Inspiration?

[LSPoorEeyorick]

(The Amigo, continued)

I found her among racks of knitted dogs and bells and angels, fondling the texture of a plus-sized Christmas sweater vest. Clearly I’d inherited her tactility but not her style.

“Isn’t this cute?” she asked, examining a shiny button in the shape of a candy cane.

“It certainly makes its point.”

“Don’t grinch. It’s cheerful.”

“Hey, if teddy bears in scarves do it for you, go for it.”

She grimaced and held the sweater up to her rounded shoulders. “I don’t fit clothes here anyway.”

I straightened my own rounded shoulders. “I thought…”

“I did. How are you supposed to maintain weight if you can’t move?” She sighed, and plunked the sweater into my cart.

“Oh… I don’t really think that it’ll look good on me.”

“It’s not for you. It’d look nice on your aunt. Maybe we can find some warm sweatpants to give her on the caroling trip, too. Are you still coming?”

I usually did end up accompanying my parents on their annual Christmas trip to Gladwin, the tiny, depression-era farming town where they grew up. We’d bundle ourselves in our warmest coats and brave the black ice on the poorly-paved roads between the homes of my mother’s less-fortunate siblings. I could always expect that while we warmed our hands on the wood-burning stove in his bungalow, my beer-bellied uncle would point out the couple new pounds I’d gained that year and make his pet bird do tricks. But we’d sing our harmony to “The First Noel” and play Santa, and somehow, I always ended up with less Scrooge and more Tim Cratchett. I nodded and suggested we buy some toys for Billybird.

After locating the right bird-treats, and treats for the rest of the people on our caroling stops, she was determined to find some presents to send back with me. She always made sure her kids in college had something to look forward to each day… a carved snowman to remind us to get outside and play… a CD to keep us in the Christmas spirit despite our piles of undone work… powdered cider so we could inhale the musky sweetness and imagine we had just stepped inside their warm house, seconds from their embrace and the real cider mulling on the stove.

We were in the middle of a kerfuffle about Toblerone (she was convinced she could find one for me, I was certain the store hadn’t found a way to sweatshop Swiss chocolate, and even if they had I wasn‘t willing to waste her last bit of fading energy in search of honey nougat) when I felt the sensation of being gawked at.

A pillar of a woman stood in the aisle across from ours, staring at us with an indignant pout on her lips. I stared right back and sneered at her knockoff designer bag. Mom smiled at her, with a look of slight confusion on her face that we’d usually identify with her search for a missing word or name since the steroids started bleeding her memories together. “Do we know you?” she asked.

The woman pointed a bejeweled finger as she walked towards us. “You should have left that machine for someone who really needs it.”

“Pardon me?”

“There are people who deserve to use those wheelchairs. You shouldn’t have taken it.”

Mom shrugged. “These are available for anyone who needs them, that’s what the greeter said.”

The woman put her hands on her hips--or lack thereof-- and took a step closer to us. “Anyone who needs them. Not you. If you just stood up and walked, you could lose some of that weight.”

A tingling of bile grew to a burning fireball constricting my throat, and fifteen different insults evaporated before I could open my mouth . I looked helplessly to my mother, who was taking a deep breath. She smiled weakly and shook her head. “You don’t always know the whole story.” The woman narrowed her eyes and wheeled around, and clicked away in her tacky pumps. I stared in disbelief until she turned a corner, and then looked down at my mother. Her eyes were welling up and she was staring at the scuffed linoleum floor.

I kicked the nearest shelf. “What a ****ing bitch.”

“She didn’t know. She didn’t know I was sick.”

“Doesn’t excuse her behavior.”

Her tears had begun to reveal her blood-bruised cheeks. I dug in my pockets for a Kleenex.

“No,” mom said, shrugging her shoulders. “But someday she’ll know how I feel.”

“She’ll never understand.”

“Not until she gets sick someday. We all do.”

“Well, I hope the bitch suffers.”

Mom looked me straight in the eyes for a moment. The she put the wheelchair in gear and rolled away. “I wouldn’t wish this suffering on anyone.”

She was waiting for me at the front, where Jodie with the frizzy hair was helping her park alongside an electrical outlet. Another worker had pulled out mom’s own wheelchair and we helped her back into it. The workers smiled warmly at her, and she smiled warmly back while I stared numbly and pushed her back through the tides of shoppers into the parking lot and a pouring rain. Barely the energy to stand, she slumped from the wheelchair to the car and laid her head back to rest.

I glared at the wheelchair. **** you, ****ing wheelchair.

I popped the trunk and tried to pick it up. Dripping wet, it slipped. Pinched again.

I slammed it up and over the bumper. The wheels stuck.

I shoved it harder. And harder. ****ing wheelchair. **** you. Be that way. We don’t want you.

I screamed.

And then I felt a hand on my back. I spun around.

It was the greeter, rain-drenched, looking at me with concerned eyes. “Are you OK?”

“No.”

He re-angled the wheelchair and slid it in gently. “I told you it wasn’t a good day for shopping.”

Mom’s voice, worn but warm, drifted from the passenger seat. “It’s always a good day for shopping.”

He closed the trunk and patted me on the shoulder, and walked away with a train of shopping carts in tow. I stood still, suddenly aware of how wet I was, not really caring. I squashed back into the driver’s seat and reached out for mom’s hand. “Do you want anything?”

“I’m OK.”

“Do you want me to key that awful woman’s car?”

“Maybe a little.”

“How about some chili fries?”

“Chili fries… would be nice.”