But I know that I have seen what I have seen! Somehow there is a trick in this—but what? I pirouette on my broom and pretend to be busy in the canned vegetable aisle, from which vantage I can see the pair of Gypsies at the meat counter. My uncle John in his blood-stained smock approaches in a kindly manner, and just beyond him, through the doorway that leads to the meat cooler, I can see my cousin Dan, cleaver raised, then falling, but his eyes trained on the Gypsy woman. From his vantage point, of course, all he would be able to see of her is her head, the hoop ear rings, the bandana, the intense brown eyes. I see the little one clutching her mother’s hand, and the mother herself, from the rear. Clop! I hear the cleaver divide the chicken carcasses in a steady, slow rhythm. Clop! . . . Clop!
The Gypsy woman asks to look more closely at the lamb, please. My uncle, always the gentleman, slides the tray with lamb chops on it out of the case and places it on the counter top—something that would be illegal now. The Gypsy woman stands on her toes to inspect the chops and asks the price, though she can plainly see the blue plastic numbers on the white plastic card, $1.99/LB.
For you, my uncle says, one-seventy-nine.
The woman nods, and holds up two fingers.
Two chops or two pounds, my uncle asks.
Two, the woman says, pointing to her (presumed) daughter, and then to herself.
Two chops, my uncle says, a bit amused it would seem. But then, as he is wrapping them up, the woman and her daughter walk away. My uncle is clearly a bit confused. He slowly finishes wrapping the chops, and places the package on the counter top, after writing the charge in red crayon on the crisp white paper. He looks at me, but I can only shrug. I sweep my way around the end of the counter and into the next aisle where the pair I have under surveillance is studying the baking supplies—flour, sugars, salt, cooking oils, spices. The mother, presumed, seems to be explaining things to her daughter, presumed. When the mother spots me this time, she turns to face me, strides deliberately forward, and, placing a hand on my shoulder gives me a heart rending smile, her eyes flaming in the stupid fluorescence of the grocery store lights, and she says,
Sweet boy, come with us.
It is both a question and a command. I think I might have recoiled in horror, or laughed in horror, except that the daughter gazed up at me with such woeful appeal that I knew there was no decision to make. No decision. Clop! I could see no crime in the disappeared cabbages and peaches, in the unclaimed lamb chops, in the vanishing bags of flour. Suddenly I was a co-conspirator. Clop! That gold tooth and the child’s profound eyes had done me in. Clop!
We three of us mounted the broom, first the child, then the woman, and then myself, and we shot out of the front entrance to the store like bank robbers fleeing bullets. By God, my old life was over! Now for the clouds.
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