The Once and Future Beauty Queens

At the A&P in my first part-time job

it was the full-time cashiers I studied most.

They seemed savvy and

at 16 I was looking for ways to be.

I watched them on breaks from my corner perch

in the crowded airless lunchroom, upstairs in the back,

all smoking roll-your-owns, laughing nervously at the men’s crude jokes,

carefully picking stray flakes of tobacco off their crimsoned lips,

in this small northern town looks their only currency.

The older women like Evelyn were quiet, would light one off the other,

eyes on the clock, sullen,

counting down their moments of freedom

and how many they could power through before time was up.

Laughing the loudest was Shirley, the head cashier, smarter than the rest.

Her lipstick bled all day on a slightly trembling mouth,

her deep well of sadness pouring forth even as she laughed,

this one-time looker, this prom queen gone wrong.

The story went her husband beat her,

but never where the marks would show.

I can still smell the place,

the filthy overcrowded fridge packed with

meatloaf sandwiches and last night’s chili,

Dutch the butcher’s apron soaked in blood,

his cuticles caked red.

The sounds come back clearly too,

breaking apart our folded white cotton uniforms stiff with starch,

the click of the pricing guns resounding up and down the aisles,

the funereal clunk of time cards being punched at the top of the stairs,

the defeat in Evelyn’s voice over the crackling p.a. system,

calling wearily “All parcelers to the front.”

And how there was a pecking order to everything, even this:

How the prettiest girls were the first to get help at their tills,

young boys rushing into their stalls behind them,

as horses into gates,

eager to package groceries every Friday night

for the current beauty queens.