Rainy Afternoon in A Small Town

I walk into the corner drug store to pick up my prescription.  Well, first I try to pull a door that's clearly marked "Push" because the doors are hung backwards and they always mess with my brain, despite that I've been to this store a million times.  Behind the back counter, which is ten steps from the door, Brenda smiles at me.  We exchange pleasantries. She invites me to the next Lion's Club event and reminds me, “We always need good new members!”  Unlike Walgreen's, when I go to the Corner Drug I never have to give my name and address or tell the cashier whether I'm picking up or dropping off.  Brenda already knows

Standing by the register, Frank Crowe leans on the counter looking at me sideways and nods a hello without speaking.  I give him my tight lipped smile--the one where I don't show my teeth, then stick my debit card into the machine which takes an incredibly long time to complete my transaction.  I stand impatiently, tapping my foot as I wait for the beep that tells me I can retrieve my card.

Behind me, I hear the door squeak open again, Betty Looper.  I swear she's always in the Corner Drug.  Always picking up some prescription or another. She’s old.  No one knows really how old, but no one remembers a time when she wasn’t around either.  She’s like a permanent fixture here, just like that statue that stands crumbling and decaying in front of the court house of some old Civil War hero on his horse.  Nobody knows when it was erected and nobody knows when it will finally finish falling apart, but we all can see that its inevitable demise is nigh. 

 How many medications can one person even tolerate, anyway, before medicine is no longer a good thing?

Finally, Brenda hands me the little white paper bag, stapled at the top, with my bottle of pills inside.  With it in my hand, I turn and head out the door.  The pills rattle as I shift the bag to my left hand and start digging for my keys in my purse. I can feel old Frank's stare at my back.  Betty, ignoring me, presses onward, Brenda now turning her focus to her. 

“Now Bettty, you ain’t give us ten minutes to get that medicine ready before you come runnin’ over here.” She says to Ms. Looper, trying to sound like she’s teasing, but I can tell she’s more than a little put out.

Standing by the door, thumbing through some dusty old greeting cards, Estelle Cantrell looks up as I pass.  Her gaze is quick, but measuring.  She looks me up and down, making her judgment fast and sharp.  I don’t know what she thinks of my outfit or my hairstyle today and that’s probably a good thing.  I wonder what she’ll tell people about me?  I can just hear her now.  “She was in that store and out of it like she was on her way to a fire or something.  Ain’t no sense in anybody being in that big of a hurry.  If she put near as much time into ironing her clothes and fixing her hair she might not still be single.”

Honestly, I feel violated, like the simple act of refilling my blood pressure medication should come with some degree of anonymity or at least without judgment. But then in a small town, you tend to get the illusion that everyone knows too much about you.

You come to accept it, expect it after a time.  At first I found some comfort in being recognized, and in knowinmost every face I see.  It was almost like the feeling of home--like walking in every door to find family and a big casserole dish full of mac and cheese that everyone intends to share. Fresh gossip, thinly veiled as concern would fill the air with a familiar chatter that almost made you feel like you’d gone home for Sunday dinner.  I felt I sat among my own, adopted into this motley crowd of small town folks--hometown folks, only it's not my hometown.

They all seem to eye me in a sidelong way, even the ones who've adopted me.  They seem to accept me, even care about me, but then I remember the thin veil that covers most everything here. I’m recognized but not truly known and that confuses me more than the backward-hung doors at the Corner Drug.  

If I speak up too often or too loudly, I feel their eyes narrow and their lips purse with disapproval. 

"You're not from here." They're thinking.  

They say to each other, "She's not from here. She has no clue what she's talking about."

As if one small town in the South is so different from any other. 

 There's a kind of Southern pride, a false sense of originality that every little tucked down here below the Mason-Dixon wants to claim as theirs.  Like the way we all drink sweet tea, or the way most of us think grits are breakfast food only. 

"If you ain't from 'round here, you caint understand our way o’ life." They all say.  "We don't need no outsiders a comin' in, tellin' us how to do things."

Sometimes I think if it were up to Southerners we’d all still be using privies and drawing our water from backyard wells.  We’d be sending our womenfolk down to the river to wash clothes and making them cook on one of those old wood cook stoves.  To the chagrin of many, the Yankees somehow succeeded in modernizing the good ole South—even the small towns out in the middle of nowhere, like this one.

Progress is still a dirty word in the South and in small-town Southern America in particular.  If you speak the language of change, you are marked.  In the old days, you'd have been run out of town on a rail. Nowadays, you just get gnawed to pieces by gossip.

Along with the overblown sense of pride and originality you'll find in every tiny town, you'll find at least a fair amount of poverty.  On hillsides and hidden behind thick stands of pines, trailer parks stand like ancient ruins, their roofs tarred over, the windows held together by duct tape and a Sunday morning prayer.  They, and the people who occupy them are the landmarks of true Southern living.  Dirt driveways with deep ruts dug out by rain.  Clunker cars that just barely get folks to their jobs and back every day and  kids that spend too much time home alone...this is the reality of life in the Ruins.  

It wasn't always so.  Many years past, there was commerce here.  Factory jobs, hardware stores and green grocers, a post office and a cafe.  Now, shuttered and crumbling store-fronts sit empty, save for the ghosts of the past that dart with quick shadows across the sidewalks, specters of a place that used to exist.

Change came here, but it came like a thief in the night.  No one discussed or planned it.  It just came.  When the shoe store closed, everyone just drove on to the next town, to Wal-Mart or to Sears, where they could buy shoes and a dress in one place.  When the post office closed, a church moved in.  Slowly, change crept up each street, boarding up windows, every boutique, every beauty shop and every hardware store's sign permanently turned to read "Sorry, We're Closed."  That kind of change came easy.  It was gradual and since no one talked about it, no one had to actually see it happening.

Thing about change is, it's always happening.  

I drive across the street to pick up some Cokes and a frozen pizza for dinner from the local grocer.  The gals at the register say hello as I choose a buggy and go browsing through the aisles, picking up things I never intended to buy.  This store is old, too.  It's dingy and the floors have a peculiar hollow sound under the clomp of my heels.  The produce is limp, spotted bananas, potatoes growing eyes, mold on the blueberries, I decide I'll stop at the farm for fruit.  

I grab my milk and eggs and head to the register, where in line ahead of me a woman I recognize is already waiting.  I'm trying to remember her name when she speaks to me.

"Good to see you again.” She says kindly.  

"You too!" I say enthusiastically.  I'm probably smiling too big as I grapple for her name, or where I know her from.  

I'm relieved when she turns back to her groceries, laying them on the belt that doesn't work anymore.

I too, start to set my purchases on the belt, separating mine from my stranger-friend's with a yellow ruler someone left at the counter for that purpose.  When it's my turn, I use my arm to push everything closer to the cashier.  We make small talk as she rings up my milk and eggs, and I realize I forgot the Cokes.  Too lazy to bother with going back to get them, I tell myself I need to cut back anyway.

"Have a good weekend now!" The girl behind the register whose face but not name I know,  says.  

"You too!" I reply pleasantly.  I can't wait to get my things into the car and head home.  

As I make my way out the door, pushing the buggy with one hand, shoving my debit card back into my wallet with the other, it starts to rain.

Big, warm drops of water fall heavy on my back, soaking my silk blouse until it becomes my epidermis. It sticks tome, a purple skin, translucent enough so my bra shows through it, and every bump and curve of my upper body to boot.

I stand in the open, loading my food into the car, the deluge causing my hair to drip into my face. Now my skirt is soaked as well, the thin white linen like wet paper against my skin becoming cold and uncomfortably heavy. 

By the time I'm done I'm thoroughly wet and exposed. My light summer outfit gives me little in the way of modesty now that it's drenched.  I walk anyway to the buggy stall, with my head held high, dripping hair and running mascara notwithstanding.  Out the corner of my eye I see two men I recognize sitting in an old Buick, watching me.  When I look their way, they do not avert their gaze.  Behind the windshield they must feel like invisible voyeurs.

Sopping wet, I finally open the driver's side door of my car and try to quickly get in, my wet skirt restricting my movement. I immediately steam up the windows with my body heat and warm breath. 

I take a minute to shake out my hair, wipe the water and makeup off my face with a fast food napkin, take a deep breath.  I turn the key, flip on the defrost and the wipers, put the car in reverse.  As I start to back up, I look over my shoulder and see him there, just sitting in his truck, waiting, watching.

The thing about small towns is, you sometimes run into people you used to know.  You see them hiding behind end-caps at the gas station, and in their pickup trucks sometimes.  You should learn to be on the lookout for them, but sometimes you forget.  

I drive home, amused a little that those two guys in the Buick thought they were so hidden as they watched my practically nude body walk across the parking lot.  I feel that sick sensation, deep in my stomach, or in my uterus, or maybe my heart even, when I picture him waiting in his truck like a little kid thinking he’s hidden behind a sapling.

On my drive home I think over the past.  I recall times when I felt less of a stranger, but orbited a much bigger world.  I realize how, as I’ve shut myself off from people, my new world seems increasingly, painfully small.

Maybe I’m merely the shadow of something now. A dream that once was, or a place that used to be alive with movement and color.  Now I am that foreigner--not from 'round here.  Constantly seen, always recognized, but never, ever really known.

By the time I’m home the rain has stopped.  The sun threatens to pop back through the clouds as I unload the groceries and haul them inside.  I try to put them all away before I go change, but the air conditioning chills me to the bone as it permeates my wet clothes.  Home, no mac and cheese, no fresh gossip. No prying eyes or judgmental stares. Just me, in my wet clothes, a pile of groceries at my feet that I probably will never eat.