For 22 years, every time she entered a supermarket, the scent of the produce section brought her back. It didn’t take her out but it unsettled her. It had gotten stronger over the past several years.
Back to the summer before her junior year of high school. She had just moved back to Vermont from Virginia. She left her mom for her dad. Sometimes abuse is better than neglect. Better for ego formation and belonging building. Therapists would tell her this act of agency was essential to her functioning in the world.
She got her first job at the small town grocer. Her dad’s best-friend-since-kindergarten was the owner. She worked in the produce section. Her manager there was the same age she is now. 22 years older than her. He flirted. He left notes. He left lurid scenes of pornographically-configured produce. He called her house.
She was confused. She liked the attention but also felt dirty and disgusted. Her first paycheck arrived tangled up with shame. Like most women, she’s still disentangling making a living from surviving men.
One day it got more serious as he made a physical advance towards her. She never stepped foot inside that store again after that. Her family and friends still do. He’s store manager now. Linked up with the local church she went to Sunday school at.
She told her dad that night after hours of him prying it out of her. She couldn’t say it. He thought it was drugs. And then he finally guessed and he didn’t believe her. He said she must’ve imagined it. She must’ve asked for it. She must’ve invited it.
He finally relented to say, “Just work at the cash register instead!”
The manager of that section was known for exposing himself to teenage girls in the break room.
Her 14 year old colleague was awarded a $70,000 settlement for when the guy harassing her physically assaulted him with grapefruit and cement blocks.
Her dad said that the local police said there was nothing to keep on record.
It would later be revealed that her father colluded with her manager to not go so easy on her, not give her all the shifts she wanted. He needed her to learn about proper work ethic. He’d continue to take the side of the harasser more and more like when he said many years later that it must’ve been her since he still worked there.
Don’t tell your mother.
His best-friend-since-kindergarten would only handle the situation at the supermarket. When he was on his deathbed, her father said it was up to her to absolve him of his cowardice. Thank God she’d learnt enough by then to refuse this ludicrous. She said she would but he needed to call her. He didn’t.
Don’t worry, it’s all water under the bridge, Dad.
Adversity doesn’t cause trauma. Trauma occurs in the aftermath. In the belonging part of it. Was there anyone there to acknowledge and hold it? Was there anyone there who had dealt enough with their own demons of mistreatment and mistreating to not project their shit onto who’s smaller than them? Was there a safe space to allow all of the feelings in warm accompaniment?
We used to sit in tribal circles acknowledging our daily griefs. Now we are machines worshipping artifice and artificial intelligence. Better luck next lifetime!
“I think I need to talk to a professional about this.” She pleaded. He obliged. She paid the copay. He said her mother’s child support payments were owed to him, not her.
The therapy wasn’t about the supermarket supervisor. It was about her dad. And it was about admitting how she was angry.
Pick up the amount of cards to demonstrate how angry you are….I think it’s more than that, go ahead, Mattie. ::weeps::
She got her own damn job this time. And was Ben and Jerry’s scoop shop manager in no time. Very liberal. The redheaded republican identification was releasing. She gave her friends free ice cream all the time. She stopped the older boys from doing whippets out back. She had the keys to the lock.
Fast forward 22 years…
She went back for a lap in the land and lifestyle as an adult. She lived in a different small town. The local supermarkets had gotten all bought up together. She stepped in to grab a few local essentials. As she returned to the front to pay, by the produce section, there he was.
He recognized her immediately. “Oh hi!” He said nervously.
“Wow. Unreal.” She said.
She could read right through him now. She had a post-doc in that by now. Was trained up in power by now.
“I was a teenager. You disgust me.” She added.
His colleague floated away.
“I was just saying hi.”
“Step back. You’re a piece of shit.”
He cowered.
“You were more than 20 years older then me. I was 16.”
His colleague floated back.
“Some things never change!” His colleague replied.
“Wow, that’s good to know. I’ll spread the news!” She replied.
“Well, I’m certainly not shopping here.” She put the shopping basket down.
“Oh, I thought you were kidding.” His colleague said.
“I’m not buying this anymore.”
She left thinking mostly about how short he was. She, a woman of average height, felt like a rugby player towering over him now. But she had also learned not to feel bad for a perpetrator at her own expense. Sure, in the grandest sense, it was all a large scheme for her to practice turning lead into gold. Expertise in alchemy. More reps in the grounded transcendent. I am that too.
And sometimes, we need to let the animal of the body stretch, breathe and speak.
And this, she reflected with a straightened back, was no squeak.
Some adrenaline but no sweat. No dry mouth. Just a clear assertion of what happened. Clean and simple. A reclamation of what was unjustly taken. In good order and balance. As her father would say, “That’s just the way the world works!”
-
She called her friend. Her friend of 33 years. Her friend who’d been through shit way worse than her regarding the abuses of men.
Her friend celebrated her reclamation with a “Fuck Yah, Cottontail!”
“Yah but I’m afraid. I am not sure I have the capacity to hold all of that without collapse. Maybe I should not have taken that on.”
“Yes you do or you wouldn’t have been able to. You would’ve ran or you would’ve smiled back. You’re a bad bitch now though so it just happened instinctually.”
“I feel like you were there with me.”
“You’re just being real, my dear!”
“Thank you for being here.”
We’re reinforced in our belonging. When there is an interruption to the movements of life and love, we need people to help weave us back in.
She dropped the rope. Just one swift long-overdue battle and then put down the sword. She released the chord with him and reattuned to the higher harmonic of a true friend.
-
She still needed eggs. Local ones.
She walked in to a better boutique of local products. She went for a basket at the same time as a man. He stepped back bowing his head.
This time, she couldn’t smell the scent of produce. The air had cleared.
The Golden Hen Farm. Hand Gathered. Hand Graded. Laid by Happy, Healthy Hens. She checked them. No rotten eggs.
Just one old story she was over enough to tell.
“Heck yes, even better,” she said.
Hildegard of Bingen, Book of Divine Works (12th century)