Rise by L. Annette Binder

his wallet. He took a five dollar bill and set it on the belt. “Here you go,” he said. He looked at the lady but not the crying baby with its perfect little fists. Her hair was oily and stuck to her forehead. It was blond in places, but the ends were brown. No telling what color it had been when she was little. “Forget about the card.”
    The mother looked at the crisp bill. “I don’t need your money.”
    â€œIt’s more than you’d get if you used your card.”
    â€œHow would you know a thing like that?”
    â€œYou’re holding up the line,” he said. There was nobody behind him.
    She pushed her cart forward. “I don’t want your money.”
    The cashier reached for a metal ring with cards hanging from it. “Ma’am,” she said. “I’ve got a blank one right here.” She swiped the card over the scanner.
    There wasn’t any checker so the cashier bagged the groceries herself. She mixed the lettuce with the Comet, but the mother didn’t complain. The cashier set the bags in the cart and looked at the receipt before handing it over. Her goiter was big as an apricot.
    He set his items on the belt while the mother gathered up her things. He dropped his basket on top of the others and straightened up the stack so people wouldn’t trip. He had only three things and look how long he’d waited. He pointed to the Express Lane sign. “Next time pay attention,” he said to the mother, who was zipping up her parka. He stepped a little closer. “Can’t you read the sign?”
    â€œDon’t go pointing at me,” she said. “You need to learn some manners.” Her baby was wheezing. It hit the handlebar of the cart like a tiny drummer, and she squared her shoulders and pushed her cart past the aisle and through the double doors.
    She was in the parking lot when he came out with his bag. She was only a few cars down. She drove a rusty Datsun that might have been green once. She strapped her baby in its seat and left her empty cart pushed up against another car. She was a sign of how things were going, another symptom of a general disease. He set his bag in the passenger seat. He scraped the ice from his windshield, and hishands shook even harder from the cold. People didn’t pay attention to the rules. They made right turns from the left-hand lane, even when it snowed. They pulled out into the street without looking because what did it matter if somebody had to hit their brakes. What did it matter if they used the parking lane to cut their way to the front. Pornography on the billboards. Ladies with their mouths open and their hair looked bleached and ironed flat like the bristles of a broom, and he didn’t want to see them.
    She took Circle all the way to Highway 115 and then east toward Fort Carson. He could see the sticker on her window now that he was close. She was married to a soldier and she should shop in the commissary and not at Safeway. She should stay where she belonged. They passed the new apartments that were coming up on both sides of the highway. Mushroom-colored buildings with names like Gold Rush and Wildridge Meadows. She turned left at the gate and the MPs waved her through, and he kept on going. It was another half mile before he could turn around.
    The checker at King Soopers with the scar above her lip. The Mexican girls walking home from Mitchell. They wore short skirts even in December. The lady selling roses outside the Guadalupe Church. Nothing was better than their Aztec hair. Those slanting indio eyes. All the mothers pushing their strollers around Memorial Lake. They were fifteen, sixteen, they weren’t even twenty. He wanted to warn them the trail wasn’t safe. They needed to walk in groups.
    He used his mother’s copper pot. She’d never measured anything. She went only by taste. You have to cook with love and not with those recipe books , she’d say.