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Book cover for What Things Cost: an anthology for the people What Things Cost: an anthology for the people
Rebecca Gayle Howell (ed.) et al.
https://doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813182438.001.0001
Published online:
18 May 2023
Published in print:
07 March 2023
Online ISBN:
9780813197418
Print ISBN:
9780813182438

Contents

Book cover for What Things Cost: an anthology for the people What Things Cost: an anthology for the people
Chapter

In Line

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Diane Gilliam
Diane Gilliam
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https://doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813182438.003.0073
Pages
174–175
  • Published:
    March 2023

Extract

Last checkout lane at the grocery store, a half-full cart
parked about four feet from the end of the line. No one’s there
so I can’t tell if it’s in line and since I read somewhere
that first-come-first-served is basic to democracy and this is why
people get so bent out of shape about cutting in line,
just in case, I hover back behind.
Then here she comes, from the display of water softener salt pellets
off to the side, forty-pound bags mounded up on a pallet. Are you in line?
I ask and she tells me to go ahead, but I’m not in a hurry and not of a mind
to cut in line. By her face I guess she’s got eight or ten years on me
though she’s dressed much the same: not-tight jeans, tennis shoes,
an ordinary shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
She tilts her head toward the pile of bags—I used to lift forty pounds
like it was nothing. We talk about our backs, feet, how a butternut squash
costs more than a steak, and when we get close to our turns, she heads back
to the piled-up bags of salt. I follow, a two-woman carry in mind,
but she says she can do it. A man now in line behind me hurries over, takes
the bag from her without asking, and sets it in the empty end of her cart.
She unloads her groceries, one-handed, one can or box or bag at a time.
Factory line, thirty years, she says. Wrecked my hands, too. Knuckles all knotted up,
her fingers a system of strings and pulleys. I’m only sixty-four.
How are you today? the young woman at the register asks her.
That’s on special, the woman points to the bag. 7.99, regular 14.98.
She points to the pallet. Go look at the sticker yourself.
The computer will know, the cashier says. But no. Go look at it yourself.
The woman goes over, squats down and points to the tiny sticker barely visible
on the edge of the pallet, presses her fingertips against the floor to help herself back up.
The cashier doesn’t move. Go look, she tells her again. Then to me, They think
you’re lying, they don’t see it with their own eyes. The bag boy goes, looks, nods
to the cashier, who scans the bag and the rest of her order. No to help out to her car.
On my way out, I push my cart past the woman, stopped a few feet
down from the end of our line, forearms resting on the handle of her cart,
the receipt held up between her fingers, glasses down on her nose,
checking it out with her own two eyes. She doesn’t look at me.
She knows what things cost: backs, hands, feet. Too much.
Count on it—always, too much.

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