Q: Alice #8

The night I went to pick up my son and daughter from the jail should
have been the worst night of my life. It wasn't, because I refused to
think the worst had come. The worst should always be yet to come, if
you ask me.

They'd put them in different cells, one for girls and one for boys. The
jail was like everything else in Houston: damp, smelly, hard to find. I
was embarrassed but I kept my chin up. "Nice kids," said the cop behind
the desk, and I didn't argue. I could tell she was glad she hadn't met
me or my kids in a dark alley.

They'd been picked up for shoplifting, at a Woolworth's, no less. Right
next door was Neiman Marcus but my kids managed to get nabbed at a
discount store. It didn't make any difference except that Neiman Marcus
would have made a better story. My daughter was blameless but she'd
been standing next to my son when he dropped five dollars and
twenty-five cents worth of bath salts into his pocket. Isn't that
always the way?

"I was Christmas shopping," my son told me, and I believed him. How
could I not? He hates baths, always has. There's no way in hell those
bath salts were for him.

I listened to both of them on the way home, getting madder and madder
the whole time. I wasn't mad at them, but at the man who'd caught them
in the parking lot. "He acted like he was so nice," my daughter said,
"Like he was our friend."

That changed when they got into the man's office. He wouldn't let my
daughter pee, and he threatened to slap my son. He told them to shut
the fuck up. "Shut the F up," my daughter said.

I know this Woolworth's because it's where I buy my panty hose. I can
stop there on the way home from work and get in and out in ten minutes
flat. They used to have a soda fountain but it gave way to a candy
counter before it was annexed by the ladies sportswear department. I
didn't blame them; the sodas were always flat and once I saw a roach
make its way across the silverware they kept in a gray plastic tray at
the entrance. All sorts of places were popping up where you could go
for a soda and ice cream, anyway. Why fight it?

But "shut the fuck up"? That was something else altogether. I don't
doubt my kids deserved to be caught but shut the fuck up? Who talks
like that? People who shut the fuck up belong on television or inside
those office buildings with all the steel and windows. They don't
belong in a tiny room with two kids while outside old ex-waitresses try
to sell orange blouses to fat women.

So I did it. I walked into that Woolworth's like I have every week of
my adult life and I found the man. He had a beard, just like my kids
said, and he looked like a regular old shopper. I knew it was him by
the way he kept walking up and down the aisles, pretending to look at
the cheap shoes and cheap makeup and cheap scarves. He was no idiot.
That much was clear from his eyes.

I waited until he was across from me before I said hello. I smiled and
cut my eyes, fingering a pair of pants you couldn't pay me to wear. I
was wearing my green top and I knew my hair had a perfect part down the
middle. He fell for it.

We chatted. That's the word for it, "chatted." Before long I knew he
had a wife and kids and an office just behind the shoe counter. "I'd
just love to see it," I said. I drew out that "love," stressing the
whole syllable while cocking my eyebrow. Stupid man.

It was the tiniest, most pathetic office I'd ever seen. He had a steel
desk and one of those chairs only teachers use. The doctors where I
work would have laughed and made jokes about the room suiting the man.
I didn't joke but I bet I caused some laughing later on.

I made sure I was between the door and the man. When he put his hand on
my side I lifted my hand and messed up my hair. When he pushed me
against the door I started screaming. When he put his hand over my
mouth I lifted my knee to his groin and screamed even louder.

"Baaaaa-raaaaack," I shouted, opening the door. "BRAACK BRAACK BRAACK
BRAACK BRAACK BRAAAAAACKKK!" I knew I sounded like a sick chicken but
the deed was done. Even before the women at cosmetics came to my rescue
I was out the door, my fly undone and my hair tousled.

I ran all the way to my car. The look on that man's face; I almost felt
sorry for him. But mostly I worried that he wouldn't know who I was,
because that's what matters, in the end.