Free How Sweet It Is by Alice Wisler

getting to use a coupon, I can’t help but look up from the donut box to see what is going on. However, once I look up, it’s as if the newest issue of Glamour is taunting me to take a peek. Lowering my eyes, I place the donuts in the buggy.
    “Those bodies are all air brushed,” Sally told me shortly after my accident. “You don’t believe that those celebrities have no moles or laugh lines, do you?”
    “Well…”
    “Come on, Deena. Everyone has a scar or two. Be realistic. These Hollywood starlets never fell off their bikes or got stitches?” She looked at me and smiled. “Every other day one of them steps up to admit she had plastic surgery. I bet most of what they show off on the covers isn’t real.”
    Still, as it is with so much of life, it depends on what others think is real. Other people think celebrities really are just that flawlessly beautiful. And compared to them, I am a train wreck. The scars on my right arm glare at me through my longsleeved shirt. They remind me every day that I am no longer beautiful. I was the homecoming queen in high school and now look at me! People used to say my brown hair and eyes were prettier than Julia Roberts’s. Now I just have a pair of rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. If you look closely, you can even see the fertile Nile River Valley where the scars meet just an inch from my wrist.
    “The scars will fade in time.” Dr. Bland’s voice usually enters my thoughts when I get on this well-worn path called Feeling Sorry for Myself.
    The cashier, a young girl with several moles dotting her arms, is trying to help the woman in curlers. “That coupon expired last month,” she says sympathetically.
    The woman raises both hands. “Then that means I can’t buy the dog food?”
    “Well, you can buy it,” the cashier tells her. “You just can’t use the coupon.”
    The woman lowers her hands, shakes her head. “I have been shopping at this store all my life!” she blurts out and then takes a breath. “I can’t believe you won’t let me use the coupon!”
    “Ma’am, it’s expired.”
    “What will Sinatra do?” She lovingly strokes the twenty-two-pound bag of Kibbles’n Bits. “What will he do? I can’t bear it. I can’t.”
    I am assuming Sinatra is her canine.
    “He had surgery last week. This may be the last dog food I get to buy him,” she says, turning to me.
    I don’t know what to say. I keep my mouth shut, afraid that instead of showing empathy I’ll shout out “I’m allergic to dogs!”
    The cashier notes the line forming behind me. A man in a Hurricanes cap clears his throat; another customer rattles change in his pocket. The cashier asks, “Ma’am, what are you going to do?”
    The woman eyes her and states firmly, “That’s my question. I think you should let me use the coupon. Where is the manager?” Her eyes are beady, like little tan pellets, perhaps similar to the dog food she wants.
    The cashier sighs, and the next thing I know, she shakes her head and punches some buttons on her keypad. The woman with the curlers is now wearing a smile as bright as the curlers on her head. She pays for the dog food and teeters out of the store like she’s just won the blue ribbon at the state fair, her bag of Kibbles’n Bits towering in her shopping buggy.
    “I know that woman,” the man behind me says to no one, to all of us. “Marble Gray,” he spits out. “She’ll cheat you out of your underwear, if she can.”
    Marble Gray with a dog named Sinatra? Aunt Regena Lorraine with a furry creature named Giovanni? What happened to the traditional pet names like Fido and Daisy? Sally and Jeannie will never believe these names when I tell them. Especially not Jeannie, believer that folks want simple in these parts.
    ————
    I put on a long-sleeved blue cotton shirt and a denim skirt to wear to teach my first cooking lesson. The long sleeves are a must for me; they cover even my wrists. I don’t need middleschoolers asking me questions