Free For You by Mimi Strong

trouble when we got home.
    When we got to the middle of the aisle, where nobody could see us, she grabbed my arm and squeezed her fingers around my arm, so tight. Mom it hurts. You're hurting me. I don't want the cold meat and the blood against me.
    Her cold eyes flashed at me, and I sucked up my crying. I wiped my nose on my sleeve and I made myself small and quiet. I made myself as still as a stone.
    We kept on shopping. Up and down the aisles.
    At the checkout, the woman asked how old I was. She asked if I had a pretty smile. My mother said I did—I did have a pretty smile—but I wouldn't show the lady because I was rude and selfish and a liar.
    The blood.
    It was in my clothes. It was everywhere.

    The people at the grocery store probably didn't think much about me after I left. To them, I was just another problem, probably a meth addict.
    Some people watch movies and shows about zombies to get a thrill out of seeing human forms stripped of their civility. Desperate, angry, hurting creatures. I knew girls who got caught up in drugs, saw girls I knew from high school wandering around with skinny arms and banged-up knees. No jacket. Like so much of them was numb, they couldn't even feel the cold anymore.
    In arguments, they fling their arms at people like sad, useless weapons. They give blow jobs to family men in parking lots, and by the way they swear and kick at the vehicle after it dumps them off, they don't even get paid.
    Everywhere you go, the addicts are the same. Our neighborhood wasn't so bad, but you didn't have to travel far from where I lived to find Whalley, an area the city said was “in transition.” I'd seen people openly dealing and shooting up. That was their business, though, and I kept to mine.
    The stupidest thing about me running out of the grocery store like a crazy person was that I got myself lost. It took me twenty minutes to retrace my steps and find my way back.
    I stood outside, staring at the glass doors and people going about their business. My little two-wheeled cart was in there. The gift from my grandmother. I didn't know what it cost to replace, but the value had to be slightly more than my pride.
    I could see my cart through the window, standing at the end of the checkout.
    Digging around in my purse, I found a hair elastic and pulled my hair up into a high ponytail, a wholesome, middle-class, cheerleader ponytail. I peeled off my pink hoodie and rolled it up into my purse. The shirt I wore underneath was black, and the change in appearance gave me the confidence to walk back in.
    Moving calmly, looking at my cell phone as I walked, like I was checking a text message from my husband, I walked by the checkout and grabbed the handle of my cart without breaking my pace.
    I strode over to the newspaper stand, pretending to be distracted by a headline, did a three-point turn with the cart, and reversed direction back out the store again.
    My heart was pounding. Even though I hadn't done anything wrong.
    I had to keep reassuring myself that as I walked away from the store, fighting the urge to break into a run.

    I didn't like thinking about the past, but lately it had been trying to catch up with me.
    Not just at the grocery store, but everywhere I went.
    I did what I could to keep my head down, to stay focused on the present moment, where I had control.
    After I got my cart, I went to the other grocery store and bought all the same groceries I'd already shopped for. The cheese strings weren't on sale at this store, but they had a deal on mini yogurts that wasn't bad.
    I barely had time to get everything home before I had to rush off to work again. I skipped lunch, angry at myself for the freak-out at the first store. I should have taken the bruised apple and put back something else. Why did I always have to take the difficult path?
    When I got to work, the first thing I did was pour myself a shot.
    Then Lana got there, and she'd also had “quite the day.”
    Toward the middle of my shift,