The Writer’s Corner features poetry, essays, short stories, satire and various fiction and non-fiction from SCAD Atlanta students. To submit your own work for the Writer’s Corner, email features@scadconnector.com.
Jersey by Julie Tran.
“Hey I’ve got two bottles of crappy — ” Delete.
“hey i’ve got two red — ” Nobody really says it like that, though. Right?
“Hey.” She’d wait for a reply, then work from there. Vaguely she wondered just how many times she should drop in a swear word in the conversation that was surely to follow, just to remind David that she was a woman of substance. It would be a short exchange. Maybe she’d have to text him only twice, three times at best. And she’d already used one on “Hey.” Silently she started to berate herself, but stopped short after a second, thinking, well, it wasn’t like she could have hit him up with “hey what the f*** is up?” That would just be crude.
The bus lurched to a stop. The drilling fumes of exhaust wafted in as the door opened. It wasn’t that warm outside, but warm enough for the fumes to be nauseating. Underneath her Coca-Cola jersey, she shivered in disgust. The jersey was too warm for today, but she couldn’t wait. She wanted to take it out. It took her a solid two weeks to find it — this exact deep-not-bright red color, with these black stripes going from shoulders to cuffs, and the Coca-Cola logo in white. She had fantasized about wearing it for two weeks and a half. David didn’t get her obsession with the jersey. She told him it was ironic, because Coke is obviously very popular and you would think everyone would have a Coke shirt, but you don’t really see them around, do you? To which David furrowed his brows.
“So it’s a protest against capitalism or something?”
“Kind of. F**king capitalism,” she scoffed. David laughed, but she wasn’t sure he’d gotten it. They had found the jersey that evening, in a thrift shop a block away from where they had their dinner. “Date night,” as David called it, but she just called it dinner.
“It’s ironic, dearest,” said David.
“It’s just corny, darling.” She winked at him.
They had sex that night, the kind of early-relationship sex that was supposed to be enjoyable but at the same time not quite because they both had to show off a little bit. But the moment she met David she had decided that she would not follow this rule of pretense. Females of the insecure and undereducated class of mind do it, and she had decided to be better than that. She wouldn’t be pulling any tricks to him, or toil to be creative for his pleasure. David would get what he gets. End of story. She was sure he would understand. After all, their first encounter went something like this:
“David.”
“Like the statue, David?”
“Like the third most popular name of the seventies, David.”
“That’s too bad. Daisy.”
“As in the plant?”
“As in Buchanan.”
It was a classic story of a bar meet-cute. She admitted to herself she was relieved. Relieved that her first words to this man was to his face instead of to his screen. She couldn’t fathom how she could make someone possibly understand what she was about through texts. This whole business with the two bottles of red proved it too clearly.
The bus hissed as its door moved to close. The smell of wasted gasoline, or whatever the hell it was, assaulted her again. The inside of her Coca-Cola jersey was beginning to collect sweat. So miserable she was in this damp predicament that she barely took notice when a woman fell down next to her on the aisle.
The woman had bene shouting for a while, apparently, because the bus became very quiet when she finally took the fall. She had brought down with her five plastic bags. Walmart. Known for its workers abuse. Apples, tomatoes and onions were rolling out like vibrant globular rats running for the spaces underneath the seats and between passenger’s shoes. Daisy watched as a red onion bumped into the side of her left shoe. She stared at it as it came to rest. Then she picked it up.
The woman, whose haste had brought about her downfall, was on her fours, scrambling to pick up the spilled groceries, her mouth running again. The bus that paused at her stop too briefly, and if the driver had listened to her when she told him to hold up nothing would have happened. This was what she said. Daisy silently disagreed, cringing still in the exhaust fumes. None of the passengers around them showed any sign of recognition of the ranting woman. A frown here and there, gaze averted, but that could’ve been about anything.
Daisy looked at the red onion in her hand. A second later, she realized the woman was staring at it, too. She had gotten the fruits back and was standing, looking at the onion rather severely, like it had failed her. Hastily Daisy stuck out her hand.
“Here, Ma’am.” Bravely she smiled. “Long f**king day, huh?”
The woman frowned the slightest bit. The dark eyes darted very quickly to the Coca-Cola logo, the, back up again, nonplussed. Cautiously, like taking a bomb from a bomber, she pried off the rescued onion, then bent down to hook her fingers into the five plastic bags. Four of the plastic straps was torn already. Two bags slipped to the floor again. The bus driver was muttering under his breath.
“Let me help you with that, Ma’am.”
It was the result of a funny tickle in her head. Before the woman had the chance to answer, Daisy picked up the two bags and stood up.
“It’s my stop also,” she said, nodding sympathetically. The other passengers weren’t looking away now. They were looking at her. She felt rather idolized.
The woman stared her up and down, muttered a “Thank you”, and made her way off the bus. Daisy followed closely behind. The two bags were heavier than they looked. One was full of canned dog food and the other was two cartons of milk, cold, sweating, and jabbing into the side of her thighs with their corners. The woman walked in front of her. She was saying something about dropping the bags down at that shop right over there.
“Over there, Ma’am?” she asked, pointing at a small convenience store near the end of the block with dark windows. The woman nodded.
“Yes. And don’t call me ‘Ma’am’, if you please.”
The ingratitude of the response surprised her. Daisy looked at her surroundings sourly. This wasn’t even anywhere near her stop. And it was getting dark quickly. Maybe she’d have to ask David to pick her up. Maybe she’d tell him about the two bottles of red in the car. The corner of one of the milk cartons stabbed her in the thigh again. Walmart and its abuses indeed. Scowling, she broke into a quick trot, passing the woman, all the way to the convenience store and put the two bags to the ground. Leg still aching, she slapped on a kind smile and turned around to face the woman, who was approaching slowly. She had her three bags in one hand and a phone in another. Texting, apparently. The dull pain in Daisy’s thigh tingled in annoyance.
“You’ll be alright here?” she asked in the brightest of voices. The woman smiled an insincere smile, nodded, and muttered another “Thank you.” Sighing silently in relief, Daisy bid a good bye to her and made her way back to the bus stop. Maybe she’d just get another bus back instead of asking David like an insecure little girl who couldn’t take care of herself.
The bright phone screen attracted her attention as she passed by the woman. Daisy stole a glance at it. The woman hadn’t been texting, she was preparing to make a call. She’d even already dialed the number. 911.
Daisy barely had time to get annoyed or enraged or indignant. She just caught her own reflection in one of the store windows. Her semitransparent face was scowling back from above the red Coca-Cola jersey, and after a second it scowled even harder. All thoughts of the woman swiftly gone, she tugged at the jersey’s fabric, wondering how come she hadn’t seen it until now. Red really wasn’t her color.
