Chapter 2, contd

I was the only person on the bus that afternoon. It was a lonely ride into town. The bus driver was not a devout Christian. He had a Darwin fish stuck to his steering wheel—and if that did not make his (lack of faith) clear, he wore a fish with legs around his hairy wrists, too. He was not the type to talk; neither was I. We passed the trip in uncomfortable silence, though I caught him staring through the rearview mirror whenever I adjusted my skirt to cover my calves. The physical and spiritual distance from everything allowed me to think about Ben—and how I would surprise him with my presence in the concert hall. It was the first time I was proud to be a violist.

My fingers hurt from the practice I put them through. The back of the plastic seat in front of me was my instrument and my wrist’s vibrato shook cleaner than weeping.

The town rose from nothing. Without warning, the driver paused in front of the bus stop.

This a stop? I asked, when it was clear he wasn’t moving.

You Jesus freaks don’t understand English? he said, even though he had never warned me.

(Why thank you, I spat, on my way out. I could be a mean nasty thing, and I cursed without ever cursing. It was a talent.)

The Aldi’s was at least a few hundred feet from the bus stop. I say that it’s half a store because the back half with the freezers did collapse in the last big thunderstorm to hit this part of the country. A Floridian import, Mr Feldman said of the storm. Mr. Feldman owned the half-dead store. The frozen things were now kept in the back in a small closet behind the store. Whenever I wanted a frozen bag of vegetables, I had to find Mr. Feldman and ask him where they were. He always recommended a zucchini or a bag of okra—new, exciting, different food. Down South they have a great affinity for zucchini and bake it in their bread, fry it, and shove it in lasagna. Though I did not have the opportunity to eat much of the zucchini bread, and since there were no ovens in the dorms, my roommates brought boxes of their mothers’ cooking. I never told them that my Mama did not bake me any kind of bread, or, in fact, bake anything at all.

The Aldi’s was empty when I reached. It was scrubbed. Suffused with bleach. The back was completely gutted out, the remains of the freezers put away. Now there was only a neat white wall with just the residue of where the freezers had once clung to it. I waited by the counter for Mr. Feldman. Even rang the bell on his desk a couple of times. I needed frozen peppers for the home fries I was going to make for church breakfast on Sunday.

Soon, the storage door opened. But it wasn’t Mr. Feldman—it was a girl. Her denim skirt reached her ankles and she tied her hair back with a scarf. She wore a shirt with sleeves that covered her knuckles. Fair. Delicate wide eyebrows, not the result of plucking but of gifted genetics.

How may I help you?

I could not place her accent.

Is Mr. Feldman here?

I’ll get him for you, she said, and as she spoke I found myself growing a headache just trying to place her. Polite and open, without the shields even devout girls like Phoebe kept up.

Before she turned back, she smiled.

You are from the college? she asked.

I nodded.

Mr. Feldman likes you students, she said. You are all so polite.

Maybe I melted when I saw her turn back, but I did not have the inclination to keep distance. From the beginning, I wanted to tell her everything.