Would she ever have the nerve to look at it? Could she find the strength for the truth?
2
Orangeburg, South Carolina
At Helena’s place, it wasn’t usually like this: an empty fridge, empty cabinets, and an ache in Helena’s gut that told her she needed to eat sooner rather than later. But for whatever reason, that morning the delivery driver hadn’t brought her groceries, and no matter how many times Helena asked the chatbot associated with the delivery app, she couldn’t figure out what had happened to her food. She was beginning to panic. The room spun around her.
Helena peeked out the window. It was late May and already startlingly hot and humid, such was the way of the south. Her air-conditioning was on, and her windows and doors were sealed. It had been a very long time since she’d left her house. Did she have the strength to leave?
For the first time in a few weeks, maybe Helena forced herself to glance in the mirror, just long enough to see what she was wearing and whether it suited being seen by others. Her jeans hung on her, so she exchanged them for leggings, which she paired with a big sweater. It would be freezing in the grocerystore. It always was. All she had to do was walk from the car to the store and back again. Maybe she could get one of the bag boys to wheel the grocery cart to the car? Maybe nobody would recognize her?
She was exhausted, just thinking about it.
Helena turned the key in her car's ignition and thanked her lucky stars that there was still gas in the tank. The garage door buzzed open, and she backed out slowly, cautiously. She whispered to herself the things she wanted to buy from the store, as though it were a sort of meditation. She didn’t want to have a panic attack, not now. Not on the road. She didn’t want anyone else to be injured, all because she needed fresh cherries and bread.
Helena pulled into the grocery store's parking lot and slid into one of the closest spots. The route to the front door was clear. She would get out, walk fifteen feet to the automatic doors, then walk slowly and carefully through the aisles. She would be done in twenty minutes, tops. “Come on, Helena,” she said, imagining her father at one of her childhood baseball games, calling out for her.Come on, Helena!She’d never been particularly sporty, but she loved hearing his enthusiasm.
Helena staggered into the chilly store and grabbed a cart. She was doing this! She was at the store. These were the simple things that Helena had to celebrate. The speakers were playing a nineties song she remembered from her childhood. Her mother had liked it. Was it Sade? Around her were women in their forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies, walking purposely, wheeling their carts through the produce section, and squeezing apples, pears, and peaches. Helena wondered what it was like to live in these women’s brains. Many of them wore wedding bands. Many of them probably had kids at home, kids who expected dinner on the table at a certain time. Helenaremembered making dinner for someone once upon a time. She hadn’t shared a meal with anyone for a very long while.
Helena left the produce section and entered the dairy area. She wanted yogurt. But when she turned her cart to the left, she nearly collided with another woman heading in the opposite direction. “Oh, I’m sorry!” the woman cried. And then she said, startled, “Helena? I thought that was you!”
Helena’s heart nearly exploded. The woman with the cart was Meg, an old friend of Helena’s, one from her previous life. Helena gaped at Meg, who was beautiful and youthful looking, with long, flowing dark hair and lipstick. Helena remembered that she and Meg were around the same age. They’d been together in high school, although they hadn’t been friends till later on, when they were adults and married. Meg had known Helena and Helena’s husband. They’d been friendly, too, with Meg’s husband. It seemed impossible now, but Helena remembered going on double dates.
Double dates! Like in the movies. It was hard to remember that Helena had lived that life.
“Hi, Meg,” Helena said, her voice like a string.
But Meg’s face echoed with alarm. “Helena, are you all right?”
Helena wet her lips and found them cracked. She should have used lip balm before she left the house. “Oh, I’m fine. I’m great. How are you?”
But Meg couldn’t shake the look of shock on her face. It was for this reason that Helena knew she looked worse than she thought she did. She hadn’t weighed herself in a long time, but she remembered the jeans, how they’d hung on her waist. She’d lost too much weight.
But it wasn’t like she could help that.
“I didn’t even think you lived in town anymore,” Meg continued, trying to laugh. “I haven’t seen you around!”
“I’m still here!” This was all Helena could think to say. She glanced at Meg’s cart, which was filled with cheese and meat and heavy things. But Meg wasn’t wearing a wedding band anymore. Helena wondered if Meg and her husband had gotten divorced, just as Helena and her husband had.
Even before getting married, Helena had read that the divorce rate was 50 percent. It hadn’t stopped her. It hadn’t stopped Meg, either. But it was clear from the items in Meg's grocery cart that she had another man in her life. She’d managed to divorce, pull herself together, and go back out on dates. She’d managed to rebuild.
For Helena, rebuilding wasn’t an option.
Helena blinked tears out of her eyes.
“Well, I’d better…” Meg said, gesturing toward the bread area. “I forgot the hamburger buns. Silly me. Take care of yourself, Helena. And if you need anything…”
Helena stood frozen, waiting until Meg passed her by and disappeared around the corner. Only then did Helena hightail it to the frozen food section, moving as fast as her body would allow. She filled her cart with foods that she could defrost and heat. Foods that looked so terribly sad when compared to Meg’s cart. But when she reached the cashier, she realized that Meg wasn’t too far behind her. They would probably still see each other in the parking lot.
Helena made up her mind to ignore her. But she hated where her brain went next. She imagined Meg calling their old friends, telling them how bad Helena looked. They didn’t know what was up with Helena. She hadn’t bothered to share her truth because it didn’t matter anymore. Why, then, did she hate that they were going to gossip about her? She’d hidden herself away for various reasons. She’d wanted them to think she was gone.
As Helena put her items on the conveyor belt, her hands shook. She could feel Meg, a few people behind her in line,watching her. She could feel Meg scrutinizing her. The cashier was a pimply kid, maybe fresh out of high school. Helena wondered if he’d gone to Orangeburg High School, just as she and Meg had. Helena remembered being carefree, nineteen, and enthusiastic. She’d been what her mother and father called a “free spirit,” and she’d gone to college to study art. Every medium had made itself available to her: sculpture, painting, drawing, collage. She’d been uninhibited. She’d even sung in a rock band.
Helena marveled that the memories she had of her own life felt as though they belonged to someone else. She felt as though she’d stolen them.
As she pulled the bag of rice from the cart, it fell from her hands with a terrible thump. She gaped at it. Her body had given up on her. A bit of rice poured from one of the corners, and it made such a strange sound, like when you walk through sand. The other shoppers were gaping at her. The cashier was clearly frustrated. But when she bent down to reach the bag of rice, her knees nearly gave out. Panicked, she forced herself down, down, down. She gripped the bag and threw it onto the conveyor belt, gasping for air. The cashier rolled his eyes because he was a teenager who couldn’t understand the ways your body could fail you.
It took every last bit of strength for Helena to pull her credit card from her wallet. A bag boy stuck her things into plastic bags, although she wished there was a paper option. She hated the idea that someday soon, she’d be dead, and she’d have left all this plastic behind. She wanted to leave the earth better than it was when she’d arrived. She knew these were not things that the bag boy and the cashier thought about.
