“May I help you, Sir?”

Dottie stared at the man standing at the cash register.  Mid-forties with khaki overalls and a shock of brown hair slicked across his forehead, grease-encrusted nails tapped on the counter. He offered a ready smile of gray picket- fence teeth.

“This’ll be all,” he said, as he shoved a tin of Skoal and a six pack of Miller High Life towards her. He held her gaze for a moment longer than necessary as his watery blue eyes bored into her light brown ones. Dottie dragged herself away and hit the ancient register keys then placed the items in a flimsy paper bag emblazoned with the store’s name in blocky blue letters.

 “Thanks,” he said. He lifted the bag off the counter and lumbered to the door. The bell tinkled as he opened it and  he twisted around to give Dottie one more smile. Dottie’s heart pounded in her thin chest. She dropped her gaze immediately,  eyes on the scarred formica counter.

 Darren McLaughlin, he worked with her father at the plant making car parts for people on the other side of the world.  Her face grew hot as she waited for his exit.  She had learned a long time ago to avoid notice, to blend in, no eye contact, easier to disappear that way. Relief swept through her when the door closed behind him.

The next evening, Operation Darren began.  He stopped by every day on his way home from work. He purchased lip balm and Juicy Fruit gum in amounts that would take one person a lifetime to use,  all the while filling  the stale air with nervous chatter. At first his efforts were met with stony silence and downturned eyes. But one day the tight coil in Dottie’s chest loosened just a bit and the ghost of a smile flitted across her face.

***

“Dottie!” a weak voice full of gravel called. Dottie sighed and rolled her eyes to the dirty popcorn ceiling, where a blue balloon hovered. It had been part of the display designed to bring in customers. Losing helium it was making a slow descent down to the black and white tile of the floor.

 “Yes Ma’am. Coming.” She ambled to the back of the store past the brightly colored bags of chips, cookies and candy on her way.  She stashed snacks into her purse or  the pockets of her jeans whenever Mrs. Duffie wasn’t looking (which was most of the time).  The salary from  two jobs was barely enough to pay rent on her matchbox- sized apartment. Her food money stretched longer when supplemented by snacks from the store.

Hunger was an old friend. As a child it had been her constant companion. She had loved school because they fed her. Back then, no one noticed her painfully thin body,  the knobs of her spine standing  out like buttons at the back of her neck. Her stick-like collar bone protruded from under threadbare clothing.  No one noticed when she devoured  the free food at school.  She shoveled it into her mouth:  fish sticks,  turkey surprise,  overcooked noodles slathered in blood red sauce. At the end of each meal she scraped the hard plastic plate to get all of the sauce or syrup or cheese that clung there and then she sucked the tines clean.

Dottie pushed the door to the storeroom open. Mrs. Duffie slumped in a chair, occupied by the bleak scene out of the office window, the cracked asphalt of the parking lot and a strip mall beyond.

 “Dottie, can you work Sunday night ?” Mrs. Duffie asked Dottie this question every week. Mrs. Duffie knew that Dottie worked two jobs, one at the store the other at the bowling alley. Dottie had had the same weekly schedule for the past two years.   Sunday was a bowling alley day.

 “No Ma’am. I can’t work Sundays. I work at Bowl America on Sundays, remember?” Dottie kept her voice gentle so as not to upset Mrs. Duffie; reminders of her memory lapses scared her. Dottie stared at the pale pink scalp visible amid the few white hairs covering Mrs. Duffie’s head. She had forgotten to wear her wig today. 

 “Alright, dear. I just thought I’d ask. Thank you. You can go back up front now.” Dottie made her way back behind the  cash register.  Time stretched out with little to fill it. Duffie’s was one of two convenience stores in New Hope, Pennsylvania and most people in town went to the other one. If Dottie had a choice she’d have gone to the other one too. Dottie marked her time by Mrs. Duffie’s nightly shuffle out the door at six, and Darren’s nightly visits. Darren had already been by and Mrs. Duffie would be leaving soon, then there’d be four hours to go.

 Dingy and dilapidated  with its sagging roof and dust covered windows, Duffie’s was a relic from the past. Stark fluorescent lighting assaulted the senses at the door, giving all who entered the pallor of death. Grief twined with neglect in every corner.  Most of the customers had connections with the Duffie family. They tolerated the higher prices and lower quality because it was all Mrs. Duffie had left after her husband of fifty years succumbed to a heart attack.

The large white clock ticked off the final minute before ten o’clock. Dottie snapped off the tinny bleating of the transistor radio,  her chipped black nail polish glowed in the low light of the one source of illumination she left behind.  By two minutes after, she had wrestled her key out of the lock and  hunched narrow shoulders against the frigid air that blasted through the parking lot. She shivered as the fingers of the wind slid right through her faux leather jacket. She could almost taste the pocket- warmed candybar stuffed in her jeans that would fortify her for the two- mile trek home.

***

She pulled the blankets over her head. There were three of them, purple, orange and blue. A bright yellow chicken strutted on the orange one, her one and only memento from high school.  She kept the thermostat on fifty-five  in the winter to save on the gas bill. The temperature required that she wear several layers of clothing underneath the mound of bedding including two pairs of socks on her cold feet. She turned onto her side and pulled a pillow over her exposed ear. Despite the effort, she could still hear the persistent fucking of her next door neighbors. How many times a night did they need to do it? Don’t normal people do one and done? Where did the energy come from? Was she the only one who worked two jobs? Couldn’t be in this hovel.

She had no frame of reference for what normal people did in any of life’s usual activities, sex included. She was tempted to pound on the shared wall between the apartments but she knew it would just encourage louder, more guttural moans. Eventually they would get off and fall asleep.  She would just have to wait it out.

Since sleep wasn’t coming she padded to her closet swaddled in thick blankets, out came the shoebox with black Mary Janes inside. A fat stack of bills was tucked under the shoes, $752.34.  Almost enough money to buy the cobalt blue Ford Festiva for sale at the Main Street Car Lot.

 Desperation was an ache in her bones, a constant thrum in her blood. The desire to get out of this town was all that she thought about. It was the reason she worked so hard and lived on boxed macaroni and cheese and rice and beans, subsisting on cheap carbs was familiar, even comforting.

Her final destination, mysterious and exciting, whispered constantly in her brain.  Philadelphia thirty-one miles. New York City fifty-five miles, Boston two hundred and eighty-nine miles. If she decided to really commit to the road, Los Angeles was 2,737 miles from New Hope. She imagined seeing the endless horizon, toes in the sand; her lungs filled with the magic of an ocean breeze. A butterfly of excitement fluttered in her stomach as she saw herself watching sunlight dance on turquoise waves.

Away from here she could be anybody she wanted to be. She could shut the door on the squalor of her childhood and the dirty secrets therein, no longer plagued by people with judgment-filled eyes. She wrapped that delicious thought around herself, letting it warm her.  The apartment fell silent and she slipped into her dreams.

***

Dottie got married on a hazy winter day. Weak sunlight poked through the tiny stained glass windows of the First Baptist Church.  The Justice of the Peace, old Judge Waller presided.  Decrepit and unsteady on his feet,  halfway through he could no longer stand and finished the ceremony seated in a folding chair, his arthritic hands clutching a large Bible to emphasize God’s presence in the room.

Dottie stared at the brown age spots on his hands as she said, “I do” in a warbly voice. 

A month ago, a six pack picnic in the bed of Darren’s battered truck commemorated her nineteenth birthday. A threadbare blanket and a bag of take out from Taco Twister completed the party fare.  Darren toasted her with beer breath underneath the stars.

Dottie had never been much of a drinker but she had dutifully sipped the warm beer in her hand and leaned up against the tool box in the back of the truck bed. Sweet relaxation coursed through her blood and she nestled into the rare feeling. They had dated for four months and she managed to keep his greasy hands off of her throughout that time. The lie that she was a virgin and wanted to wait until marriage was accepted without question.

When they kissed he rubbed his hands all over her body, pressed her skin roughly over her clothing, pinching and prodding. He claimed her mouth as if it was a prize he had won, his tongue like a shovel in frigid ground. As he pawed her she willed her body to relax rather than stiffen which was her instinctive reaction. Darren didn’t notice; so focused was he on his unslaked lust.

After drinking five of the six beers he clumsily got down on one knee. He belched into his left elbow and then reached into dirty Wrangler jeans to retrieve a wine-colored box.

“Dottie, will you marry me?” He opened the box and exposed a silver band with the tiniest dot of a ruby in its center.

Shock made her head spin, her mouth agape. She never truly believed that anyone would want to marry her. She wasn’t pretty or smart or educated. She had nothing to offer but a skinny ass and a willing attitude.  There was no real comparison between the idea of embarking on a solitary adventure or the sure thing of marriage. If this train was leaving the station she had to be on it. There would be no other in this lifetime.

Breathless, she pushed the word out of her mouth in a huff “Yes.” Her heart threatened to pop out of her rib cage, such was its clatter.

“Woo Hoo!” he hollered drunkenly, and lurched close,  her small bones clutched tightly to his bulbous middle- aged belly. “You made me the happiest man alive! I want to get married as soon as we can.” He brought his mouth close to her ear whispering in detail what he was going to do to her sexually when she became his bride.

Revulsion bubbled in her gut and she embedded her nails into her palms so as not to pull away from his too wet mouth. A tightly controlled movement split her lips, a facsimile of a smile,  a jack-o-lantern three months before Halloween. 

“I can’t wait to be your wife,” she said, her voice slightly above a whisper.

***

Conceiving the baby was quick, if not easy. After the wedding Darren insisted on sex every evening after two hours of tv. She left her body on the stark white sheets and flew to a corner of the room while he pawed and grunted.

As a child, when the monster came to visit, she would hide, her mind retreated into itself. Her soul slipped from her body and she would hover in the air for a moment.  And then she floated out the open window, past the naked branches of the oak tree standing like a sentinel next to the house. And then up, higher than the ramshackle roof, higher than the church steeple, higher and higher until New Hope was just a jumble of puzzle pieces far below. The clouds were her bed until it was time to go back.

The sessions with Darren were short-lived. He entered her quickly and after seven to ten strokes finished loudly; his groans ringing in her ears. Her much smaller body bucked and thrashed with his vigor. When he finished, she laid still  for a few minutes, white skin exposed in the light of the moon, a gutted fish on a cutting board. She came to herself slowly and dripped his seed into the toilet.  Exhaustion made it almost impossible to muster the energy to slip her body into a white cotton nightgown and tumble into bed.

She was two months late before she thought to take a pregnancy test. It was purchased at Buckley’s, the only convenience store in town, now that Duffie’s had closed. Mrs. Duffie had followed in her husband’s footsteps and had a heart attack in the store. Dottie was still thankful that she had quit both jobs five months before.  Otherwise, she would have been the one to find Mrs. Duffie collapsed in the back office, stiff and cold, the light gone from her eyes.  Darren had insisted she quit working once they married. He said her jobs made it seem like he couldn’t provide for his family.

Now she spent her days cleaning the double wide trailer and learning how to cook. When Darren came home at 6:30, she would have dinner on the stove or in the oven: a main course, a vegetable and sometimes a dessert. Darren wasn’t hard to please. His childhood had been as devoid of food choices as hers so any variety in the basic meals felt exotic to him.

After the required three minutes,  two pink lines showed in the pregnancy window. She gasped, staring in utter disbelief. This didn’t make sense. She was tainted inside. The darkness that emanated from her childhood had planted itself within her and grown. That ugliness devoured any good or beautiful thing.  A sweet baby could never survive in such an environment. It was impossible.

Never one to take chances, she purchased three tests and took them all at once. The outcome was the same. Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant. One test might be defective, but all three?

She couldn’t concentrate on the meatloaf recipe she had planned, or the green bean casserole. Suddenly she was too tired to run the vacuum cleaner or dust their meager furniture.  Instead, she huddled in front of the television all day without moving until Darren came home. He found her sitting in the waning autumn light, the television casting a blue glow on her slack face.

“Dottie? You ok? Why didn’t ya turn the light on? Dark in here.” Darren bustled into the room and flipped on the light staring at his young wife with concern. His gaze took in the three sticks on the chipped brown coffee table.

“What’s this?” He picked up one of them and held it to the light. “No way!” he said with excitement in his voice. “I’m gonna be a daddy! Woo Hoo!” He pulled Dottie off the couch and into a bear hug. He held her aloft so that her feet no longer touched the dingy gray carpet.

“You’re gonna make a great mama! You just wait and see Dottie! It won’t be nothing like your parents! I swear.”  He made these statements while swinging her around the living room, his face flushed, his bloodshot eyes full of grateful tears.

Dottie said nothing. The fear of motherhood pressed down on her shoulders, heavy as an anvil. She couldn’t move or talk. When he put her down on the couch she went back to staring at the sticks trying to get her mind around the news. How could this be?

 Darren took her out for a celebratory dinner in the town’s diner, Stumpy’s. Dottie had only been there for soda and dessert once before. It was a place that she could never afford. They entered the booth and Darren promptly ordered a scotch and soda (rather than his usual beer). Dottie raised an eyebrow at this choice and he reminded her they were celebrating.

They devoured  bacon cheeseburgers, french fries, and a giant slice of lemon meringue pie. An indelible grin cemented on Darren’s face as he shared the news with anyone who’d listen, including the pimply faced waitress.

“Congratulations,” the woman said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She looked as exhausted as Dottie felt. After ingesting all of that heavy food Dottie drooped against the ripped red vinyl booth.

“You’re tired Babe. I need to take you home.” He paid the check and they made the short walk to his mud-encrusted truck.

That night, Darren deviated from the usual pattern of sex after television. He was suddenly very concerned about what she wanted and how she felt. When she said she was tired he nodded sagely and turned over facing the wall on his side of the room without another word. Two minutes later they both snored.

***

The pregnancy crept by on sullen, swollen feet. Dottie watched her body change, waited for the moment when it would all end. Screaming bloody fetuses ravaged her dreams.  It was only a matter of time before the poison inside her would extinguish this precious life. Something bad would happen because it always did. The good things never lasted.

Still, as the months passed and she came through all of the pregnancy milestones, a mustard seed of hope floated inside her, nothing more than a whisper in the deep darkness. Hope had never been a part of Dottie’s life. It was for other people who always had food on the table and gas in their tanks. Dottie had stamped out that emotion a decade ago. It was better to expect the worst so that when it happened you could handle it. Hope terrified and sickened her. Like so many other things, manicures, trips to the salon, steak at the grocery store she couldn’t afford it.

 She kept it tightly caged so that it didn’t grow but she couldn’t snuff out the small spot of light it made within her.

The birth came on like a summer storm. The pain was lightning that criss-crossed the sky as fat raindrops fell. The pain overtook her, overwhelmed her. She lost her bearings as she flailed around in it. And then, it was over. The tiny body slipped from her own covered in red goop. Was this the bad thing? Was it finally here? The sticky black tar of dread draped over her, clung to her.

Practiced hands rubbed the silent child. The lack of crying cut a hole in Dottie’s heart.  Was it dead? Dottie’s eyes burned with tears, as fear burrowed into the marrow of her bones. Unexpectedly,  the nurse placed the baby girl on Dottie’s chest. Swaddled in a hospital blanket, the tiny wrinkled face belonged to an elderly person.  How can someone look old and new at the same time?

Dottie ripped off the blanket to stare at the tiny body, counted the fingers, counted the toes. She tried to look into the baby’s eyes but she kept them closed, her tiny chest rising and falling rhythmically,  as the tiny heart beat within it. Dottie brought an ear down gently to listen for the breath. Everything seemed ok.

“Is she ok?” she asked the nurse who hovered by the bedside.

“She’s perfect,” came the reply.

Dottie covered her daughter and pulled her close. The wonder of her.  The miracle of her. A beacon of light so powerful that it pushed Dottie’s ever present dread into the corners of the room.  But even as joy filled her chest and warmed her belly Dottie knew the darkness awaited her still.