Burnt Tongues Page 10

  “Unbelievable,” Jen says.

  “I simply don’t believe that,” says someone behind a cage full of pasta products.

  “Crap, crap, crap, and more crap,” says a blonde as she walks away from the group.

  And then, to everyone’s surprise, a bored and uniformed body stacking Italian spaghetti says, “You know . . . I could really do with fifty pounds . . .”

  Then the floor supervisor appears and everyone shuts up.

  The body stacking spaghetti, it belongs to this stupid, stupid girl who insists that everyone call her Morris. Most people ask why she has a boy’s name. Colin, her mum’s boyfriend, the idiot, he thinks it’s some weird ultrafan thing for Morrissey when really it’s a tribute to William Morris, the nineteenth- century radical thinker. And it’s because her real name is Carolyn. But Carolyn deserves a cool name, because she’s so edgy she thinks both Lennon and Lenin were sellouts.

  This bedroom revolutionary, this suburban Gandhi with black lipstick, is always preaching, “Did you know ‘fair trade’ coffee pays the Chagga people of Kilimanjaro only about twenty pence extra for their day of hard work?”

  This checkout iconoclast, destroying the corporate system one scrawl on the staff toilet wall at a time.

  A week after the story, Morris is working at the customer service counter. Explaining to a middle-aged woman that the three-for-two offer in the fruit section applies only to strawberries, not raspberries. Strawberries, picked by minimum wage migrant workers in giant greenhouses scattered across England, they’re always a popular buy in the summer.

  Over the store Tannoy system, Morris calls out, “Supervisor to customer service, supervisor to customer service.”

  Standing behind the confused middle-aged woman is Margarita. The middle-aged woman wanders off with a supervisor, muttering something about shopping elsewhere. Margarita, a peroxide blonde with earrings as big as donuts, she’s come in to give some money to Anita but can’t find her. Morris says she shouldn’t, but she’ll look after the money.

  As Margarita lets the rolled-up notes fall from her hand, our bedroom revolutionary asks about Stock Movement.

  Margarita smiles and says, “You girls thinking of playing?”

  Morris says, “It’s not real, right? It can’t be real. It’s just a wind-up on Anita. An older sister playing a joke on a younger sister.”

  “It’s real. Last game, I won,” Margarita says, pushing her hair away from her earrings. “Four hours with a mini chicken satay stick.”

  “No way,” Morris says.

  “Yes way.” Margarita heard about The Game from a friend of a friend. Different stores call The Game different things.

  Insider Trading.

  Stocking Up.

  Packing.

  Margarita, leaning on the counter, licking her pink lips, says most stores have something like The Game. In certain department stores, male members of staff dare each other to leave their seed on the clothes in the stockroom. In certain chain restaurants, the chefs literally chew your food for you before a waiter brings it to your unsuspecting table. In certain hairdressing salons, the hair products don’t contain much

  hair product.

  Stain Addition.

  Al Dente.

  Root Booster.

  “No way, no way.” Morris, bedroom revolutionary, stares at the milling customers, with their stained clothes, their bulging bellies, their shiny hair.

  The in-store radio playing over the Tannoy system tells customers to check out the great summer deal on raspberries.

  Our suburban Gandhi thinks about making her own clothes, growing her own food, cutting her own hair.

  “Not all but most stores have something like it. Our game is fairly simple. You’ve heard the setup. Ten points an hour. You all decide on your items beforehand—so everyone agrees they’ve got equal items,” Margarita says, and she spins a pound coin on the customer service counter.

  “And you have to walk around all day?” Morris says.

  “Not all day,” Margarita explains, the movement of the spinning coin forming a globe. “You’re on checkouts—you spend most of the day sitting down. Sometimes The Game finishes after an hour. Although, one month, this new girl, out to prove herself, she bet fifty pounds she could last a month with a coffee bean inside her.”

  A long, long way from a blazing hot African sun . . .

  “This girl lasts the whole month, or so she claims. She said it was no problem, just had trouble sleeping. She gets the nickname Princess Flick—as in flick the bean and ‘The Princess and the Bean.’”

  “Isn’t it ‘The Princess and the Pea’?” Morris says.

  Margarita says, “Whatever.”

  The coin stops spinning and falls flat on the counter.

  Our checkout iconoclast says, “You’re winding us up. A coffee bean, sure, maybe . . . but a chicken satay stick?” She blows a puff of air in disbelief.

  “What about drug dealers?” Margarita asks. “Mules, they’re called, smugglers paid to keep little packets of drugs deep inside their own bodies. Or what about fisting? A five-fingered, five-knuckled fist, all sharp angles and bone, shoved tight inside . . .”

  The in-store radio tells customers, “Don’t hesitate to ask an assistant if you need a hand.”

  “Okay, okay,” Morris says.

  Margarita reminds Morris to give the money to Anita, says “Ciao,” and walks off.

  The next customer who needs customer service, he’s making a complaint about the in-store brand root booster and doesn’t understand why Morris should find this so funny.

  A few hours later, Morris gets relieved from the customer service counter. She’s on her lunch break, goes looking for Anita. Surrounded by the countless colours of brands and packaging, as if the store were selling colours siphoned from a rainbow. Down the aisles stacked with shampoos, microwave meals, and store brand clothing. Pritt Sticks, Lynx Bullets, and cocktail sausages. Fold-up toothbrushes, lipstick, and mascara. Pepperoni and green beans. Mini Mars bars, mini Snickers bars. Mini bottles of liquor, big enough for a single shot, small enough for . . .

  Anita is restocking the damaged goods shelf. Packets of chocolate fingers that have been opened but will stay fresh for a few more days. Cocktail sausage packets that have been opened. Fold-up toothbrush packets that have been opened. Anita stands with a sticker gun repricing the faulty or damaged items. By the end of the night, they’ll all be taken from the shelf—taken to a campus by students struggling to budget.

  “Money from Rita,” Morris says and gives Anita the rolled-up notes.

  “Oh, brilliant,” Anita says, then playfully stickers Morris’s left hand with the sticker gun.

  Peeling the sticker from her hand, the adhesive creating a tiny wave of skin, Morris says, “The Game is real by the way. Rita won the last game, with a mini chicken satay stick.”

  Anita says, “Whoa, whoa, too much information about my own sister.”

  “Would you be game?” Morris asks, a sly smile across her face. Sure, winning some money would make it easier to get by on minimum wage. But a little revenge would be a prize in itself, payback for every customer who thinks the checkout staff are just extensions of the checkout. Giving a secret middle finger to every clock-watching supervisor.

  This self-actualised eco-warrior, this teenage Marx with emo hair, always preaching, “Did you know prawn farmers in Dumuria and Khulna get as little as £250 for one hundred kilograms of prawn a year?”

  “I’m game . . . as long as you play with this,” Anita says, holding up a caved-in Pringles tube.

  Our bedroom revolutionary, she starts to say, “I’m not a shopping basket,” when a customer walks over holding a cardboard box with a picture of a flat-screen television on the side, and he asks where customer service is. Anita points him in the wrong direction.

  Before the Eurocup final, flat-screen televisions sold well. Colin, Morris’s soon-to-be stepdad, had offered to buy her one. “Do you know what coltan is, Colin?
” she asked. “Did you know our televisions are made with minerals from a war zone? Do war crimes and the Democratic Republic of Congo mean anything to you?”

  The customer walks off without saying thank you.

  Morris and Anita look at each other.

  Arsehole.

  Now, sitting in a hospital corridor, staring at the door of the doctor’s office, this confused and heartbroken man asks again, “How did this happen?”

  He doesn’t know that the first time The Game was played, everything was fine. No problems. Northern Jen won with a fold-up toothbrush. Still smelling of prawns, she slotted it back into its packet, taped up the hole, and displayed it on the damaged goods shelf with an 80 percent off tag. The fold-up toothbrush, the winning item, was gone by the end of the day.

  A ten-pence bargain, taken to a campus by a scruffy student struggling to budget.

  Now, this confused and heartbroken man, he just sits there in ignorance.

  The doctor comes out of his office, asks, “Do you guys need some more time?”

  “Yes.” He starts to stroke the ring on the left hand he’s holding. “Please, let’s go back in, and we can talk this through with the doctor. You can explain, and he can give us the best advice, okay?”

  He says, “Okay, Carolyn?”

  His eyes look wet. Not because he’s upset. Because he never blinks when he is being serious. It’s a conscious choice. When you love someone, you think you know all their dirty secrets.

  He keeps stroking the ring.

  The story, unsaid, it forms a lifetime of distance between us.

  It takes two weeks for Morris, our suburban Gandhi, to convince the girls to play The Game again. Just one more time. To liven things up. One last time to teach the customers a lesson they’ll never learn. It’s only Jen, Anita, and Morris who play. Each pitch in twenty pounds. Jen chooses a Chupa Chups lollipop. Anita picks a cocktail sausage, and it’s agreed she gets only eight points an hour because her item is the easiest. Morris, our practical rebel, goes with a previous winner.

  Standing in the girls’ toilets, holding a mini chicken satay stick from the delicatessen, Morris thinks about how she’d spend the sixty pounds. New jewelry for her mum’s wedding is an option. Save some for travel to the climate camp in June. Maybe be a humble winner and buy the girls lunch one day. Maybe treat her dad to dinner or something or anything, if he’d be willing.

  Fuck Colin.

  Each girl steps inside a cubicle, and blonde Zoe, waiting outside, says, “Don’t be too long.”

  Our eco-warrior doesn’t hang about. She drops her uniform trousers and her white underwear and without looking down begins to push the four inches of chicken stick deep inside.

  It’s not easy. It takes some time to get the necessary

  natural lubrication.

  One of her younger toilet wall scrawls, it says, Fight the Power.

  “I can’t believe I was talked into this again,” Jen says through the cubicle wall.

  From the other side of the cubicle, Anita says, “Hey, Morris, did you check to make sure your chicken’s organic? Is it chemical free?”

  Jen giggles, says, “Is it free range?”

  Our bedroom revolutionary, she says, “Not anymore.”

  This college hippie, this middle-class activist, always preaching, “Did you know most battery hens have their beaks cut off with hot irons, so they don’t peck themselves to death while they’re confined to a tiny cage for the rest of their lives?”

  After a few minutes, the three cubicle doors open, and the three bored and uniformed bodies waddle out.

  “I’m not going to last an hour,” Anita says, rearranging the crotch of her uniform trousers.

  She doesn’t.

  About half an hour into The Game, Anita waddles past Morris on checkout 15. “I’m going to the loo.” She says it in a way that says, “This is the last time I play this stupid, stupid game.”

  Jen, on checkout 8, she’s breathing pretty heavy but

  hanging on.

  Our checkout iconoclast, our teenage Marx, she’s felt better. She can’t get comfortable, no matter how much she shuffles her arse cheeks. The wooden stick is poking out by about an inch and keeps tickling her thigh.

  If nothing else, having four inches of chicken satay stick inside you is distracting.

  For over an hour, customers keep saying, “You didn’t scan that properly.”

  “You forgot to apply the three-for-two discount.”

  “You look a little flushed.”

  The shiny-haired customer who comments on Morris’s rosy cheeks and squinting eyes, she’s buying fresh oregano from Israel, from the West Bank, from land stolen by walls and troops and bulldozers.

  One hour and ten minutes after The Game started, Supervisor Mike asks Morris if she wants to swap lunch with Zoe. This would put her five minutes away from lunch.

  Our practical rebel says, “Yeah, great.”

  Over the store Tannoy system, a voice says, “Cleaner to the breakfast cereal aisle. That’s a cleaner to the breakfast

  cereal aisle.”

  The next customer with a bulging belly is buying multipacks of chocolate—packets with mini bars of Mars and Snickers and Twix. Chocolate that started life as beans guarded by militias, picked by children, chocolate slaves, thousands of miles away on the Ivory Coast.

  The in-store radio sounding over the Tannoy system tells customers, “Treat your kids with Safeway’s three-for-two

  offers on sweets.”

  As the chocolate customer bags up, Zoe comes over to relieve Morris. Zoe asks how it’s going.

  Our college hippie, our middle-class activist, she says it’s going hot and sticky and itchy. She limps and waddles down the breakfast cereal aisle, heading toward the staff entrance at the back of the store. Our eco-warrior, our bedroom revolutionary, stares at her groin and belly, the linoleum floor out of focus. The floor, so shiny it looks wet. Shiny and wet and slippery. The only way to tell that it is wet is by the yellow plastic cone just out of Morris’s sight.

  The customers look away from their future breakfast cereal as they hear Morris’s shoes squeak along the floor, her backside thud against the linoleum.

  The milling customers, with their stained clothes, their bulging bellies, their shiny hair, none of them are aware they’ve witnessed an impaling.

  The poor girl who’s just embarrassed herself in front of all these people is struggling to stand up. She’s taking deep, deep, deep breaths. Like she’s going into labour. She tries to straighten her legs, her back, but it looks like she’s about to burst into tears.

  An old customer shopping with his wife asks the girl if she’s okay.

  The poor girl limps off without saying a word—letting out nothing but deep, deep, deep breaths.

  Our teenage Marx, our suburban Gandhi, she just wants to get to the nearest toilet as quickly as possible. Men’s, ladies’, or disabled—as long as it has running water and a lockable cubicle.

  A customer says, “Excuse me.”

  But Morris plays deaf. Limping on, trying to waddle

  faster and faster.

  The thousand miles to the girls’ staff toilets are nothing but agony. Cereal packets, Pritt Sticks, cooked meats, foods of the world, Supervisor Keith saying, “What’s up?” are all a blur. Morris begins to focus when she realises one of the toilets is empty. Limping to the cubicle, locking the door. Dropping her uniform trousers, dropping her stained underwear.

  The underwear is stained red, the same red as on a Saint George’s flag. Saint George’s—made in Turkey. The store’s Saint George’s flags—made in Portugal. The Saint George’s red mess dripping down her thigh—made eighteen inches above her kneecaps, a few inches below her belly button.

  Our middle-class activist, our human satay stick, she feels just a centimetre of wood between her legs and flinches.

  On the toilet wall, one of her younger scrawls, it says, Fuck the System!

  This is not what
she had in mind.

  The chicken stick, there’s only one way to remove it. With most of her fingers inside, it’s going to take a firm yank. So this is what she does with the fingers of her left hand. She doesn’t look. She lets out a small moan as her knuckles become slimy. For ten seconds her whole body is nothing but her left hand and everything between her legs.

  Then something wet and warm comes loose from inside, and she hopes to God it’s just poultry and wood. It makes a wet pop as it’s pulled out. Then the chicken stick gets thrown in the toilet. The left hand looks like it’s punched a whole punnet of special deal raspberries.

  Our checkout iconoclast.

  Our practical rebel.

  Our bloody idiot, staring at the left hand, getting tunnel vision, feeling cold and weightless, then falling to the

  concrete floor.

  When the girls found her, they nearly broke the cubicle door down. But Morris came round in time.

  In the staff sick room, Supervisor Karen said, “It’s okay, darling. Us girls get it bad some months.”

  They sent Morris home, but she went to the hospital. Because she was a haemophiliac, the blood wouldn’t stop. The doctors did scans and gave her tablets, constantly asking where the round wound half an inch deep in her vaginal wall came from. Spending days and nights on a ward. Our checkout iconoclast, our bloody idiot, pleading ignorance, like it was some unholy stigmata. Even when the wound became infected. Even when operations were required. Even when the doctors said bearing children would be unlikely, considering the complications.

  Colin paid £500 for surprise tickets to an environmental conference in Seattle, because it’s a small price to pay when your stepdaughter may never have children.

  Margarita came clean. The Game was a lie. A wind-up. An older sister playing a joke on a younger sister. She was sorry from the bottom of her heart.

  Now, outside the doctor’s office, this confused and heartbroken man sitting on the plastic bench in the hospital corridor, he asks again, “Carolyn, are you okay?”