I stare at two bottles of shampoo intensely, trying to determine whether or not the one with ten extra ounces is worth two more dollars. My aunt is behind me, fumbling through her purse for her glasses. She cannot read English, but has memorized the layout of the local grocery store and the designs of each individual brand so well that this has never been a hinderance. It has never occurred to me to remember things like that.
“Soda hai ghar pe?” She asks, and I turn around quickly, my blue purse bouncing against my hip. “Is there soda at home?”
I shrug. Mentally, I start picturing the layout of the garage. It’s a mess, so I try to block out the extra furniture and clothes. If there is soda, it must be near the metal shelf. We put it right next to the chips, because the children are fiends and will tear the garage apart unless the snacks are next to one another. I sift through my brain for green and white, the colors of the diet ginger ale box.
“Ya, khala,” I interject. “We do have soda.”
“What about chips?”
I start reconstructing the garage again but I can only register the shrieking woman calling my aunt a sand n— and telling us that we should speak English here. Before I can stop myself, my hand is on her cart, my blue veins bulging against my olive skin. Her eyes widen; people like her never expect me to do something.
In her imagination, she might have imagined the encounter playing out over a patriotic backdrop, maybe that horrible song “Proud to Be an American” that I had to sing as a choir kid in third grade. Maybe she pictured herself as big and strong, defending the honor of America from us, two small women in sweatpants buying barbecue chips to eat with shwarma. In her mind, the scene probably climaxed with her walking away triumphantly, having strengthened democracy in the classy way that only Americans know how. She is wearing a Duck Dynasty t-shirt and the ugliest black Clarkes I have ever seen; I cannot stand the sight of her.
“Say it again.” I whisper, my chest rising and falling with a dramatic thud in my ears. I worry that my mouth will begin filling with blood. My other hand is shaking so badly I tuck it behind my back, holding onto the top of my pants for stability. Sun is pouring through the front windows of the store and my eye twitches uncomfortably. I hope that she does not notice. Waves rise off of the black asphalt in the parking lot and I try to calculate the distance I would need to run in the event that I commit a crime in the next couple minutes.
“I said,” my voice is rising and I cannot stop myself. Her eyes are so blue, her nose straight, her brows thin. I remember when I used to look at pictures of women like her and mime scooping my eyes out of their sockets so I could paint them and put them back in. “I said say it fucking again.”
My aunt grabs my hand and tries to pry it off of the woman’s cart. The woman attempts to move, but I shift my left foot so that it is now blocking one of the wheels. I feel pleasure when fear washes over her face. I wonder if we are the same.
“Attiya,” my aunt hisses, digging her nails into my bicep. I turn my head slightly. “Why do you fight like this? Just let it go.”
The woman morphs into a taller, thinner white man with brown eyes and a strong jaw. I am holding onto my father’s hand and there is mango ice cream all over my green dress and the cuff of the tall man’s jeans. The man is screaming, his spit flying onto my father’s white shirt and the top of my bowl cut. My father is silent but his index finger shakes in my hand, and I wish I was much larger than both of them. If I towered over the cereal aisle and had teeth the size of butcher’s knives, I would hold this man between my fingers and squeeze him until he popped. Each of his bones would be made into a ring or earrings or a necklace, to adorn the bodies of every person he ever called a “camel jockey.”
My father does nothing, and I find him offensively cowardly. He is so much bigger than the man. What he lacks in height he makes up for in build and muscle; I know without a doubt that my father could break this man’s nose at the very least. When we leave the store, he buys me another mango ice cream and cleans the front of my dress.
“Attiya.” My aunt repeats herself, pulling on me harder. I take one more look at the woman’s face, which is contorted in confusion. I could break her nose. Probably even her arm. She looks old, and the thought of her being immobile in bed is a rather seductive one. Gritting my teeth, I undo my fist slowly, feeling pain rush into the indents left behind by my fingernails.
“Don’t ever fucking run into me again.” I tell her, pushing her cart harshly against a row of hair accessories. After a quick gasp, she scurries away, defeated, and my aunt and I remain silent for the remainder of our shopping trip. She navigates the aisles seamlessly without my help and I trail behind her, listening to a random playlist on my phone at full volume.
I am torn between the half of me that wants peace, and the half that wants to turn the corner, and run into her again.
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