ran into dollar general to (try to) pick up some toilet paper before the snow storm today. ended up in line behind three women who looked to be in their late teens-early twenties. at first i was somewhat enamored. were they roommates? coworkers? cousins? two were wearing the same brown flared yoga pants, and the shortest girl’s had worn ragged at the bottom. she had a belly button ring and long, curly black hair. the other had Betty spaghetti thin limbs and wore a white Victoria’s Secret hoodie covered in yellow stains and cigarette burns. i felt like i knew them, smoked weed with them in my friend’s trailer in 2011. one of them had to be named amber. they did not at all look the same, but that could mean anything.
anyway. the one who seemed the oldest, tall with chunks of bright blonde hair and a softball build, went up to pay. her card was declined. she tried another. insufficient funds. the girls looked at each other.
i walked up, arms full of toilet paper. ready to be the hero. “How much do you need?”
“It’s 97,” the tallest said, in a tone that said I know there is no way in hell you’ve got the money for that. and yeah, i was standing there in my sweatpants, clutching my discount toilet paper. they’d assessed me the same way I’d assessed them.
“I’m so sorry,” i said.
She’d already run out to her car, leaving the other two girls awkwardly tottering by the register.
i did a few things I shouldn’t have. I looked at their cart and saw the cases of Mountain Dew and thought “do you really need all that?” I opened my wallet and saw the $50 I kept before storms in case of emergencies and thought, if I were a good person, i’d give that to them. I thought about how I’d just paid my mom’s water bill because her disability couldn’t cover it and wondered if they had similar responsibilities. I thought about the $130 I’d just spent on groceries and considered the $15 bottle of prosecco and whether that was selfish. basically, I thought too much.
at the end of the day, none of us had the money to do what we wanted to do. i had to run back to work before i saw what happened to them. I didn’t even get to buy that toilet paper. I wondered if she’d scrounged up the money from her car seats somehow; or if they’d had to put some of the stuff in their cart away and just get the necessities: or if they’d called a parent or a sibling or a kind aunt and asked for help. I watch the snow fall from my bedroom window and wonder where they’re watching it from, if it’s warm enough, if they have what they need to make it through the storm. i wonder what will happen to all of us as the price tags and the water rises. will we float together, or will we drown apart?