by nora hylton ’25
managing editor
The summer I became a woman, I did it in the corner store. Became a woman, I mean. It was hot, and all the girls around me blossomed while I writhed.
It happened like this, I found myself getting caught up at the orange bin at the store. It wasn’t really a grocery store, because there weren’t any groceries. No apples or broccoli or tomatoes. Just canned fruits and cereal and condoms and a big pile of oranges. The pile was Mecca to me. I would’ve gotten on my knees and prayed in front of it if I knew how. I liked eating oranges, but more than that, I liked peeling them. Oranges were easy to dig your fingers into and their skin broke under your nails. I could never get that same feeling with people. I wanted to peel back their skin, feel them underneath my nails, and carefully divide them into quarters. Really get to know them.
The air conditioning was loud in the store, and Mr. Giovanni kept shooting me looks from behind the counter, like I was going to pocket something on the way out. I think that’s what those looks meant. He knew I didn’t have the money to buy anything. I had blown all my money on a new pair of tennis shoes and a Giants jersey for my brother’s birthday. Mr. Giovanni didn’t know all that but he could tell I didn’t have anything. He wasn’t selling anything I wanted anyway. He was a fat man with a face that got red when he stayed in the heat for too long. I passed him every day on my walk home from summer school sitting outside his store on an old milk crate. Sometimes he was smoking a cigarette and sometimes he was just leering but he was always sweating. I didn’t know who was at the register while he sat outside, but I never bothered to go and check.
“How much for two?” I shouted at Mr. Giovanni, my eyes still locked on the towering pile.
“A dollar twenty-five,” he shouted back, even though we both knew I didn’t have it.
The summer before, I knew a boy. But I don’t mean in the biblical sense. He had learned to hit from his father and take it from his mother and he believed that was all there was to know in life. And this boy, he told me that he loved me and I gave him an orange. But maybe it was the perfect gift for a boy who loves me because when I handed it to him, he just laughed and I got away without saying a single word. It was hard to say who was less satisfied with our relationship, me —who was resentful that he wasn’t orange — or him, who couldn’t decide whether or not he wanted to hit me. In the end, we just stopped calling each other. I think we were both disappointed by this outcome. As I stared at the pile, I couldn’t remember if he had ever eaten the orange or just passed it back and forth between his hands.
I could hear people shouting at each other and cars honking from outside the store. Instead of muffling the uproar, the white noise of the air conditioning unit amplified it. The heat was making everyone crazy, even the crazies. I shivered.
“You gonna buy anything?” Mr. Giovanni called from the register. I could feel his glare boring holes into the back of my head.
“Nah.”
“Okay then.”
I turned away from the pile and kept walking down the aisle, looking at the stacks of red and white cans. Pea soup. Chicken noodle. Cream of mushroom.
“Mr. G,” I called from behind the aisle where he couldn’t see me.
“Yeah?”
“Who’s at the register when you’re outside?” I asked, trailing the tips of my finger along the metal can edges.
“What?”
“The register. Who’s there?”
He snorted. “Girl, I have no idea what you mean.”
“Oh.” I deflated.
“If you’re not gonna buy anything, you gotta get out. I’ve got other customers who wanna come in here.”
I didn’t see how my being there stopped other customers from coming in, but I nodded. He still couldn’t see me.
I walked back towards the pile, giving it one last look. Fast, before he could catch me, I grabbed an orange from the bottom of the pile. I had hoped the whole thing would topple over, but it barely shifted. He hadn’t even noticed what I had done, he was too busy looking at my ass in my shorts.
I could feel the orange underneath my left hand. I squeezed it tighter and pressed it against my leg.
“Have a good one Mr. G,” I shouted at him as I sprinted out of the store and back into the wall of heat.
