Store Aisles I Passed Through Before Leaving Town
- Mar 31, 2021
- 2 min read
by Abbie Barker
Cosmetics
Mom crouched beside the lipsticks, a plum tube pressed against her freckled cheek. She asked what I thought, and I shrugged because she smelled different. Like citrus or melon. Like a store in the mall we used to pass on our way to SuperCuts. She never had a smell before. She assumed the odor of the house—cinnamon or seasoned beef or the mildewy dampness rising from the basement. That afternoon, she smelled fruity, almost tropical, like a beach vacation.
Mom pushed the plum aside and grabbed another shade, a deep red-brown. This! This is perfect, she said, and I asked, what for? She smiled—all lip, no teeth. I squinted at the gold lettering stuck to the black lacquered lid: Touch of Spice.
Tile
Dad dragged me to one of those warehouse home improvement stores. A surprise for Mom, he said. Every surface sparkled beneath domed lights. Mosaic, subway, porcelain. Small hexagons. Bigger rectangles. I ran my finger along the glass tiles, those that were translucent and the color of oceans. Those shaped like mermaid scales.
Which would Mom like best? Dad asked.
Touch of Spice, I whispered.
Frozen Foods
Dad fogged up freezer doors, comparing ingredients on the back of pizza boxes. Clouds of cold leaked into the aisle. Dad only cooked pancakes and eggs, bacon. For weeks we ate nothing but breakfast. Some nights, only toast. For weeks we waited for Mom to return with pale lips, so she could soak up the smell of sausage that clung to our kitchen walls, and dinner could taste like dinner again.
Before she left, Mom told Dad she was drowning.
I ate soggy pizza on the floor of the half-tiled bathroom. The marine blue tile curved around the room then tapered off, like a tidal wave breaking. Like a storm that came, but would not pass.
Abbie Barker’s flash fiction has appeared in Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Atticus Review, Gone Lawn, Cease, Cows and others. She teaches college writing courses and is a reader for Fractured Lit. Abbie lives with her husband and two kids in New Hampshire. You can find her lurking on Twitter @AbbieMBarker
