Skittles

 

It’s my first day back to work and I arrive at the café just after they open at 7:30. The sun is still glowing behind the hills and the air is brittle with the cold. I get my coffee and go back to work at my seat, pausing occasionally to stop and watch the glow over the hills increasingly slightly. We’re back in the purple tier so I have to work outside, which is fine.

By 10am, it’s warm enough to have taken off my jacket and gloves and even my sweater is beginning to seem extraneous. But stationary work outside isn’t a warming activity and I am still nursing a ball of cold somewhere at the bottom of my lungs that the coffee and the sun still haven’t completely dislodged.

The mid-morning rush comes and makes its customary noise. The guy with the dogs arrives and turns on his radio. Democracy Now. A few people cluster around him to listen and to chat about whatever lunacy’s going on far from here. I check the inauguration date on my computer between responses to new students, gearing up for whatever, I guess. The radio is turned off, but the group remains, mostly sitting rather than talking. The day has warmed nicely. Even the other solitary workers look pleased, hammering away at their computers.

After 11, the place really quiets down. Most who’ve planned on coffee have gotten it for the day and usually lunch traffic is pretty light. By this point, I’m either quite focused on a task or just trying to be, hoping to finish, or at least begin, an important task before I go home for lunch—knowing as I do that I seldom get much accomplished in the afternoon when I work at home. Even through the closed door, I can hear everything happening in the house: cries, admonishments, encouragements, blandishments, little running feet and narrated meal preparation. Sometimes, I put my headphones on, but then the music distracts me. I get my real work done in the morning, at the café.

But since it’s the first day back, I don’t really have to worry about afternoon work. There isn’t any to do, maybe another handful of assignments to comment on for the students already getting to work, but even that could wait until tomorrow.

I’m considering packing up when a dog comes up and pushes his nose against my leg and then against my backpack on the ground. Behind the dog are a couple with a very large stroller with a baby lost in it somewhere and a young boy, probably about six with the kind of hair cut that looks like it was buzzed about a month ago and has grown out into a formless, dirty blond puff, the kind of haircut that I can’t help but to associate with hyperactivity and Kool-Aid stained lips for some reason. The mom is a typical young mom who has completed accepted the role and vanquished all of her own desire except maybe on New Year’s and the rare night out with friends. The dad is unreadable. He’s got a bandana on instead of a mask, but even this mask statement seems to say nothing. He doesn’t look exceptionally happy, but neither does he look nagged or cajoled into being in front of this café on the holiday. Both parents are carrying grocery bags. The baby is a baby with close set eyes, looking a little like a siamese cat, taking everything in quietly.  

The boy has a handful of Skittles that he must’ve got out of one of those 25-cent machines—or perhaps the bag ripped all the way open and now he’s carrying them. When his mom stops to get their purchases (there’s a grocery store in the shopping center) in order, the boy sets the Skittles down on one of the café tables. The table wobbles and five Skittles or so bounce merrily around on the sidewalk for a minute, like ballbearings or something in Home Alone to exaggerate the chaos of a scene. To this the mom gives an agonized sigh.

“You weren’t supposed to put ‘em on the table! uuuhhhh!” This sigh comes out in an ‘I-can’t-believe-the-shit-I-have-to-put-up-with’ kind of way. The puffball hair deflates a little. From where I’m sitting it was obvious that the kid’s Skittles were getting sticky and that he’d set them down to regroup and now he’s got his mom practically lamenting that she’s brought him into the world to commit such egregious mistakes. She goes inside to see if there’s a cup she can put them in—why the kid can’t just pick the Skittle back up is unclear. While the mom goes in, the dad mumbles through his mask.

“Fuck. Why’d you have to set those down?”

This doesn’t come out in anger so much as in abject hopelessness, as if in setting the candy on the table, the kid has just reaffirmed that he is once again the most clueless dope in the world and that he is no more an asset to his parents than leprosy would be.

It’s such a small thing. Nothing that I could call out, but I want to cry for this kid. I can feel his shame blazing off his hot little ears, sticking out from that bushwaked hair. The dad is not belligerent; in fact he retreats back to obscurity, but the kid moves off and sits on the curb, not crying, probably accustomed to this kind of treatment. When his mom comes back outside carrying a cup from the café; she has to cajole him back. It takes a while, but he gets up and accepts the cup of Skittles. I notice the dad says nothing. It’s like he’s not even part of the picture. He’s just barely there.

The family, like so many others plods down the sidewalk to god knows where, the Skittles rattling around in the cup, Skittles that now won’t be tasted, all their flavor having been blanched by the dad’s irritation.

I sit there for a few more minutes thinking this is what childhood was like. This complete unpredictability, the slightest shift in temperature and you’ve pissed someone off or trigged their gall. It’s something I’m glad to have escaped as an adult, constantly feeling like you were at the mercy of other people’s mood. When you’re grown up, you can choose to avoid perpetually bad-mooded bastards or choose to ignore their claim on your emotions but, as a kid, you don’t have the same choice.

…

A few days later, I’m back at the café, trying to focus on my work, but distracted by two little boys who show up from time to time with their mother who buys them apple juice in glass bottles. The boys linger near the table, but they’re too active to stay with their drinks and their mom. They look around on the sidewalk and at the edge of the parking lot. They slide. They shove each other. One of them reaches down. The other one grabs for what he’s holding. The mom has to intervene.

“What is this?” she asks looking at what the boy has reluctantly dropped into her hand.

“A Skittle!”

She throws it “You can’t eat Skittle you find in the parking lot.”

I hear it bouncing back over the asphalt; lost again.