A Supermarket in Memphis, and: One in Wins, and: Nostos Caki Wilkinson (bio) A Supermarket in Memphis It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity, says everyone who won’t admit it’s both, but even deep in June you need a coat in Kroger, which I did not remember the morning after my cousin Hope won $200 for beating the crap out of a woman onstage at Blanchard’s. I used to worship her, older, taller, tougher, my very own ego’s fog machine. It was a week of new laws, headlines reading wine in groceries, guns on campus, both sides still buzzing, righteous, both sides a little bit appeased. Hope called to say her eye was swollen shut, and who was I to judge? Hadn’t I huffed my share of duster? Hadn’t I made a boyfriend sexy magnets, of me in hot pink underwear and different outfits he could change? He put them on his locker. His friends were all so jealous, and there’s no telling who else saw, but even then I knew I’d never run for office. Hope took the pictures for me. This was before I went to college, before Hope got caught stealing strawberries from the same store I was standing in, freezing my ass off. My mother said that was the moment things went south, as if someone just suddenly starts stealing strawberries. I want to claim I haven’t been unkind. There is so much that mortifies us later. I don’t think about what happened to the magnets. I don’t think about the students I should arm myself against. Who knows what’s worth $200 once you’re six drinks in at Blanchard’s. They call it Foxy Boxing. Hope’s face was puffed up worse than I expected, but of course I lied and said it wasn’t. I brought her what she wanted: a box of white, and ice. As little kids, our favorite game was diner. I cut and glued the menu’s paper food, and we’d spend hours taking orders. [End Page 97] One in Wins The first time Hope ran off, she took September with her. I went to the fair to pet the baby llamas and make myself sick and spend a hundred bucks on crooked games. In the craft booths all the winning cakes were sweating. There were obscene, lopsided squashes and pinch pots from the mental institution. There was a woman with a sugar glider hiding in her ponytail, and monkey jockeys riding dogs around a track. There was a tortoise whose shell was stained with yellow paint from the cage it banged itself against. I kept circling back to the basketball stall, seduced, as usual by one in wins, full knowing the rim was bent and tilted, the balls weighted wrong. Give me one more goddamn shot, I told the ropey man who squinted but obliged me, and by some dumb luck I sunk it, the line behind me whooping as I claimed my prize: a giant crunchy alien with eyes the size of footballs. The only way to hold the thing was so its floppy limbs were hugging me, and I clomped around like that all night, alone and so conspicuous, convinced I’d never be the same—but no one seemed to notice, and I am. [End Page 98] Nostos Hope holds her cards so close I don’t know how she voted. I’m afraid to ask. Like me, she’s always leaving lives behind, changing her mind about what’s feasible. Hope lived seven states away the night her dad got tanked and drove into a ditch, banged up where passersby could see how deep he’d finally spiraled. Two Thanksgivings later, here we are. Hope thinks some stories dog you all your life. I think she’s right. It’s hard to go back home, or where home was, where part of you still partly is, which is why we wind up, two grown women, at the batting cages, the all-day gray a sort of syntax we’re suspended in. I figured we’d both have a couple kids...
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Oct 16, 2024
Amy Kristin Sanders + 2
Open Access