stamps out of her coupon book while holding the baby.
My mother snorted in derision, “There goes my tax dollars.” I looked up at her in confusion. At the time, I had no idea what she meant by that, but the angry, heated glare the woman gave my mother and the nervous look on the cashier’s face always stuck with me. When the woman left, my mother started on a little tirade about my father’s sister and her kids. “Shiftless, never worked a day in their lives. Never will. The entire clan is useless.”
“I got a sister like that,” the cashier said with a chuckle. “Got pregnant, figured out it was free money. She hasn’t worked in years and here I am working and can’t afford a pack of pig’s feet, much less the steaks she’s always eatin’. ”
“Well, God blesses the child that has his own.” Then my mother looked at me and said, “You remember that.”
The vision wavered in front of me, and this time I was a few years older and with my father. It was a nearly identical scenario, only my father had cross words for my mother’s children from her previous marriage. “Stay away from those people, girl. They’re all criminals, and they will only take advantage of you.”
Those words didn’t faze me much. I was used to him and his contempt for “those people,” as he called them … on his better days. (When he was really in a foul mood, the names he reserved for them would make the Devil cringe.) It was when we got into the car that I met his wrath. And for what? I hadn’t done anything wrong. But whenever my father saw a woman carting around a brood of unkempt and unruly kids, I would become the target of his ire since he couldn’t really say anything to the woman’s face. No, that just wasn’t gentlemanlike.
“I swear,” he said as he started up the car, “if you ever come home pregnant … If I even so much as see you looking at a boy, I will skin you alive, girl, and then put you on the streets. I will not have it in my house!”
“Yessir,” I responded meekly.
“Welfare is for the weak and for the do-no-gooders. Your sister ain’t worked a single day in her life and look at her. Worthless!” And it was that hatred of my mother’s now very distant family that drove a wedge between my parents. I could never really understand why, because she didn’t have much to do with them, anyway. She had left them for another life and never looked back.
Her doing that, along with my father’s contempt and derision, would cost me everything years later, including the family home and everything I owned.
I didn’t have time to linger on the thought, as Gabriel ushered in another vision of me once again in the checkout line. Only now, I had my own groceries and my checkbook out and ready while staring at another woman with food stamps. Years of conditioning had worked. My parents would have been proud.
“Good grief,” I scoffed at the cashier as the woman walked away. “Is it so difficult to ask people to get off their asses and work?” The cashier chuckled as she rang me up.
The vision faded, and here I was back in the darkness of my bedroom. I glanced to the copy of the application that had been approved only hours prior. In that one moment, I had become everything my parents hated.
I had become the very thing I hated.
I had no words for Gabriel, and he had none for me. After a moment, he faded into the darkness. I didn’t move from my spot for hours, stuck in a vicious cycle of contempt, self-pity, and dread. Now, I would be the one to be mocked and humiliated at the checkout counter. The notion brought to me the painful realization that karma, as it were, was a rabid female Rottweiler cornering me, a pampered Persian pussycat that had pooped herself out of fear.
Here, I must be cautious. When I mention karma, I don’t mean it in terms of good versus bad karma or even in the sense of retribution. Here, karma simply goes back to what I covered earlier about causality. My parents
My mother snorted in derision, “There goes my tax dollars.” I looked up at her in confusion. At the time, I had no idea what she meant by that, but the angry, heated glare the woman gave my mother and the nervous look on the cashier’s face always stuck with me. When the woman left, my mother started on a little tirade about my father’s sister and her kids. “Shiftless, never worked a day in their lives. Never will. The entire clan is useless.”
“I got a sister like that,” the cashier said with a chuckle. “Got pregnant, figured out it was free money. She hasn’t worked in years and here I am working and can’t afford a pack of pig’s feet, much less the steaks she’s always eatin’. ”
“Well, God blesses the child that has his own.” Then my mother looked at me and said, “You remember that.”
The vision wavered in front of me, and this time I was a few years older and with my father. It was a nearly identical scenario, only my father had cross words for my mother’s children from her previous marriage. “Stay away from those people, girl. They’re all criminals, and they will only take advantage of you.”
Those words didn’t faze me much. I was used to him and his contempt for “those people,” as he called them … on his better days. (When he was really in a foul mood, the names he reserved for them would make the Devil cringe.) It was when we got into the car that I met his wrath. And for what? I hadn’t done anything wrong. But whenever my father saw a woman carting around a brood of unkempt and unruly kids, I would become the target of his ire since he couldn’t really say anything to the woman’s face. No, that just wasn’t gentlemanlike.
“I swear,” he said as he started up the car, “if you ever come home pregnant … If I even so much as see you looking at a boy, I will skin you alive, girl, and then put you on the streets. I will not have it in my house!”
“Yessir,” I responded meekly.
“Welfare is for the weak and for the do-no-gooders. Your sister ain’t worked a single day in her life and look at her. Worthless!” And it was that hatred of my mother’s now very distant family that drove a wedge between my parents. I could never really understand why, because she didn’t have much to do with them, anyway. She had left them for another life and never looked back.
Her doing that, along with my father’s contempt and derision, would cost me everything years later, including the family home and everything I owned.
I didn’t have time to linger on the thought, as Gabriel ushered in another vision of me once again in the checkout line. Only now, I had my own groceries and my checkbook out and ready while staring at another woman with food stamps. Years of conditioning had worked. My parents would have been proud.
“Good grief,” I scoffed at the cashier as the woman walked away. “Is it so difficult to ask people to get off their asses and work?” The cashier chuckled as she rang me up.
The vision faded, and here I was back in the darkness of my bedroom. I glanced to the copy of the application that had been approved only hours prior. In that one moment, I had become everything my parents hated.
I had become the very thing I hated.
I had no words for Gabriel, and he had none for me. After a moment, he faded into the darkness. I didn’t move from my spot for hours, stuck in a vicious cycle of contempt, self-pity, and dread. Now, I would be the one to be mocked and humiliated at the checkout counter. The notion brought to me the painful realization that karma, as it were, was a rabid female Rottweiler cornering me, a pampered Persian pussycat that had pooped herself out of fear.
Here, I must be cautious. When I mention karma, I don’t mean it in terms of good versus bad karma or even in the sense of retribution. Here, karma simply goes back to what I covered earlier about causality. My parents
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