At Sears

My father has an office under the escalator. All day, people move up and down, smoothly, evenly, feeling on their faces the brushing wind that is unique to escalator travel, carrying shopping bags and grasping the hands of squirming children. Down below, my father sells insurance. He has a wide plastic briefcase that opens up into a kind of slide projector. The suitcase is gray. He uses it to make promises, to show people what security looks like.

One day I am walking around the store with my mother, father, and brother. We are here for Toughskins jeans. I have a green pair and a red pair, and my brother has brown and blue ones. We each need another pair. As we pass by Lingerie, my mother drags me aside, saying to my father and brother, "We'll catch up with you."

I am ten years old and already I have small mounds forming under my t-shirt. I have not noticed, but my mother has. She has been plotting, waiting to ambush me. The woman in Lingerie is wrinkled, smells of milk and must. She gives me a knowing look, tinged with pity, that says she is sorry I am growing titties so young. I hate her. I hate my mom. The woman wraps me with a tape measure, turns the tape measure this way and that, proclaims a number and letter for me to harness around myself when I dress in the morning for the 6th grade.

Another day I am much younger. I am about as tall as my father's hip. I am alone with him, walking through Appliances. We are walking fast, on our way somewhere. I reach up to hold his hand and my pinky finger is met by a burning sting. I cry out and yank my hand back. Tears spill from my eyes. My father halts, startled. He bends down to examine the red circle on my finger and says he is sorry. He is sorry he was holding his cigarette in toward his palm so I couldn't see it.

He is sorry, too, that I know something about him: that he holds dangerous things in places that can't be detected; but this he does not say.