Adventures of Filomena continue
Filomena in a page/previous issue
Sometimes A Foreign Place
Filomena stood in the grocery store holding a can of peaches in each hand, each one of a different brand. She stood there comparing the two, looking from one to the other with a scrunched up, perplexed look on her face. She had been standing there for almost five minutes now, amongst the shelves of canned goods, doing her comparison shopping, gripping the large, heavy cans as if she were about to drop them at any moment. Filomena just couldn’t make up her mind.
It had been easy with the cat food, she’d always get the same cat food brand when she came to the store. Lisa, her cat, prefers Chunky Cat Whiskers cat food, so that was all she would ever get, even if the price was a bit more than the other cat foods. Lisa was worth it. As Filomena thought about her beautiful, happy cat, waiting for her to come home, she felt a shove from behind. The offensive object had the consistency of another person, more precisely another persons shoulder. She turned slowly, and cautiously to see what had ran into her. A short, bald, black man stood there looking up at her with a huge, smiling, half moon of large, white, shining teeth, he was holding a basket of produce at his side.
“Soda sorry, madam see, didn’t mean at, eh, run into you, see.” He half shouted up at her with some heavy foreign accent surrounding his broken English.
Filomena looked blankly back at the little black man with the big, white teeth, not sure what to say to him. Still wearing her grimace of concentration, her eyes now fixed on him, she proceeded to let out a quiet, mumbling, groaning sort of noise that she meant to mean “ok, whatever, please leave me alone.”
The smiling foreigner nodded his head quickly, responding with a quick barrage of strange sounding thank you’s and turned away, returning to his own shopping. Filomena was still a bit startled, it had all happened so fast, and now, just as quickly as he had run into her, this man had gone back to his shopping as if it had never happened. Forgetting that she had been holding the heavy peach cans in her hands, she now dropped one of the oversized cans onto the speckled tiled floor, producing a loud, smacking ‘THUD!’
The fall of one had left her somewhat unbalanced now, she fumbled the remaining can precariously in her other hand as she fought for control, regaining her composure only after utilizing her newly freed hand in the struggle. She now stood there with both hands clutching the can with all her power, the grimace on her face had now twisted to more of a look of desperation. She stood there awkwardly, left in a strange, ungainly stance. The little black man was looking back her way again, staring at her with that big, beaming smile and a puzzled look in his eyes, the fluorescent lighting shining off his pitch black head . Filomena remained it that position, holding onto that can for dear life, positive now that this little man was some weirdo. This time when her eyes met up with his, he quickly turned away from her, returning to his consumer perusal, thinking to himself that this woman was truly a real weirdo.
Filomena felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see a young, skinny, tanned Asian man standing there, arms folded across his chest, looking somewhat unhappy.
“You drop can! You gotta buy! Big dent, see!” He barked at her.
Filomena cringed at his demands and did not speak. She looked down at the can he pointed at, sad and dented on the grocery store floor, and then back at the angry Asian man.
He loudly repeated himself again, “You drop can! You gotta buy! Big dent!”
Filomena felt the first inclinations of tears rising within her, holding them back she sputtered out, “He ran into me, I dropped it on accident. I have this can.” She held up the remaining can in her hands for him to see, but her body was beginning to revolt in her minds panic. As she held the can up in front of her, it suddenly became unbearably heavy. She struggled with it in her hand for a moment, then it teetered to one side and began making its slow journey to the floor, landing next to its previously dented competitor. The Asian man became clenched his whole body and screamed out, not with words this time, not anything discernable in English or his native tongue, just a loud “Aaaaargh!”
Filomena burst out into tears now, no longer could she keep her loose grip on her questionable composure. The Asian clerk was furious now, he waved his hands around like a maniac, his face the brightest of reds. He was yelling out what were surely every curse imaginable in some language that was not English. Filomena didn’t know what to do, she had never been in a situation like this before, she did all she could to avoid situations like this. She responded in the most primitive of ways, making a dash for the front door, her purse, hanging form her forearm, swung about wildly.
She turned back briefly before exiting the store. The skinny Asian man had chased her to the door and was hot on her heels, still waving his arms and screaming. Just behind him she could see the short, black man, his teeth and head shining back at her. It seemed that his smile was even wider than it had been before. As Filomena reached the safety the outside, she turned hard into the direction of her apartment, continuing her wild sprint. She was already winded but decided she wouldn’t stop until she got to her front door. She was worried what Lisa, her cat, was going to say when she returned home empty handed and wondered where she was going to do her shopping now. Maybe it was time to move.
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