The Young Lady at the Five and Dime

Photo by Spencer Selover from Pexels

The other week I visited the local Five and Dime to pick up some odds and ends; allergy meds, some batteries, a belated birthday card, and a granola bar to stave off that afternoon hunger. There she was at the register, the young cashier I often see, asking me once again for my rewards card. I smiled and said sure, give me a sec, as I fumbled through my wallet. 

She had the eyes of a young spring doe, beautifully large and round, so expressive. She blinked slowly as she laughed, watching me continue to fumble. Oh here it is! I exclaimed, handing it to her. We smiled at each other in amusement.  

She began to ring up my miscellaneous items, focusing on the register. My eyes wandered from the locks of hair framing her twenty something face to her funky earrings, to the colorful tattoos adorning her neck then peeking out from her ivory décolletage, continuing down her arms. She was hauntingly beautiful, a work of abstract art perhaps. A slender maiden from the Romantic period with a sense of rebellion and artistic self-expression.Then I noticed them. Something which made her all the more mysterious and sad. 

Up and down her arms were the scars of at least a dozen cut marks. They were healed completely and if you weren’t focused on them, they might have been missed. But here they were before me, as a reminder to her of an emotionally painful time in her life.

I grew embarrassed and looked away quickly at the magazines framing either side of the register. The red warm heat of embarrassment creeping up the back of my neck and over my head. I couldn’t look at her and attempted to look anywhere else. I felt as if I had seen something I should not have seen. I felt sadness. I felt ashamed I had noticed them.

And then she was done, handing me my bag of odd drugstore items. I refocused, composed and forced myself to look her square in the eyes and thanked her. I cracked an awkward smile and she smiled back wishing me a good day.

You too, I said. You take care.

And I meant it. For whatever she had gone through to cause her to cut herself, I truly meant for her to take care and be well. For a split second, I felt she had suffered before and did not wish for her to feel that anymore.