Circumstances 25

When I got home from school the next night, Mom surprised me, giving me the twenty we’d discussed.  She told me it was for lunch and to pay off what I owed, and to remind her if she forgot the ten for the following week.  Wow!  Maybe she really had listened to what I’d said to her about missing lunch, or maybe her seeing me walking around the house undressed, seeing how bony I was, had made an impression.  I wasn’t going to worry about it, whatever the motive was.  I was going to use that money!

I owed Gary eight dollars.  He’d paid for my lunch four times.  He didn’t seem to care if I ever paid him back or not, but I cared.  It mattered to me.  Why is it people without any money are so aware when they owe someone something, and so often, people who have money, if they borrow some, don’t seem to worry about paying it back?  It’s odd.  Anyway, now I could repay him, and it was a relief to be able to do so.

What I decided to do was give him eight one-dollar bills.  It would be more significant that way, showing him how many times he’d made sure I had something to eat at lunchtime.  My mom didn’t have change, so I told her I’d be right back and then walked to the convenience store on the corner a couple of blocks away.  I didn’t go there much.  The people who worked there weren’t real friendly to kids, and I didn’t ever have any money anyway.

There were no customers there but me.  I looked around the store.  I needed to buy something that was cheap so I could get a lot of change.  I finally settled on a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.  I took it up to the lady at the counter and put it on the counter.

She scanned it and said, “One twenty-eight.”

I handed her the twenty.  She opened the cash drawer and I said, “Could I please have eighteen ones?”

She stopped what she was doing, looked at me again, a pissed off look on her face, and I again dropped my eyes.  Damn, I wish I wouldn’t do that.

There was a pause, and then she said, “Eighteen?  Your change is $8.72.”  And she laid that amount on the counter.

I looked at it, then up at her.  She was staring at me with no expression at all on her face.

“Uh, I gave you a twenty,” I said.

“No, you gave me a ten.  There’s your change.”  She gestured toward the counter.

I wasn’t good at arguing with adults.  But I wasn’t going to back down on this.  I needed that money, and fair’s fair, and she’d made a mistake, although I was pretty sure it was no mistake.

“I gave you a twenty.  My mom gave it to me, I brought it in here and gave it to you.  I didn’t have a ten to pay with.  Only the twenty.  That’s what I gave you.  Please, you made a mistake, and I need those additional ten ones.”

She stared at me without answering for a moment, then said, “There’s your change, kid.  Take it and beat it.”

I was getting angry and I raised my voice, something I rarely do, and never with adults.  “What’s going on here?” I asked.  “You’re stealing ten dollars from me!  I need that money.  In fact, why don’t you just give me my twenty back?  You can keep your candy bar.  I only bought it to get the change.  Give me my twenty and I’ll leave.”

“Get out of here, kid.  And don’t come back.”  She was staring at me with small, ugly looking eyes.  I had a quick thought, wondering how many times she’d gotten away with this with other kids. Instead of being intimidated, the look she gave me just made me madder.  I yelled this time, “Give me my money!  You’ve got my money!”

She’d been sitting on a stool, but now stood up.  She was a lot bigger than I was, taller and much heavier.  And she looked mad.

“I told you to beat it,” she said, and her voice was raised now, too.

“You stole my money!” I yelled.

She started toward the opening in the counter that led to where I was.  I gulped.  But I didn’t run.

She’d stepped through the opening and was walking toward me when another lady, an older one, came out of the back of the store.  “What’s all this noise out here about?” she asked.

Before the cashier could say anything, I shouted to the older woman, “She’s trying to steal my money.  I gave her a twenty and she gave me change for a ten and won’t give me the rest of what she owes me.”

The cashier stopped where she was, and when the lady from the back looked at her, she said, “The kid gave me a ten.  I gave him the right change.  He’s one of the neighborhood punks who’re always trying to get away with something.  He’s trying to scam us.  I was just going to chase him out of here.”

The lady looked at her, then at me, and finally said to me, “I guess it’s one person’s word against another’s, and Mary’s been a cashier here for over a year.  I trust her.  You probably just made a mistake.”

The lady seemed reasonable, not like the cashier.  She seemed sympathetic, so I didn’t give up.  “Look, ma’am, I didn’t make a mistake.  I only had a twenty.  ‘Mary’”—and I said the name with some sarcasm in my voice, the residue of the anger I felt—“either made a mistake or saw a way to make an easy ten dollars.  I must have looked like easy pickings.  It makes me wonder how many times she’s done this before, to other kids.”

The lady was listening to me, and took a quick glance at Mary, who returned her glance impassively.  I started thinking.  We were at an impasse, and without anything to support what I was saying, I wasn’t going to win here.  I needed to think of something fast.

The lady finally said, “Well, without any evidence...”  and let her voice fade off.

So I said, “Don’t these stores have security cameras?  And don’t they have one pointing at the register?  I’ll bet if you review the tape of the last five minutes, you’ll see that I gave her a twenty, and that she put it in the cash register and pocketed a ten for herself.”

The lady wrinkled her brow, then looked at Mary.  Then back at me.  I asked her, “Have there been any other complaints from kids saying they got shortchanged?”

That had an immediate effect.  She looked surprised, then said in a firm voice, “I’ll check the tape.”

Mary spoke up then.  “You’d do that?  You’d believe him, and not me, and I’ve been working my ass off here for all this time for minimum wage?  I don’t have to put up with that.  I quit.  Pay me what you owe me and I’m out of here.”  She stood up real tall and scowled, making herself look fierce.  The older lady was much smaller than Mary, but she didn’t seem to notice the posturing.  She said, “Come back tomorrow and you’ll get your pay.  I’m going to review the past few days of tapes, first.”

“No.  Pay me now!”

The lady looked at Mary, paused, then said to her, “Just what am I going to see on that tape?”

The two women had a silent but intense staring match, and then Mary stormed out of the store.

“Can I have my ten dollars?”  I asked.  “In ones?”

She smiled at me and said, “Sure, hon,” and stepped behind the counter.