King. Tanya Chapman
the cashier asked my name because I was new in town, and I told her it was Hazel, and she said, ‘Your driver’s licence doesn’t say Hazel.’ I told her that I was finished with the other name, so now it’s Hazel. Then, when I was leaving, she said goodbye and called me by my old name, real loud and with a nasty snarl in her voice. I had already written my legal name on the cheque so everything was legit. There was no reason for it. Just this ‘I’m right and you’re wrong’ idea that you’re not allowed to change things around and make things better for yourself.
I know King understands, though. He understands in the most complete way. And when I figured that out, I knew I loved him for good.
Sissy introduced me to King. She knocked on my trailer door two days after I moved in and invited me over for a beer. I spent the whole afternoon listening to her voice. King and Spiney came home from the shop where they work together and the four of us talked, played cards and had a darn good time. Pretty soon it was a ritual.
A couple of weeks later I invited King over for dinner. Sissy gave me the idea when she told me that King was living in the shop where he worked. I figured that a home-cooked dinner might be a pretty good evening for us. I needed to give him a chance to tell me that he liked me – it was obvious already.
Sissy came over that day to cook for me. I can’t cook a thing except Kraft Dinner and grilled cheese, but King didn’t know that back then. While Sissy was cooking, I decided that the trailer needed a bit of decorating, so I got out my collection of Christmas lights. The first week I was in town I got a job at the thrift shop. They were throwing out this huge box of lights – apparently, no one buys used Christmas lights. I hung up my whole collection – some on the front door, then on the whole front of the trailer. I just couldn’t stop. King was coming over.
It was the best dinner. We went through three bottles of red wine and sat and talked all night. There was a lot of laughing and a lot of telling silly stories and making fun of one another. I almost forgot about the lights, but then I jumped up, so quickly it made my drunken head spin, and I grabbed King and led him out the front door.
I made him stand in the middle of the lawn with his eyes closed while I ran and plugged in the lights.
‘Ta da!’
He almost fell over, he was so blown away at the sight. I went and stood beside him and looked. We stood for a while just staring. The whole trailer kind of glowed, like one of those super-coloured cartoons about nuclear reaction. So many colours all on top of each other and shining away in the warm night. Then King took my hand and put it on his chest, over his heart. ‘Thanks, Hazel,’ he said.
And there I was, standing in the hazy, many-coloured night feeling the beat of King’s heart.
And that was it. We knew from then on that we understood each other, and we’ve never talked about it since. It’s not really something you can say out loud anyway.
I work at the thrift shop in town. Lots of people get their noses all up in the air about second-hand stuff. Some people never want anything that’s second-hand. They judge the store right away – I can see them through the big front window looking in and thinking that nothing is good enough. It’s a very specific expression and it looks the same on everyone: like a sour-lemon face just underneath their normal walking-down-the-street face. When they see me looking back at them from the other side of the window, I get the look too, like I’m second-hand.
This is new to me – no one looked at me like that in my old life. But now I’m getting used to it, almost. I do live in a trailer park, after all. People don’t see the real personalities in the park, or the great things in the shop, or me – just the trailers and a bunch of things that someone didn’t want anymore.
King likes the fact that he fixes used cars and equipment and I sell used everything else. He says it’s like we are keeping things alive together, giving second chances.
The thrift is only open four days a week so I don’t make a lot of money, but I’m not exactly living the high life. Four days pays the bills and puts some fun on the table.
The thrift is a small operation owned and run by the town council. There’s me and then there are the twins who take care of the money and report to the council. The twins are old ladies about seventy-nine years old and they’re dotty. I mean, they are great and sweet and everything, but I have no idea how they manage to balance the books because they can’t even keep their place in a conversation. But the twins are just another thing that I like about working at the thrift.
On the days the thrift is closed, people leave their donations in a big wooden box out back. It’s my job to haul it all inside, sort it, price it and hang it up. I also have to keep the place looking halfway decent, which is harder than it sounds because it’s so crowded and generally down-at-the-heels.
Another good thing about this job is that I get the first look at all the stuff that comes in. The other week there was a huge bag full of belts. An entire bag. Who has that many belts to throw away? Leather, elastic, chain-link, rope: there was everything that anyone has ever thought to make a belt out of. I’m not a belt person myself, but I picked out a tough-looking one for Spiney, leather with a huge buckle. He wears it all the time.
The worst days are when a whole truckload of things comes in from one person, usually an old man or lady. You know right away what happened.
Sometimes the clothes don’t have anything to say for themselves – they are just a collection of pants and shoes and shirts. But other times you can read a person’s whole life.
Today is a day like that. There are nine huge plastic bags filled with dresses, great dresses with sparkle and glamour built right in. I lay them on the counter. There are tons of them. There are so many dresses that when I get them all out of the bags I can’t find enough room to lay them all out straight. So I drape them over racks and along shelves, covering the whole place. After a while the shop starts to look like something else, something a little more beautiful. Who was this person? There sure isn’t anywhere around here to wear these gowns. This lady must have been living in her own piano-bar-and-martini world.
I sit for a while and look around. The light comes in the big window and reflects off the sequins and the shine of the dresses. The whole place sparkles. I watch as the shine makes its way around the place, seeping into the dreariness and lighting things up a little.
The bell above the front door rings and a lady comes in. ‘Holy crap,’ she says and waves her hand at the dresses. Then she goes to the back of the shop to where the books are. This town is too small for a public library, so people are always coming in to pick up a paperback for twenty-five cents, fifty cents for a hardcover. She finds a Harlequin and leaves.
I take the dresses one by one and hang them carefully on a rack. They’re heavy, so I have to use the best hangers. I go to gather up the bags that they came in and that’s when I notice that there’s a smaller bag that I haven’t unpacked yet. I can feel beads and stones through the plastic. I pry open the knot that holds the bag closed and dump everything onto the counter.
We have a whole section of junk jewellery in the thrift shop. There are bead necklaces and fake gold brooches that look like jumping leopards or flying parrots. There are clip-on earrings made of plastic pearls and thin silver bracelets that turn your wrist green. But there’s nothing like this.
I can’t believe it when I take the jewellery out of the bag. It’s spectacular. There are bobbles for every part of your body. They are all rich deep colours to go with the dresses. No cheap stuff here. No falling-apart strands of plastic beads, just loads of sparkle.
I fasten a big bracelet around my wrist. It’s heavy, with glass stones cut to look like gems. My wrist looks different. I know I’m just Hazel standing in the middle of the thrift, but I don’t quite feel that way anymore.
And that’s when it hits me. I’m going to redecorate the shop. The place is pretty depressing, to tell the truth. A room full of unwanted things. But it doesn’t have to be that way. After all, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure and all that.
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