Sweet Bye-Bye by Denise Michelle Harris Page A

me as she walked past and stopped two desks down. She was probably stealing an account from someone who was away. I chuckled a bit and tucked my hair behind my ear.
    She looked over in my direction. “Chantell, would you do me a favor and tell Eric that my friend Stephanie said to meet her at their normal place for dinner?”
    That did it! I’d vowed that I wasn’t taking any more mess from Mina, and that was exactly what I meant. She would say
anything
to try to hurt me!
    “Oh, okay, Mina,” I said to her. “I’ll be sure to do that.”
    What a liar! Eric didn’t have any “normal place for dinner” spot with anyone except for me. Mina Everett was going to find out that I could get just as petty as she could.

8
    The Test
    I was still fuming on the ride home. I left San Francisco and had gotten through the Bay Bridge, but then the traffic came to a standstill. When it started to creep along again, I got off the freeway and took the side streets. I cracked my window and drove down the city streets. I thought about that silly woman at work as I rode past the old church that my grandmother used to take me to.
    The beige-and-white two-story building still sat there, its grass looking green, its bushes cut in a long rectangle. The parking lot was filled with cars. I wondered what they were doing in there on a Friday night.
    It had started to rain a bit by the time I got to the grocery store. A lady sat outside the store and asked for donations for the Veteran’s Relief Fund. As I approached her, she shook her white bucket. I heard change rattling at the bottom. Usually, when I had extra, I gave. I gave to the homeless, I gave to the United Negro College Fund, and I gave to the local women’s shelters. But today I was tired and not in the mood.
    The lady sat behind a card table, with a nurse’s hat pinned in her hair and a badge clipped to her candy striper uniform. She had a cigarette in her mouth, but she’d unknowingly turned it the wrong way. She shook the white bucket at both another man and me as we grabbed carts and headed into the store at the same time. She stared at us and flicked her lighter with her thumb. The fire rose up and she put the flame to the brown filter of the cigarette. The filter melted a bit. I tried to look straight ahead and not notice.
    “D**n it!” she said as she threw the cigarette to the ground.
    I went into the store, toward the meat and cheese aisle. I grabbed the envelope sticking out of my purse, thinking it was the grocery list that I’d made that morning. It was actually a doctor bill. I looked in my purse and discovered that I’d forgotten the list at home. This was how I ended up exceeding my planned budget every month. I continued down the cheese aisle. I knew that Colby-Jack cheese was on the list. I grabbed a block of cheese and moved farther down the aisle to the turkey breast. A man was pushing a grocery cart containing two little girls whose coal-black hair was tied with green ribbons. They were probably three and four years old and singing Barney songs while bobbing up and down, and making a bunch of unnecessary racket.
“I love you, toot, toot, toot . . .”
    They argued over whose turn it was to sing. “Okay, you go. Okay, now it’s my turn! Okay, you go. No, it’s my turn!” They were squealing and whining, and their father just walked along pushing the basket, like he didn’t hear a thing. The two children, in light blue nylon jackets and pink ski boots, finally got on one chord, and sang,
“Standing outside with my mouth open wide . . .”
and proceeded to make gagging noises. Forget the turkey breast, I needed to change aisles.
    I walked fast toward them and got over in the lane to pass. A lady and her husband walked toward me pushing a cart. They were arm in arm, and poking along. They both had handfuls of the fresh pistachios that were sold in bulk in the big white tubs near the fruits and vegetables. They munched and laughed and dropped the shells of