Strawberry Sweettarts

She stood before the old man head down. She counted all the scratches on the dirty linoleum counter that separated them. Her dark eyes ran along the shiny edge dotted with tiny nails that held the counter top in place and then lower to the glass shelves. She looked at all the one-cent candy jars. Green mint juleps, red licorice whips, wax lips, an assortment of jujubes and jaw-breakers, and, her favourite, strawberry Sweettarts. She clinched the pennies in her hand. She could have eaten all the candies, especially the Sweettarts, which she loved so much.
She liked the sour-sweet as it melted in her mouth making her tongue and lips red. Her mother never gave her money for candies. Never.
She looked around the shop. It smelled of old wood and candy. The shelves were lined in snacks, snacks she had never tasted because her mother fed her only home-made cookies and cakes.
The wrappers, blue and pink and green, seemed to call out to her. She knew the sound they made when they were being opened. She had sat near numerous friends who ate them at lunch. She had seen them appear from within numerous lunch boxes. She knew exactly what they smelled like.
“Well?” Asked the old man.
“One penthil, pleathe”, She lisped hopelessly stretching out her hand and placing the pennies on the counter.
Old mister Kuzma eyed her suspiciously. He didn't like foreigners, didn't trust them. She was one, he was sure. He looked her up and down before turning to the shelf on which he kept the pencils in a tatty old peanut tin, dangerously sharp lead tips pointed upwards. His back to her for only a second, but enough for the one little strawberry Sweettart to slide from the jar into her tiny fingers.
“Where you from, kid?” He asked bluntly as he turned around to face her again.
The child stared up at his hostile face and stammered incomprehensibly.
“What'd you say?”He barked.
“Down the block”. She replied raising her voice.
“I don't mean here. I mean where you from? Where your people from?”
She looked up at him quizzically. She lived just down the block. She had no idea what he was talking about. She squeezed the strawberry candy in her fingers. She could feel the scratchy sugar coating sticking to her palms.
“I live down the block, thir”.
“Your folks...” He said with force, “Where are they from? Are you stupid or what?”
She thought about being stupid. She felt certain she was because she really didn't understand what the man wanted from her. She only knew that the stolen candy was melting in her hand and that it felt good. It was justice in a way that she would never be able to taste the sour-sweet pillow melting in her mouth. It was stolen, after all, and that was a sin. The nuns in her school had taught her so. It wasn't right to benefit from something so wrong. She squeezed her little hand more. She wanted to squeeze the life out of the stolen candy. She wanted the colouring to seep through her fingers like blood and cleanse her. She wanted to eradicate the guilt that had been building up inside her ever since she had clasped on to that one tiny soft red marshmallow coated in sugar. She wanted to purge her soul of the wrongness. She wondered how many Hail Maries it would take, how much time she would have to stay on her knees, how many cracks on her knuckles the nuns would inflict.
“You stupid, or what?” He repeated.
“My parenth live down the block, too, thir”.
He shook his head at this, put the pencil in a tiny white paper bag and handed it over the counter to her.
The little girl reached her red stained hand out to clasp the bag.
“What you got there?” Shouted Mr. Kuzma.
The girl went white.
“Open your hand! Open it!”
The little girl opened her fingers one at a time. What was once a lovely little marshmallow coated in sugar lay in her tainted palm, spittle.
“That's one cent!” He barked.
The little girl looked down at her open hand. Tears welled up in her eyes. And yet she felt relieved, saved somehow.
“Well, do you have the penny, or what?”
She shook her head. The tears zigzagged across her cheeks.
“Can't give you the pencil then. Five cents minus the penny for the candy makes four. You can count, can't you? If you're old enough to steal, you're old enough to count. Four is not enough for the pencil. You'll have to take your business elsewhere.”
He took the pencil out of the bag and placed it back in the peanut tin. The clanging sound was deafening.
She stood there for a while, waiting. She wanted him to lash out at her, punish her, shout, but he only looked down at her with disgust.
“Go on. Get out of here.”
She moved towards the door. The little bell above it rang as she pulled it open.
“Damn foreigners...” He sentenced banging his clenched fist on the filthy counter top.
The hostility in his voice thrust her out of the shop and into the sunshine.
She looked down at her hand. In the sun, the specks of sugar twinkled in her red-stained palm. She licked them away. The sour sweet taste of strawberry lingered in her mouth. She loved strawberry Sweettarts.


Matilde Colarossi