No. 9

Summer 2005

Tanya Underwood
Sliced Thin

Carlos slaps my ass in the bagel shop. We're both behind the counter, working. I am slicing the tomatoes thin, but not too thin. Carlos pushes his white baker's cap away from his sweaty forehead.

He says, "Man, we're not working as a team. I want us to be a team."

I look at him when he's talking and then back at the tomatoes.

Paul, the manager, says I am the best vegetable slicer here. "The cucumbers, "he says, "never get see-through."

Paul doesn't know, but I cut the vegetables wrong all the time. I just hide them so no one sees. I put all of the bad ones in my mouth. I like the way they taste, the thin cucumbers that are white like paper if you hold them up to the light, the tomatoes that are sliced so skinny that they almost melt in your mouth, almost disappear on your tongue. I put all of these miscut pieces in my mouth, so many that I have seeds in my teeth all day.

Paul does not see Carlos slap my ass. He says, "Hey, Shawna, get us some more onions."

I go down to the walk-in refrigerator and I still have my rubber gloves on. My hands feel dry and sweaty at the same time. The cold air hits me and brings the hot smells of my body up and around my face. I kneel down and pick up the purple onions, two at time. I am thinking of the way they smell much lighter in their skins when the door opens. I stand up and it is Carlos. His black hair is slick around his neck and pulled into a ponytail. He grabs me and pulls my face toward him. I feel his arms, thick and solid, around my back. This is not the first time he's tried this, but this time I let him. He puts his mouth on mine, his tongue all around. He is hot and we taste like tomatoes. I feel the dust on my face from his gloves.

When he stops kissing me I say, "I have a boyfriend."

He says, "Man, Shawna, you ain't got shit. You got a doormat. I seen that guy, coming in here with his white skin and his shirts with the pockets."

I say, "You have a girlfriend."

Carlos looks at me with his eyes that are very dark. He grabs my soft middle in both of his hands and squeezes, just a little. "It's all right," he says, in my ear this time. "I like big girls."

I push him away. I tell him to go back up upstairs and away from me. I pick up the onions in their plastic bin, but I still taste him in my mouth.

When I get home, Greg is at the stove. He's making spaghetti sauce and stirring it with a long wooden spoon. He has on a maroon T-shirt and his cheeks are a little pink from the heat.

Hey says, "Hey." He kisses me. "Did you look for a job this afternoon?"

I say, "No, I went to Doc's with Jenny for a beer. She worked second shift today. She never works second shift."

He says, "Isn't Paul going to promote you soon?"

I don't answer him. Greg is smart. He is an engineer and he's with me, who still works at the bagel shop a year-and-a-half after I've graduated college. I want to tell him about the tomatoes and how if you move your hand in just the right way, you can get them to slice in even, perfects cuts the whole way through. If you do it right, they look just they way they do on TV commercials.

Greg looks at me and keeps stirring the sauce. He's looking at me, not like he's expecting an answer, but just like he's looking at me. I can tell something is wrong. I can tell by the way he's standing, with his thin shoulders caved in on himself.

"So," he says, "I went to the doctor today."

Greg tells me that his heart is worse than he thought, that the doctor said if it kept getting worse he'll have to have a transplant. He tells me about how they made him run on a treadmill. He says, "No more salt in the house. I can't eat salt, I can't have caffeine. But look," he tells me, "look we can learn how to cook with new spices together."

Greg has been having heart problems for the past year. They thought it was just a bad heart murmur, nothing to worry about. When I lay at nights with my head on Greg's chest, I hear his heart stop, just for a second too long. The silence between one beat and the next, it seems to last for hours, and I forget that I can breathe normally while I'm waiting for the next one to come. I no longer lay on Greg's chest like that. He notices, I can tell, but he doesn't say anything.

I stand there now and watch Greg look at me. His long thin nose with the curve on the end, his thick eyelashes that always make him look sad, even when he's not. He lets go of the spoon and it drops slowly into the pot. I can see the sweat on his face. I go over to hug him, but I accidentally let go before I'm supposed to. When Greg is holding me, I'm thinking of Carlos. I'm hearing him say, "We're not working as a team." Greg pulls me closer and sighs.

The next morning, I call my mother. I don't know why I do this; she usually makes me more upset. I sneak into the bathroom and turn the shower on. Greg is still sleeping, his hands wrapped in the sheets. I tell my mom about Greg's heart and then I tell her about Carlos.

She says, "Listen, you need to decide what do about this." She tells me I can't hurt people just because I don't know what I'm doing.

Next she asks me about my job. She asks if Paul promoted me yet, if I've been looking for anything else. My feet feel cool on the bathroom tiles. I pause and she says, "Well, I have to go." She doesn't say what she wants to say. I know she wants to tell me how I'm so painfully slow about everything. How I just sit around and let things fill me up, but I never do anything with any of it. She doesn't say that, but I hear it anyway.

After she gets off the phone, I keep sitting on the toilet and listen to the shower. If you listen long enough, you can make out patterns in the sounds of the water.

Greg and I met in college, right after I started working at the bagel shop. He said I was the most fun girl he's ever met. He said there's just something about me that makes him want to laugh all the time. I used to be fun. Greg used to tell me that I could light things up, that I could make people smile just by looking at them. Now, when I look at myself in the mirror, my face looks dried out, my eyes look grey instead of blue. I don't see any lights under the surface of my skin and I wonder where that part of myself went.

That first winter we dated, Greg took all my wool sweaters to the dry cleaners and when he kissed me, he always touched my face. Greg made me feel strong, like I was really there. I was used to guys like Carlos, guys who were mean and funny and smelled like beer and made me feel like I was floating. Greg smells like raisins and detergent. He smells soft.

We do not match, Greg and I. Me, with my big frame and soft rolls of skin around my middle. Greg, who looks like he could disappear, like he could walk through buildings and vanish into thin air. His tall bones are so small, I think they're going to break. Greg likes it, he says big people attract small people. He says we balance each other out. He never calls me big, but that's what he means. I do not like that we don't match. It makes me uneasy. It makes me afraid of something, but I don't know what.

I don't know when I stopped feeling for Greg the way I should. It must have been before now, although today is the first day I think it in my head.

I walk over to the sink and brush my teeth. I use Greg's toothbrush. I look in the mirror and imagine I am him. His toothbrush has a different taste than mine, warm almost. I imagine that I am pale and thin and that my heart might explode if I eat too much salt. I brush around in my mouth and I imagine that I am short of breath. I imagine that I want something so bad that I would give anything for it.

When I get to the store later that morning, my mom calls again. She says, "So, what are you gonna do?"

Customers are coming in. They want coffee, they want cream cheese, they want a dozen, but only of the hot ones.

I say, "Mom, I'm at work."

When I hang up, I am behind on prep. I slice the cucumbers thick and uneven. I see Carlos watching me and my face burns. I cut my finger on one of the tomatoes, a flap of skin that is white and then red.

Paul, the manager, walks behind me. He says, "Shawna, what are you doing? There's customers here. Go put on a Band-Aid and get some more tomatoes."

Carlos watches this. He slides a sheet of onion bagels out of the oven and drops them into the metal bin. He has a half smile on his face.

After I get a Band-Aid, I go downstairs to the refrigerator. I go to the wooden crates and pick up two tomatoes. I know Carlos will come down, so I just stand there, waiting for him, with the tomatoes in my hand. When the door opens I don't walk over to him, I stand right where I am, but he walks over and starts kissing me anyway. He does it for awhile, but I am just standing there so he stops and looks at me.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay, what?" he says.

"I don't know." I sit on the floor. I think of my mom, asking me what I'm going to do. I think of Greg. I think of a night two weeks ago. We are lying on the couch. We are listening to number nine on the Tracy Chapman CD over and over. Number nine is his favorite, low and soft. He says, "I love you more than anything, Shawna. I know you're not the same. I know something's wrong, but I think we can make this work." I see his hand chopping garlic into thin pieces. I see the tiny muscles on his arm move when he stirs the sauce. I think about the tomatoes, about how their skins are cool and wet. I think about how when I am slicing them in even, perfect cuts, watching their dewy skins pull and break, it's almost like I'm not thinking about anything.

Carlos walks away from me and opens the cooler door. Behind him is bright and fluorescent. I can feel the heat from the basement coming in slowly. Carlos holds the door open for a minute and then he sweeps his arm in a wide gesture and drops it at his side.

He says, "I'm going back upstairs. You coming?" He turns after another second and the door closes with a soft suction noise behind him.

I sit under the dim, cold lights for another minute before I reach to the left of me and grab for more tomatoes out of the crate. I fold my apron in half and fill its cloth with as many tomatoes as I can. Carefully, I stand up and open the cooler door. The basement heat is heavy and my apron feels cool against my skin as I follow Carlos up the stairs.

Copyright 2005, Tanya Underwood

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.