Strange Attractor

They called her Betty Pooper.

I thought it was because her head seemed too large for her skinny body. With her round face nested in a mass of extravagant curls she looked like an ageing wreck of the cartoon character. It was perhaps an unkind reference to the sour, unwashed smell that enclosed her like a protective bubble. She certainly never popped a little dance for me and exclaimed, "Boop, boop de doop!" More often she'd approach me, shyly and mumble about how 'they' only gave her fourteen dollars a week and I'm looking for something for my son, he's about your size. She'd grab anything from the rack closest to us, anything, any size, and hold it up for my inspection, "What do you think?"

She was one of my regulars. I would see her almost every week. I'd take her offering, gently removing it from her grasp and then tell her I was putting it on hold. I'd put the garment aside on my counter and when she left the store, I'd put it back. Sometimes the alarm would go off. "Annoying isn't? How these things just go off?" There'd be some small item dropped into her handbag. "Oh, how'd that get there?" She'd hand it to me, lowering her head and raising her face to me with a little apologetic smile. The submissive posture accentuating her dowagers hump.

I counted on my regulars to relieve the horrendous tedium of working in that place. Almost everyday there'd be three to four hours with nothing to do and no-one to talk to. I'd already dusted my allocated space, tidied the racks of hanging clothes, coat hangers all spaced neatly, exactly the same distance apart, all the clothes on shelves neatly refolded. Then I'd stare out the window at the mall with it's mixture of deserted shops with crumbling facades, unfinished skeletal redevelopment and the few, struggling retail outlets. A meager and generally dispirited collection of individuals would would wander by. Thick plate glass insulated me. There was always a police presence in that mall. The police were there because of the junkies. The junkies were there because of the methodone clinic around the corner.

Often they'd take a shortcut on the way to the clinic. Their voices like bending metal, sharp and horribly clear, spat out percussive rounds of arguments and expletives as they meandered through the store.'"What the fuck are you staring at?" was a common greeting. Going through the side entrance and out through the liquor department they were always tightly wound and belligerent. Coming back the other way, glassy eyed, they were often quite mellow. Either way, as if by reflex, they'd always try to lift something.

Store security was lavish with their praise for my vigilance. Store management gave me a final written warning prior to dismissal for talking too much and not making my sales target.

And one day while Betty was visiting, she stood in front of my counter, smiling, her head cocked to one side, swaying from foot to foot. It was a dance. The sort that an elderly, arthritic Oompah Loompah might do. Her smile widened and a tidal wave of fecal stench rolled over me. She giggled nervoulsly like a school girl caught smoking and shuffled away, trailing little islands of runny shit. The back of her track pants wet with it. The nickname was unkind. But accurate.

Betty was banned from the store after that, so no more visits from her.

But there were others I'd come to know.

Mad Mary, who gossip had it, murdered her husband for sleeping around. Apparently, so the story went, they found her in the kitchen sipping tea. She'd even offered the arresting officers a nice cuppa. They'd found her husband in their marital bed with his cock and balls in his mouth. No-one seemed to know if they'd got there before or after Mary had cut his throat. So the rumour went.

There were the girls at the cosmetic counter with their big hair right out of the sixties. Ageing, single and desperate with a voracious appetite for anything male. The poor guys looking for perfume for their girlfriends and/or wives had a tough time. I'd never before witnessed flirting as an olympic competitive sport. Curiously, perfume sales weren't that good.

And there were two others that were regular visitors. Frenchie and the middled aged guy.

Frenchie had been a visitor for about five months. Only on the first visit did he buy some clothes, after that he'd stop by for a chat. He'd come into the store or we'd run into each other on the street. We chat about various things and then one day while visiting me at work I asked him out for coffee. He didn't come again after that. This was about the time of the written warning for talking too much. Soon after Frenchie stopped dropping by the other man started to.

He was familiar was all I knew. Familiar and creepy. Then I remembered. This was the man who had raped me when I was seven. I couldn't be one hundred percent sure, except I was. I knew it was him.

For sixteen months I worked in that store. It seems like a parallel universe away now. Full of bewildering pain, loss and isolation. And there was hope and longing and love as well. It was a time of pure madness and utter strangeness. A time when my life was chaos any direction was seemed lost. A time and place peopled by ordinary, yet fantastic characters. Each, in a way, perhaps, a mirror for myself or a reflection of my past. Being there I had to endure, and somehow, I survived. I can see now, that I was given the opportunity to face a lot of my demons and away from that place I feel the strongest I have ever felt in my life. Strangely, as I write this, I feel a pang of nostalgia. Why? The people I met in that store, Betty Pooper, Mad Mary, the Junkies, the Big Hair Girls, Frenchie and even the Rapist, all of them stand tall and larger than life. Each is a sign post with memories and feeling attached. Each is symbolic for me of a point of transition. A part of my life I've left behind, a person I used to be. Through all of them I learnt about myself and about my life. I gained compassion and perhaps a little wisdom. It was a lost place where I found myself and now I have to do something with that. And for me, that may be harder than being in that damn store!