Donna by Mike Zimmerman

Usually, a voice promised hits of “80s, 90s, and today” as ShopRite opened in the morning.  But a crackle interrupted this promise, calling me away from bagging groceries. I made my way to customer service, and behind the desk, to the office door. 

The word “private” and “manager” confronted me. Private—something shameful, something secret. Why had I been pulled in here? Something private. I had done something wrong, and I hadn’t even worked here for three weeks. And manager—not her name, just the title, so when she left or quit or retired or died, the next person could occupy this private room: no muss, no fuss. 

I thought I knew why I was being called in here. The strange encounter I’d had yesterday, helping that man into his car. I stood outside the door and adjusted my apron to make it sit flat. If I lost my job, I lost my car, and if I lost my car, I lost my freedom. 

The manager called me inside with a leathery arm. Her office had the lingering air of cigarette smoke, which emanated from her clothes. She didn’t have her name on the door, but at least she would leave her mark on this place with the smell of coconut oil and menthol and ash. 

“We just want to talk,” she said. 

“We?” I said. I had this image in my head of a long lineage of managers, all of whom occupied this room, summoned for a séance. We, the managers. We, the store. The royal we. Her shoulder pads made her militaristic, and she sat straight-backed in her chair, a formality that was hard to resolve with the jabs she exchanged with the prepared food guys. “You call that chicken golden brown? It should look like this,” she’d said, holding up her bronzed arm to the glass case. They’d chuckle—her along with them—and she’d disappear again to watch the cameras, her smell the only hint that she’d been out on the floor and that she would return.  

She pointed at her phone. “HR,” she mouthed.  “We’re ready for you,” the manager said to the speaker.

“I’m Jessie,” said a woman’s voice from the speaker. “I work for the store in their investigation department.” The disembodied voice sounded like she was talking through a big, fake smile.

“I’m Mike,” I said. 

“Yes. Let make this short and sweet—I know there’s a lot of work to be done today—big summer sales and lots of excitement on the ground, right?” The smile seeped and oozed over the phone line. The manager was rapt, absorbed by the voice: she nodded along. 

“We understand you were bagging in the express line yesterday?”

I didn’t do anything wrong in the parking lot, I thought. They can’t fire me. “Yes—I guess it was a bit strange. This guy, at his car —”

The manager raised an eyebrow, but Jessie didn’t miss a beat, interrupting me. “Oh, no. Did you notice anything about the transaction itself?”

“I guess he bought some weird items,” I said, trying to catch the eyes of the manager. I had the familiar feeling of walking into a test without having studied. The manager didn’t look back at me, but instead gazed lovingly at the speaker, at the voice behind the curtain of wires and authority. My leg bounced, and I swallowed: “At his car, he—”

“No, no,” said the voice. “At the register.”

I panicked and shrugged. 

“Are you there?” 

“They can’t see you shrugging,” said the manager. 

“I don’t know,” I said, as she glared at me. 

“Did the cashier ask him to contribute to a donation?”

“Oh,” I said. Finally, relief. “Yes—the St. Jude’s Charity. A donation to the Children’s Hospital.” Why did they care about that? Why were they asking me about the transaction? I was a bag boy—not old enough yet to work the register. 

The voice mmhmmed. The voice paused, probably as Jessie took down a note. “When do we run that campaign?”

Please don’t fire me. “I don’t know,” I said.  

“At Christmas,” the manager said. 

“It’s not Christmas, is it?” sang the voice on the line.

Was that a question that needed answering? The voice droned on: “What can you tell us about…” papers shuffled, “About Donna Aaron?”

Donna was my cashier on the express checkout line. She had the same hoarse voice and leathery skin of all the women here, but her unfeathered bangs and scraggly uniform gave an overall impression of hiding. It was a small store, so I knew she had been married, and now she was divorced. People in the breakroom had mentioned it as a part of the usual gossip, always in a tone that mixed awe with disapproval. Things like, “just like that, Mare, no money in her pocketbook. She took the keys and drove. Swear to God. Couldn’t take it anymore, I guess.” Apparently, he had left her husband, the two car garage, the white-shingled house to move closer to her estranged daughter. 

On my first day, it seemed random: the express line didn’t have a bag boy, unlike the other registers, so I hopped on with Donna. But it wasn’t: the other bag boys wouldn’t work with her. When the bag boys talked during lull, one of them asked, “How is it working with the old witch?” This was my first job, but I understood that man talk at this age, as most ages, was either bullying or bragging. 

I shrugged. I’d bagged an old lady’s groceries while Donna rang her up. Nothing eventful. 

“You know her daughter?” Everyone leaned in. “Shemale,” he said. “Came into the store once. I almost vomited, dude. That daughter is a freak, and the mom is a nut.”

And now, in the manager’s private office, I didn’t know what to tell them. It looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 80s, with old carpet and a small rack for personal items. A purse hung there. Some steel shelves with papers in folders. But then, as I stared at the desk, I saw a few clues about why I was here. A bunch of printed receipts sat on the table, with shimmering neon yellow. Sneaking a look, I spotted the highlighted sections: keyed in codes, all for different amounts. 

Donna had keyed in something incorrectly. These donations, maybe?

The manager cleared her throat and Jessie repeated her question: “What can you tell us about Donna Aaron?”

“Well, she’s nice. She greets all the customers…”

The manager shook her head. “Does she always ask for a donation?”

I didn’t answer, but I did know. She always asked, even from our very first customer. 

Donna had called her by name: Mrs. Montecier. “I see you have the usual,” Donna said. 

“That’s right, the usual,” the old woman said slowly, with a shaky voice. It consisted of a few bananas pulled of the bunch, some diet coke, caffeine free, applesauce, oatmeal, eggs, and a new flavor of Oreo that made big promises on the package. “Something special,” she said while Donna scanned. 

“How’s your husband?” Donna asked. 

Mrs. Montecier shook her head. “Still at the hospital. They have him on something new for the gout—I can’t remember what it is—but, Donna, you should see his leg. He can barely walk, and it’s so painful. So, I’ll have a few more days of oatmeal and eggs until he comes home. I just can’t bring myself to cook for one. And how’s your daughter? Still needs a surgery?”

Donna nodded and turned to me. “Make the bags light for her,” Donna said. I did my best, peering at the lady’s thin arms and judging how much she could carry. Wedge the oatmeal into the sides, put the coke between the boxes. Nestle the Oreos on top. Start a new bag for applesauce and eggs. I put both bags into Mrs. Montecier’s cart, careful with the eggs, and asked if the old woman needed help to her car. She shook her head and smiled. She did not speak to me. Donna gave Mrs. Montecier her total. “And would you like to donate $2 St. Jude’s Hospital? The store takes the proceeds and matches—”

  “I would. Thank you. Goodbye, Donna,” she said. 

“You’re welcome. He’ll be home soon,” Donna said, with hope and sincerity. “Do you need your receipt?” 

Mrs. Montecier shook her head. She pushed the cart out in slow, careful steps, and I had this vision of her collapsing under the weight of my heavy bags and the heat of the day. If only that bag boy had been more thoughtful, she’d say when she called the store from her deathbed. 

“Are you sure she doesn’t need help?” I whispered to Donna. Donna just smiled and patted my shoulder. 

Old women were our main customers in the afternoon shift. They trickled in—not a flood at the speed they moved, more like an ooze, though there were a lot of them—to buy a scant few items and talk to each other in line. A box of chamomile tea. Bread. The occasionally ambitious woman with flour, eggs, sugar, and butter, her dimming vision set on a final chance at edible perfection. I’d keep the bags light. Squeeze their cans—they never got fresh fruits or vegetables—between boxes. Gentely lay their bread on top. Keep their cold in a separate bag. Offer them help to their car. Would you like to donate? They’d nod their heads yes. Would you like your receipt? They’d shake their heads no. But what were they donating to? 

The manager took a sip of her coffee from a mug which had the name Melanie in all different colors and fonts. This was strange because the manager’s name was not Melanie. Maybe the mug got absorbed into the debris of the room, a ghost of managers past. I hesitated before answering the question. I didn’t want to be fired, but I didn’t want to get Donna in trouble. 

“I don’t know,” I said softly, but the answer was yes. 

 Yesterday, a middle-aged man stood at the end of our growing express line, a few incoherent items in his basket: sundried tomatoes, cream of tartar, royal saffron mangos, cake flour, and frozen peas. 

Outside, the afternoon was hot enough that I could see waves of heat radiating from the asphalt and people shivered when they came inside the store from the temperature change. This man came into our line with his odd mix of ingredients and said quietly: “Can I ask you, young man, to be careful about bagging those?”

Some bright panic took hold when the man’s eyes met mine, as if he could see straight through my exterior into what I was hiding in my wrists and eyes and bones. He was fifty at least, with an indistinct face and pudgy features that left an overall impression of softness. He was in a button up and slacks on a summer day. 

“Of course,” I said. Mangos placed gingerly in the center, cake flour on the side, frozen peas and cream of tarter on top. Donna gave the man his total and asked him if he’d like to donate money to St. Judes. He raised an eyebrow but nodded, his eyes stayed on me, unblinking. He wore a wedding ring. His hair was going gray in patches, more like something bubbling up from under the surface than a slow fade. 

“I’ll need help to my car,” he said in a tone that dared either of us to challenge him. “Bad back.” He was a grown man with a few light items—he didn’t need help to his car. Donna let him know we also offered delivery, but he seemed perplexed. He made a face as if delivery was ridiculous but help to his car was expected. Something stirred—I felt defensive of Donna, and she felt defensive of me. She locked eyes with the man. 

“We don’t normally offer carryout in the express line,” she said. Her voice flowed with honey, thick and soothing, like a kindergarten teacher. Customer service voice. “But since you have a bad back, Mike can hustle these things out for you.” A message waited under the stone of her first message. It passed between Donna and this man, and I saw that Donna was, indeed, someone’s mother. Maybe the kind of mother whose love stuck out so sharply it threatened other people. She seemed like the kind of person who might have left the white window boxes and the easy-open garage in order to be closer to her child to protect her. If this man understood the message, he gave no indication. He waited, watched, eyes up and down me. I grabbed his carefully bagged groceries. “Do you need your receipt?”

He nodded, and Donna tucked it away in the bag with the cake flour, but he yanked it out. 

I followed this stranger out the door, and I could see that he had sweated through his collared shirt. He was wet, slimy, but had some petty authority, too. He wanted someone to see his importance, and so he waved it like a flag. 

Outside, a great oven door opened, searing the man’s face a sick, pork pink. Sweat ran across my back, and not only because of the heat. I thought of The Silence of the Lambs when Buffalo Bill pushes that woman into his car while “American Girl” plays on the radio—a dirge for her ripped dress. I saw a car parked toward the back of the lot, a few spaces from any other cars, dark green, and I thought, that’s his. And of course, it was. 

The man spoke. “I can tell you’re a special employee. You’ll go far here.”

Mostly, I wanted to avoid trouble. “Thanks,” I said, but it came out like a question. Thanks? Are you going to murder me? The bags slipped in my slick hands. We were almost at the green sedan. The sun bore down in hot judgment. 

“Really, you are,” he said. “Are you a college student?”

“High school.” I could not tell if my age made me safe because he was ahead of me, and I could not see his face. He was looking down at something—studying his receipt and frowning. 

“Is something wrong?” I asked. 

“I don’t know,” he said, mumbling to the receipt, as if it would speak back to him. We reached the car and he turned to face me. Greased and wet just from this short walk, he licked some of the sheen from his lips and held out his hand, as if I should take it. 

“My bags,” he said. They slipped out of my hands into his. His hand brushed mine, wet, and his green eyes met mine, and then—he smiled. He smiled but not at me. At my discomfort. He knew he would get away with—this. Brushing his soaked fingers against mine, which doesn’t sound like much, and at the same time, felt horrible. Something doesn’t have to be big to feel big. He took the bags and laughed, a high-pitched, piggy chortle. Even though it was hot, I jogged back to the store, to the shock of cold, to bagging for Donna in the express line. 

I didn’t plan to say anything, but Donna observed me, watched my wet hands bag the groceries (for a Mrs. Mancini, whom Donna, of course, knew by name). “Something happened,” she said, studying me. 

“No,” I said. 

“No?” she asked.

“Well.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Not nothing. Something. But, at the same time, it was nothing.” I shook my head. “I’m not making any sense.”

“Actually, you are,” Donna said. “When I wait tables at Marlton diner, the clients—the men…they look. Leer. Or maybe, touch, but in a way I can’t prove. While my back is turned, a hand on my ass, but when I check, they all just sipping their coffees. A ghost hand. Is that what happened?”

“He looked at me,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Like…”

“Yes,” she said. “I saw it.”

“His hand lingered when I handed him the bags,” I said. “Wet hands. He told me I was going to go far.”

Donna snorted. “Far far away, I hope.”

“You work a second job?” I asked. “As a waitress?”

She nodded. “We’re saving up. My daughter needs…a surgery.”

“Is it bad?” I asked. 

Her lips pressed together. “It’s complicated.”

I smiled and tried to reassure her the way she’d reassured me, the way she reassured our customers about their sick husbands. “I’m sorry,” I said. “She’ll be okay.” 

“And you?” Donna asked. “You’ll be okay?” 

I nodded. “Nothing really happened. He was distracted by the receipt.”

“The receipt?” Donna said, her attention razored. “Did he say anything?”

“Just that I was a special—”

“About the receipt,” she said. Donna looked alarmed, but I couldn’t say why. I told her I felt sure it was fine. Another older woman, a Mrs. Piselli. Cereal on the sides, orange juice in the center, a can or two of fruit in light syrup. In another bag, the new Oreos tucked under some wonder bread with salad laid on top. Another bag with milk and butter—the cold items.

The afternoon went by and Donna’s shift was ending—I still had another hour. She turned off her light and hit 12 in the cash register to open the drawer—time to count it out, I guess. The store got quiet. Something was happening. Then, murmurs in a rising chorus, murmurs like the white noise of the ocean. A man in a punk rock cheetah print skirt and loud black heels, bright orange lipstick, with a scraggly, sweaty bob had walked into the store. The outfit looked vintage, and I realized that this person was a little bit older and much cooler than me. Black nail polish, leather bracelets to my green apron and name tag. 

“Hey, mom,” said a froggy voice. “Car’s out front.” Mom was Donna. This was Donna’s daughter, giving her a ride home after work. 

“You didn’t have to come inside,” Donna said. The bag boys were laughing, openly, and so were the cashiers, grown-ups, mostly middle-aged women. Donna stared only at her daughter, but Donna’s daughter challenged the entire store with a glare. 

“I wanted to,” she said. People in the store were red-faced, some stifling their laughter, others clutching their sides in open fits. Darker judgments passed between the ones who didn’t laugh, while others hid their embarrassment by averting their eyes. 

Donna packed up her water bottle, her snacks, her disposable coffee mug she reused everyday. She noticed the murmurs and laughs, and she tried to pretend she did not notice. That always makes the noticing more obvious.

I hopped on with another cashier, a grey-haired woman with shocking pink blush on her cheeks, who did not know last names, and who did not ask about St. Jude’s Hospital. Donna waved at me. Her daughter nodded my way. I raised my hand, and I waved back at them. Donna and her daughter left the store.

This morning, there had been no sign of Donna when I clocked in, and she was usually the first to arrive, waiting by the clock, as if she wanted to start getting paid the moment it was possible. 

Now, in the office, the manager sipped from her Melanie mug and let her mouth form a line of concern. “The man you helped to his car yesterday. Did you know he was a secret shopper? Did you recognize him?”

“No,” I said. But the man had recognized me, in his own way, when his slippery hand touched mine. And he had recognized Donna, too, or at least, he had recognized what she was doing. 

Jessie spoke from the speaker: “It seems likely that Donna has been stealing since Christmas. Charging for a donation and then keeping the money. Fooling people. Fooling you. Do you know why she did it?”

I had seen stories on the news of elderly people being scammed, giving their bank accounts over the phone, and always thought I was way too clever to be scammed, and I’d continue to be too clever even as I got older. Either I was not as clever as I thought, or Donna hadn’t meant to scam anyone, or she had a sinister cleverness that went beyond anything I could understand. She knew the name of every old woman. She remembered whose husband was alive, whose was in the hospital, whose was dead and when. Then she’d ask for a donation and take a little bit of what they had left. Why had she stolen from them? For her divorce? For her daughter’s surgery? For herself? 

“It’s in your best interest to cooperate with our investigation.”  The manager said. “Tell us everything.” 

Everything? How Donna worked two jobs, how everyone laughed at her daughter, and how she’d protected me while she stole from innocent old ladies? 

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. 

At the end of my shift, I hung up my apron and stepped outside. Night was falling, and they had just lit up the logo sign for the store. I sometimes liked to watch the lights flicker on, but tonight, I didn’t like it the way it looked. I didn’t like the way it looked at all.  

THE END

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My work has been published elsewhere, in places like CutBank, A & U Magazine, and various other anthologies and magazines. I won the 2015 Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award, was a finalist for the Hewitt Award in 2016, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for my story “Doppelganger” in 2018. Recently, I was featured in Florida Review’s Queer Folio. Otherwise, I teach high school English in Brooklyn and live in Brooklyn with my husband and our cat.