On Grocery Stores

Photo by Nathália Rosa, on Unsplash

I don’t enjoy cooking, but I do wish I could make chicken salad. I wish I knew which parts of this great and divine bird to give thanks to before pulling its meat from bone. I don’t stop to wonder what it’s like for your flesh, your fat, your consumption, to nourish something after you die because I’m concentrating on holding my breath as I cut the onions. Can’t cry all up in the chicken salad.

I wish I could make chicken salad but more specifically I wish I could make Doretha Thomas’s chicken salad because Doretha Thomas’s chicken salad is home. And maybe it’s foolish to look for comfort in food, to try to revive the dead in sweet tea and pound cake, but if I chop these onions and celery just right, and mix the paprika and pepper and dill maybe, and then just maybe, I can get closer to her.

But I don’t get it just right, of course. So here I am, in line at Pak n Save, hoping they have chicken salad. They don’t always. But today they do. Theirs isn’t the closest to hers, but it’s the most convenient and, again, I don’t love to cook. 

Today the line at the deli counter is short, so there’s only a few people in front of me buying fried chicken, burritos, and different kinds of cheese. I don’t typically enjoy waiting in line, but I welcome the respite from the reliable and predictable hell of the grocery store.

Grocery stores are sarcophagi. They house the bones of the people who live within their radii, markers of the decision that the distinction of being poor earns you the privilege of slowly poisoning yourself. When none of us matter, some of these tombs will carry skeletons dripping in the spoils of conquest, awarded to them by their zip code and ordained by their god That doesn’t talk to them. Some though, will seal the brittle bones of a malnourished people, uncared for and discarded; a people who made magic with what they were given and who made do with what they had. Some of them will have as much water then as they do now.

And today, I hate the grocery store because it’s fucking confusing.

There is, I’m sure, an organization to this. The fact that the aisle with peanut butter, honey, granola bars, and herbal tea is next to the aisle with taco seasoning and storebrand sriracha is completely intentional, as is that the bread is four aisles away from both, on the other side of the store; that the organic fruits are next to the non organic vegetables which are in front of the display of guacamole and pico de gallo in the black vat of ice that still has the “SUPER BOWL LII” graphic screen-printed on the side which is all behind the organic vegetables which is next to the GMO fruit is, I’m sure, not done haphazardly; that nothing is alphabetized, or sorted by number, or that there is hardly, if ever, a map of the store and a list of general inventory must be done with the presence of mind that what has been brought forth is a labyrinth that on busier and more crowded days is equal parts MC Escher painting and Ultimate Ninja Warrior obstacle course; that all must be intentional and if you’ve gotten to this point and are still reading you are proof of a level of patience I do not possess because I often cannot bring myself to be in the grocery store at all.

“Yeah, that piece… and that one too… naw not that one right there now, we don’t need none of that,” the man at the front of the line bellowed as we all shuttled forward, sliding our baskets across the floor. 

I don’t know that it’s my OCD. It being the reason I struggle completing routine grocery shopping seems likely, but there’s something about giving it credit for something it may not even cause that makes me question how much space in my mind it really occupies. Sometimes I think it doesn’t matter, since it consumes so much of my thought anyway. Sometimes it thinks for me. Whatever the situation, anxiety and dread swells within me if I’ve been inside any establishment larger than a bodega for longer than 15 minutes. 

It starts simply enough, with a tingle in the pit of my stomach, and the sudden taste of ah fuck in my mouth. If I’m doing well enough to ward off the paranoia from the constant intrusive thoughts—that I won’t have enough money once I reach the register; that I won’t have that money because my bank account has been compromised; that I will have to move back home or have no home to move back to—that ramp up now that I can’t find the can of tomato paste I need for this pasta recipe I have to follow exactly to the tee because if not then I’ve wasted my time and my money and my food and besides ain’t nobody trying to eat nasty food if they don’t have to—if and only if that happens, I am rewarded with more physical manifestations of my anxiety. 

I stand in line and feel my chest begin to lessen, to ease. My ribs feel as though they crack and splinter ever so slightly, as their squeeze on my lungs starts to relent. I can’t remember how long I’ve felt a numbness in my feet. Fun fact: deep breaths for an asthmatic on the precipice of a panic attack only blow life into the flames. Those deep, futile breaths felt smothering on the walk up and down and down and up and down and down and down the aisles looking for that fucking tomato paste.

But now, for now, it’s fine.

“Hi baby, what can I get you?”

The woman who worked behind the counter stared at me behind slightly fogged glasses, as beads of sweat gathered on her brow beneath the black Pak N Save employee hat that secured her hair, pulled back and tied in a bun. I usually don’t like when strangers call me “baby.” I’m a grown ass man and if the police don’t think I’m a baby, I don’t see why you would. (I’m only kidding—legally, Black babies only exist until they’re born.) But Black women aren’t strangers so I smile.

“Yes ma’am, could I just get a taste of the chicken salad?”

I know I’m going to buy it, that’s not the point. The point is for me to reach the same conclusion that I do whenever I am standing in front of this cold glass: I will always be searching for something that will never materialize. I know this. This is almost certainly an emotionally stunted way of grieving my grandmother. I know this too. Don’t you ever chase what you know you can’t catch, because the only thing that feels right is the pounding of your feet into the leather of your soles into the packed dirt beneath the rubber into the life beneath the soil that is there, that is not there, that has always been there but constantly forgotten because it was buried?

Sometimes I think we’re pushed and incentivized to be so outcome-driven that we don’t stop to consider that outcomes have really only been a net positive for the centered and powerful. I guess what I mean is niggas haven’t really made out when it comes to outcomes and even our greatest triumphs, laden in excellence and awards of myriad kind, are really about the story of the struggle and survival. All our freedom fighters died trying to topple a system that still stands on hacked limbs. Our athletes and entertainers nurtured and sustained us from the vantage point of spaces that actively tried to capture, then extinguish them. But were they not heroes in the truest sense? Our food, our dance, our writing, our language our language our language endured. To be Black and alive every day is the most positive “outcome” we can ever strive for, as long as the killing of our bodies and spirits is what continues to fuel the machine we rage against.

We are still here.

“Listen baby, I don’t mean to rush you or nothing, but there are other customers in line, you sure all you want is a taste?”

“No ma’am, could I just get… a third of a pound?”

She crinkles her face and cuts her eyes in a way that makes me feel closer to the home I’m looking for in this Pak ‘N Save. She isn’t mean, or even rude—more just like, “who is this lil skinny nigga who keeps looking over his shoulder asking me to mete out this specific ass measurement of this day-old chicken salad?” I would’ve cut my eyes too. 

“Is this alright? It’s about, what’s that say, 0.31 pounds?”

I run my tongue along the back of each of my teeth on the top of my jaw. Then the bottom. I will not let this moment be one in which I break promises to myself, so I do not count them. I want need to, though. 

“Could I have a little less?”

I just want enough to taste. To hold, to remember for just a little bit. I don’t even mean this to be overly sentimental. The moments that I taste the bits of chicken or chopped celery mixed with the creamy-tart mayonnaise turn into minutes into hours—but never days—of thinking about her. I want to think about her longer, but not so long that I ever ask for the recipe.

I’m sure it exists. I bet I could even call my mom and just ask. If she didn't know I’m sure my uncle would. Or maybe nobody knows, and my search would yield nothing. I don’t care to look. I don’t care to look and I know that what that really means is I don’t care to find the answers I claim to want. If I ask and find the recipe, I no longer spend weekends trying to find the closest chicken salad recipe. If I ask and I am confident that the recipe is just as gone as she is, then I have to stop looking, I have to move on. I have to stop looking for my Granny. 

The only safety for me exists in the unknown, in this line at the deli counter.

I take the container from her and place it in my basket next to the pita chips, seltzer water, and laundry detergent. I watch the soiled yellow tiles pass under my feet on the way to the front of the store, making sure to remind myself why it was good to keep fighting the urge to count them all. There are brand new security cameras at the self-checkout counter, a reminder of how much money is spent to ensure we can watch some starve—sometimes in HD. 

My stomach twists itself again. As quickly as I attain some status of equilibrium, I am upended again in line. I have to remind myself that nothing has changed, that it is just me, though that doesn’t comfort me as the white lights of the supermarket cause spots to dance across my eyes. The screech of the dispatch coming across the hand radio on the cop stationed at the front entrance—there’s almost always a cop lurking at the door of this Pak N Save—melts into the white noise created in my own head. There is no cinematic moment in this story at which the din is broken. There is no moment of awakening or clarity, a moment to point to and highlight a triumph over myself. There’s just persistence. There’s putting one item up on the scanner, then another, and another (but not that one) until you’ve convinced yourself that you can stand to part with the little bit of money you have left. I take the paper bag from the attendant at the counter, even though we both know I lied about paying the ten cents for it. 

The walk through the parking lot should be nice. The sun has started to peek through the gray that has blanketed the sky above West Oakland for what has to have been weeks, by now. I can feel its rays lick my ankles as my heart continues to palpitate, pumping more blood to my toes and fingers, which prick and tingle. It is endless, it is endless, it is endless. Existing becomes a rote task, by necessity. To stop and sit within that dread is to run off the cartoonishly painted cliff and look down.

But today I don’t look down. Today, unlike other days, I find that I am able to keep walking, to keep moving. I pat my pockets to find my car keys. I could open the driver’s side door and even turn the ignition on without having them, so I suppose in this moment I’m checking, again, to reassure myself. I feel my stomach loosen, some, enough for the guilt that comes from succumbing to another of my compulsions to fill the crevices of my inside like liquid concrete. The hum of the engine once it turns over brings me back to the present—driving makes focusing on anything but what is happening at the present no option. 

As I cut the wheel and pull from the parking lot, I take a moment to acknowledge my wholeness. I am incomplete, sure, but here. Often that is all I can take away from each day, and I remember that as I reach down to feel the outside of the container of chicken salad in the paper grocery bag. I feel the ridge of the sticker on the lid of the container, which bears the wrong cook’s name. This salad may have come from a kitchen in Oakland (or somewhere else entirely) but it’s in my bag because of a place much farther away. 

This chicken salad won't taste right, but I know that what matters is I was able to bring it to the car with me; that I went to more places than the deli section of this Safeway and brought back way more than chicken parts and store-made relish. It's only once I turn onto the street that I realize that I was never lost, that she was always with me. I can't feel her, but she's there because that's why I'm on the precipice of a breakdown in this damn supermarket. To find her. To stay in conversation with her. To be next to her. 

I can't help but smile, realizing that the afterlife we dream of is probably not nearly as expansive as the one that exists now, the one that floods the aisles of my everyday. And as the calm within me settled, and the joy begins to crescendo, the bass in my sedan booms and fills the chamber of my car, wrapping me in only things I love until I jerk the wheel violently to the left. The trumpets from terrified drivers behind me sing sing sing as a coronation commences on San Pablo. I'm sure I've spiked someone else's paranoia in my own haste, but I won’t feel the lingering effects of that guilt for another several minutes. No, now, as my car is parallel then perpendicular then parallel then moving as though nothing happened I sit in the driver’s seat and parade down the asphalt to the symphony of panic that welled within me and spilled into the intersection. With as slowly as I slid into a feeling of comfort, the realization of the gravity of my current and perpetual situation—that just my working to exist for comfort could never, would never be enough—came quick, fast, and in a hurry. The buckets of light that splashed through the palm trees and splattered on the faces of the angry, panicked southbound drivers cursing me out were muted; the music in the car became noise that you couldn’t feel, sound that doesn’t cling to bone. This is the pattern that I know, and this is a descent that I can rely on.

The sad thing about parades and coronations is that they end and ultimately, that throne is just a seat, that float just a ride home if you’re fortunate to be able to find love in a place a car can take you to. I remember that, as I am stirred back to the present, now parked in the far corner of the Pak N Save parking lot with the engine idling. 

I forgot to get the tomato paste.