Muriel Winters - Olivia Murphy-Major

Muriel Winters

by Olivia Murphy-Major

When I was fourteen, I worked at a donut shop in town. There was a long, white linoleum counter and red-seated swivel stools where customers would sit. I tended to them and did my tasks from the other side of the counter. The baker came each morning. He was a very large man called Denis. Denis wore compression bands all over his arms and legs because his skin had begun to split. He stood above the fryer each morning and made the donuts, sweating profusely from the bubbling heat. I watched him sometimes, once I had gotten all of the opening shift tasks done. I swept the bits of frosting and sprinkles away from the donut case , ground up the coffee, wiped down the hot plates, put the coffee on to brew, and unloaded and stacked the donut trays beside Denis’ station.

Denis would get red over the heat of the deep fryer and tell me stories, projecting over the bubbling and snapping sounds. He would stop to catch his breath every few sentences and then continue. When he walked, his breath heaved, laboriously, as if there was an outdated motor churning deep within his chest. He told me a story once of when his father had taken him out to hunt one day when he was a boy. He described the quiet of the woods, his father’s sharp, whispered commands, and his successful shooting of a big buck. It was his first and only time putting a bullet in an animal. His father was dumbfounded, Denis told me. They stayed crouched there, his father’s mouth agape, the fallen deer bleeding in the brush. They had lugged it home, his father quietly being congratulatory. At home, his father strung up the deer, gutted it, and told everyone, even Denis’ mother, that it was his own shot.

After this story, Denis made me a chocolate frosted donut. I watched his rough, red hands do the delicate work of ebbing the frosting on with a spatula, and he used a sieve to sprinkle powdered sugar on top—his own decorative flare.

The boss, Dill, would only come in to do finances, reprimand, or take the apple fritters. Sometimes, he clipped his nails on the counter with a clipper he kept in the pen jar, and when he was done he would sweep them off and onto the floor, as if they would just disappear that way. I had heard him say once to Denis that I was a few bricks short of a full load. I was briefly annoyed before realizing he had chosen me, over a slew of highschool girls, to have this job. I had the keys and was trusted to lock up. He must have thought me smart.

One day, Dill put up a sign that read “Always Trust a Fat Baker!” which had a cartoon drawing of a large moustached man in an apron, whose eyes were winked sleepily shut as his hands rested on his belly.

“Oh-ho!” Denis had exclaimed when Dill showed him, gesturing excitedly to the wall where it hung. I watched Denis’ eyes, searching and ashamed, twittering over the sign and back to Dill, and then down at his own stomach where he wiped the fryer grease from his hands onto his apron. Dill ignored—or did not notice—the flush in Denis’ face, his avoidant gaze, and continued explaining where he had gotten the sign, as Denis wiped the sweat from his forehead and listened, kindly and diligently.

When the room was heavy with the cakey, sweet smell of donuts, there was much less pressure to run a sound business. The important things were coffee and donuts. The place was dirty if you looked closely, the corners shiny and dark with grime, the counters under the toaster rife with crumbs, the stale oil from the deep fryer staining the counters in dark brown streaks and making them slick to the touch. The air swam with dust when the light came, in an afternoon slant, through the store window.

When someone asked for an egg sandwich, I would march into the back room and head to the refrigerator. I would peel a wet piece of ham from its package and place it, folded, at the bottom of a small bowl. Then I'd crack an egg on top of it, stir it with whatever utensil was lying around, and microwave it until the egg was firm and steaming, before flipping it, like a pineapple upside-down cake, onto a buttered english muffin and handing it to the customer. The butter was what kept this sandwich from being inedible. The egg was often rubbery, which I saw as nothing I could help, and the ham was detectably not “Canadian bacon” as we advertised on the plastic menus. I would often try to convince people to take this sandwich to-go, it disgusted me to see them eat it. I would wince as they took a first bite; I would behave in an unfriendly way or sweep the floor around their feet so that they would hurry and leave, or better yet, be too distracted by my ill manners to wonder about how I made the sandwich, and, god forbid, ask me how.

When enough people sat at the counter, the breath, body heat, and steam of coffee rose and accumulated in a fog that curled around the edges and corners of the shop window, like frost. One Friday afternoon, I observed this from the register. I glanced at the twirl of yellow flypaper hanging from the ceiling, three black flies stuck in its sticky sheen. One buzzed as it fought the adhesive. Another fly, free, swirled around the donut case in circles, bumping against the plexiglass. There was a lull in customers: only the locals remained, sitting quietly at the counter. None of the rowdy locals were among them, it was only the quiet farmers whose days were made whole by their hour at the donut shop, whether or not there was conversation. One of them had finished his cup of coffee, having held up a kind hand of refusal when I raised the coffee pot to refill his mug. This was Vic Thompson, who the other men called Vic the Hick, though they were all hicks themselves. He sat quietly, bending the bill of his hat in his hands. We saw Muriel Winters’ car through the window, all turning our heads at once, as she entered the parking lot. She went at such a speed and stopped so suddenly that the car rocked, the headlights bouncing, their light washing over the case of donuts. When he recognized her car, Vic pulled his wallet out and left a five dollar bill on the counter before waving to me and nodding his goodbye to the other men at the counter. Bold women were unwelcome to many of those men, or any women at all, but particularly Muriel, who was known to sing and pick fights. He held open the outermost door for her, the one before the entrance on the way inside. The bell on the door made its high tinkling sound. I heard her say, “Well aren’t you a gentleman.”

I saw Muriel’s cane first. She poked at the ground before her as if she were walking across a frozen pond and testing the ice. She sat down at the counter as I poured her a black cup of coffee and took the honey from the open shelves above the coffee maker and set both in front of her with a spoon. This was what she always got.

“You aren’t charging me for this, are you? Because I didn't ask for it,” she said, and paused to adjust the way she sat on the stool before continuing, “I’ll drink it now that it’s here but I did not ask for it.” She wagged her knotty-knuckled finger in the air as she spoke and then picked up the honey with shaking hands to dress her coffee. She swiveled on the stool and surveyed the customers, giving a solemn nod.

She dug through her purse and pulled out lottery scratch tickets, setting them on the counter. She looked at me, raising her eyebrows, and slapped her flat hand on the counter, as a way to tell me it was time to begin. Muriel had me do her scratch tickets every Friday, and continued believing I was lucky even though we had been doing this every week for some time and nothing had ever come of it. Each time, she would hand me a coin from her purse to use on the ticket. She would insist I keep it afterward, and said it every time as though it were a large tip: “Oh, and dear, you can keep that.” When the numbers were wrong, and they always were, sometimes she would get angry and slam her fist on the counter so that her cup would rattle in its saucer, and she’d swear or yell, “well, dag-nabbit!” Other times she might smile and sigh, saying, “there’s always next week” or, “you are getting much faster with the scratching.”

This particular time, she gave me a quarter, the handsomest coin to scratch with, and I bent my face over the steam from her coffee and worked at the ticket until the numbers showed through. The first two were right, the third was wrong. Today she was in a good mood.

“Well, that’s okay. Best not to fuss,” she said, waving her hand.

I stayed there, giving her a look that was sympathetic without being pitiful, which she returned before turning her head to stare out of the window. Little was happening outside. It was late fall, and brown leaves danced in swirls on the pavement of the parking lot. Two men were visible, talking outside, who had come from the laundromat next door; they were each holding garish-coloured detergent bottles, one blue and the other yellow. We could hear their faint voices through the glass. Cars whizzed past. A teenager driving a low car, with music and bass up high as he shot through the stop light, cigarette smoke pouring from the window. Muriel looked at none of these things in particular. Her focus on the present seemed to have dimmed. It was as if she was far off, gathering wisdom that could not be put to words, perhaps reigning in some memory of the past. She looked full of thought and longing. What remained, I thought, now looking at her, was the present—age, the arthritis in her hands which she tried to shake out before grabbing the handle of her mug, the hunch of her body now—it seemed clear to me that this was where the longing lay, somewhere embedded in the unspoken labour of movement that hung around her, each day, like a thick fog. I wondered what she might do with the lottery money if she ever won it. She had talked about wanting a swimming pool, she said the water was good for joints and bones.

I thought then of what a burden a body was. What sickness it produced, the smells, aches, the attention that must be paid to washing, feeding, and proper exercise. What beauty was there? It seemed so separate to me, so much of an act, the beauty of bodies. I thought of the circus, the swinging and bending and twirling, how beautiful the body could be then. But hair on bodies unnerved me, made me feel hot and embarrassed. I thought of paintings I had seen photos of, which showed women with pale round breasts and stomachs. That too was unsettling, was something not entirely scandalous, but off-putting—something of the adult world that I had no curiosity for. The meandering blue veins up ladies’ legs, the moles and freckles, all of it gave me an unsettled feeling, one that I eventually determined was connected with a oneness I had with other people’s bodies. I felt they were also my own; they were so visible that I too was a part of them. I also could never help associating my own body with others. Suppose I were to ever get as fat as Denis? Or grow large, matronly breasts? Or thick hair on my arms and legs? But it went beyond association, or fear of stretch marks and cellulite. I was afraid of being seen the way I saw other people’s bodies being seen, the way I myself saw other people’s bodies. For so long I had been a girl, I had a girl’s body, and the notion that my body could be seen and considered as anything else was so shattering I could only think about it in bits and pieces, gathering this awareness in the smallest, most digestible fragments I could find.

Two girls I recognized from my grade appeared in the frame of the window, peering in with their hands shading the sun from their eyes to see. They seemed to see me and continued to walk inside, the bell on the door ringing as they came in. Lucy and Geneveive. They both wore shirts that showed their midriffs and were trying to keep their teeth from chattering. Their cheeks were rosy from the cool air outside. Lucy plucked a clot of chewing gum from her mouth and kept it pinched between her fingers as she began to speak.

“Hey! You’re in school with us, right? Your name is… Oh my god, I know this! Don’t tell me.” They both laughed.

“Clara! It's Clara!” Lucy finally yelled, and they both began laughing harder, falling into each other, their cheeks becoming rosier, the piece of gum still pinched between Lucy’s fingers. It shone with spit in the light. I could feel Muriel watching, I could see her: a small, gray hunch in my periphery. I was waiting for her to say something, but she did not.

“Anyways,” Geneveive continued, quieting and leaning closer to me, over the linoleum counter, “we actually came here because Ethan, Ethan Mulroy,” she squinted and looked for my recognition of his name, “well, he wants to know whether you would want to go to the movies with him. He told us he wants to take you.” I looked from one face to the other. They were both smirking, silent.

Ethan Mulroy was one of the most sought-after boys in our grade. He was well-mannered, and sometimes made crude jokes, as boys did, but they were funny and added an edge to his charm. He was good-looking and did well in his classes, and he had never said a word to me in school, had not looked at or acknowledged me. I knew Lucy and Genevieve were mean girls, that they were only trying to make a fool out of me, but there was a kernel of hope lodged somewhere in my overall caution and instinct to be wary of them. This kernel had been pressed and formed by my work at the donut shop, it was made of my new feelings of capability, which had, in turn, made me feel beautiful. I was competent, respected, trusted to lock up and count bills in the register, to separate the quarters, nickels, and dimes, to tuck them into their respective sleeves and account for them. I had begun to stand taller, to walk with longer strides. I had started to notice the grace in my hand and wrist as I held the handle of the coffee pot, as I plucked a donut from the case, or punched in prices on the fat gray keys of the register. I had memorized the prices of things, with and without tax, and would recite these to customers even if they did not ask. Because of these things, I believed Ethan Mulroy would want to take a girl such as myself to the movies.

“Yes,” I said, “you can tell him yes, I will go with him.”