That Jess Ho

There is this woman kneeling beside the whole butternut pumpkins, which are going for eighty-eight cents each at Safeway, in her thermal running pants and crying. Her blonde friend is wrapped in a giant cheese cloth, holding the crying woman’s son, while trying not to draw attention.

At this point, the crying woman, (who I will just refer to as Sue for no other reason than she just looked like a Sue) is distressed at her lack of attention and starts to wail. We’re in the Lygon Court Safeway, and no one gives a shit. People are too busy trying to get their cans of tuna and loaves of bread and Corn Thins for their office lunches to stop for some brunette slapper with emotional issues.

“I can’t do it anymore, I just can’t fucking do it,” says Sue. Blondie rifles through Sue’s bag and pulls out her white iPhone and starts dialing numbers, hanging up when she has obviously reached voicemail, and tries for another. Meanwhile, I’m shifting my way into the cereals aisle, contemplating if I would actually make porridge when it gets cold enough after I go to the gym.

I try not to go to the supermarket as much as I can. I have never seen so many cereals on offer in my life, and none of them are appealing. The toucan doesn’t make me want circular balls of sugar, the rooster doesn’t make me want flakes of corn, that monkey should know that those Coco Pops look like his pellets of shit, and what is with the three gay midgets trying to push puffed rice?

Sue’s found me in the aisle and can’t stop screaming fuck. And I thought I swore too much.

She’s still crying.

“No one is here to help me, I have had no fucking help!” She’s wiping her hair off her face and trails of spit are clinging to her sweatshirt. Her son has no idea what is going on and keeps looking around like a brainless worm.

Blondie readjusts her bob.

“I need him here. I can’t move. I can’t move without him. I need him here. I can’t do this. He needs to be here NOW!”

Blondie keeps on dialing.

I’m now in the aisle next to them, trying to find my brand of brown rice and they’re following me, despite her claims of immobility. She’s holding her son and she hates him. She’s crying more and Blondie’s standing at the end of the aisle. She’s over it.

This isn’t post-natal depression, it is the realization that she is bored with her life and shouldn’t have just ‘rolled with it.’ Now, she’s stuck in some basement supermarket, in three-hundred dollar running pants, a bad dye job, judging the prices of shit-quailty produce, wondering whether she should cook chicken or beef tonight while her child is grabbing at her tit.

She’s crying because her son’s just shat himself and that isn’t the last time she is going to have to clean it up.

Since when was rice three-eighty-nine a kilo? It is like shopping in a fucking Seven-eleven.

I go to the check out and see her at the counter without any of her groceries. Her silent fuck-you is a carton of Marlboro Lights, which she starts smoking before she leaves and she is still fucking crying. Blondie escorts her to their silver Subaru parked opposite RG Madden and Blondie drives off.

I am never going to a supermarket ever again.