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January 08, 2014

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L I T & L E C T U R E S | F I C T I O N

Fiction Issue 2014 honorable mention:"Sugar Pop"

"For one terrible moment, she saw the thing that lived in his eyes when hethought no one but Allison was looking."

By Robin Kirk

HYE JIN CHUNG

hen the alarm buzzed Rosa awake, she knew she wasn'tgoing to give the old man extra sugars that day. EverySaturday, he asked for ten packets. She had begun

calling him Sugar Pop. Nobody in their right mind would dump tenpackets day after day into one small Styrofoam cup of coffee.

The bakery owner, Allison, bought decent coffee, too, somethingyou could look forward to in the morning. Rosa drank the coffeewith plenty of half-and-half, the way her mother prepared it. Shedecided she would give him just three packets. That was all anyoneneeded. Sugar Pop was going to have to learn to like it.

After school and on Saturday mornings, Rosa was a counter girl atDream Fluff Bakery. Allison said that she was the best counter girl

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Dream Fluff Bakery. Allison said that she was the best counter girlever, after only three months. Rosa was a smiler, always polite, butshe didn't let anyone push her around and that was the mostimportant part, Allison said. During Rosa's training week, Allisontold her it was important to be nice to the customers, but firm, especially early in the morningswhen people are coming off night shifts.

"The customers are a little crabby," Allison told her. "You know, still thinking, 'I haven't slept awink.' The watchmen are OK, but the ambulance drivers you got to watch out for. Who knowswhat they've been doing in the middle of the night."

Allison was thin, maybe 30 or a little older. She ran all day between the kitchen and the built-intables where people ate their long johns or crullers and drank their coffee. Allison covered herhair so that you couldn't see a wisp. Some days, she used cotton bandannas. Other days, she hada silk scarf or a tiger print. When Allison wore her sunglasses indoors, she looked like atelenovela character who had been unlucky in love or cursed with some tragic accident like palsyor maybe headaches, like Rosa's own mother.

Allison rarely sat down and ate, unlike Rosa, who in a sitting could put down two or three cuts ofhot apple coffee ring and wash it down with three cold strawberry milks. Allison would pinch offdough here, maybe a ball of streusel there, and pop it like a pill into her mouth.

"I've been in this business since I was a kid. My father owned an independent until the day hedied," Allison told Rosa after she hired her. Allison said her father had big hands, twice the size ofher own, but could decorate the most difficult cake in less than an hour if, of course, the frostingwas prepared and the decorations were laid out in the order they were to be set. If they weren't,there was hell to pay.

Allison told Rosa she'd have to say no to the customers when it felt right. "Don't hesitate to useyour noggin," she said at the end of training. Allison liked that Rosa wanted to study businessafter she graduated from high school. She had ambition, Allison said, not like the other countergirls she'd hired, who wasted what they earned on nail polish and clothes. "I trust you, you'regoing to be my best worker."

And Rosa was.

On her first Saturday, when Sugar Pop ordered a bear claw, a coffee, and ten packets of sugar,Rosa said, "Coming up!" Allison's boyfriend, Bump, who ran the ovens, was just bringing the bearclaws out. They were hot and soft, their heaped middles letting out puffs of steam as they gentlycollapsed on themselves.

"These claws," Bump said, "they'll go like wildfire."

Rosa counted out the sugars and watched as Sugar Pop put them in a ragged pocket. He had aface like a washrag hung up to dry.

"That'll be two dollars and ten cents," Rosa said.

Sugar Pop counted out the dollars in change and made up the ten cents in pennies.

"Have a nice day!" Rosa said as she dropped the coins into the tray. Sugar Pop was already outthe door.

"A regular," Bump said to her, smiling. "Every morning, like clockwork. Allison has a soft spot.She'd feed the bums for free if I let her."

Bump was just the kind of person customers would look at and think, "I wonder what he is doingin this old place?" When Allison introduced them, Bump extended a floury hand. "Little SpanishRose," he grinned, "where are your thorns?"

He had hair the color of raisins and a clean, hard jaw. Allison joked that he looked like a moviestar and it wasn't an exaggeration. He was slim but solid, so that you knew he was coming whenhe was on his way and that he had gone by the change in the air after he'd left, how the pressureof him suddenly leaked away. Once, when he lifted a tray, Rosa saw the way his belly funneledbetween his hips and the frothing of hairs above the drawstring of his baker's pants. It lookednothing like the boys in her high school. She turned bright red as Bump pushed backwardthrough the kitchen door for more pastries.

Winter brought what Bump called claw weather. The wind blew hard against the tall officebuildings. People in padded overcoats walked hunched against it. That Saturday, snow off thelake was on everyone's mind. Bump could make bear claws 24 hours a day and still there wouldbe someone left without. All a customer would see were silver trays with wax paper still stickywith melted caramel. Sometimes, Bump would take his break at one of the tables, chatting up thecustomers as he sipped his coffee, black and splashed with the whiskey he kept next to the mixer.

After her first Saturday, Rosa didn't think about Sugar Pop again until the next time she was in

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early. He was waiting on the street when she walked up from the bus stop. She unlocked the doorand he followed her in as she flicked on the lights.

"Good morning!" Rosa said. "Cold enough for you?"

He didn't look at her like the other customers did. His eyes slid off to one side, as if he wereinterested in the coffee straws or maybe the red-and-white linoleum.

Before even taking off her coat, Rosa reached for a waxed paper square to grab a claw. Allisontaught her to get a paper bag with the other hand at the same time and snap it open. Rosa likedthe crisp sound.

Sugar Pop grasped at the packets of sugar.

"That'll be two dollars and ten cents," Rosa said. Again, Sugar Pop counted out two dollars inchange and the rest in pennies.

Rosa tried conversation. "These sure are a welcome sight," she said, jangling the pennies. ButSugar Pop didn't reply. Every Saturday since, it had been the same story.

But not this Saturday. By the time Rosa was ready to have her mother braid her hair, it was 4:45AM. She had to catch the 5:05 train to be downtown by six, when the bakery opened. Heruniform was a white blouse with red piping along the collar and sleeves, a red apron, and a whitecircle skirt. Above her left breast, "Rosa" curved in red thread over the Dream Fluff emblem, afat baker lifting a tray of red and blue doughnuts.

"Mama, hurry!" Rosa said. "I'll hardly have time to make fresh coffee."

The brush struck the back of Rosa's hand. "Hush." Her mother began at the crown, pulling down.Then she drew the brush back, fanning Rosa's purple-black hair out. Rosa's eyes closed and herneck arched in pleasure. "It's me who'll suffer if you wake your father. There'll be no peace forme the rest of the day."

Rosa wasn't listening. She was already thinking about one of Bump's hot claws and coldstrawberry milk.

On her way to the bus stop, Rosa untied her mother's red ribbon and replaced it with a scarf shehad bought the day before. The scarf was covered with red roses, all with thorns. Though the redwas different from the red of her uniform, the shade was deep and rich against her hair. Today,she'd put one over on Bump along with old Sugar Pop.

"Bump," she'd say when he came up front for his coffee break, "no more pulling my braid!" Thenshe'd flip the scarf with the red, red roses and give him an eyeful.

As for Sugar Pop, she'd shake an empty sugar basket under his nose. "Oh, the sugar packet truckis late," she'd say, or that there's some crisis in sugar. That's wasn't entirely a lie. Sugar costAllison money, and Allison and Bump depended on the bakery and Allison and Bump were herfriends. Allison often complained about how customers stole coffee refills and weaseled extrapastries because theirs weren't cooked to satisfaction or had a hair. Too much sugar was bad fora person, even a bum like Sugar Pop.

When Rosa got off the bus, the bank clock at the corner read 5:37. She had never been this earlybefore. It didn't matter. Allison and Bump were always baking by 3 AM. On Saturdays, Rosadidn't see either one until Bump shouldered out the first tray.

Inside, she heard their low voices under the growling of the oven fan. Since she was early, SugarPop hadn't been at the door. The scent of the cinnamon rolls Allison made every Saturdaywafted from the kitchen. Rosa's mouth began to water. She stuffed her mittens and hat into herpocket and hung her coat by the door, where the customers could leave their things. Afterstowing her purse beneath the register, she started a fresh pot of coffee. Then she hid the sugarsso that Sugar Pop would find only an empty basket. The case was still empty, since Bump liked tobring the claws out first, just as the early birds were wandering in.

Outside, a janitor whose pant cuffs were dark with mop water hurried past. The guard from thejewelry store across the street stood in the door rubbing his eyes. With a rag, Rosa wiped downthe seats and gave a swipe to each of the tables, even though they were clean.

Then she heard a slap. A metal bowl rang to the floor.

"Bump," she heard Allison say. "Stay where you are."

The bright bakery lights threw shadows onto the sidewalk. Rosa waited for the next sound and itcame, just like her bus.

"No?" Bump said.

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There were creams and coffee sticks to restock. But Rosa didn't move.

"Please," said Allison. "Bump. Please."

"I've had about all I can take."

"Baby."

"Don't baby me."

"But I didn't mean . . ."

"Lesson," said Bump. "I'm going to teach you." A garbage truck growled past, but Rosa could stillhear the sound of something hard and quick from the kitchen.

Rosa ran to the kitchen door and shoved her way through. Bump stood at the marble candytable. Allison lay on her back across it, with Bump leaning over her. Rosa could see the whitecloth of his baker's jacket stretching tight over his moving arms.

"Bump!" Rosa shrieked. He didn't seem to hear. His fists connected with Allison's face, thenopened to circle her neck. He lifted her by the shoulders, then propelled her down to the marblewith a sound like eggshells cracking. Allison's scarf slipped off, and Rosa saw that her hair wasbutter yellow.

"Lesson," Bump was saying, "lesson, lesson, lesson."

Rosa grabbed for Bump's jacket, then clawed her way to his shoulders, as hard as the marbletable. She pulled and yelled. She shoved her knee into his hip. Her father hit her mother and thisis what Rosa knew: she was going to get it sooner or later so she had to stop what was happeningnow to give her father the chance to realize that he was beating her mother blue. He had to stopsometime; she wanted him to make now seem like just the time he wanted. Her father would lookat Rosa's face or his fist or her mother's face, just beginning to swell, or at her mother tossed likea dirty shirt against the wall or at her eyes, rolled back and pink as strawberry milk. Then hismouth would open and he would stagger back, as if watching someone else's car slam against arailing.

Bump squeezed trenches into Allison's neck. Then his arm swept to the side, knocking Rosa tothe floor.

"Umb," Allison said.

Rosa kicked Bump in the shin. A ball of spit hung at the corner of his mouth as he turned to her.For one terrible moment, she saw the thing that lived in his eyes when he thought no one butAllison was looking. Then his lips started moving. "You have customers," he said, his voice asballed up as his fist. "Customers, Rosa."

Rosa looked out to the counter, visible through the door, which had stuck open. Sugar Pop stoodthere, eyes watering from the wind or the cold or the bright kitchen lights. Then he stepped back,away from the steel racks and huge canisters of cinnamon and pecans and the silver dough hookshanging on the wall.

Instead of ten sugars, Rosa tried to give him 15. But Sugar Pop wouldn't take extras. Rosa triedto slip the extra packets into his pocket, but the material tore. Threads, soft as eyelashes, clungto her fingers as the packets scattered on the floor. The coins he had for her clattered to thecounter as he hurried away.

A line of customers had formed for pastries. Bump started loading the glass cases. "Hot twists,"he shouted out, then, "Snails coming up! Look at those claws. What a day for it!"

Rosa gave him the meanest look she had, the one she gave her father, but he shrugged it off.

People don't want trouble served with their morning pastry and coffee. Rosa focused on the cashregister, the paper bags, and the little extras, like remembering what the regulars wanted.Customers came and went and she served them, wiping down the tables when she had a momentand collecting the used coffee cups, the soiled napkins, the newspapers people read and leftfolded on the chairs.

Later, Allison appeared, her dark glasses on and the scarf rewrapped. She said hello to someregulars and smiled at Bump when he emerged from the kitchen to take his break, sitting likealways at a table with his special coffee steaming from a cup.

Rosa never saw it happen again. Sugar Pop came in every Saturday, and showed no sign ofhaving seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. When friends of theirs stopped by, Bump andAllison talked of getting married, finally, and buying a second Dream Fluff, this time farthernorth, in a more residential neighborhood. "The downtown is getting dangerous," Allison toldRosa. "You never know what kind of creep's going to walk in."

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A strange thing happened to Rosa, and she thought about it often, on the bus or just walking,thinking about anything at all, even after she left the bakery and graduated and started workingin a dentist's office, a much better job, really, and nearer to the community college where shewas taking classes. This was it. When she came to work after that day, no matter how hard it wassnowing or what had happened at home, she would hesitate at the door and hold her breath. Untilshe saw Allison making the frosting or Bump holding a steaming tray high above his head, or thedentist greeting her or the first patients arriving, she would wonder: Who would be the first togive themselves away? Who would cry out?

Sometimes, she imagined a slap or the crack of a bowl against the floor or the clatter of thepennies on the counter as Sugar Pop fled back into the street.

But it was always nothing.

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Tags: Fiction, Pure Fiction 201 4, Robin Kirk, Sugar Pop

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