make change for smelly guys in shorts with hairy legs and bare feet, I lost respect for Miss Creach, even though she was the one whoâd taught me about how plankton fit in the food chain. When she worked at Food World, she wore an apron that read, âIâm here to help you!â across the front pocket. She
looked like a high-school dropout.
âHi, Miss Creach,â I said.
âHello there,â she said as a minor logjam of Slim Jims and Fruit Roll-Ups advanced on the conveyor belt along with bread, a box of rice, eggs, ground beef, peppers, onions, and apples. Slim Jims and Fruit Roll-Ups covered two of the four food groups â red meat and fruit. Miss Creach frowned, like she caught me with crib notes. âYour mother know what you eat?â
âNo. She has no idea.â
âYou sure you donât want two bags?â she asked as I stuffed everything into a brown paper bag.
âI got my bike, so I can only take one,â I said.
âDrink some milk, okay? Or else your bones are going to stop growing,â she replied, wiping her arm against her forehead.
I got onto my bike, one hand on the handlebar and one holding the bag. The bike had come with a basket in front, but Iâd torn it off because baskets looked gay. I was ï¬ne with one hand.
My parents sat in the kitchen eating Chinese food, and I was in the living room, eating a bowl of Sloppy Joe and watching âM*A*S*H.â Two Korean women were sitting on Klingerâs cot, crying. In the background, I could hear my mother and father talking in Chinese. Actually, my mother was talking in Chinese and my father was saying, âUmgh, umgh,â as he ate.
âYou want to open burger stand?â asked my mother.
She was speaking in English, so it was understood that I
was being addressed.
âWhat?â
âTurn down TV!â she ordered. Canned laughter washed over the sound of the Korean women sobbing.
âI can hear you ï¬ne! Why do you want to open it?â I looked over at my parents. They were ï¬xed in a brightly lit realm of tile, wood, and table, while I was sitting cross legged on the worn rug of the living room. They were in a completely different world.
âCome over here! You canât hear me! You should eat with us!â
âI donât like the way your food smells! Just tell me what you want!â I said, getting annoyed.
âWe want you run burger stand on weekend. People get hungry and go across street to Barnhouse. You know how â you cook hamburgers. You cook Sloppy Joe.â The Barnhouse was a drive-in across the highway from the hotel. Bennys would pick up burgers, fries, and onion rings there, and come back and sit by the pool. I was always sweeping up soggy, flattened cartons smeared with oil, ketchup, and ants.
The burger stand by the pool had been closed for years, but the equipment was still there, alongside the crates of hotel supplies we stored in the space. The only times Iâd go inside was to get spare light bulbs or ashtrays.
The scene inside the hamburger stand reminded me of those National Geographic features where theyâd run a waterproof camera through the former living quarters of undersea shipwrecks. It was dark and murky and ï¬lled with drifting particles. Layers of gunk coated all the ï¬at surfaces. Chairs were strewn about as if they had been abandoned in haste. And surrounding everything was an eerie stillness. Fixing that place up would be way harder than ï¬ipping burgers.
âI canât run that place by myself. I need some help!â I yelled.
âFrom one to ï¬ve, youâre going be open. Saturday and Sunday. All you do is play Atari, anyway.â There wasnât much sense in arguing that point. When all the rooms were rented, there wasnât anything to do in the afternoons but sit in the ofï¬ce and tell people we didnât have any more rooms or make change for the phone or
Learning to Kill: Stories