Misunderstanding
by Dennis Trylovich
June 1, 2009
Whenever I needed something, I went to the mall. Maybe I should’ve gone someplace smaller and more enjoyable, but the mall was within walking distance. And it had things. All the products, all the money, and all the people. With its sheer size, it exerted a force on the neighborhood and pulled everything towards it. Businesses built around it, hoping to siphon off some of the unspent money. Banks sprouted branches, large and small, throughout the immediate area, weaseling as many of their ATMs into the mall itself as the administrators would allow. The people, too, washed over the place in dull hunger. Everybody talked without knowing how to stop, even if they didn’t know what anybody else was saying. Because of a surrounding mix of Polish and Hispanic communities, the noise in the place was always a garble of European languages playing on top of each other and interrupting each others’ trains of thought. Even the languages were pulled in by the size of the place and melted together into a hybrid of the acquisitive chitchat and idle obscenity of any number of cultures. Sometimes I thought that the place condensed the surrounding neighborhood to such a fine point that the air became thick and crushing as a result. Sometimes I just thought it was loud. Whatever went on there always felt like a little too much. The Christmas music started months too early, there were too many restaurants in the food court and too many cell phone stores. But it always had what I wanted and I always came back.
One day I needed boxers. My old ones were frayed and covered in mysterious stains. They made me look like an incontinent old man, not that there was any real threat of anyone seeing me in my boxers, but it never hurts to be prepared. And I’d recently gotten a $25 Target gift card as my Christmas bonus from work, so at least I wouldn’t be spending my own money. I found some that looked like they’d fit, packaged in a plastic bag with a picture of an effeminate, muscular gentleman in his underwear that made me uncomfortable. Calculating the total in my head on my way back to the front of the store, I realized that I still had at least a good ten to fifteen bucks left to spend, so I made a sharp right turn into the DVD section and looked for a movie I wouldn’t mind seeing again. I went for Unforgiven, mainly because there’d been a big misunderstanding the first time I’d seen it with friends. As the movie progressed and the main character turned into more of a vicious bastard, I’d started feeling sorry for him to the point of despair, but everyone else was cheering for him to keep on shooting. When I saw the case sitting on the rack, I realized I wanted to watch it again to see if I’d really gotten it that wrong, so I grabbed it and continued to the register. I stood in line behind a curiously tan woman who seemed to be grocery shopping and was putting all her stuff on the conveyor belt as she waited for her turn. She had a full cart of groceries and one of those backpacks with wheels for some reason. She had a nice body, so I tried not to stare too much. I busied myself by staring at the candy and the other impulse items which lined our little aisle.
When she finished loading her items onto the conveyor, she looked around absentmindedly and eventually saw the boxers and the movie resting in my right hand. I noticed this either because I caught her in my peripheral vision or because I was accidentally ogling her out of the corners of my eyes. She must’ve been going to a tanning salon. The color was too even and it was still the middle of winter, but she had still done a good job of it. Sometimes a person’s skin can take on a strange, orange, deliberate hue when they go to a tanning salon, but it looked like she had stopped before she could get that far. She pointed at the movie in my hand, which caught my full attention, and then she said something to me and smiled. But it was all in Polish and I didn’t know a word.
There must be something terribly earnest about my cheekbones that makes me look like a Polish immigrant, because every now and then someone will walk up to me and assume I know the language. I remember standing at the bus stop when a kid on a bike comes tearing up to me on the sidewalk, braking so quickly the bike swerved around in a way I’d only seen in movies or blooper reels. He said to me, “Moejhklajnie po Polsku?” All I could say was, “No . . . sorry.” And then he tore off again, in the sort of rush you only see in children and ambulance drivers. Sometimes I’ve thought that maybe, if I knew Polish, I could’ve saved someone’s life that day, but people die all the time and I try not to worry about it.
“Eklantlkvniaes,” she said to me, pointing at the picture of a grizzled Clint Eastwood and smiling. I entertained the possibility that she liked the film, or Clint Eastwood, or tough men with big guns, but for all I knew she could’ve been asking me why someone would go to the store only to buy a few pair of boxers and a movie with lots of blood. What impressed me more than what she said was the fact that she was talking to me at all.
Dammit, I thought, and looked at her. I smiled and nodded and wished I could say something she would understand. I could’ve taken the chance that she knew English, but by the time I got to thinking this, she had already turned away with a suppressed chuckle and maybe an embarrassed pout. The clerk was already ringing up her items and coming out with a total that most people would’ve paid with a credit card or check, but she was Polish and paid in cash. She took her bags off to the side as I stepped up and paid for my items with my gift card. The clerk handed the card back to me after the transaction and told me it had a dollar and thirty cents left. Every time something like that happens, I always want to tell the clerk to just give the amount to whomever’s behind me, but for some reason I never do. I put the card back in my pocket, grabbed my plastic bag, and started toward the exit, when I noticed that my little Polish girl was still off to the side, trying to fit as many of the groceries as she could into her rolling backpack. She must’ve lived nearby, and all the mall’s shopping carts automatically locked up if you were more than three feet off the property, so she had to load a bunch of stuff into her bag and try to carry the rest. It looked clumsy and uncomfortable.
For once in my life my instincts got the better of me. I stopped with the one bag in my hand and asked, “Do you need any help?” Crouching next to her backpack, she looked up at me, slightly arching her back, and gave me a look of nervous humor. I spoke more slowly, as if that would help. “Do - You - Need - Any - Help?” I picked up one of her bags, shrugged emphatically, then picked up another bag and then another. By the end of my little show, I was carrying about five bags as best I could, leaving her with one bag and whatever she had put in her luggage. I smiled and gestured towards the door, telling her to lead the way. I followed her like a dog past the security guard and out the door.
We left the mall, crossed a busy street, darted down an alley, and wound up in one of the long string of identical apartments which dominate the neighborhood. I guess that she and her family or her roommates or whomever she was buying the groceries for lived on the first floor, because she walked around to a side door. She let go of her luggage and her plastic bag, dug out her keys, and opened the door. She smiled at me as she walked into the house with her bags, but she made a pretty clear gesture that I should stay outside. She told me to stay where I was in such an enticing way, with just the right amount of coyness, that for a little while I entertained the possibility that she was a prostitute, or maybe just a thief who would lure me into the apartment, knock me over the head, and take all my money. I decided I was okay with either possibility, and tried to remember how much money was in my wallet, in case either should happen.
All she did was come back out, take a few bags, go back inside, come out, take the rest of the bags, leave, and come back out with another polite smile. She made a gallant effort to say, “Tank yu,” then pulled the screen door shut. Looking back at me one more time, she closed the inside door and left me standing in-between the apartments. I could hear the bolt lock slide shut and couldn’t really blame her for doing it. My only problem was I didn’t quite know how I’d gotten here, but so long as I could find a main street, I figured I would be fine. I walked aimlessly in a random direction, hoping for the best. A few blocks down, I realized I wasn’t holding any bag in my hand and that somewhere in the apartment she had both my boxers and my movie. It didn’t matter all that much. It wasn’t my money, anyway.
Back home, I started thinking. I really wished I’d known Polish. But the misunderstanding between the both of us had a charm to it. She could have been saying, “A Western. All you Americans love Westerns. That’s why you’re all so fucking stupid.” Even if she had said that and I’d known she had said that, I still would’ve smiled like an idiot and helped her out as much as I could. For a little while I thought about what a relationship with her might’ve been like. Supposing that, instead of letting her close the door, I had managed, through some sort of elaborate sign language, to convince her to go to a restaurant or something. Then maybe I could’ve gotten her name in a Me Tarzan You Jane sort of way, and by snatching the bill right away I’d be able to show off all the money I didn’t have. Just for the sake of custom, I’d get her phone number, but when I’d call her all I could really give her is a date and a time. “Lisa? Lisa? Is this Lisa? Seven o’clock. Tomorrow. Seven o’clock. January 16. Seven o’clock. Will you be there?” And all she would say is da . . . da . . . da . . . or whatever the hell they say, and I wouldn’t know where we’d actually meet but I’d wander around the mall until I found her and we’d do something again. We’d kill a lot of time by trying to learn each other’s language, but once it got serious and we went to bed together we’d talk foreign to each other again. Maybe she’d try something she thought was sexy like, “Phuk mi, phuk mi,” but it wouldn’t work and she’d see it in my face and give it up. Instead she’d start babbling in Polish, and I can imagine her saying terrifying things I wouldn’t understand like, “You’re too small,” or, “I love you.” I couldn’t see it ending very well, but I really didn’t want to think that far ahead. I wasn’t thinking much at all, just lying on my back and staring up at the blank ceiling.
I went back to Target the next week, same day, same time. My excuse was that I still had a dollar thirty on the gift card, but I looked around a bit in sections I didn’t normally look in. I reasoned that she was the sort of person who went grocery shopping the same time every week, but I didn’t tell myself that. I walked around saying that I was looking for something that would cost me exactly a dollar thirty, a pack of gum or something. I didn’t want to leave a penny on the card, and I certainly didn’t want to spend any more than was there. If there was money left on the card, it was like the store had taken advantage of me, and if I overspent, then the store had suckered me into buying more than I really wanted. My problem was that I didn’t know exactly what the sales tax was, so I was just walking around making calculations that didn’t mean anything. I finally decided to give up and take some cherry cola out of the small fridge close to the register. To make up for the effort it took to decide, I’d have to drink the shit like it was champagne, and if there were a couple of cents left on the card, I would certainly give it to the person behind me. I checked my wallet to make sure I had a dollar in case it cost more. I didn’t want to have to pay with a twenty or a credit card or anything, but I wasn’t letting that card go to waste. The only fridge was in an aisle where a tremendously fat woman huffed over a cart’s worth of items while her eyes rolled around her head like she had no control over the muscles in her face. I looked at her and became disgusted with myself. The best I could do was look away as I stood quietly with my bottle of soda.
When I turned around, my Polish girl stood behind me. I said, “Hey!” like I was the Fonz or some foreign equivalent, and she pretended to be surprised to see me. “You have my boxers,” I told her, gesturing so that it made sense. “You” I pointed to her “have my” I placed my right hand flat against my chest “boxers.” I held up left hand as if I were holding a bag. I wondered which way the fat lady’s eyes were rolling, but by then she was done and I was paying for my soda. Eight cents remained on the gift card, and I was too ashamed of myself to pass it on. I put it back in my pocket and told myself I would throw it out later. As she got her stuff together and paid for it, I waited at the end of the register, as if I were seriously intent on getting my boxers back. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I wasn’t leaving now.
Whatever she bought amounted to two bags, and I volunteered to take one by waving my arms around like a tired monkey. She stared at me quietly, then she must’ve caught on to what I wanted (or what I might’ve wanted) and gave me one of the bags. I smiled broadly and started thinking of things to try to say. As we passed the security guard, I used my other hand to raise an imaginary cup to my lips. I said “coffee” repeatedly, figuring that “coffee” was a universal word, like “no” or “SHARK!” She shrugged and we walked on, heading off in the same direction that we had last week, down the same streets and up to the same side door. But this time she let me in, even invited me in by leaving the door open and looking at me in sad expectancy. I walked in with her bag and my head bowed, quietly muttering a thank you.
Inside, she put the bag down, gestured toward the kitchen table, and started making coffee. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I sat down and put my soda on the table. There was no one else in the apartment, but it seemed like someone should be. She got out the cups like someone else had put them in the cabinets and it took her a few seconds longer than it should’ve to find them. I said I liked the place, that it was nice, but she didn’t say anything. I looked out the window and kept my hands on top of the table, placing one on top of the other. It took some time, and she refused to sit still until the coffee was ready, but finally it was and she placed one cup next to me and smiled. Instead of sitting across from me, she sat in the chair that was closest to me and positioned at a ninety degree angle. That meant something, and we drank coffee. I smiled cheekily and kept on repeating, “Good,” as I drank. “I like it,” and pointed to the various knickknacks around the kitchen: a few old jars shaped like cats, a small cross posted high on a wall, a cheap little painting of a rural scene. “What’s your name?” I mumbled, but when she looked up at me with a certain amount of fear that she hid by playing dumb, I pretended like I hadn’t said a thing.
Her left hand held the eggshell white coffee mug. Her right, the one that was closer to me, was relaxing on the table at the end of her slightly extended arm. My left hand, pushed out in a similar way, was only about an inch away from hers. I took my index finger and started gently flicking at her right pinky, I’m not sure why. Then I moved my hand over hers, squeezed a little, and turned the hand around, so that the palm faced up. With my left middle finger, I followed the lines on her palm, as if I knew how to read them. On my face, it felt like I was somewhere in-between smiling and grimacing. When I looked at her, she seemed to be stuck just like I was. I took my right hand and moved it closer, thinking that maybe it would help if I read her palm with both hands. But she stood up instead, turned right, and walked aimlessly to the the counter.
As she passed me by, the back of her left hand brushed against my left forearm and then my shoulder. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, which I should’ve figured was a bad sign, but instead I got out of my chair and stood close behind her. Her hair was brown and long, which I hadn’t noticed until now. My hands were very close to her slender hips. Before I could decide what to do, she turned around with a sudden paleness to her face that somehow shone through her deliberate tan. I kissed her, strongly at first, but then I backed off a bit. Closed mouth. My hands, instead of grabbing her, reached further back and gripped the counter behind her, so that she couldn’t move left or right without having to go through one of my arms. It was foreign and anonymous, which canceled out the sordidness of it, or at least made the sordidness part of the fun. For her part, she put both of her hands flat against my chest. It meant that her arms were bunched up between us, and when I moved in closer, all I felt were her arms. But she wasn’t pushing away. She wasn’t responding much at all. I didn’t know what she wanted, which made me feel like I could get away with anything.
“Lidahjfkla!” I heard behind me. I turned around and saw a squat, old, wrinkled woman burning up the apartment with her eyes and her linebacker’s stance. “Jfiauefhascknbeku!”
My little Polish girl didn’t move. I thought she would’ve walked toward the old woman, and I hoped that she would’ve taken a step back to hide behind me, but instead she stayed where was, pressed on the counter as if I were still up against her. “No!” she said. “Iiencvlakjukleauiesiinuclaiuebnfduyulaiue!”
“Feianceioaeioharluk.”
“Incaieanfludibhfejhbacjhluiabeuhuliaylkuajdsbhchjbykcaeuhlaiyey.”
“Ubclaueihsfiel!”
Then they both looked at me, and whatever I was was in the wrong. “Out!” the old woman said. “Out! Eldfghslitghydjfghwiergruehsi!” She walked towards me and looked up at me as if she were a foot taller than I was. “Out!” Under ordinary circumstances, I would’ve been more inclined to listen to her, but I had already gone beyond the point where I cared. I knew by now I would never see either of these people ever again. It gave me the right to be mad. They weren’t allowed to talk about me like that. I had been invited in. Nobody had stopped me. Now that they were trying to lay all their guilt on my head, I had the obligation to maintain my side of the argument, whatever side that was, as loudly as I could. My little girl was still standing closer to me than she was to the old woman. I took strength from that.
“Wait a minute!” I said.
“Hcnueiaubcia--”
“Wait a minute!” I looked to the girl. “Where are my boxers!” I held up my hand like I had in the store, like a mad chimp in the circus. The old woman looked confused, so I kept on talking, not knowing if they understood what I was saying, really just wanting to keep up the momentum. “They’re my boxers! You have them! I want them! I mean,” I babbled just to keep it up, “I mean, I have money, I can get more. I got money! But you have my boxers and don’t think you can just keep them, I want them back! Yeah! Get em!” Up to this point, I had been looking back and forth from one to the other, to let them know that I was talking to both of them, but now I looked directly at the girl and pointed in a random direction. “Get them!”
She looked at me. “Ojznhka.” She looked at where my finger was pointing and walked in the opposite direction. While she was gone, I stared at the old woman and tried to look mad and not embarrassed. The girl came back with the DVD. She threw it on the kitchen table and disappeared into another room. The plastic wrapping was gone. It had been opened. Looking for something to do, I picked up the case and checked to see if the disc was still there. Then I took the disc out and flamboyantly checked the underside for any scratches. I looked up at the old woman and said, “I bought this.”
The girl came back while I was still checking the disc. “Ojznhka,” she said, “aincikajicectcztychag.” Then she threw the package of boxers onto the kitchen table. The old woman seemed alarmed at the picture of the scantily clad male who looked up at their ceiling, but the package hadn’t been opened, so she didn’t have much of an objection.
“Thank you,” I said. I put the DVD back in the case, picked up the case, picked up the bag, and thought of gestures I could use. “Thank you.” Jamming everything under one arm, I dug around in my pockets and pulled out my Target card. Throwing it at the table while I walked away, I shouted, “I got money!” I’m pretty sure it landed on the floor. I heard it click against the ground as the screen door closed behind me.
Out in the street, I got mad and frustrated. I threw the package of boxers at a nearby apartment, then I looked at the DVD again. “Fuck you, Clint. You’ve never helped me for shit.” I took the disc out and flung it like a Frisbee down the street. I threw it at an odd angle, so it made a sharp right turn into the window of a parked car and broke into three pieces. I tossed the case up into the air and allowed the wind to blow it onto a snow-covered lawn. When I got closer to where the disc hit the car, I saw that the window was a little cracked, but I figured it must’ve come from something else. The air was cold. I walked back to where I’d thrown the boxers and had to walk through the snow to get them. I could still use them, but the cold snow and water on the outside of the package made my fingers freeze a little bit while I walked home. They fit good.
But now I can’t stand foreign languages. I’m terrified of them. Every time a stranger says something I don’t recognize or makes an unfamiliar, almost secret gesture, I can’t help but think that whatever they’re doing is directed against me. Every foreign hello or do you speak my language is a mile-long screed against myself, my country, and my incurable ignorance. The only honest way out of it is to learn everything, but today I barely had the strength to get out of the shower.
I don’t like that mall anymore, not even for buying. I need to find a market where I can show my face.