Well, I say corner stores; you may say "7-11s" or "mom and pop" stores or whatever, but you know what I mean.For my sins (I smoke), I have often relied on them a lot, and for the last two years I've lived close enough to one to become heavily dependent, thus a regular, and finally a friend.
Grace is the boss. Her husband and her teenage son take their turns at the cash, but Grace says she's the boss and she really is. Her son's English is much better than hers - he would be a native speaker - but he has to study much of the time. Dad's English is barely there, although I'm sure he runs a lot of things in the background. Still: Grace is the interface, so Grace is the boss.
She is a gorgeous woman and person, very kind and curious about people, although also obviously very tough and determined. She figured out somehow that I was a regular at the nursing home a few blocks south, and she started telling me about the ladies from her church who go there to visit all the Korean residents. I know some of the Korean residents, and one day I got Grace to write out a short explanation to one of them who had been asking me questions about how my husband was - questions that I could not understand but really appreciated.
So anyway, we have got to enjoy our visits with each other more and more.
This has run through my mind before, but somehow I couldn't quite believe that these things really happened to people so close to me. Last night I was just about to leave the store when a group of teenage boys came in and started to ... linger. I don't know how else to describe it. I thought they were, y'know, taking up a lot of space but was trying to be tolerant, but then Grace grabbed my arm. She wouldn't say much, but she was obviously bothered, so I said, "Maybe I'll go look at your cat food," and she said, "Thank you thank you," so I did.
The guys strolled up and down the aisles (only two - it is a tiny store), picking things up and then putting them back, for the longest time, so I had a good long chance to read a lot of ingredient lists on cat-food labels. (You'd never imagine what is in Seafood Surprise.) Finally they slouched to the front desk and bought something like a bag of chips and then left.
So then I went back to talk to Grace. At first she just looked and sounded exasperated. These were just slouchy kids, after all, and what she was mainly telling me about was petty shop-lifting, except she started to explain to me how much that cost and how the kids do it. She held up a chocolate bar: "I make 10, 20 cents on this," she said; "they pick it up and then they walk around and it goes in their pockets and maybe they buy something else, but if I am here alone ..."
So then I said - stupidly, I now realize - "You don't get any REAL robberies, do you?" And she said, "Guns. Knives. Oh, yes." And then it all started to spill out.
Yes, they have emergency bells for her to push, although if someone is pointing a gun at her, she goes semi-blind and doesn't push it. They have a screen upstairs from a camera trained on the desk, but what are her family going to do if someone has pulled a gun or a knife on her?
And it happens. Often. Middle of the day. Yes. The store is on the corner of two through-streets, and yes, they all get away. They come often, and they take everything, and they all get away. Guns. Knives. Nice dressers; slouchers; young; not so young; seldom groups, although sometimes there's a guy outside with a cell phone; you name it.
This lovely woman has to be on alert every time that damned door opens. How the hell does she do it? Go on? How? I couldn't. I found it very hard to leave last night, considered sitting on the steps for a while.
What can businesses like that do? How can they continue?
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posted 31 March 2006 11:20 AM
