The Woman and Her Moment
By: Connor Kemp
Tags: Empowerment, Short Story, Immigration, Creative Writing

Perusing the canned food isle of a local convenience store at ten o’clock at night isn’t ideal, but life has given a woman lemons in the form of a lack of dinner supplies and she’s just looking to do what she can to make lemonade. Living alone in a country she wasn’t born in with few social connections limits her options.

A xylophonic noise is emitted from the outdated speakers in three of the four ceiling corners, before a young shopkeeper mumbles impassively about the store’s impending closure. The woman is not adept at speaking the English language — she’s borderline selectively mute — but the three months she’s spent in the outskirts of Toronto have blessed her with some decency in listening comprehension, and she understands that she’s not permitted to stay in the store any longer.

Which is not the same as not being wanted.

She’s nervous. She can feel the unease like a physical presence in her stomach. Like a separate entity has made itself comfortable within her and doesn’t understand that sometimes it’s not wanted.

Maybe the woman and her discomfort aren’t so different.

She struggles with this constant contradiction in her mind. A contradiction that tells her she’s invisible, while simultaneously filling with a paranoia so strong, she can’t resist the feeling that everybody wants her gone. A logical view tells her that it’s not possible for everyone to be constantly hoping for her demise, but she knows her defining feature is her ethnicity and she knows she’s been given a disadvantage because of it. A disadvantage she never asked for and will never want.

The counter is unkempt. Unkempt in a way that says something about it’s operator. The chocolates lining the front of the counter are so jumbled that the woman can’t determine where one type ends and the other begins. But the smell is different. The smell reminds the woman of home and she wonders if it’s the array of scented candles and sprays lining the back wall, or the boy sitting on the stool in front of her. She somehow thinks it’s the latter.

The young boy at the counter looks no older than seventeen, but seems as though he’s experienced the life of someone much older. His eyes look tired, the fatigue of living a life that slowly takes its toll. The woman knows this life, and she hopes for the boy’s prosperity. Especially after his cadaverous body produces a voice so dull, she can’t help but feel his sorrow.

“Was this all?” he mumbles, monotone in his execution. She nods and he asks her for her payment method.

And it happens. She stumbles, seemingly losing all ability to speak. Her mother always told her that in times of distress human beings either freeze, fight or flee, and the woman can’t avoid the urge to freeze in this moment. She hates it. She hates that she can’t feel confident enough in her English to answer the simplest of questions.

The woman knows too well that there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.

She turns to flee, ashamed in her incompetence, before a single scoff stops her. Without thinking, she turns around. A man stands there. She stares subconsciously, and he stares straight back. He looks rugged. But the woman sees that it’s the type of ruggedness that comes from a life of privilege. A ruggedness that doesn’t seem all that intense.

She drags her attention away. The man speaks over her to the boy on registers.

“Can you tell this half-breed to stop holding up the line?”

It’s more of a mumble. But it’s audible, and the woman understands what was said. She understands because it’s a word she’s heard too many times. A word that disgusts her to the core of her being.

The boy doesn’t respond. He looks to her apologetically but makes no effort to intervene.

She manages to stutter, “W-what?” and the man looks at her. It’s a look she’s all too familiar with. A look that says you do not belong here.

“So you speak English? Well why don’t you hurry up and leave. And go back to where you came from while you’re at it.” He enunciates every syllable like she’s a toddler. Or a dog. Either way she sees what he’s trying to say. He’s superior. He’s better. He’s stronger. There’s no way she’ll ever belong here as much as he does.

And the woman is sick of it. This isn’t her first experience like this, and it won’t be her last unless she works to make it that way. Submission doesn’t work anymore. Submission is only a catalyst that gives more power and makes it all worse. Then it hits her. An epiphany so strong it’s as if a mist had cleared. She’s been letting her feelings get in the way of seeing thing as they truly are for too long, and she won’t dismiss her discomfort anymore.

The woman knows it starts with her. It shouldn’t have to, but it does. She knows people like this man are contributing to a fundamentally wrong patriarchal society. A social construct that devalues authentic people because the place they were born in wasn’t right for them — because the place the woman was born in wasn’t right for her.

“Did you hear me? Get out of here and go clean something.” He’s still staring at her and she doesn’t know if he’s been talking to her this whole time, but she hasn’t been listening.

Questions rush through the woman’s mind. How can he live with himself? How can he say these words and still think he’s a good person? How can he demand a service like cleaning, while simultaneously devaluing those who provide it? She’s disgusted.

The woman feels… bold. Almost as if she’s been put in this moment for a reason. As if it’s a chance for her to start a change. She feels empowered in her mindset and brave in her culture.

This woman is done letting people wrong her, and then make her feel as if she herself is wrong. She is done devaluing her identity because someone else didn’t value her. She respects her culture, even if this man won’t.

This man is wrong. There is no grey area with this. He is wrong. Fundamentally and foundationally incorrect. This woman’s value is no less because of the place she was born.

She thinks back to her mother’s advice and sends a silent apology for fleeing for too long when she should’ve been fighting.

The woman turns to the boy at the counter and slaps some cash on the bench in anger before she sees the look on his face. The astonishment present in his wide features. She wonders if he has had the same epiphany or has seen it in her. An epiphany that shouldn’t have been an epiphany at all, but rather something the world had known all along. Who says this woman can’t be the greatest in the room? Why has she not felt this passion before? What will she do with this passion now that it’s there?

The woman isn’t sure. But she slaps the man hard across the face and collects her items. The door dings as she exits and the woman feels — no she knows — that this is her moment, and she belongs in every part of this world.