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My mother, she’s standing at the counter with her hair shining loose over her shoulder, her eyes just as bright, her smile so wide she can only be oblivious to the lipstick marks on her teeth. She’s laying her change out onto the counter, one coin at a time, placing each down with a sharp, metallic tap on the smooth space between the till and the gum rack. The tapping sound, clear and deliberate behind the dancing wall of her voice, feels like the echo of a giant clock in the background. Ticking down to something. Tap-tap like tick-tock.

“Eighty-nine,” she says. Tap-Tick. “Ninety.” Tap-Tock.

Beside the rows of coins, stacked up to tens in neat piles, are two crisp bills. Beside the bills are her intended purchases. There are only three—a vanilla-scented lip balm, a box of salted crackers, and a carton of full-cream milk.

“One hundred,” she beams. Tap. Tick. “Nearly there.”

She’s twenty cents off the total. She’s fumbling in the depths of her bag in search of more loose change. The guy behind the counter, he’s standing there with his arms folded, trying to look serious while he stares down her shirt. She’s made this easy for him—the staring—leaning forward the way she is, her shoulders curved in the way they are.

The man waiting behind my mom, he huffs a sigh. It comes out mostly through his nose. His hands tighten on his shopping basket. He wants to buy a frozen pizza, a bottle of soda water, a tube of lubricant. Clearly, he’s not asking much of life as it is, and this is supposed to be the express queue.

My mother looks over her shoulder at him. Maybe she caught the gust on the back of her neck, felt his breath hit the space between her shoulders. “Sorry,” she says to him. “I’m in a hurry, too.” She gives him the kind of smile that leaves him awkward for a few moments. His cheeks color to a tough, meaty red. He huffs again. But this time it isn’t a sigh. Not exactly.

“I’ll pay whatever’s left,” the woman behind Lube Dude says. She’s middle-aged, no makeup, sloppy ponytail and sports shoes that have never seen the surface of any track or indoor court. She wants to buy a pack of tampons, a bottle of aspirin, a box of cheese-flavored crackers, and the obligatory bread, eggs, and milk, of course. Still, it isn’t hard to tell why she’s testy.

“Five,” my mother says, ignoring her. “Six.”

Tick. And then Tock.

The shop is small but understaffed. Four check-outs, two in use. The guy behind the counter should’ve done something by now, but he’s young, new. Who expects this kind of scene on a calm, mid-week afternoon?

He clears his throat. “Ma’am….”

My mother stops counting. “Yes?”

“Don’t worry about the rest,” he says. “Please.”

So, at fourteen cents short, everyone in line behind my mother exhales a loud sigh of relief.

“But… are you sure?” she opens her eyes wide at him, and smiles again, the tips of her teeth caught with the scarlet smudge of her lipstick. Red smeared on white. Gleaming.

“Yes, really,” the cashier guy says. “It doesn’t matter. Just, please…”

His new worry is she’s going to launch into a thank you speech. That she’ll stay right where she is with her shining hair and her stained smile, and hold the queue up even longer while she tells him how wonderful he is, how kind he is, how he can only be an angel, helping a stranger out so selflessly. From the way she’s standing—cozy on her elbows, her feet arched in their heels with one ankle crossed back in a lazy twist—this seems a likely scenario. The way she leans, it’s like she’s at her own kitchen counter. The way she’s smiling, it’s like she’s catching up with an old friend.

“Please,” he says.

My mother seems unsure. She turns her head for a moment, about to look back again at the growing line of people—now six, maybe seven—behind her, but thinks better of it and returns her attention to the cashier. He drags his eyes away from the place on her chest where her shirt ends and her skin starts. For a moment he looks like he might be about to cry.

“Well, times are tough for all of us,” my mother says.

Cashier Man stares at her. He blinks.

“So… I can’t tell you how grateful I am. My little girl here—” and now she points to me “—she and I, we struggle every damn day to support ourselves and each other. Every cent counts. Every cent really counts. So few folks understand that when it’s not them it’s happening to. You know?”

The cashier guy definitely knows. Minimum wage for long shifts, school assignments, and debt payments. Time stretched out like a decaying rubber band you have to keep plucking on, dreading the day when it finally snaps—but then he has a moment. He seems to replay what he’s heard, and he looks at me. Eyes mostly white.

“That’s your daughter?”

My mother beams. “Looks just like me, doesn’t she?”

My mother, sometimes she’s a super bitch.

“Hey.” I smile. My teeth are whiter than my mother’s. They don’t have any lipstick marks. “Mind if I take some gum?”

I’ve already pocketed a pack, strawberry-flavored, by the time he looks at me.

“S-sure,” he says.

I take another pack. The only one he knows about.

“It’s so important to be kind in this life,” my mother says.

“I thought maybe she was your sister,” Cashier Dude mumbles. He’s trying not to look at me again.

My mother scoops the cash back up off the counter. Bills, coins, the lot. She shoves it all into the pocket of her leather jacket. She picks up the purchases. The items she hasn’t purchased at all.

“Only great people do beautiful things,” she says. She cocks an eye at me, signalling that it’s time to leave.

“But—” the cashier says. “Wait—”

But.

Wait.

Like by the time he dared to say those words, they still had any power at all.

My mother zips up the side pocket of her jacket, packed now with all the cash she’s just re-appropriated. She shoves the milk carton into my hands. She palms the lip balm in his full view.

“God bless you,” she says. “So much.”

I follow her out, and when the door closes behind me I hear a bell jingle inside.

Such a cheerful sound.

The stiff silence of sudden outrage shut behind.

***

“Okay kitten,” my mother says as we speed-walk across the parking lot. “Stay right by me for the next few blocks, okay?”

I wouldn’t know where else to go, but this is something she always says after what she calls a ‘paper-tiger heist’. The famous paper tiger, a cut-out form that fools only the utterly gullible or the absolutely stupid. My mother, she’s not made of paper, though. The tiger in her has teeth. Scarlet-marked and all.

That we’ve just risked a major scene for some milk and crackers, it’s not important. Adrenalin, endorphins, the sweet mayhem-jolt anxiety and excitement make when they swirl into each other. My heart pounds. My throat is swollen with all the giggles I’m keeping trapped down there. Scary as it is right now, it’s also sort of funny. Later it’ll be hilarious.

“Try to look innocent,” she tells me over her shoulder, half-smile, fast-stepping in her heels. I’ve never seen any other woman walk so fast with spikes on her feet. Battered concrete or rough country road, my mother steps like all the world is her linoleum.

The box of crackers slides out from under the clasp of her jacket—it thuds against the concrete and rolls onto a battered side. Probably all shattered in there, now.

“Goddammit,” she mumbles, pausing to snatch the box up, glancing at me through the fall of her hair.

I raise an eye at her, flash her the tube of lubricant, the carton of eggs. I lifted them right out of those tight-clenched baskets while their holders gazed in stunned outrage at my mother’s shining-smile antics. I could’ve swirled these items over my head on the way out, shrieking, and nobody would’ve noticed. Back there, I was that invisible and she was that bright.

“My girl.” She grins.

Without having to try this time, I smile.

I don’t know where we’re going, but she leads us. My momma in her pretty spiked shoes, with her lovely dark lips. Her blonde hair glittering, her silhouette stark as black velvet tossed on tall flames. Like an angel on fire. Like a shadow thrown against the sun.