Help Yourself

HELP YOURSELF

That'll teach me to be a smart ass.

If there's one thing I've learned from this whole experience, it's that I should leave vengeful practical jokes to the professionals; you know, the ones that have their own television shows. Looking back, I should have handled it differently, or better still, just let the lunch incident go. No amount of leftover rigatoni was worth what I had to go through. And it certainly wasn't worth two lives.

I really don't blame anyone, certainly not my job. I'd been working at ATC for half a year, a ten-dollar-an-hour grunt job I had to take to supplement my income after my travel agency fell through. It seemed easy enough, selling cheap phone service to gullible senior citizens and ditzy housewives from a call center in Goodyear. But that was the problem; it's such an easy job, they let anybody do it. Now, I'm not the type who goes around casting judgment on people (though my ex-husband would probably say otherwise), but from my first day there I found myself surrounded by the biggest assortment of losers, deadbeats and dumbasses since that god-awful punk rock concert I went to with my daughter a couple of years ago. Ex-cons, recovering alcoholics, bored old biddies, teenage dropouts...you name it, I had to work with it. Not all of them were like that, mind you. Some were displaced, college-educated career people like me, trying to restabilize their lives after a bad break. But the majority? I certainly wouldn't share a lunch with them, much less eight hours of my day.

Which leads me to how this whole thing happened. Yeah, it was all over a meal.

Since my daughter went away to college, I've had to learn to cook for one. I'm not particularly thrilled with rationing leftovers, but it's either that or fast food, and unlike most people my age, I listen to my doctor. Low-fat pasta meals are my specialty, and those were usually the ones I'd take to work with me. I used to take a Lean Cuisine, but I've discovered that once you leave one in the break room fridge, there was no guarantee that it would still be there come lunchtime. That bothered me more than anything else on this job. Being a telemarketer is bad enough, but after half a day listening to people hanging up on me, screaming at me, and degrading me like I'm some sort of criminal, I can't even enjoy my one hour of reprieve because some thief covets my frozen entree! I couldn't begin to tell you how much that ticked me off. So I'd whip up some lasagna or something and keep some in a plastic container with my name written on it, and that would be my lunch for the day. I've found that almost all of my co-workers had a reverence for Tupperware, and my food was generally left alone. But not this time.

The day was fairly typical. Sales were a little hard to come by, and one kindhearted individual felt it would improve his day by calling me a "lecherous cunt." I know it's just my job and I shouldn't take it so personally, but maybe I did, probably because I knew that if I responded in kind, I'd be fired on the spot. Then again, reaching through the headset and punching that mysogenistic turd in the face wouldn't have satisfied me. Needless to say, it was a sucky day all around, and it was only half-over.

At twelve o'clock sharp, I manuevered through the rat's maze of cubicles to the break room on the North side of the building. Not that I'm a neat freak or anything, but if that were anybody's restaurant, it would be shut down. Just opening the refrigerator door was an adventure in odor tolerance! I hated to store my food in that God-awful thing, but the fridge in the smaller, South side room was no better. So as usual I pulled open the door, held my breath, and did a visual search among the milk cartons, sandwich bags, half-empty bottles of soda and God knows what else for the little, blue-topped container with the word "Sharon" on the front and one-day-old rigatoni inside. Normally I would find it right on the top shelf, easily spotted. On this day, however, it wasn't there.

I begrudgingly reached into the foul-smelling thing and moved the various items of food around on both shelves. No sign of it. I looked in the vegatable crispers (big mistake; someone's package of deli meat had become a science experiment). I even looked in the freezer to see if I had committed some kind of brain cramp. It was nowhere to be found.

Ever have one of those moments at work where you just feel like just gathering up your stuff, leaving your key on the desk and walking out without so much as a whisper? This was one of those moments. As much as I would've loved to bail out right then and there, my left brain kept me in line. The bills had to be paid, and until I could gather the resources to move my business to the internet, this was it. I settled for a fish taco at the nearby fast food place.

When I got back to my desk, I considered sending out a nasty e-mail demanding the thief make himself or herself known, but I figured it would fall on deaf ears and elicit no more response than a stern e-mail from the general manager, reminding everyone of the company's policy of "respecting your co-workers' property." Really, what good would that do? I wanna meet that sticky-fingered punk face-to-face, if for nothing else, just for the satisfaction of knowing what kind of sub-human would have the audacity to steal someone else's food.

Maybe a little public humiliation was in order.

That night, I whipped up a special salad, with fresh lettuce and tomato, parmesagn cheese, sliced apple and finely chopped peanuts, and mixed it all up with my revenge. Under the right conditions, Kaopectate looks almost exactly like ranch dressing.

I brought it in the next day in a seperate container from my real lunch, which I put in the South break room. I sat at my desk enduring the hostilities of cold calls, and allowed nature to take its course. Unfortunately, it did.

There was a minor commotion coming from the North side of the building. Several people were gathered around the door of the break room looking very concerned. Paramedics rushed in, weaving their gurney around sharp corners to make their way to it. With a dark tickling in my gut, I made my way up there to see what was going on. Peering through the small gathering of phone jockeys I could see the medics working to revive a young woman on the floor of the room, and then they ordered us to stand back. I wish I hadn't seen that. I still have difficulty with the memory of that lovely young lady, maybe nineteen or twenty, lying on the floor with the color of death in her face, and a touch of white cream on the side of her mouth.

Congratulations, Sharon. You found your thief.



The supervisor let many of us off of work early that day if we requested it, and I used that time to visit the girl at the hospital, meeting up with a few other co-workers who were already there. I found out her name was Arlita, and it was only her third day on the job. I was devastated. I didn't have to, but I sat in the E.R. waiting room for hours hoping I could maybe catch up with a relative.

I spotted a woman who looked like she could have been her mother walking out of the E.R.with her arm tightly around a teenage girl. Both looked as though they had been crying for months. They took a seat on the other side of the room, the teen's face buried in the older woman's shoulder. For me, the question was already answered. It didn't look good.

God, how I wanted to get my butt out of my chair and tell them how sorry I felt, but I just couldn't. My mind was too busy trying to figure out how someone could suffer a fatal overdose from a laxative, not to mention having to deal with the task of gently explaining to this grieving family that I may have been responsible for Arlita's death. A couple of ATC employees approached them and expressed their sorrow, and that was enough of an icebreaker for me. I finally gathered the courage to introduce myself.

She told me her name was Anabel Saenz, and the girl with her was her second daughter, Lupe. She told me how proud she was that her first-born daughter was "just getting her life together," but she didn't go into specifics. Lupe just stared off into space, not saying anything. Even though I never saw much of Arlita at work, I lied and told them what a joy it was to work with her. I didn't feel bad about that. This is probably one of those times when God allows you to lie. But then came the hard part.

"I can't tell you how horrible I feel about this," I told Anabel, choosing my words carefully. "In fact, I feel I owe you an apology, even though it's not enough."

She looked up at me with tired, bloodshot eyes. "What do you mean?" she said.

I wrote my home phone number and address on the back of one of my old business cards. "Give me a call tonight," I said as I handed it to her. "I'll explain everything. And listen, anything at all that you need, just let me know."

She seemed like a reasonable woman, even in this dark moment in her life. Such admirable strength. I don't know if I would be so rational if I ever lost Sydney (that's my daughter). Still, I felt it would be better for me to fill her in on the whole story over the phone.

Anabel called me at a little after eleven that night, and I told her just about everything I told you, only with a lot more tears. I was expecting an outpouring of rage and the threat of criminal penalties. Instead, she assured me it wasn't my fault. Of course, it wasn't the laxative that killed her daughter. It was the peanuts. The poor girl died from an allergic reaction to peanut oil. She had no idea what was in that salad; it just looked good to her, and she took it, even though she wasn't supposed to. It was just a freak accident, she said. Nothing I could have done to stop it. And you know what really floored me? She says, "Thank you for telling me this. I know it was difficult for you. I pray that it will help you find peace."

This, from a woman who has to bury her daughter for eating something most of us eat every day. She's worried about my peace!

I felt compelled to help pay for Arlita's funeral. It was the least I could do.



I wasn't expecting any visitors that Saturday night after the funeral, but when Lupe showed up at my door, I couldn't turn her away. I remember how she looked so dreary and kind of empty, like she never left the graveyard after the ceremony was over. She took her big sister's death the hardest, but I had no idea how hard.

"May I come in, Miss Hastings?" Her voice was so soft and polite, it felt like she had to ask permission to take a breath.

I said, "Of course, sweetheart," and I let her in, reminding her my door was open to her anytime, which it was. Lupe was a mature sixteen-year-old with supermodel features. She had beautiful eyes, but she never turned them toward me. I offered her a soda, but she declined; in fact, she didn't say much of anything while she was in my house. She just sat on the couch with that same far-off look on her face that she had when I saw her at the hospital with her mother, only there might have been a little bit of anger mixed in.

I kneeled down in front of her and put my hand on her shoulder, trying to get her to open up. "You can talk to me about anything," I said. She turned her head away from me and rubbed her clutch purse like a Buddha's belly.

"It's not right," she finally said.

I almost started to cry. Dealing with my own grief is much easier than dealing with someone else's.

Lupe stood up. A single tear streamed down her face. I stood up with her and hugged her, allowing my own tears to flow. She didn't embrace me back. Instead, she was fumbling around with her purse.

"It's not right!" she said again.

"I know, sweetheart. I know." It didn't bother me at the time that she wasn't sharing the hug. We barely knew each other, and she was a grieving teenager.

This time, she said it with a little more authority. "It's not right, what you did!"

I was jarred back to reality. Oh my God, she knows! Her mother told her! She doesn't understand.

I pulled away from her and caught a glimpse of what was in her hand.

It was a steak knife, and I had no time to react.

What followed was the worst pain I ever felt since I gave birth to Sydney, a pain that sent me crumpling to the floor and sucked the air right out of me. The bone-colored handle of the blade was sticking out from just under my left ribcage, and for a moment I mistook it for one of my own ribs. It all felt like a bad dream. Screaming for help was nearly impossible; so was trying to comprehend my disappointment. I didn't know what to say, and couldn't say it even if I did.

Lupe was standing over me with this terrified look on her face, like even she couldn't believe what she had done. Only now she felt she could do a little more, because she was pulling something else out of her purse. It was a small handgun.

The look on her face told me she could still be convinced not to shoot me, but just trying to speak was like pushing a broken-down car up a hill. I could only mouth the words, "Please don't," feeble as those words were. Maybe she could understand me, but her decision was already made. She aimed the trembling barrel at my head, and closed her eyes. I closed mine.

Boom. Everything went white, then black.

The rest gets a little fuzzy. I didn't remember most of this part until I was laying in a hospital bed.

I do remember waking up in a lukewarm, wet stain under my head on my living room carpet. My face felt...bloated. I couldn't move my jaw, or for that matter, close my mouth. I felt something dangling from my cheekbone. The knife was still lodged in my chest, and it still hurt like hell to breathe. For a few minutes I wasn't fully convinced that I was alive.

I noticed that Lupe wasn't standing over me anymore. Lupe. That poor, mixed-up girl. What could possibly make her want to take my life as payment for her sister's? I wonder what Arlita would say to her if she was standing right next to her at the moment she nearly butchered me. And what about Anabel? Does she even know what her daughter just did?

I tried to get up. Every little bit of movement caused pain, but I fought through it. I wanted to just pull the knife out, but decided the smart thing would be to keep that artery plugged if there is one severed. Using the arm of the sofa I managed to pull myself to my feet, despite some dizziness and a slight tingling in my left arm.

The screen door was open, and I heard something rustling in the backyard. Maybe I was a little disoriented at the time, but I thought it was the police or an ambulance, so I gingerly walked outside, hunched over like an old lady. The cool night air hit my face in a strange way.

Lupe was standing in what was going to be my tomato garden, using my shovel. There was already a pile of dirt about two feet high next to her. I couldn't see her face, but I could hear her sobbing. I was in too much pain to be shocked, but I was. Just a week earlier we were mourning together at Arlita's funeral, and now she wants to bury me in my own backyard? I wanted to slap her but I was too weak; besides, she'd probably finish the job. I started walking toward her.

She must have heard me, because she stopped shovelling for a moment and turned to face me. The expression on her face was like nothing I had ever seen on a human being before. Her eyes were the shape of half-dollars, and her jaw dropped wide open and bobbed up and down like an ventriloquist's dummy. No gasp, no scream, no hyperventilating; no sound whatsoever came from her. Every muscle in her arms tensed up, forcing her fingers into almost arthritic curls. She stood that way for what seemed like much longer than it actually was, then collapsed in a heap to the ground. Her jaw eventually stopped convulsing, but the look on her face never changed, that look of pure, abject terror that I had only read about in mystery novels. I'll never forget that face as long as I live.



I barely remember getting back in the house and calling 9-1-1, but apparently I did, because now I'm here at St. Luke's. Been here for about a week now. All my internal organs are intact, but it's going to take another surgery or two to repair my face. I'm probably going to look a lot different when it's all over, but that's okay. I'm ready for that.

Sydney came home to visit me yesterday. She calmed down just enough to run home and get my laptop computer, which I'm using to write all of this down. You know who else came by today? Anabel! Ours has to be the strangest friendship in the history of mankind. Why she would even speak to a woman who indirectly caused her firstborn daughter to be poisoned by peanuts and her second to die of a heart attack is beyond anything I can understand. But she's there for me, keeping me company. I may never come to grips with that level of compassion.

Maybe that's part of the learning process for me. I count my blessings everyday now. I'm beginning to understand that forgiveness is everything. Sometimes you just have to let things go.

So to the next person who steals my lunch: Go ahead, help yourself. I don't mind at all.