I had been working in the grocery business for about ten years before the clientele started to take on a tan. At first you got the good churchgoing people. Then, after a couple years the high rollers started to show up with their gold grille, their knot rolls of money and their white girlfriend hanging on their arm.

Then, before too much time goes by, you get the ghetto-ass hoodrat bitches, cussing out their old man at the register, slapping the shit out of their kids—the kids, seeing the babies get slapped and cussed at and the toddlers get punched, the little kids kicked under foot like a dog, it just wears you down.

But little did I know, I hadn’t seen the worst these heathens can do. It wasn’t until I got the job in Hamilton at the ghetto grocer that I worked in a store where they’d routinely call you a white bitch and threaten to beat your ass for not giving them something for free that they didn’t want to pay for.

My Grandmommy would ‘ave been proud of me standing up to those Heathen coons like she did. I think that’s where I got it from. They can take that race card and stick it where the sun don’t shine. I’m a broke-ass bitch making ten dollars an hour slaving away on the register, lifting up their twenty-four pound cases of chicken wings, their ten 3-liter grape sodie pops…none of which they pay for.

This one day, it was summertime, this queen rolls up in her nice big car, probably bought for her by her “manz” while her groceries were paid for by Uncle Sam.

I was standing under the overhang, leaning against the wall, between the newspaper box and the carts, trying to keep the weight off my feet. It’s not easy getting a rest on your break when some fat, non-working fucks are sitting on the bench!

People suck.

So, this woman is waiting to turn into the lot. The widows are all down. He had a blue shirt on, was about three years old—cute little thing with big eyes. The little boy says, “Mamma, are we to da sto yet?”

That bitch went OFFS!

She turns around screaming, “Muvafucca, I told you not to pluck my muvafucin nerves, BITCH!”

Can you believe that, calling your baby boy a bitch?

Not only does she cuss him up down and around, but she turns in her seat and punches him in the face!

I about jumped out of my skin—I wanted to kill that bitch!

Then you have to remind yourself that it’s none of your business, that they can’t do anything wrong, that even if they kill that child it’s my fault for being white.

The kid starts crying, crying so bad he’s chocking while she starts it up and then she jerks it to a stop and turns on him like a banshee and screams, “Muvafuca, I WILL DO IT! Don’t push me muvafuca—I WILL!

You could see the pain in his eyes, but the little guy sucked it up, choked it down. When she turned into the lot he was still shaking with the effort not to cry, but he did it.

I finished that stogie and headed inside and who did I run into, but that heathen, hood bitch, pushing her car through the door with that baby in it like it was a battering ram.

I was kind of proud of the little guy, how he sucked it up and held in the tears. But I still see his face sometimes when I’m puttin’ my little pumpkin down for her nap. That little boy sat like a stone, afraid to sniffle, the whole time that brutal bitch pushed him around the store and threw groceries she didn’ have to pay for into it… little runners of snot on his lip, tears in his eyes, afraid to do anything but look straight ahead…and nobody gives a fuck.

I’ll never work in one of those hell holes again and don’t ever let bitch one of them tell me it’s my fought that the city they drove me out of is falling down around their ears.

-Megan