Live Better
Growing up, Walmart was restricted to newspaper headlines and redneck jokes, a haven for the impoverished and morbidly obese. The Southern girls at my summer camp were shocked at the fact I had never been inside one. Their eyes would grow into muddy pools of wonder, their eyebrows would shoot up to their hairlines, and as I explained their faces would harden into understanding. Ah, yes. An outsider. What was I doing there?
However, it was only summertime when I was a minority in my Walmart virginity. The other girls in my grade, raised by doctors and lawyers and politicians, girls with bedrooms lifted directly from Pottery Barn, girls with regular manicurists at age 11, would have a very different reaction than my summertime peers.
“Walmart? Uh, no, I’ve never been there,” hair flipped, eyes absorbing me from the top of my head to the soles of my shoes, hunting for any signs of a frequent Walmart shopper. They wouldn’t find any. The nearest Walmart was at least fifty miles away.
Enter college. Enter Iowa. There are 17,814 Walmarts in Iowa alone. When I need to go to Walmart, there are at least three within driving distance. No one here has ever asked if I have been to Walmart. There is no need. It’s like asking if I have ever been in a car. Sure, there are people who have never been in cars, but do they go to school in the middle of a cornfield? Sure, there are people who have never been to Walmart, but do they live in the United States?
My first time inside the store, my senses were assaulted. It was the largest store I had ever been to. It seemed to be its own world of cheesy crackers and tires and tampons and guns and flower pots and duvet covers. The florescent light turned my skin green, assimilating me to this strange society. Where the fuck was I? I was endlessly amused and incredibly horrified. I wandered the aisles, touching everything I could, though there was a lot of everything. I felt like a miniature, the shelves seemingly nearing the ceiling. I was astounded. I was hooked. I knew vaguely from being a concerned but somewhat disinterested citizen that Walmart was the serial killer of local businesses everywhere. But who could beat these prizes?
So when Hannah asked me to accompany her on an adventure there at four AM last week, how could I say no? First, because in a store of endless options, there was surely something I would find to need. And second, I could not possibly let a young woman go there alone at night. Though I found that many of my stereotypes of a Walmart shopper were unrealistic during the day, like a horror movie, the freaks come out at night. This trip would only support this theory.
Wandering the rows, trailing Hannah as she picked up this and that for her art project, the store was mostly empty. Those that were there were mostly grizzly old men, stocking shelves with canned peas and peaches, grumbling to themselves. There were so few people there that only one of the 20-some registers were open, the cashier a forty-something woman who looked more like sixty. Her eyes looked hallowed, covered in at least three layers of black eyeliner, and I avoided her gaze as she rang up the man in front of us, who seemed to be buying the whole store. I left Hannah there briefly as I ran to pick up grapes, a necessity I had not anticipated.
When I returned, Hannah looked horrified. She texted me as we stood next to each other. “That man just asked me about my butt. WHAT?” Here he was, the freak we had been waiting for. I took a closer look at the items he was buying, too scared to look up and meet his gaze. Dish towels, shoe laces, Pringles, a blue-ray copy of the Lion King, bins and buckets, lighters, five t-shirts, a case of crayons. The items that had already been scanned overflowed out of the plastic bags. He carelessly tossed several packs of gum on top of his immense pile. As we stepped as far away from him as possible, I observed him as subtly as possible.
His doughy skin layered his body in folds, hidden under a blue sweatshirt that had seen some rough times. He was sweating in streams, droplets pooling around his neck, though both of us were freezing. Behind smudged glasses, he looked at us and smiled, his teeth crooked like they were trying to move away from each other.
“Do you guys want me to pay for your stuff?” He asked. We immediately shook our heads, not wanting to know his price. He smiled again. “It’s okay, you know. I can afford it. I just won the lottery.”
“You what?” Hannah asked, no longer avoiding looking at him.
“I just won 32,000 dollars,” He said breathlessly. “Do you want me to pay for your stuff?”
“That’s okay,” I replied hurriedly. “We’re fine.”
He shrugged and paid for his items. When he left, the cashier’s eyes became muddy pools of wonder, her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. An outsider. She followed us to the door, worried that he might be out there, waiting for us. We thanked her profusely.
“He just spent over a thousand dollars at Walmart,” Hannah told me as we locked the car doors. “Why would anyone ever do that?”
I couldn’t answer. Suddenly, I was so far from home. We drove past shadowy cornfields and tractors, under the biggest sky I’d ever seen. It seemed to me that, despite its uniform layout and consistent low prices, Walmart, and Iowa, would never stop surprising me.
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