a work in progress

when i was young i used to eat doritos in hopes of meeting cher. needing her afternoon fix of cheap cigarettes and even cheaper coffee, my mother would drive me to the 7-11 in town after school daily. i'd wait impatiently in our champagne mini-van affectionately named "sandy" when she ran into the store, promising with thin lips that it would take "just a minute." sinking into the stale spring heat that had been trapped in the car i'd watch as dusty-jeaned contractors hopped out of their trucks, the engines still puffing dry exhaust, and brush past the pack of too-cool 8th graders and their heaped bikes under the "NO LOITERING" sign. my seersucker shorts sewed by my grandmother felt uncomfortably warm upon the soft cloth of the seat and the coloring book on the floor,wet from a forgotten soda spill, made my head fuzzy with a sweet ache. i'd eagerly leave my backseat straight-jacket and peer between the metal poles that held the driver's seat headrest, watching my mother and the other carb-craving suburbanites skip through the store like Candyland game pieces. bypassing the gleaming slurpee machine, ignoring the frosty cases of Ben & Jerry's Half-Baked pints, and stopping, momentarily, to glance at the fruit salad display, my mother would sweep into the savory mecca of childhood treats: the chip aisle. unable to see what she had selected from the rainbow of plastic packaging, I'd crawl back into my designated seat, buckling the belt before she could notice my smooth escape. equipped with her vices, she'd wave a sharp goodbye to the pakistani counter-men, relishing in the glow of small-town popularity and unscrew the sealed door of our jelly-jarred car, tossing a light 99 cent bag of nacho cheese satisfaction onto my lap. My slouched knees and crumbled spine would spring upright as hunger spelled "snack" into the lining of my stomach. defying the road rules we had set as a family a year earlier when Sandy didn't have a Snapple stain on her roof's upholstery, mom lit a fresh tobacco stick and i peeled apart the bag.