In Providence: The Cashier

“At 3am every night, this guy comes in and asks me how I’m doing. He’s this older guy and I tell him he needs to be home, but he says there’s nobody out at that time, and he’s going stir crazy. I don’t bother yelling at him anymore, because I feel bad for him. I think he’s just lonely. Last week, I gave him my number and told him if he needs to talk, he can call me. My manager saw me do it. All these things I would have gotten into trouble for, but now it’s like– Why not? This woman got fresh with the guy who works during the day and the manager said to me, ‘He snapped right back at her,’ and I said, ‘Did you write him up?’ and he goes, ‘Nah, she was out of line,’ but that wouldn’t have mattered before, but now– I don’t snap at people, still. I try to be nice. Everybody’s having a hard time.”

She works third shift at an all-night pharmacy. One of the few remaining places where you can still pretend there are parts of Providence that are leaving the light on for you.

“We have repeat customers still. There are people who used to come in just to bother me or whoever was working, but now if I don’t see them, I get nervous, because I worry something happened to them. I’ve worked here for years, and I’ve seen it all, but this is tripping me out. You get people coming in with these masks on, and I have mine on, and there’s no way to be friendly because you’ve got this thing between the two of you. I like to be friendly. Some people can be mean to you, but I grew up in the church, and I grew up being nice to people, so I try to be nice. Now it’s hard to do that, but I still try as best I can. I might be the only person somebody sees all day, so I really do want to be nice, but I yell at people if they’re not doing the right thing, because we all gotta be in this together, or there’s no point to it, right?”

Her two kids are home from college, and her husband has been laid off from his job, so she’s the only one venturing out to work. I ask her if she can feel a difference in the city even at a time when most people are asleep.

“There’s quiet and then there’s hurricane weather. Storm weather. I usually like that. When I’m on my way in– I’ve worked during hurricanes and blizzards and all kinds of things before, and it’s nice sometimes, because there’s a calm, you know? This isn’t calm, though. This is very, very tense. It’s a tension. I used to have another job besides this one working with kids who were troubled, and you felt that in those kids. You felt the tension before they’d jump up and come at you. They were good kids; it wasn’t that they wanted to hurt you. But they felt the tension and they were trying to do something about it. That’s why you have to be careful when it gets like this. People who are feeling this are going to want to do something to make it stop. That’s the only reason I get scared thinking about it. I’m not scared to get sick, because I’m doing all I can and I can’t do any more, so if I get sick, I know I did my best not to. What else can I do?”

I ask her what people bring up to the counter when they come in after midnight. Has she noticed a change in the kinds of things they’re buying?

“You can tell a lot of them are coming in just to come in, because they come in, and they put down candy, some gum, a soda. Just little things. Before we had to do the masks, they wanted to talk, and I’d talk to them. See how they were doing. It’s harder to do that now, and sometimes, they don’t even buy anything. They walk in, walk around the store. We used to think that meant they were going to shoplift something, but now I know they’re just looking for somewhere to go, and where can they go? It’s late at night, but that’s when some people are up, and there’s nowhere to go. One woman told me she used to sit in the casino at night, because she couldn’t sleep, and it was a place she could go and walk around. She can’t do that anymore. This is it.”

And has she spoken to that old man recently?

“He calls me every day now, and he doesn’t come in at night. That’s good. That makes me happy. I got a new friend out of this. Isn’t that funny? My father died years ago, back in El Salvador, so now when I talk to this man, it’s like I’m talking to my dad, because he was stubborn too, like this man is. I tell him, ‘You can call me whenever you want, just as long as you promise to stay home,’ and he tells me that’s what he’s doing. He was trapped at home, you know, and he thought nobody was out there. That’s scary for somebody like him, all alone. He just needed to know somebody was still there.”

Like many of her regulars, I’m a night owl. It’s when I write, when I reflect, and when I really start to feel the weight of reality set in. These days, the weight is heavier, but the remedies are fewer.

“I got to get to work, but you take care now. Don’t you worry about me. I’m being very, very careful and my manager says I’m tough. You like that? I’m tough.”

Sometimes I’ll drive a few minutes down the road to my nearest pharmacy and sit in the parking lot, not wanting to go in and put anybody at risk, but needing to know some parts of the world are still functioning as best they can.

“Call me anytime you want. I’m going to get so many phone calls from people when this comes out, but I don’t mind. I like talking to people. It’s how you make each other feel better. You just say ‘I’m still out here for you.’ That makes a difference. To know somebody’s still up to answer when you call.”

Sometimes it’s enough just to see the light on.