Gerdy

Medicine in wrinkles

I go to the grocery store across the street from my home because I like to look at the face of the old cashier lady. This fascination isn’t fetishistic or malignant in some way, I just find so much depth inside of it and inside myself whenever I’m looking at it that I’m drawn back to it for no other reason than simply to look.

If I’m having a tough day, I’ll go look at the face. If I’m struggling with something, I’ll go look at the face. Medicine comes in many many forms in this life, including the shapes and energies carried in peoples faces.

On trips like these, I typically don’t need anything from the store, but in order to actually get close and feel it’s true potency, I get a pack of mints or a protein bar or an apple, something small, something just to get me near it in the hopes that I notice some new small wrinkle.

Her name is Gerdy. It’s written on her name tag. I’ve been in her line more than a hundred times at this point, probably, and have never said anything beyond the usual ‘how are you’s’ and ‘good’s’ and ‘yes I found everything’s’ that are exchanged as conventional checkout parlance. She doesn’t know I come here for her. I’d like to keep it that way. I also don’t want to know more about her. I don’t care, but as I’m there in line, I found myself on the street following Gerdy by foot to her home. I didn’t want her to see me and I didn’t have malicious intent, I just wanted to see where she lived. Deeper medicine, maybe. She arrived at a small apartment building just a few blocks away from the store and entered the first apartment on the first floor. I waited for the interior light to turn on, and when it did the warm glow contrasted perfectly with the cool blue of the end of day. I could practically smell her apartment from all the way across the street. It was old and lived in and charming.

She entered the frame of the window and seemed to be scooping something into something else that was sitting on the counter. She bent down and only then did I see the bushy tail of a dog wag along the bottom of the sill, and then she turned to the window and saw me, and neither of us flinched, we just held our gaze into each other’s eyes, I think pretending on both sides that neither of us was looking at the other, and just when it started to feel a little too long, she took my mints and swiped them along the scanner.

The wrinkles of her eyes webbed out like many little smiles, held inside the plump goodness of her upper cheek fat.