Imelda

In the summer of 2000, I worked at a now defunct health food store on the Upper West Side. Both places- health food stores and the Upper West Side- are typically full of lunatics. But this store occupied a unique corner in the space-time continuum in that the staff, customers and upper management all seemed afflicted with a particular kind of insanity that was probably responsible for the place shutting down... in spite of no competition and a growing consumer awareness about and willingness to buy organic foods, even among the intractable and irascible population of pot-head Jewish intelligencia that formerly occupied the prewar buildings and put Zabar's on the map.

I was staying with my mother and stepfather a few blocks from the store while I looked for apartments in Brooklyn, and I paid my way by bringing home deli leftovers and stories of the people I encountered on a daily basis. My favorite was Imelda.

Imelda is one of those tiny old people who, no matter what the weather is, she is wearing a black shearling coat with a round collar and faceted, shiny black buttons. Her lipstick merely serves to highlight that she, at one point, did have lips on her face, and she has gamely tried to trace a path to them, but, alas, they have once again eluded her. Her eyes are a bleary mish mash of ancient mascara and eyeliner. She moves between looking terrifying, comical, sad and more than a little dashing. Imelda had clearly once been a lovely young woman, fashionable, desirable and hilarious. She reminded me of a Yiddische speaking Phyllis Diller. Without breasts.

Imelda shuffles in, her overcoat stinking and worn, with a shopping cart filled with the empty bags of other markets in the neighborhood. She walks with a cane that does not match her style- such as it is. It is heavy wood, the kind that typically accompanies old men wearing those abbreviated fedoras they've had since they came from the old country. Imelda, small, frail and hunched, can barely seem to lift such a cane, and really, she doesn't use it for support, she just sort of drags it along behind her.

When she comes into the store she sorts through her bags as though looking for something, but what she is doing is unpacking them, arranging them into neat rows. This done, she looks around furtively, as if no one has seen her, though everyone has seen her. Then Imelda starts to stroll through the aisles, picking up various packages and boxes, bottles and jars. Some she returns to the shelf, but most go surprisingly swiftly into one of the many open bags in the cart. She looks out of the corners of her eyes, sometimes slyly, sometimes with a look of glee, feeling she has got away with a wonderful crime. It completely escapes her that not just the employees, but many of the customers are staring at her slack-jawed. Suddenly, as if she has just realized where she is and what she is doing, she snaps to.

"Vare ees he? Vare is my boyfrent? RRRRaphael!!! Vare is RRRaphael!!" She is waving her cane high above her head and shouting with glee. "You kennot hide frem me!!! Vare are you my disgusting Latin lover?" Raphael is the fat, sweaty, mustachioed store manager. He is Mexican, swarthy Mexican, but somehow, shockingly, he speaks Yiddische. (I love this town.) Raphael made the mistake, years ago, of talking to Imelda in Yiddische, and now she is in violent, angry, evil love with him. This is Imelda at her brassiest broadiest. This woman does not take no for an answer. She comes at Raphael with all the subtlety of Mae West drunk on tequila and wielding a rocket launcher.

"MY LOINS IS BURNING! I HEV NOT BEEN LAID SINCE 1943!! Come to momma!!!"

Raphael, for his part, is hiding behind a stack of Garden of Eatin' boxes. He is sweating even more than usual, and though he's smiling, there are tears at the corners of his eyes. He is muttering, and I'm pretty sure he's praying.

"YOU FUCKING SPIC!!! I'm going to find you and give such a beatink! Hiding from an old lady! Who would do such a think? Bastart!!" Imelda is tearing around the store searching behind counters, cursing in customers faces, laughing and shrieking like a harpy. She stops in front of me. "I know you are hidink him. You are all against me. Afraid I will steal you boyfrient. Look out! I vill find heem and rip that disgustink mustache from that rrrrotten punim." She looks in the deli case. "I'll take a haf pount of salmon." I shudder and measure it out for her. "Gif me extra onions. And the lemon. Ach! Add it after you weigh, dummy!" I glare at her. "Fish is good for you, yes? You are a skinny, pretty girl. You eat lots of this fish, yes?"

"No." I say. "I'm vegan."

"So nu? You can't eat fish? This is not meat. It's good for you, yes?" I tell her it is not: she'll get mercury poisoning and go crazy. She looks aghast. I tell her it will give her bad breath. She stares at me steadily. I tell her it's disgusting, it's dead. She says nothing until I print out the price tag and then she says "Give me a little more."

"Okay, but it'll cost more." I say.

She says "NO! Just give me a little more!"

"No."

"What is this? I'm an old lady. I'm starving. I need to preserve my strength."

"Okay. But you have to pay for it."

"NO!NO! No. Iss fine. Just gif me that. Stingy!" She puts it into one of the open bags and ties the top shut. "I bought it somewhere else," she says, and looks at me with a broad wink. "It comes from the Key Food." She pauses. "Our secret, yes?"

I shrug. I don't really care if the old lady steals the fish. Or anything else for that matter.

But this is too much for Raphael. He leaps out from behind his boxes of corn chips and screams "BITCH!"

"AHA!" Imelda is nearly apoplectic with joy. He took the bait.

"THIEF!!!" He hollers.

"You love Imelda!" She shouts and throws her arms around his neck, which is as thick as my thigh, and smears her lips across his jowly cheeks.

"GET off me you old bag!" He pries her claws from his shoulders and literally runs away. And Imelda, god bless her, waves her cane, lets out a whoop and gives chase. They pass through aisles, hollering, cursing, alternately kidding with and hating each other in Spanish, Yiddische and English.

Finally, Raphael stops, clutching his chest and wheezing. He turns to face Imelda who suddenly looks like a chastened child.

"GET OUT!!" He shouts at her.

She juts out her chin, and retrieves her shopping cart, full of hundreds of dollars of unpaid for groceries in the bags from other stores. She tries to walk past Raphael, but as she heads for the door, he siezes the cart, and she nearly loses her balance from the force.

"Vat is this?"

"Get the fuck out of here, what kind of idiot do you take me for?"

"The fat kind!"

"Hag!"

"I bought these foods at Fairway! I would not buy any of your drek!"

"No, you would steal it!" She smiles. "Why do you come here? For the view? To torment me?" Amazingly, Raphael seems genuinely unsure. He might actually be convincing himself that she did buy all those groceries at other stores, even though he watched, saw with his own eyes, as everyone else did, that she had plainly stolen this food here, at this store. And she had far more food than one person could hope to finish in a month. And god knows, she came in twice, sometimes three times, a WEEK!

In the end, it always ends the same way. She pays for two apples. That's it. Two apples, and these she complains are overpriced, but for Raphael, her poor tubby boyfriend, she will pay these unspeakable prices.