Olive Branches Don't Grow on Trees by Grace Mattioli Page B

Portland with her friend,
Emily.  They were talking about something more meaningful to her than
gummy bears and blue whales.  She then saw herself riding her bike in the
rain and going out to eat burritos with her new boyfriend.  And of course,
he was the one .  She had
searched high and low, but she had finally found the one .  She then imagined herself at whatever job she
could find there, and this is where the fantasy became most vague and even
somewhat disturbing.  She saw herself working in a mall job just like this
one, and all of a sudden, James’s speech became more clear and pronounced.
 It was actually a good time for her fantasy to go sour, as he was talking
about the process for ordering.
    “Orders
are made every week,” he said. “They’re called into our main office in the
city.”
    He showed her the
process for ordering, and then it was about time for the store to open to the
public.  He turned on the store’s fluorescent lights that made the candy
shine so brightly that Silvia’s eyes burnt for a quick second.  Children
were waiting anxiously at the doors, accompanied by their tired looking mothers
seeking to appease their little ones with candy so that they could proceed with
a day of shopping.  Silvia had not had any experience with children, so
they may as well have been really short aliens from other planets.  She
had never baby-sat, and because she and Angie had seen so little of each other
in the past couple of years, she barely had an opportunity to hold her little toddler
niece, Isabella, in her arms.
    A
small Asian girl with pig tails and overalls ran towards the coke bottle candy
canister, opened the lid, and took out a piece of candy right as her mother
came over to reprimand her.  The mother then looked at Silvia and
apologized for her daughter’s misbehavior.  Silvia was not used to being
apologized to.  Usually she was the one apologizing to someone for
something.  It felt good to be on the right side of the fence.  She
then felt a little tug on her shirt and looked down to see a little boy, with
dark hair and big-rimmed glasses, who wanted to ask her something.  It
felt good to be bigger than someone for once.
    “Hey
lady,” he said, his little face looking up at her, eyes like saucers, “can you
get me a lemon slice?”
    “ A lemon slice please ,”
corrected his mother, who was standing behind him.
    “Oh,
yeah, please,” said the little boy.
    “Sure
honey,” she said realizing that James had forgotten to show her how to open the
candy case where the fruit slices lived.  He gladly showed her how to open
the case and demonstrated how the fruit slices should be properly taken out
with tongs and placed in the tiny paper bags used for candy from the case.
 He was business-like and efficient, but also had a
sweetness about him.  Silvia figured he had to be sweet to work in
the candy business.
    The
morning flew by, and before she knew it, it was lunch-time.  She forgot to
bring her lunch, so she went down to the food court and bought the only thing
that she could afford-- a bowl of rice at the Chinese restaurant stand.
 After lunch, she went right back to the candy store without the usual
dread she felt when returning to other jobs after a break.  She thought it
might be because she was working with a completely new group of people.
 Her lack of familiarity with children did not make her
uncomfortable.  Rather, she was interested to learn about them, and when
she saw them entering the store with fresh curious faces, her own curiosity
about them increased.  To her great surprise, she was only slightly
irritated by the whiners.  Mostly, she found the children’s spontaneity
and their lack of conformity to social customs refreshing.  They were free
in their own simple way.  Silvia attributed their ability to be free to the
fact that they were too young to care how others perceived them.  As she
peered around the store, with kids running wild and bright candy