Heads of the Colored People(42)
With some of the ruder students, however, Marjorie practiced what she called retributive finance, smiling her way through their transactions, following the four-step process for de-escalation, and then making certain errors after the students left, to pay them back for bad attitudes or terse conversation. She instinctively felt both guilty and justified for doing this. Her supervisor questioned her once about one of these “errors,” and from then on Marjorie staggered her payback just enough to continue undetected. But she felt worse, over time, for making these vindictive adjustments rather than waiting on divine retribution. Her conscience was quicker now to ping her with a twinge of guilt than ever before. Marjorie, for instance, would never hook up with Charles or any married man now. She took this and all the twinges as signs of her continued sanctification, because as Pastor Bevis said, “You get saved once, and that’s forever, but sanctification—becoming holy, living right day by day—that’s a process, and we’re all in that process.” Marjorie’s process for getting over Charles involved a lot of prayer and digging her nails into her own arms.
The monitor announced Marjorie’s turn to approach the fingerprinting line, and she stood up. There were fourteen people ahead of her now, and it was just her burden to be called into the line of the lady who was making small talk with each customer, holding everyone up. Yes, Marjorie could understand why people went postal. She didn’t condone it, but she could understand the man’s fit as he stormed out of the DMV, could understand the desire to bring pennies, even respond violently—not that she would. But she understood the impulse.
Marjorie moved up in the line. It was shrinking much more quickly than she expected, but the anticipation of having to wait in two additional lines after this one dulled her contentment. She had already run through WAIT twice in her mind on the way to the DMV. Now that she had been there for over an hour, she did not feel like practicing her skills. And it still bothered her, the way Jessica had gotten off the phone so quickly this morning. Marjorie couldn’t understand the difficulties in all her relationships; with Coryn, yes, but why was Jessica also pulling away? On the day she suggested therapy, Jessica had said something like, “You don’t want to grow old alone, do you, Marjorie?” Yes, her circle had shrunk, but it had never been large to begin with. As Mother Lydia said, whom did Marjorie have besides her sisters, who hated her? Where exactly was the Lord taking Marjorie, and was it somewhere so grand that it really couldn’t accommodate any lasting love? Or was she, as Jessica thought, the problem? Was she really that volatile, Mother-Lydia-volatile?
And how could Marjorie tell her therapist not only of her affair, but also that it was not she, who, in holy wisdom, broke up with Charles, but he who rejected her, choosing Coryn over Marjorie once Coryn confronted him about the years-long relationship? Charles’s rejection only solidified Marjorie’s fear that there was something broken and ugly in her and irreparably so.
Maybe part of the reason Marjorie couldn’t fully receive grace was that she didn’t find the concept altogether fair. Why shouldn’t some people be paid worse for their sins than others? Wasn’t a child abuser much less forgivable than, say, a jaywalker or an adulteress? If sin was sin, why did Coryn, who also had an affair of her own and who stole from Mother Lydia and was promiscuous in every way, have so many of the things Marjorie wanted while Marjorie had so little to show for her thirty-seven years on earth and her thirty-three years of sanctification? Why did people like Coryn and Jessica—and even Latrice, who was born of the same biological mother and into the same circumstances—have it all, the marriages, the careers, the families, while Marjorie only got to be the cleanup woman with the burn marks? Yes, she was angry. Why shouldn’t she be? And in the line, the weight of all this started to overwhelm her. She might at any moment faint or cry uncontrollably.
Marjorie stood at the front of the line now. The attendant, a brunette woman, smiled into Marjorie’s face, the white collar of her shirt crisp and fragrant with fabric softener. Her nameplate said KELLY. She was downright perky, and this additional irritant Marjorie could not tolerate.
“Here to get fingerprinted, ma’am?” Kelly smiled. “I’ll take that,” she said, reaching for Marjorie’s form. “The weather’s supposed to be nicer tomorrow.” She wore a purple glove on one hand. She grabbed Marjorie’s thumb, manipulated it, and dipped it into the ink and onto the paper.
“I’d like to speak to a manager,” Marjorie said as Kelly pressed her forefingers down.
Kelly smiled, confused, then noting Marjorie’s facial expression, said, “Come again?”
“Your manager,” Marjorie repeated. “I’d like to talk to a manager about the service in this place.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, ma’am. I can get a manager,” Kelly said. “Can you tell me what the issue is so I can relay it accurately?”
It was as though she were reading from a script or an acronym on customer-conflict resolution, and that made Marjorie angrier. Kelly should speak to her like a real person, not a hypothetical scenario from a training manual. If anyone knew and understood these tactics, Marjorie did.
“I just said: the service,” Marjorie raised her voice and looked behind her at the others in line for their corroboration, but no one would meet her eyes. She turned back to Kelly, lifted her hands in exasperation, and waited, watched her feelings, acknowledged her anger and sadness, imagined her options, noted the black ink all over her fingers, the many ways her heart and hands were still dirty, her sanctification stagnated, her plan to keep calm today thwarted, how her friends and even Charles were justified in their departures, the sad account she would give before the Lord.