Red in the Hood by Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
Chapter One
Red happened to be her favorite color––warm and bold––so maybe it wasn’t such a surprise Tamara wore a red hooded jacket almost everywhere. Somehow, it went from being something to keep out the cold to a fashion statement and then became part of her identity. Red warred against the teams most everyone in the ‘hood followed, and opposed her former high school’s colors, green and white. It burned with the power of fire in the night and screamed rebellion. It whispered love with the romance of crimson roses and hinted at blood. Red suited Tamara, with her anger simmering just below boiling point. And everyone knew the girl in the red hood, even if they didn’t know her name.
Sometimes Tamara loved her jacket, but just as often she hated it. She’d hang it over the worn lamp in her tiny bedroom in the little house where she’d been raised and still lived. Sometimes while AC/DC played on the stereo, the rough and rugged sound cutting through the night like a heartbeat, Tamara’d think how life might have been if she’d been born in a different neighborhood or another city. If she could’ve been a rich girl, if she’d owned red satin dresses, crimson silks, real ruby jewelry and a red fox fur that wasn’t faux. If her life turned out one of wealth and privilege, she might not be angry or on edge. As someone else, she probably would’ve opted for college and a career instead of just a job at the supermarket. Another woman might’ve kept a significant other, or at least a lover, and wouldn’t be so lonely.
All day long, five and often six days a week she stood in her worn Nikes at the checkout stand, ringing up groceries with a pasted-on smile and a routine learned by rote. “Hi,” she’d say to each customer in the same false voice, “How are you today? Did you find everything all right?” She never bothered to listen to their answers, not knowing or caring if they said fine, terrible, dead or alive. Tamara didn’t give a damn if they found their Cheerios on aisle five or the red beans on aisle seven or the powdered drink mix advertised in the weekly sale circular.
Once she’d passed everything across the scanner, keyed in any produce, and totaled it all, she would give them the amount, take their plastic, check, or cash and hand over the receipt with the falsely cheerful, “Thank you and have a nice day.”
Most of them wouldn’t and probably never would. In her neighborhood, a tired old section just a notch or two above outright ghetto, she waited on tired single mothers with dark circles beneath both eyes from working two jobs, accepted food stamps from senior citizens who couldn’t afford their medicine and wheezed in her face, winos buying the next bottle to keep reality away, and kids who scrapped together pennies to buy peanut butter. Tamara endured each shift and walked away from it, uncaring and if it hadn’t been for the red jacket with the hood, she might just have blended into the gray crowds as another face from the neighborhood.
As she exited the store late on Saturday night, she passed a skinny young mother fastening a baby into a car seat stuck into the back seat of another old clunker. Tamara wouldn’t have given her a second glance except the girl glanced up and said, “Tamara! Long time no see.”
“Hey,” Tamara said, bored and almost indifferent. “How’s it going, Blondie?”
Blondie, legal name Brenda Blevins, used to be her playmate. Their Barbie dolls outdid each other with glamorous outfits and soon stepped out with Ken, making a ménage before either girl even understood what it was. In high school they’d been locker partners, and sometimes besties, but after Blondie dropped out junior year, they drifted apart. Now with high school in the rear view mirror, Tamara hadn’t thought about either her old friend or the dreams she once harbored until now.
“Oh, it goes,” Blondie, nicknamed for the home hair-coloring job she’d done in the eighth grade, said. “It’s just me and the kid now. Matthew took off again, this time for good.”
“I’m sorry,” Tamara said, even though she wasn’t. Matthew, the presumed baby daddy for the drooling infant in the car seat, was a total jerk. “What’s your kid’s name?”
“Marilyn,” Blondie said with a dreamy grin. “You know, for Marilyn Monroe. My idol.”