Meera Klein clutched the cigarette package in her hand. It’d been twenty-six hours since her last cigarette. She was halfway across the grocery store parking lot on the way to buy nicotine gum. Beneath her, heat from the asphalt seeped through the soles of her sneakers. The parking lot sizzled, the sun was on fire, the air smoldered. Everything was burning except the last cigarette in the package.
The package’s sharp corners prodded Meera’s hand, and phantom menthol-smoke kissed her tongue. Her fingers twitched. She squared her shoulders, shoved the package into her purse, then gripped her cell phone instead.
At the shopping-cart return, bees circled a trashcan and darted in and out of its gaping mouth. She gave the can a wide berth and said a quick prayer for the employee who had to empty it.
If she didn’t stop smoking this time, Wayne wouldn’t let her see her precious granddaughter, Katy-Meera. Mama, your smoke gets in your clothes and hair. Even if you don’t smoke around Katy-M, she’s still breathing it.
Outside the sliding glass doors of the store, she paused at the sand-filled urn. There, people snuffed out cigarettes before entering the store. Someone with orangey lipstick had left half a cigarette.
A half!
And it was still burning.
Smoke rose in lithesome columns and caressed her nose. Sweet, a hint of fennel, and woodsy, like chewing on a licorice stick while sitting around a campfire.
A Pall Mall, then.
She snatched it up, holding it between the end of her first two fingers the way her high-school boyfriend, Jonah, had taught her years ago.
So you can curl your other fingers out of the way when it gets real short, see?
So that she wouldn’t get burned. She saw, she nodded.
By their senior year, Jonah had dropped out of school and disappeared, leaving her with nothing but a soiled reputation and a raging cigarette addiction.
A buxom woman with a little boy in tow exited the store. The woman’s gaze flicked from Meera to the half-burned cigarette in her hand.
“No one stopped me when I was young,” Meera said to the woman. With a nod to the boy, she added, “Don’t let him get hooked.”
The woman grabbed the boy’s hand and steered him away.
A glob of chewing gum lay atop the sand in the urn. Next to it were a used napkin and a pool of … Meera squinted down at the urn. It looked like sputum from a person with a nasty cold.
Recoiling, she dropped the cigarette with someone else’s lipstick onto the concrete, then stomped on it. She kept stomping until it was no more than tobacco flecks and shreds of rolling paper that once held them.
Out of breath, she scurried inside. The cool air smacked her in the face, and for a second, her craving evaporated. It flooded back when she turned toward the ten-items-or-less checkout stand. Behind the cashier stood a display shelf with rows of cigarette packages in tempting teal, bewitching black, seductive scarlet … shiny cellophane packages, glinting under the store’s fluorescent lights. At the far end of the cigarette display, a locked, glass cabinet kept the nicotine gum safe.
She opened her mouth to ask the cashier for some gum, but no words came out. The cigarette packages were more beautiful than gemstones lined up in a jeweler’s case. Meera reached into her purse and fingered her almost-empty package.
“May I help you?” the ten-items-or-less cashier said. She was Meera’s age but with silver-streaked hair that still shined and skin that still glowed around her faint crow’s feet. The cashier stepped to the side, allowing Meera an unobstructed view of the cigarette display.
Maybe just one more package of cigarettes before she quit.
“No!” Meera backed away from the cashier’s stand. She plucked the rubber band on her wrist, but the thin rubber broke before it delivered its pain-deterrence.
To the left was the cereal aisle with its fruity, sweet smells. She fled to its refuge.
At the far end of the aisle, an older man with gaunt shoulders and pale-gray skin shuffled behind his shopping cart. His lips were parted, and even from a distance, she could see his stained teeth. A smoker.
I’ll look like that in ten years if I don’t quit.
She didn’t care. Once again she reached for her remaining cigarette but stopped herself. It was illegal to light up in the store.
The last time she tried to quit, she sucked on hard candies to manage cravings, but the only thing she got was a cavity and a sickening thrust to the stomach when she choked on a jawbreaker at church and a beast of a deacon wrapped his arms around her in the Heimlich maneuver.
She drew closer to the old man and his shopping cart. The breast pocket of his pearl-snap shirt had the bulging outline of a cigarette package. His breath whistled in and out of his open mouth. She paused next to his cart. Leaning even closer, she closed her eyes and inhaled the smoke attached to his body.
A large hand to her chest shoved her backwards. Her eyes snapped open, and she wheeled her arms until her balance returned.
“What are ya, some kind of freak?” The old man lowered his hand and sneered, revealing his brown teeth and inflamed gums.
“Sorry, I just needed …” She reached across his cart, grabbing a box of instant oatmeal and scurried to the bread aisle.
What am I doing? I hate oatmeal. Lord, I don’t want to be like this. I do care. Help me. Her shoulders relaxed.
She stopped in front of the hamburger buns. Katy-M loved hamburgers. Meera could imagine her granddaughter asking why Grammie’s teeth were brown. “Or why I’m so noisy when I breathe,” she said to the buns.
When Meera spoke, a teenager at the rye breads looked up from her phone and cocked her head.
Meera spun about and headed back to the ten-items-or-less checkout. The cashier was gone, and Meera could have sworn the cigarette packages were singing. A soft melody. Hypnotizing. As if evil little fairies danced among the cigarettes, calling to her, tempting her.
She dropped her oatmeal and dashed out the door.
A slim figure in a green hoodie, black sweats, and worn sneakers crouched at the sand-filled urn. Meera couldn’t tell if it was male or female. She circled the urn to get a better look at the person’s face.
It was a boy about thirteen, and he was digging through the sand. Meera gasped. He was so young to be addicted to cigarettes. He was also sweating in the heat. The hoodie was too small, even for his slim frame. Inappropriate, poor fitting clothes … he must be from the emergency shelter up the street.
Embarrassed for the child, Meera turned away and walked toward her car.
Jonah had been slim like that. Whatever happened to Jonah? Where was he now?
She fingered her cigarette package with its precious, last cigarette. She slowed. She should give it to the boy, ease his pain.
No, she’d just frighten the kid. She made a beeline for her car.
And stopped.
She looked over her shoulder. He was still crouched by the urn. Meera turned around and headed in his direction.
“Hey,” she said when she got there.
He pushed his hood back and looked up, squinting into the sun, and she shifted so he could see her better.
“I was wondering if you’d like …” She gazed into his coffee-brown eyes. So much like Katy-M’s. And he had a mop of not-straight, not-curly hair like Katy-M did.
“If I’d like wha’?” the boy said, his voice dull.
“Um.” Meera cleared her throat. “If you’d like me to pray for you.”
He turned his coffee-brown eyes away.
A gust of wind pushed a crumpled receipt past them on the sidewalk. From somewhere in the parking lot came the squeal of happy children.
He nodded.
Meera had never prayed for a stranger before. She dropped to her knees on the concrete, suppressing a groan as her arthritic joints complained. The youth’s body odor assaulted her nose.
“Dear God.” Meera’s voice cracked. She placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and began again. “Dear God, may this precious–” No, not child. A teen boy wouldn’t like that. “May this precious young man find relief, comfort, belonging, or whatever it is he’s looking for in You rather than smoking.” People were staring at them, she was sure. “May he seek You instead of his next cigarette.” She was making a spectacle of herself. “May he cling to You instead of tobacco.” This was a stupid idea. But then her brain flooded with images of Katy-M, of Jonah and the way he curled his third and fourth fingers out of the way, of the old man and his brown teeth. She swallowed away the images and the stabbing pain in her knees. “Help him, oh Lord. Just help him.” Her heart thumped so hard she was sure the boy could hear it. “Please help him. Amen.”
She used the boy’s shoulder more than she should have to push herself upright, but he didn’t complain. His eyes were full of tears. He stood and swiped his sleeve across his face before bolting into the store.
“Thanks,” he said as he disappeared.
Meera turned and headed toward her car. Pausing at the shopping-cart return, she dropped her last cigarette and its slick package into the trashcan and hurried away from the bees.
Priscilla Bettis is an avid reader and a joyful writer. She is a former secular horror author who is working on her first literary Christian novel. Priscilla reviews Christian fiction at thewellreadfish.com and chats about life at https://twitter.com/PriscillaBettis. Priscilla lives in small-town Texas with her two-legged and four-legged family members.