Tart and Tiny

So earlier this evening I was in Ralph's getting some brown sugar and I was standing at the 10 items or less checkout.

The first thing you need to understand is that this neighbourhood is an odd and, I think, uncomfortable mix of poor people who are mostly not white and rich college kids who are mostly white. We all meet at Ralph's, which has "USC Trojans" banners hanging from the ceiling and security guards at the doors.

It's homecoming this weekend, which involves football and a lot of people walking around in USC clothing and I think alumni? It smells like drunkenness and charcoal briquettes and Ralph's was chock-full of frat kids buying vats of margarita mix and black and Latino families buying groceries.

So I'm standing in line with my 69 cent box of brown sugar, sort of absently looking around at the crowd. In front of me is this mom with two little kids who are small explorers and then a man buying lots of bottled water (that's something else: everyone drinks bottled water here. Everyone. I thought that just pretentious actresses did that). The little boy is tiny, like he just stopped being a baby, like knee-high to a grasshopper. He's walking around by my feet with a little plastic tube of candy in hand. I was prepared to see the traditional beg-for-candy-at-the-checkout move from this tiny child, but no, instead he starts pull up the hem of his shirt, revealing a tiny pocket in his tiny sweatpants. In goes the tube of candy and he trots out after his mom, who has paid for the groceries and is leaving.

The moment that I realise that this baby boy has stolen some candy, I look away, right into the eyes of the man in front of me in line, who gives me this intense look that says, "Don't say anything." And really, I wouldn't, because jeez, the kid is practically an infant. And plus, I'm the rich white college kid and they are the poor black family, so really, it's completely out of my league to say anything. A strange moment, mostly because of the man and the way he looked at me. It was a fixative, his gaze; he knew exactly what I saw because he had seen it too and he had already anticipated what I might do about it and was preventing it by nailing me to the floor with this look. It was a personal request on his part, but at the same time it was made along the political lines of him being black and local like the little family and me being white and privileged. Saddening, because it was a connect that only served to highlight our disconnect.

And then the moment passed and we each bought our food and went off into our own worlds.