My $20 Strawberry

I’ll get back to Becky deMarie and pretendian issues soon, but in the meantime I want to tell you a true story about a girl and a strawberry.

I’m the girl. This is the strawberry. This strawberry cost me $20.

The fruiterie across the street is a a rabbit warren of groceries, crammed with shelving and freezer cases. The aisles are so narrow only one person can fit at a time; you have to twist sideways and step into a side aisle to let others pass. Everything is tightly packed and, often, precariously stacked.

It’s a great and handy little store, but today when shopping for some salad stuff, as I passed a shelf full of flats of berries, my wire shopping basket hooked the corner of one of the flats and splatted about nine million strawberries onto the floor.

FUCK! I hollered in English before I could stop myself, and then I got red because everyone here speaks English (and knows FUCK! is very rude).

Then I started apologizing in English and in French, and said I’d pay for the six baskets of berries dumped over by my lack of coordination, but the cashier said I didn’t have to pay. We negotiated to payment for four boxes of berries at about $5 each, but even then the cashier kept saying I didn’t have to pay, though in a not-very-enthusiastic manner that seemed to indicate that I really probably should.

I helped the silent, stern-looking guy who is eternally stacking the produce at the fruiterie put the floorberries into a basket, which he silently and sternly whisked away into the back. My guess is he will wash the floorberries, put them back in baskets, and then silently, sternly stack them back in the very same place from whence they were dumped.

So why would I insist on paying for floorberries when I was told I didn’t have to? Berries which all three of us knew would probably be resold at the same price later today?

Very good question. I don’t know the answer. Embarrassment tax, I guess, or a “headache fee.” To make myself feel better for being such a klutz and a boor, and maybe make them hate me less for being a klutz and a boor who curses in such rude and loud English?

Because on some level, in many people’s minds, money is mixed up with love. It wasn’t about the berries. It was about being able to continue shopping there without being subject to the sting of local contempt. It was, at bottom, a bribe, a bribe for love, or for at least not-hate.

But will it work?? Won’t know until next time I need produce. Will keep you apprised.

Anyway, the cashier repeated that I didn’t have to pay as she added the four baskets at five dollars per to my bill.

As my other items were being rung up, I saw that a single berry had lodged itself in the wire of my shopping basket. With false gaiety I said, “Çelui-ci, c’est pour moi!” and put it in my bag. Ha ha. Tight smiles were exchanged, and I left the store, walking across the street to our apartment with my head down.

Chagrinedly I climbed the stairs, washed the rest of the produce, and sighed at my $20 strawberry as it sat on the counter with an accusatory air. It was not only the most expensive piece of fruit I’ve ever bought, but the biggest shame payment I’ve ever made as a result of a tragic marketing accident.

I sighed again. The strawberry said nothing. I put it in a bowl of cherries in the fridge so it wouldn’t get lonely.

Why am I telling you this? Because, some days, you have pay the embarrassment tax to go on living your life–life being a bowl of cherries with a $20 strawberry in it. Sigh.