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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... cc&d magazine (v214) (the November 2010 Issue) |
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Jelly Bellies
Seger Lansdale
Layoffs suck. They gather the axed ones in a conference room, or call them to HR one by one to break the news. The women usually return with tears pooling in their eyes. The men are often resolute, their faces hardened. Waiting for them at their desks are cardboard boxes for packing up their personal belongings. Desk drawers are opened and closed, sometimes loudly. Plants, various knickknacks, and family photos are cleared off desktops, or pulled out from overhead cabinets and bins and packed into the boxes. Supervisors stand nearby, inspecting the whole awful process as it unfolds. Those employees fortunate enough to stay sit and watch quietly those chosen to leave. Many people hug and say goodbye. Others burst into tears and leave without saying a word.
I was at lunch, so I missed it all this time. Those chosen to leave were just gone when I got back. Where once living and vibrant co-workers had sat working and dedicating themselves to the company for eight hours a day, forty or more hours a week, there now remained only empty cubicles. I didn’t know what to think or say about it all. Mostly, I felt numb inside. I just sat down and went back to work.
After downsizing or rightsizing or whatever the powers-that-be decide to call it, I’m never quite the same for a while. Sure, I get my work done. The pile of mortgages and deeds ready for recording gradually accumulates throughout the day at the edge of my desk. Productive is me, and productive I shall be. It appears that I’m doing all right. But outward appearances say very little about how I’m feeling. I run deep in still waters. It takes time for me to get over things.
Four days later, I was still feeling sad, so I decided to go for a walk. I got up and drifted around the office. I stopped at some of the empty cubicles and reminisced, remembering how I greeted the people who had sat in them with friendly “good mornings” or simple “hellos.” I used to ask them about their kids, their spouses, the movies they’d seen recently, what they had done that weekend.
Cynthia, a girl who had once sat next to me, was one of my favorites. She was a real people-person. She was always doing special things, like handing out Jelly Belly candies to whoever stopped at her desk. She also liked to go out for a smoke with her friends at about the same time every morning. I believe she enjoyed the visiting much more than the cigarettes though, because she always talked of quitting smoking one day. She was getting married in May and she was very much in love.
I enjoyed playing with Cynthia’s mind! She had put a toy rubber alligator on the top of the cubicle wall that separated us. She had gotten it from a restaurant named Razzoo’s here in Dallas. She would pose this alligator a certain way, and at some point during the day when she’d leave her desk, I’d reach up there and change it. If she had the gator going to the left on all fours, I’d turn it to the right. Sometimes I’d lay it on its back and then later, she’d turn it back over on all fours. I believe she enjoyed the games with that toy as much as I did.
One day, she put this tiny plastic doll on the cube wall next to the gator. The doll was a girl dressed in a red halter-top, tight blue jeans, and sneakers. It had shoulder-length brown hair and a smiling face.
I still remember Cynthia holding that tiny doll between her index finger and thumb and leaning over our cube wall. “This is little Cynthia, Steven,” she told me. “Just for you. Look, she’s got heavy eye-shadow on and I’ve put a tattoo on her.”
I took the doll from her and looked it over. Cynthia had used a green marker to shade the doll’s eyes and blot a tattoo on its upper arm. “Your tattoo is on your wrist and it’s a butterfly,” I observed. “This doll isn’t accurate.”
She gave me a pouting look. “It’s close enough.”
I shrugged and put the little doll back next to the rubber gator. I forgot about it for a few days until I noticed that Cynthia was now posing the doll too. So one day, I bent the doll’s flexible arms and put it in a pushup position. I put the rubber gator behind it and said over the top of the cubical wall, “Hey Cynthia! You said you’ve been jogging so you can fit better into your wedding dress. How about some pushups with that gator behind you for some extra motivation?”
She just laughed.
I went to lunch and when I came back, I found that she had put the doll’s legs into the gator’s mouth. Later that same day, I put the doll headfirst into the gator’s mouth. Back and forth we went week after week, until that dreadful day came when they made her and the others go home. The gator, the little Cynthia doll, and everything that had made the real Cynthia so special left with her.
I never got to say goodbye.
I returned to my chair after my tour of the empty cubicles, my heart and head swimming with emotions and memories. I was just about to turn back to my computer when my co-worker Christina approached my desk. She carried a cardboard box under one arm. “I have some inheritance for you,” she said.
“Really? Inheritance from whom?” I asked.
“Cynthia has left all of you some inheritance,” she announced to me and those seated around us.
Christina reached into the box and pulled out some items. “She wanted you to have these,” she said, handing me the rubber gator from Razzoo’s and the little Cynthia doll. “You are to keep them to remember her by.”
She turned and walked away, but then stopped suddenly and came back to my desk. She reached into the box again.
“Oh yes, I almost forgot. You are supposed to have this too,” she said, handing me a glass jar with a sealed ornate lid.
Inside the jar were black binder clips of assorted shapes and sizes. I gave the jar a shake. Christina must’ve read the puzzled look on my face. “That’s because you were always looking for binder clips for your documents,” she said. “Cynthia remembers that.”
“Tell her thank you for remembering me,” I said. “And tell her I miss her.”
I can’t describe the warmth in my heart for having received these items. Cynthia had remembered me, and now I had the rubber gator and the little Cynthia doll for which to remember her. These little gifts meant so much to me. They helped soothe the pain I felt over the layoffs.
Weeks passed. Work was done. Mortgages and deeds were recorded or rejected. Little Cynthia and the Razzoo’s gator stood on my computer monitor’s shelf, always in sight and within reach of me whenever I wanted to remember. I had put the jar full of binder clips aside and had completely forgotten about it.
Then came that day when I ran out of binder clips, as usual. I stood up from my chair and was just about to ask Christina if she had any when I remembered the jar full of clips that Cynthia had left me. I sat back down, grabbed the jar, and opened it. Instantly my nose was filled with the assorted fruity and minty smells that had been sealed up in that jar. I quickly closed the lid again and stood up in my cubicle.
I shook the jar at Christina. “Hey!” I said to her. “This jar, this wonderful jar that Cynthia gave me? Is this where she kept the Jelly Bellies? Is this that same jar?”
Christina smiled. “Same jar,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I can still smell the Jelly Bellies. Their smells are still lingering in this jar.” Christina looked at me quizzically. I sat down again, my senses stirred once more by an assortment of memories.
I remembered Cynthia handing out Jelly Bellies to everyone all the time; even the owner of our company stopped by her desk to have some. There were watermelon Jelly Bellies, cherry Jelly Bellies, lemon and apple Jelly Bellies, bubblegum Jelly Bellies: little round candies in different kinds of flavors, all with wondrous smells. I leaned back in my chair and smiled, remembering how Christina tried to protect the jar whenever Cynthia had a day off. People raided that jar for Jelly Bellies. I still don’t know how Christina and Cynthia managed to keep it filled.
I thought about how people are like Jelly Bellies. They bring their own colors and flavors to life: distinct manners of living, their unique ways of laughing; certain gestures so keenly their own that you just can’t ever forget them. People bring their own gifts to every situation and those gifts can never be replaced because people are not interchangeable parts – they are beings fearfully and wonderfully made, each with a unique personality and an ultimate purpose.
I remembered my funny friend named Cynthia and all of those wonderful individuals I’d had the privilege of working with over the last year. Different rainbow colors, unique and glorious flavors: people and Jelly Bellies, Jelly Bellies and people.
I decided to keep those memories. I haven’t opened that jar since.
