Toni Le Busque's stories.

Story for my cousin-Part V

I’m working with Julie tonight and she’s showing me how to do postal orders.
She tells me how that the phones ring of the hook in the lead up to Christmas.
“I get really excited by Christmas” Julie says, “because my mother was a Jehova’s witness”.
Julie’s mother has been married four times. From what I hear Julie telling the others, Claire and someone else and another plump girl who it turns out has snakes for pets, she might not have number four for very long.
“She was really depressed, Julie tells me, “see she left my dad, right, and he moved away, and then my mum got really depressed and then my dad, the bastard, he was already in the Jehova’s witnesses, well when he found out she was depressed he sent some of his Jehovah friends around to give her a sermon and she said they made her feel better so she joined them and therefore we were forbidden to have Christmas.”

Then the phone rings. Instead of it being a customer it’s Julie’s brother.
Julie gives a little squeal and tells us her new jacket has arrived.
“I love getting things in the mail. I love buying things on line.” She says.
“Was online buying also forbidden in the Jehova’s witnesses?” I ask.
Julie laughs.
“Did they cure your mother’s depression? I mean was she better being in the Jehova’s?”
“No” she says and laughs, “My mother has always been depressed. I don’t remember her ever being happy. Not even with four husbands.”
Then everybody starts to answer the phones, except me and the girl who has pet snakes.
So I ask her about her snakes.
“They’re corn snakes”, she tells me.
“Poisonous?”
She says No and then the girl whose name I don’t know starts talking to Claire about Claire’s boyfriend.
“He sounds like a control freak”, says the girl whose name I don’t know.
“Well anyway, he called me and asked me to go over on Friday night. He said he’s bringing the wine and he’s never done that before.”
“What, brought the wine?” asks Julie.
“No,” says Claire, “Asked me over.”
Then the phones begin to ring and they can’t continue the conversation so the girl whose name I don’t know gets up and mouths to the others on the phone “Do you want a hot drink?”
Claire and Jenny nod “Yes” and the big bobbed girl goes off to the vending machine.

I had been told about the vending machine they day of the interview.
“There’s a free vending machine,” Sharon had said, “So help yourself.”
“At my last job they made us pay for coffee from the vending machine, I tell Sharon, “and it was shit too. We worked from 4pm until 3am with a half an hour break and they didn’t even provide us with coffee.”
Sharon smiles and nods, “That’s the difference here, she says.
“Yes, I say, “It doesn’t mean they care about you anymore or any less, but it does show that they know that tiny comforts can make one happy or resentful”.