Skunk Lady
As a teenager, I worked in a supermarket bagging groceries – it was a real spit and sawdust hometown slice of Americana where we still used paper bags, wore a uniform which included a cap and called people ‘Gosh Golly Mister’. As it was a town of just 2000 people, I got to know most of the residents quite well, and was quite happy to say hello during their weekly shop. Others, of course, not so much.

Especially ‘Skunk Lady’, a woman in her 40s who varied between eccentricity and madness.

She was in every day, buying various bits and bobs, from apples to pens to loo roll. Although this was in no way unusual, what was bizarre was that she horded all of her groceries in her Ford Escort. Years of groceries had been squashed into this vehicle, with the visible wavy lines of stench permeating the parking lot. The windows were smeared with the effluent of decomposing food.

She carried a ski pole around with her wherever she went. It wasn’t for balance, it was to collect rubber bands – thousands of them. Thievery wasn’t beyond her, and would take to stealing a rubber band like a magpie to a sparkle. She’s spend 30 minutes stealing every rubber band from a stack of rolled up newspapers. Any attempt to force her away from the rubber bands would end in altercation, so we allowed her to get on with it.

One day she took to gussying herself up for her shopping trips. Bright red lipstick was drawn to her nose, and eyeliner was shakily drawn on with a large, thick permanent marker. She earned the moniker ‘Skunk Lady’ because she began to clip in bits of discarded braid weave into her short, grey, straight hair with children’s barrettes. This highly fashionable look was topped off with a low-cut top which – and it still pains me to say this – showed off not only cleavage, but also chest hair.

One day I overheard a conversation between Skunk Lady and the butcher. “Why are you buying so much meat, Skunk Lady?” “So I can build a cow.” Apparently the fetid environment of her Ford Escort was the primordial soup necessary for this cow life, as the bags of beef lay festering there until the very last time I saw her, likely a year after the overheard conversation.

She took to using our toilets, once leaving (I am told, I didn’t witness this) a full large roll of kitchen towels, bloodied with her menstrual fluid and feces, in the hall. Nevermind the time she was caught in the isle of the supermarket openly switching her putrid green underpants for a nice fresh pair off the shelf.

The final straw was when we saw her running into the supermarket – time stood still, we waited with stars in our eyes - what ever will she do next? Shit in the sink, that’s what. And not just in the sink, around the sink, on the floor, on the walls. And what with a perfectly good toilet not six inches away. My friend Sara drew the short straw and spent the day hosing and bleaching the bathroom. Skunk Lady was, from there foreword, banned.

The story has a happy ending, though. A short while later she was arrested for prostitution.

I shit you not.


**I do, of course, understand that she was likely mentally ill. BUT STILL.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Fri 31 Oct 2008, 10:59, Reply)