Polka Dot Bag

The bag he picked was orange with green polka dots. His mother scoffed. No way am I buying that for you she said, sounding as if she expected him to be ashamed of his choices, and not just in this one bag but in every choice he had ever made. He put it back on the rack without a word and walked out of the door, leaving his mother behind in the wake of the swinging store door, reflecting her image, back and forth, until the door stopped swinging. She picked up a black bag instead and walked to the register, assuming her son would be waiting for her outside. But when she walked through the swinging door he was no where to be found. She looked both ways down the sidewalk, and across the street, moving only her head; her feet remained planted firmly on the concrete as steady as if she had roots reaching far into the earth. She wasn’t panicking yet. She didn’t even seem to mind that he had disappeared. Maybe ha had gone into another shop and would be out momentarily. She walked to the nearest bench a few feet down the sidewalk and sat down, facing the rows of shops. Next to her was a trash can and she could smell the fermentation of leftover food scraps and mostly empty cans of soda. She caught a whiff of Thai food intermingling ginger and soy sauce. She crossed her legs, folded her hands in her lap, and settled back to let the sun shine on her face. She thought about the prospect of a tan, and lowered her head when thoughts of skin cancer crept into her mind. She waited. He did not appear. She was not to know that she would never see her son again until weeks later, when the final police report came back. She hid the black bag in the farthest reaches of her closet and it wasn’t found until her death seventeen years later, covered in dust and half eaten by moths. Who knew that moths ate canvas bags?