The Balance

My zodiac sign is the scales: Balance. The symbol of justice. Maybe that’s why I believe in karma so much.

I didn’t always.

Growing up, watching and feeling my father’s rage, his beating on me and my five siblings, I’d lost hope in justice. I’d lie in bed at night when he sat in the bar at the American Legion and pray he’d get in a fatal car wreck on the way home. I knew it would kill my mother to lose him, but we kids would see her through. Maybe with him gone, she’d learn to love and respect us. All too soon I’d hear his car in the driveway and his and my mother’s smooching noises downstairs by the back door. I knew she’d be spinning around him like Tinkerbell, my harmful wishes hopeless. Justice was nothing I could control. Just as well. It felt sinful hoping horrible things happened to another.

My father, a factory worker, supported six kids and a wife in a sad Missouri town. We did not get allowances, wrapped presents, or steak. Instead, we earned our own treats from collected soda bottles, ate Pork N’Beans, and learned the hard facts of life. We survived the best way we could and toiled like mad for it.

I put myself through parochial high school: cleaning classrooms, then waitressing at a burger joint, and finally cashiering at a pharmacy. I scrimped to pay tuition and anything else I coveted. My income, therefore, was precious and sparse, to be doled out wisely. My boyfriend’s mother took her son and daughter shopping for school clothes in Saint Louis, the big city about an hour from our Podunk town. I asked if I could ride along.

My budget amounted to less than thirty dollars. While my boyfriend’s family purchased name brands in the mall’s big department stores, I perused the odd and cheap shops with sale racks. I had two white blouses and the navy uniform skirt from last year, but I needed vests or sweaters.

Along the way, my stomach growled, and at the far end of the mall on the bottom floor, I found a hot dog cart. I ordered a dog, handed the guy my big bill of twenty, took the wiener, and stuffed the change into my thrift store purse. I walked further down the mall, found a bench, and munched. When I finished, I window shopped, found a sweater on sale at a price I could afford, almost my size and almost a style I liked, and went to the register to buy it. That’s when I noticed that the hot dog seller had shorted me ten dollars. Ten whole dollars.

I practically hyperventilated, retracing my steps to the vendor, but where before there had been a cart, now nothing. I walked through the area, but saw only a pretzel vendor. He told me the carts moved around throughout the day, and that I should try tomorrow. I told him I’d been short-changed. He said it must have been an accident and to be sure to count change when it was returned.

Would I ever.

Thirteen months later, again in Saint Louis with my boyfriend, his sister, and mother, I sought out a discount shoe store. I found a pair of fake leather, school-worthy shoes on clearance in my size. The store was busy with only one girl stuck behind the counter at the register. I got in line, clutching the box. When my turn came, the frazzled clerk couldn’t get the register to accept the shoe code, so she couldn’t identify the final sale price. There were people behind me, waiting and impatient. The poor clerk, almost in tears, kept trying to enter the code, but no luck. Heavy sighs behind me.

Her tears started. “Just give me five dollars,” she said in frustration. Based on the sign above the rack, I expected the shoes would cost fifteen, but I didn’t argue. I laid down the money and took the shoes.

All I could think of back then: My ten dollars had returned.

Four years later, headed south in a car in Colorado with a friend toward Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs, a tan car passed us, honking. The three boys inside flashed us the bird, then sneered and pulled ahead.

We looked at each other. What had we done? She hadn’t drifted into their lane. We were going the speed limit. Before, we’d been listening to music, talking, excited about our excursion. The boys in the tan car put a damper on our outing.

We drove on, feeing low and puzzled.

A half hour south, we spotted a parked police car on the shoulder ahead, blue and red lights flashing. As we got closer, we saw that the officer had pulled over a tan vehicle. We spotted the three boys inside.

My friend and I exchanged a look. She shrugged. “Karma lives.”

But karma worked both ways. I once pulled into a parking lot, wiggled into the space, and my boyfriend at the time said, “I think you scratched the car next to you.”

I got out, shock running through me, along with fear and denial. I didn’t see any damage to my vehicle, and wouldn’t there be scraped paint? Maybe they had a mark, but it didn’t look fresh. Wouldn’t I have heard something? And say it was true, that I’d harmed a stranger’s car, my gosh, that meant note leaving, insurance, and who knew what chaos. Maybe even a bullyish confrontation. No. No, I didn’t do anything. Impossible. And I left it at that, walking away.

Until two years later, when I returned to my car in a parking lot and saw a large, jagged scrape along the driver’s side. I couldn’t even get upset. I knew without a doubt that I HAD scratched that car years ago, despite my denial. My crime had come back to me.

And then there was Fuh-fuh. This one gets me in the gut even to type it.

Me, twenty-two, married to my high school sweetheart, and still burning from childhood trauma from my abusive father. From my upbringing, I’d learned the behavior of putting down others I considered weaker in an attempt to create self-confidence. Twenty-two-year-olds can be stupid.

I worked as a secretary in a finance company where all the male bosses had their own name-plated offices and “the gals” sat at typewriter desks outside them in our little L-shaped pool. Nancy’s desk rested at the short end. Only I’d privately deemed her Fuh-fuh.

Nancy, a buck-toothed girl without a filter, would come into the office and confess to us when she forgot to brush her teeth, had a yeast infection, or wore yesterday’s underwear because she needed to do laundry. When she talked, bits of spittle blew in small “fuh,” “fuh,” spurts, reminding me of a gnawing woodchuck. The tragedy of her hit too close to my core, mirroring the tragedy of myself. I wasn’t outwardly cruel to her, but I wasn’t sweet, patient, and understanding either. I made fun of her behind her back. A lot.

In time, I moved on to other jobs in other industries, divorced my first husband, remarried, and divorced my second husband, tried out a new career as a hairdresser, but wasn’t doing well. Homeless, I slept in my little sister’s spare room, inconveniencing her young family. To top it off, my car broke down. There I sat, in threadbare sweatpants and dirty hair at the auto repair, nervous about what kind of bill I’d be facing, when in walked Fuh-fuh. She wore business clothes, make-up, and a fresh hairstyle. I hadn’t seen her in almost a decade.

“Hello, Nancy,” I said. “How nice to see you.” The truth. I knew this was her moment of retribution. I couldn’t have been more wretched physically, mentally, or financially, and she received the full display.

She said she’d just bought a new car and in for her first oil change. She still worked for the finance company, but had been given a promotion and moved to a branch office. She had a boyfriend, though not married. “Yet,” she said with a flush and a smile. Her teeth were straighter. And whiter.

I told her I was happy for her. I meant it, too.

She asked what I was up to, and I told her I was thinking of moving out of state, that I hadn’t seemed to find my calling. I let her know about my failed marriages and my living conditions. She deserved to know.

A mechanic called to her telling her the car was ready. I wished her well as I waved goodbye.

What surprised me, as she left, was how great it felt to be humbled, to have our positions reversed.

I’ve believed in the cosmos handing out justice ever since. When I send out polluted molecules, I scold myself, knowing they’ll find their way back. And the opposite, when I’m at the mercy of undeserved harm. I don’t attempt to punish the evil-doers, much as I want to, knowing karma will catch up to them.

Good comes back to clean hearts, same as pain returns to malicious ones, whether we witness it or not.