[FICTION][12/23/25]Beulah
by Saverin Gripshover
Beulah is Queen of the Convenience Store. Her pale blue eyeshadow hails from the half-formed cosmetics section hunched beneath shelves of deodorant and mini-toothpastes. The half-eaten hot dog tortured in her manicured grip once carouseled across the steel stripes of the neon rotisserie in the back by the bathrooms. Her breath is coffee: hot, dark, and simmered by steamy gossip. Her leopard print coat dripping down to crown her knobby knees is from an estate sale conducted deep in the belly of the city.
Beulah spreads her musings like pigeon feed. The young girls are intrigued by her pink pepper and musk perfume. They beg to know its name, but don’t dare repeat it to their parents or grandparents or Santa Claus. The young boys offer her quarters so she can scalp lottery tickets, watching in awe at the way she sways and shaves when lost in a dream of winning. The after-work men whisper things in her ear thatcock her head, pleasantly challenged. The at-work men—the cashier and the melted-face janitor and the ice cream scooper—whisper things in her ear that nod her head, solemn.
Beulah tells all her worshippers the same story. This coat once belonged to an heiress. A Daddy’s-money-diva with dozens of diamond studs poked through her sculpted little ears and billions of processed blonde hairs streaming free from her sweet tiny head. The Heiress was beautiful, and she was wise. The Heiress knew of European history and the crisscross of stocks and she even sat in on Daddy’s meetings and even the ones where business jargon splintered conversation like alien transmissions through a rusted radio and especially the ones where money weighed heavy on the line. But the Heiress’ crystal eyes caught those of a bitter, small-dicked assistant clowning across Daddy’s office with a now-cold coffee in his quivering hand. He followed the Heiress to Daddy’s high rise and waited until the Heiress tiptoed outside and eased the rickety door back to sleep and slinked into the night wearing a dress as thin as a dream and a leopard print coat. Then he killed her, unceremoniously—boring, really, the way he disposed of her like simple garbage. And although Daddy could have sold her heeled boots and ruby bracelets and fur coats to a drooling bidder, he knew he had enough money and that no amount of money made could erase the tragedy anyway. So he gave them away to be bartered for cheap alongside troves of trash, alongside the other heeled boots and ruby bracelets and fur coats belonging to girls killed on the streets deep in the belly of the city.
Beulah tells this story well. The girls wince and tighten their tiny grips around the green apple chapsticks stolen from the display and hidden in their pockets. The boys shake their heads and promise to conjure jackets to coddle shoulders. The after-work men shake themselves free of enchantment and roll their eyes and tap their watches. The at-work men simply shake and lower their eyes and tap their watches. Beulah beams, pure as the fluorescents of heaven, heart mid-sneeze with pride, because she knows her story is a good one.
Once, I saw Beulah pay the ice cream scooper with nickels licked with grime. They escaped her hands and danced on the silver counter like copper ballerinas. The ice cream scooper ignored her chaos and slid her two scoops of bubblegum in a cup: Beulah’s favorite.
Outside, against the gas pump, she traced the empty roads with her empty eyes and lifted the plastic spoon to her mouth. I watched as the pink trickled off the spoon and splattered onto her fur coat like a punch of thunder. It looked like she might cry, and maybe she did. I stopped watching out of respect.
Oh, well. Beulah’s stains always come out.
SAVERIN GRIPSHOVER is a writer and student living in Kentucky. Their debut poetry chapbook White Trash Warlock is available via Bottlecap Press.