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251%u201cAsshole!%u201d the wife seethes. Then she stares back at me.%u201cPoleFace%u2122. Pink,%u201d she says, pointing to her child. %u201cCoal SleekPack,%u201d she continues, pointing to her own face. A new kiddie PoleFace%u2122, a new coal SleekPack, a Coalmeister. A family set.The woman has both the coats she needs in a second, then storms off, dragging her child behind her.It isn%u2019t always like this. This is the Black Weekend. Other times, if somebody dies, at least a clean-up crew comes with a tarp. Last year, the Friday Black took 129 people. %u201cBlack Friday is a special case; we are still a hub of customer care and interpersonal cohesiveness,%u201d mall management said in a mall-wide memo. As if caring about people is something you can turn on and off.In the first five hours, I do seven thousand plus. No one has ever sold like that before. Soon I%u2019ll have a five-hundred-dollar jacket as proof to my mother that I%u2019ll love her forever. When I imagine how her face will look as I give it to her, my heart beats faster.At five in the morning, the lull comes. The first wave of shoppers is home, or sleeping, or dead in various corners of the mall.Our store has three bodies in the bodies section. The first came an hour in. A woman climbed the denim wall looking for a second pair her size. She was screaming and rocking the wooden cubby wall so hard that the whole thing almost fell on Duo and everybody in his section. Duo poked her off the wall with his reach. She fell on her neck. Another woman snatched the SkinnyStretches from her dead hands. Lance came with the pallet jack, his broom, and some paper towels.My first break is at 5:30 a.m. On my way to clock out, I walk through denim.%u201cLooks like you%u2019ve had it pretty crazy,%u201d I say to Duo. There are jeans everywhere. None of them folded. Bloodstains all over the floor.2025I jump down from the cabin and swing the reach around so none of them can get too close. The long rod whistles in the air. Most of the customers can%u2019t speak in real words; the Friday Black has already taken most of their minds. Still, so many of them are the same. I grab two medium fleeces without anyone asking for them because I know somebody wants one. They howl and scream: daughter, son, girlfriend, husband, friend, ME, daughter, son. I throw one of the fleeces toward the registers and one toward the back wall. The crowd splits. Near the registers, a woman in her thirties takes off her heel and smashes a child in the jaw with it just before he can grab the fleece. She inspects the tag, sees it%u2019s a medium, then throws it down on top of the boy with a heelsize hole in his cheek. I toss two large fleeces and two medium fleeces into the crowds. Then I deal with the customers who can still speak, who are nudging and pushing around me.%u201cC-C-COAL BUBBLE. SMALL, ME! COAL!%u201d a man says while beating his chest. I%u2019m the only one at work who doesn%u2019t have a Coalmeister! How can I be a senior advisor without? The only one!I press the end of my reach against his neck to keep his hungry mouth from me. Then, without taking my eyes off him, I grab one of the Coalmeister bubble coats from the rack behind me. And then it%u2019s in his hands. He hugs the coat and runs to the register.%u201cUs? US!%u201d the woman with the gray scarf says. She has large gold earrings hanging off the sides of her head. The pink-coat child is at her shins. The child%u2019s face is bruised, but she isn%u2019t crying at all.%u201cCan%u2019t. The Stuy!%u201d Gray scarf%u2019s husband says. Family time needs forty-two-inch high-def. The BuyStuy deal is only while supplies last! Can%u2019t afford any other day.Black Friday takes everybody differently. It%u2019s rough on families. They can%u2019t always hear what I hear.155 Nana Kwame Adjei-BrenyahCopyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.