Page 165 - Demo

253%u201cIt%u2019s okay,%u201d I say. %u201cI helped you.%u201d She looks at me, confused. %u201cUm, SleekPack, coal,%u201d I say in Black Friday, pointing to myself, then back to her. The creases on her face smooth. She relaxes into her seat and rubs her cheek into the faux fur of the hood.%u201cGood haul?%u201d I ask. She nods hard and pets the face of the television box. %u201cFamily still shopping?%u201d I ask.The woman dips her pointer finger into the blood puddle in front of her.%u201cForty-two inches, high-def,%u201d she says.This is the only time they can afford it.With a red finger she makes a small circle, then points two small eyes onto the cardboard box, and drags a smile beneath the eyes. The 45stares forward, past me, looking at nothing. I sit at one of the white tables in the food court that doesn%u2019t have a corpse on it.I bite into my burger and chew slowly. If I hold a bite in my mouth long enough, it softens into something that feels almost like stuffing. While I eat, a woman drags a television in a box to the table in front of me. She pushes a woman who is lying facedown in a small puddle of red blood out of the chair. Then she sits down. I recognize her from the store. One of her ears looks like it%u2019s been mangled by teeth; the other still has a large gold earring. Her gray scarf is gone. But she%u2019s wearing her new coat. When I look at her, she hisses and shows her pointy white teeth.This print by Sophy Hollington accompanied the 2018 New York Times review of Friday Black, the collection of short stories in which %u201cFriday Black%u201d appears.How might this artwork comment on the commercially constructed holiday of Black Friday? What themes from Adjei-Brenyah%u2019s story does it reflect? Sophy Hollington5 Nana Kwame Adjei-BrenyahCopyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.