Seen, heard, and known. It’s all anyone wants. Meet Stacey. Or, rather, come see the world through her eyes. She’s observing human nature unfold before her whilst working a fast food cashier job. Isn’t that the most likely place to see the very best and worst of humanity—on the front lines? In this case, it’s a Taco Bell.
In Miranda Manzano’s “Four Things,” Stacey proceeds to tell us about the family that comes in every Tuesday, “and it isn’t because we make the best food in town.” Her remarks reveal more than surface details. She sees these people so regularly, “…more than some people see their own families,” that we get a full sense of characterization coming through the telling of this family’s history at the restaurant. There’s been a recent change in the dynamics: a family of four has now become three. What we really see is a grieving family struggling to regain its equilibrium.
I appreciate the way Manzano has crafted the narrative to transition between wide-angle perspective and very narrow. Specifically, the reader experiences the scene from an adult perspective, but then winds up getting down to the children’s point of view several times in the story. And, after all, aren’t we all still children in some respect? The narrative begins this transition by mimicking the way these children talk, “…and only got, like, three sips of soda,” and proceeds to demonstrate how one of the family’s rules used to have a loophole, “that allowed the girls to choose different tables.”
And then of course there’s an argument that leads to a meltdown. Manzano details the dynamics of this power-play with excellent attention to action and tension, including the narrator’s reaction. The Point-of-Sale machine even contributes to the scene. Read it for yourself to see the conclusion. Well done, Manzano!
Source: Source: Manzano, Miranda. “Four Things.” Taco Bell Quarterly, is. 4, https://tacobellquarterly.org/four-things/.
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Pauline Shen 