The Tattooed Waitress

  “That’s just disgraceful.”

  It was a voice from behind me.  I could tell it was from whoever was sitting behind me.

  I had pulled off the interstate at a Waffle Shack.  Waffle Shacks are all over The Southland.  This particular one had the exit all to itself.  

 I knew what the woman thought was disgraceful.  No doubt it was the waitress with little stars tattooed on the side of her face and both arms full of tats.

  “I’m sure she’s just a little whore,” the woman went on.

  “It says in Leviticus 19, ‘Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you,’” said another voice, a woman, “That poor child is doomed to Hell, no chance of salvation.”

  “Oh really now,” I said out loud without turning around.  “It’s my understanding that that passage was written to admonish the Israelites to not copy the ways of the Canaanites who tattooed images and words of their gods on themselves."

 ”Well,” said the first lady, “I didn’t know we have an eavesdropper nearby.”

  “You damn well knew you were being evesdropped on,” I said as I turned around, “because if you wanted to NOT be heard you would’ve kept your voices down.  You’re trying to shame that poor child based on your standards.”

  I was looking at two women not much older than me.

  “What if I told you that waitress has those tats as a way of soothing her soul?  A way she found to express herself after she watched her daddy gun down her mother and another man, shoot her in the gut…her own father tried to kill her…. then blew his own head off.”

  “What?” said the second lady, “I don’t believe this, how do you know this?”

  “So here’s a 12 year old girl, no mom or dad anymore, alone in the world,” I said.  “So she grew up the best she could, Then she discovered tattoos.  It was a way to express herself.  Her inner pain greater than any sense that the world might frown on some stars on her face or tats on her arms that gave her some relief, that she thought were artistic and pretty.”

  “W-w-well we didn’t know,” said the first lady.

  “Of course you didn’t know,” I said.  “Yet you saw fit to judge her based on her body art.  Do those tats really bug you or do y’all have your own problems that you don’t know how to deal with so you take verbal pot shots at other people?  Like this poor girl, raising a daughter all on her own, doing her best to earn a good tip from people like you who judge her and condemn her.”

  “And while we’re talking about The Good Book…what’s that passage in Matthew 7?” I went on, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.  And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

  The first lady just looked out the window, the second went on eating her waffle.  I turned around and went back to drinking my coffee.

  A couple of minutes later I heard movement behind me.  The two women were leaving.

  After I felt they had plenty of time to clear out I turned around and looked at their table.

  They left the tattooed waitress a $20 bill for a tip.

  I looked across the room at the waitress.  She was busy taking care of other customers.

  Truth was, I had no idea why the tattooed waitress liked tattoos so much, why she tattooed her face.  I didn’t know a thing about her.  I was just a guy on the interstate who pulled over for a coffee break.

  I told the tale in honor of a young woman, another tattooed waitress, back in the old home town.  I didn’t know her very well but I knew her story…it made the news 24 years ago.  Her momma ran off with a co-worker leaving her husband on his own to deal with his demons from the bottle and from an old war.

  That particular young woman had indeed been shot…right in the stomach… by her own father that day, the day that he killed her mother and her mother’s boyfriend before turning the shotgun on himself….all for a 12 year-old to see.

  She grew up to wait tables.  She grew up to have a daughter of her own, a daughter she raised by herself.

  It would be years later, when her daughter was grown, that that tattooed waitress back in the old home town, would kill herself.

  I told the tale for her.  And I told the tale for the tattooed waitress with stars on the side of her face, working her ass off at the Waffle Shack by the side of the interstate.