[Issue 2023.67]

‘Crumb Cutie Exodus’, Bernie Jean Schiebeling

Art © 2023 L.E. Badillo


[ Burn, © 2023 L.E. Badillo ] The Crumb Cuties have come out wrong.

Bean-filled and floppy-limbed, the newest rainbow of bears never meet their cuddlers’ human gazes with their own shiny plastic ones. Their round black eyes stare off somewhere into the far distance. As Crumb Cuties are the plush toy that might—maybe—become a child’s college fund, this flaw is inexcusable.

During the early hours of the Paris morning, someone flings a lilac bear from a high hotel balcony, and she tumbles, tumbles, tumbles through the freezing night air. The shiny gold tag in her ear, a plump star shape, flutters and flickers as it catches the wind. She lands with a soft pash of polyvinyl beans on cobblestones.

And she picks herself up.

After a moment, she toddles away into the star-glazed city, looking at something nobody else can see. No one on the balcony notices.

Inside, someone is already shouting into a corded phone. The hotel fax machine grinds its analog teeth. A customs mix-up delayed the quality control delivery—meaning production and logistics assumed everything was fine and moved ahead—meaning that the bears are spread over two continents and one ocean when the burn order comes in.

Peri Summers sweeps her round arm across the metal shelf of Crumb Cuties, and they fall into the garbage bag held by her coworker Nadia like a heavy spring rain. Thuds of little bodies pulse in time with Peri’s migraine. The bulging bag tears, and a few bears spill onto the tiles, sliding under a crepe-and-lace Valentine’s display.

“Shit,” Nadia says, reaching for a rose-red bear at the same time as Peri. Their hands touch, pink fingertips to dark brown knuckles, and Peri jerks back. A card with glittery hearts and two cuddling kittens—one with eyelashes—haunts the edge of her vision. She could just die.

“There’s kids in here,” their manager Belinda calls, turning a page in her magazine. For a second, Peri thinks that she’s talking about the hand touch. “Watch the language.”

Belinda is wedged behind the narrow checkout counter, which is wedged behind half a dozen displays of Chicago skyline shot glasses, stale cellophane-tasting fudge, and mugs that say “World’s Best Employee,” the latter of which Peri will never have any reason to buy. So of course Belinda didn’t see their hands touch. Even Nadia probably didn’t care, because why would she?

Pain twinges behind Peri’s left eye, flickering like the fluorescent light overhead, and she squeezes it shut. Nadia ignores the manager—it’s eight p.m. on a school night. The gift shop is dead, no children in sight. She picks up the blush-colored bear and passes it to Peri.

“You winking at me, Summers?” Nadia’s undertone carries the glimmer of a smile. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking.

Kailani Wong takes a deep breath of salt-and-rust sea air and squints past the shipping container’s burnt orange doors. He thinks, again, that this is fucking ridiculous. “We’re throwing a bunch of teddy bears overboard?”

The bosun, Gniewek, scratches an ear. “Crumb Cuties.”

Sailors are already hauling boxes to the deck rail for Kailani and a couple other big guys to toss over. Kailani crosses his muscled arms. “Dude, I’m not putting those in the ocean. They’re full of plastic. You’re gonna fuck up the fish.”

Gniewek glowers up at him with a do-your-job-you-shithead expression. Kailani shrugs. Sweat prickles beneath his overlong black hair—the afternoon sun is a hot slap—but he’ll stand here all day if he has to.

A grunt of exertion sounds from behind him, followed by a splash. Jacobson has pitched a box into the sea.

“Dude,” Kailani says, peering over the side. Sure enough, the box has burst against the waves thirty feet below, and a spray of colorful bears like unmoored coral floats atop the blue Pacific water. He expects them to start sinking, but then—

“What the fuck,” Gniewek breathes, wide-eyed at the railing.

They’re not swirling in the wake of the ship. They’re swimming. They’re paddling with their little limbs, striking out at a right angle to the vessel.

Sun Minjae hates this part. The impromptu burn teams have piled up newspapers and magazines and food cartons and scrap wood in the empty lot and set them all ablaze. Now they’re tossing whole wooden pallets into the bright and towering flames, and sparks like tiny glittering goldfish swim into the sky. Even from the factory doorway, heat gnaws at her scarlet-knuckled fingers. She clings to her cardboard box of misbegotten bears.

Peri and Nadia are still kneeling, and Nadia’s plump face, with her huge dark eyes, is way too close. Butterfly clips and bauble ties adorn her twists, sparkling and clicking together. Nadia refuses to take them out no matter how many times Belinda writes “unprofessional” on her employee reviews. Peri hopes she’s held on to enough of her Lake Michigan tan to cover a blush, but her skin is weak coffee at the best of times.

“It’s just a headache,” Peri says, accepting the red bear in lieu of meeting Nadia’s gaze.

“Another one?” Nadia’s brows furrow, and she scoops up the other fallen bears before Peri can reach for them. “You wanna take a few minutes? I can handle this.”

Peri’s face grows hotter. “Thanks, but I already had my break.”

The last time Peri took an unscheduled breather, Belinda cornered her in the back room, shaking ibuprofen under her nose until Peri’s head felt like a maraca filled with broken glass. I didn’t hire you so you could sit back here, Belinda snapped.

Whatever placebo effect she got from OTC meds ran out years ago, but Peri swallowed the pills just to make Belinda go away, even promised to go to a doctor. At urgent care, the nurse told her to come back when she’d lost ten pounds.

“Hmph.” Nadia glares in Belinda’s direction, but before she can say anything else, the bell over the door jingles. Cold air washes over the back of Peri’s neck, prickling her close-cropped hair.

Kailani fumbles for the lifebuoy and tosses it overboard. A few of the bears hold tight to it, but others just peek over their fabric shoulders and then keep swimming. Gniewek grabs Kailani’s wrist. “The fuck are you doing?”

Kailani slams his shoulder into the smaller man’s sternum, and the bosun falls on his ass, swearing. The rope flies through Kailani’s palms as he hauls the bears upwards, hand over hand over hand.

“But they might be demons,” Jacobson says, not doing anything because no one has told him what to do.

“You think you can’t handle a few stuffed bears?” Kailani asks. This is offensive enough that the rest of the crew lets him finish dragging up the drenched bears, who flop onto the deck and look around. By that point, Gniewek is back on his feet. He points at Kailani.

“Get him to the brig.”

A few of the sailors trade glances, uncertain. Gniewek’s face screws up. “Jesus, just pick a closet and lock the door.”

Kailani takes a step back, half-raising his fists. The bears are scattering. “I did the right thing.”

Minjae’s job is putting on the arms while the toys are still inside out and headless. She stitches little arches across soft polyester on her sewing machine (though the machine isn’t really hers—it’s not like she can choose to sew her daughter some new pajamas instead of making ever more stuffed animals). She rarely sees the finished product.

Now, her gaze locks on the cardboard box in her arms. The bears—lime green and cloudy rainbow and peony pink and confetti-sprinkled and red and purple and turquoise and a soft, perfect pumpkin color—nestle together and stare past her ears. Their beady little beetle eyes catch the firelight.

Something heavy crunches into the bonfire. Burning plastic shines in the air, the stench lingering like a bad dream. If they’d let some people keep working, Minjae could just concentrate on the chunk-chunk-chunk of her needle through fabric. She’d only stop to wipe sweat smears from her glasses. But the machines are quiet. No colorful threads float over the lines, no fabric dust chokes the air. Workers’ voices blend into the hiss and crackle of the flames. The foreman shouts: “C’mon, hurry up, hurry up!”

She can’t stall forever.

“Are those the new Crumb Cuties?” A ringing voice pings around Peri’s skull like a pinball, and she winces. “You’re not buying all of them, are you? You can’t do that.”

“They’ve been recalled,” Belinda says, making a sad face. “Manufacturing defect.”

Her exact words to Nadia and Peri earlier that evening—when they were supposed to be closing—had been, “We’re staying open until you get rid of the bears. Get that useless crap into the dumpsters.”

“A defect?” The customer says, more excited than ever. She’s a tall, suburban type with bouncy hair, the kind who tells Peri that she would be pretty if and who counts her change twice when Nadia is on the register, if she notices Nadia at all. “Like what, misprinted tags? Spelling errors? You know that makes them more valuable, right?”

Peri glances down into the trash bag, where the technicolor bears pile up like autumn leaves seen on an acid trip. Their shining black eyes are offset, watching anything but her. This is, according to Belinda, the dumpster-meriting disfigurement. The bears’ eyes are wrong, which makes them unworthy of the coveting love given to cute things. Unworthy, therefore worthless, therefore not-worth-the-trouble.

After Peri’s mother found her magazine stash and Peri whispered what she’d known since she was ten, her parents spent a few horrible months trying to convince her that girls really weren’t that great. That she was a different genre of person than the furious people protesting on the news. And then they just… forgot her. Poured attention onto Peri’s little sister like syrup onto pancakes, hoping this child would have the grace to disappoint them in more conventional ways.

Peri reaches into the bag and holds the rose-red bear’s little paw.

The manager’s chilly eyes also bore into the shiny black bag. “No—not a misprint. Mold.”

Nadia and Peri share a look as the customer’s jaw drops. “Mold?”

“Yes, really nasty stuff. Dangerous. You girls should be wearing masks,” Belinda says.

The bag crinkles as Nadia clenches her hands. “Roger that,” she says in her chiming customer service voice. Peri smiles, nods, withdraws her hand. Her head throbs again. She stares at the trash bag, the darkest and most comforting part of the gift shop, as the customer hems and haws and finally leaves. When the bell rings, Peri closes her eyes to fend off a lapping tide of nausea.

She opens them to see the red bear sitting up at the top of the heap, its plush head turning between Nadia and Peri.

No one goes for Kailani. Their eyes shift from the deck to his face, from the stumbling bears to the furious bosun. “They’re alive,” Kailani says, squeezing his fists until his knuckles ache, wishing for a reason to break something that deserves it. His voice rises. “You know it. I know it. I did the right thing.”

“You’ve gotten fucking fired. That’s what you’ve done.” Gniewek’s sunburned face is a stormcloud, but a grim smile lurks around his mouth. “You wanna get arrested too?”

Kailani imagines walking up the swept black stones leading to his brother’s house, the scarlet bougainvillea blooming over the scrubbed-but-slumping lanai. He pictures Nahele, bouncing Mia on his hip, the premature crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes pulled downwards in disappointment. Again? Kailani lowers his hands, shame and anger burning the back of his throat.

“Maybe I’ll press charges anyway, shitheel,” Gniewek says. “The rest of you—find where those little fuckers went. Lock the rest of them back in the shipping container. Jacobson, guard it.”

Jacobson hunches, his hands deep in his pockets, as a pair of sailors lead Kailani away. Kailani almost spits at the lanky man’s feet, but then something rustles on his boot. He looks down. A midnight-black bear clutches Kailani’s laces.

A couple of the head women, the ones who put on the black safety eyes, nudge past her with their own boxes, groaning over the work. The burn order is their fault, not hers. It isn’t the first time they’ve messed up like this, interrupted the day, earned everyone a lecture from the foreman. But though she’s blameless, Minjae still can’t step forward. She knows what it will be like—the cardboard slipping from her fingers, the heat unbearable, the body, her body, recoiling as the bears’ round ears melt and burn before the rest of them follow.

Minjae grew up with love for her parents carried high between her shoulder blades, a debt of care gathering interest. Since her daughter’s birth, though, she’s felt the responsibility concentrating in her hands: stirring noodles into soup, braiding her daughter’s hair, shifting soil to plant cucumbers. Guiding fabric under a whirring silver needle. I brought you into this world and I will make it good for you.

She checks over her shoulder. No one is watching. She crosses the factory floor, hurrying, the bear bodies shff-shffing against each other in the box.

Peri gasps, and Nadia clutches her arm. They glance at each other, confirming that, no, for real, this is really happening.

“Anyway, girls, if you help me get those bears on eBay, I’ll cut you in.” Belinda’s voice carries the same sweetness she uses when telling them that their pay was docked. She notices their faces, and her friendliness drops. “What now?”

Nadia squeezes Peri’s arm, then reaches past her and pulls the last of the bears off the shelf, seizing one just as it raises a paw. Peri stands, almost staggering as pain lances from the back of her neck up through her skull. “I, um, I have one of those headaches.”

Their manager sighs. “Seriously?”

“She can’t help it,” Nadia snaps, hefting the bag of bears into her arms. She flips her dark twists over one shoulder. “Peri, c’mon. Go to the back room. Get some ice.”

The manager’s gray eyes narrow as Peri and Nadia weave between greeting card displays. “Why’d I even hire you?”

Nadia starts to pivot back to Belinda, but Peri holds her elbow. In Nadia’s arms, tiny limbs strain against the black plastic. The bag boils. It slips from her grip. Peri lunges—catches it—and then her skull is a lead balloon about to plummet off her shoulders. Nadia’s hands are on her back, and the bag is writhing, and Peri hears herself whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” and the bears go still and heavy as snow, and they all stagger together into the dusty velvet darkness of the back room, where Nadia brushes Peri’s bangs back from her face as she vomits into the mop bucket.

[ Flee, © 2023 L.E. Badillo ] Later, in the tiny, sweltering closet where the sailors locked him, Kailani lifts the bear to a porthole so they can see the endless sunset-gold ocean outside. “I’m sorry, little dude. This is all so messed up.”

The jet-black, still slightly-damp bear turns, never quite meeting Kailani’s gaze. Kailani wants to say that they’re shy or guilty or disinterested, but they aren’t. They’re just looking somewhere else. He pats them on the head with one finger. The salt has made their fur crunchy. He thinks it’s probably some man-made fabric, not cotton, which means that the entire bear, fur to eyes to bean-stuffed-body, is created from petroleum that once belonged to the bodies of ancient creatures. Like the bears are a rebirth of long-dead moss and ferns and fish and dinosaurs.

How long does something have to be dead for him to stop caring about it? Does it need to be alive to begin with? Rocks, dirt, water, sunlight. The ocean, both a neighbor and the house next door. Kailani leans his head against the window.

From where they’ve been imprisoned, they can’t see the sun sinking below the waves, but they watch the glitter fade from the water until everything is a deep, dark blue. Kailani is starting to doze off against a carton of toilet paper, the bear held against his softly rising chest, when a tentative knock rings against the metal door.

He startles upright and tucks the bear inside his denim overshirt. Through the door, he hears Jacobson’s nervous voice. “Wong? You in there?”

Kailani grimaces. “Yeah, dude, I’m here. But, like, don’t expect me to invite you in or anything.”

“Oh. Right. Um.” A clk-chunk, and the door swings open. In the gloom, Jacobson is paler than usual. On his shoulder rides a small bear patterned in purple flowers.

Minjae bumps the front door open with her hip, clangs down the stairs, and sets the box in an overgrown ditch next to the parking lot, a place where she can retrieve it after her shift. No one will spot the bears among the colorful food wrappers people toss in the weeds, some rustling like flags on the dry and feathery grass. Mud sucks at her shoes, sending up a welcome scent of cool, fresh earth. She lingers to fill her lungs. Behind the factory, thick, iridescent smoke rises.

Just as she’s turning away, she glimpses movement: the orange bear, reaching for the box’s edge. Minjae gasps. The bear freezes, looks at her sideways, the gold star-shaped tag in its ear tapping its cheek. They watch each other.

She tips over the box. “Go,” she says. “Go, go!”

“I’m sorry,” Peri groans. She leans her cheek against the cool wall. Her mouth tastes like batteries soaked in Coca-Cola. “God, this is gross.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty gross.” Nadia gets two waters from the old fridge and sits beside her, holding a cold bottle to Peri’s forehead. Her fingertips brush Peri’s skin. Peri thinks she might puke again, or maybe just faint. Nadia hands her the bottle. “But, um, you’re worth it. You can be worth it and super gross.”

Peri mumbles “thanks” into her water, then says, “We’re not letting Belinda sell the bears, right?”

“Hell no,” Nadia says. “I mean, it’s their call? But honestly. Hell no.”

“So we’re probably fired,” Peri says. Her head is clearer after throwing up, so the loss is that much more acute. No more shifts together.

“Do you like working here that much?” Nadia wrinkles her nose.

“I mean, I know I’m not a good worker, but—” Peri takes a deep breath. I’ll miss you.

Nadia waits. They keep glancing at each other and away again. Peri drinks to cover her silence. When the garbage bag rustles, and the red bear wiggles out from beneath it, she thinks Oh, thank God.

“You good, little man?” Nadia asks. The bear trundles to her, unsteady on its bean-heavy feet. “Would you like to come with us? We won’t sell you on the internet.”

The bear’s sidewise peeking reminds Peri of someone hesitating, about to make a difficult request, but their eyes are too bright to convey fear. They’re watching something—she just can’t tell what. More of the bears crawl free of the trash bag. A pastel rainbow bear pulls a lime green one to its feet. Say that you’ll miss her.

“There’s room for all of you,” Nadia says. The bears look among themselves and gather around the two young women, holding tight to their sweater sleeves. Nadia grins at Peri, and Peri’s heart thumps. Say it.

At the sight of Kailani’s raised brows, Jacobson’s eyes dart to the side. “I’m sorry. I um, I messed up. If I knew that they were, y’know, alive I never would’ve—” He swallows. “I have a way off the ship if you want it, but we have to go now. Morretti and Floros are distracting the bosun.”

“I—Yeah, okay, dude, lead the way.” Better than being locked in a closet. Kailani takes the black bear out of his shirt and tucks them in a more secure outside pocket. Jacobson looks relieved.

“We thought we might have missed one,” he says as they start down the corridor. “Glad they’re with you.”

“So you didn’t destroy them?” When the two men climb the stairs, the purple-flowered bear holds onto Jacobson’s collar. Jacobson supports it with one cupped hand. For a moment, Kailani sees Nahele teaching Mia to walk.

“The officers have been arguing about it all afternoon,” Jacobson whispers, opening the hatch to the main deck. The humid night breeze is fresh against Kailani’s face after the closet. They dash across open spaces, hiding as much as possible in the shadowy corridors between the towers of shipping containers. Every so often, the bears’ water-wrinkled star tags gleam golden, winking like tiny lighthouses. “It’s not, um, it’s not sounding good. And Gniewek is definitely trying to get you arrested. So—”

He pries open the orange door of an enclosed lifeboat. Inside—on the floor, on the seats, on any available surface—a thousand bears turn their shiny indirect gazes towards the two men.

The bears run, and so does she, back for more of the boxes. Someone catches the door as she leaves this time: a skinny young man with bleached ends, one of the few boys on the line, out of breath and holding two cardboard boxes stacked atop each other. She’s never spoken to him before, doesn’t even know his name. They heave their boxes over the blue metal steps together. The bears pour out onto the concrete and stumble away towards the road and the empty agricultural land beyond, their understuffed bodies tipping over and regaining their balance again and again. And again and again, Minjae and the boy go back to the boxes.

Is it enough? Minjae keeps wondering, out of breath. Can she tell herself that it’s enough? When she tells her daughter this story, will she be able to say that she did enough?

“They’re alive!” She knocks a carton out of a stranger’s arms, scattering the colorful bears. Outside, the foreman’s voice stops. Minjae screams again: “Stop, stop, they’re alive!”

Peri swallows. Say it say it say it say it—

Belinda slams her hand against the closed door. Peri, Nadia, and the bears all flinch. “You better not be stealing inventory.”

“We’re not,” Nadia says, pushing the Crumb Cuties behind her. Peri does the same as new aches surge through her clenched jaw. So the bears are back to being inventory. The doorknob rattles, starts to turn. Nadia’s desperate face turns to Peri.

“Don’t come in!” Peri says. “I—I threw up. It’s really bad in here.”

With a disgusted noise, Belinda releases the door handle and stomps away. Peri gathers up the Crumb Cuties, some in the garbage bag, some in her arms. They hold tight to her cable-knit turtleneck, the gold stars in their ears twinkling in the low light like constellations. Nadia hurries other bears into a cardboard box.

“It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re a good worker, y’know,” she says, gently scooching the bears into the corners to make room for more. “You’re a good person, and—”

“I like you,” Peri says. Her hair is greasy, traces of vomit cling to her lips, and she’s carrying two dozen squirming Crumb Cuties like a litter of floppy kittens. Nadia stares, her lips parted. For once, all the bears seem to be staring at her too. Peri’s face heats up. “I like you a lot.”

“Holy shit,” Kailani says. The bears are like a jungle of flowers inside the lifeboat, tiny reflective eyes gleaming amidst brilliant blooms. “Dude.”

“Yeah.” Jacobson’s narrow face brightens, a smiling crescent moon. “We’re pretty close to Hawaii? There’s more than enough rations and water, even if you get lost. But I don’t think you’re going to get lost.”

He passes Kailani the purple-flowered bear, his hands gentle. The bear looks back at the pale man. Kailani clears his throat. “Then, uh, thank you, dude.”

Jacobson does a shitty salute—neither of them was ever in the Navy—and Kailani snorts and socks him in the arm. Jacobson staggers, laughing, and shoves him back. At some point, they end up hugging, the bears squashed between them. Their arms are so stiff that it’s somewhere between an embrace and a test of strength.

“I’m proud to be your crew, dude,” Jacobson says. Kailani blinks and, to make up for his lack of words, squeezes harder. Jacobson sputters.

Someone believes her. Someone else notices the bears moving and cries out. Someone else shouts to the people still carrying the boxes to the bonfire. Someone else grabs a fire extinguisher and runs outside. Someone pulls the fire alarm, someone reaches into the coals, someone begins to sob. Minjae and a bunch of Someones push over the remaining boxes and hold open the doors for the flood of bears and yank the phone out of the foreman’s hand when he tries to call the police.

The Crumb Cuties turn their heads from Nadia to Peri and back again.

“I, um—” Nadia picks up the box, and Peri tells herself that someday she’ll only remember this in nightmares. But Nadia’s brown eyes flick between Peri’s, and at last she says: “Do you wanna get some takeout? Eat at my place? I have a spare toothbrush if you wanna brush your teeth first.”

Peri’s knees go wobbly. She cradles the bears closer, smiling. “I’d love that.”

When Belinda dares to enter the break room, she finds zero bears, one hideous-smelling mop bucket, and a neatly-signed note stuck on the fridge: We quit. Peri and Nadia are long gone, vanished down the nighttime streets in Nadia’s beat-up sedan, a hundred bright-eyed bears pressing their faces to the windows.

Jacobson lowers the lifeboat into the ocean. It bobs on the swells. Kailani holds the black bear and purple-flowered bear up to the small porthole, and they watch the cargo ship grow farther and farther away. As its exterior lights fade out, bioluminescence fades in, glowing in green ripples outside the lifeboat. The only sounds are the waves, Kailani’s breathing, and the quiet shifting of plastic beans.

When it’s all over, Minjae, the boy (whose name is Park Eunseong), and a few others smoke cigarettes and watch dozens of distant bears break for the treeline and the mountain foothills beyond, bright butterfly spots in the gray-green palette of early spring’s fallow fields. Afternoon stretches their shadows long. Minjae holds her cigarette in the lighter offered by a coworker. That melting plastic smell is still stuck in her nose.

From the corner of her eye, she catches Park Eunseong wiping his cheeks, and she brushes his shoulder with the same gentle touch as when her daughter cries. She wonders where she’ll find a new job. She wonders what the bears are looking at. Maybe someday she’ll know.

Across the world, Paris shimmers in the sunrise, and the lilac bear sees something beautiful.


© 2023 Bernie Jean Schiebeling

[Issue 2023.67]

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