They taught her the names of produce—naranja, limón, las uvas.

She had trouble with the letters l and v. But she recited these words as she displayed the fruit, careful not to let them bruise. It felt good to not take herself too seriously, to see herself through the eyes of someone else.

She tried to reciprocate by teaching them Korean, but they already knew most of the words that would be useful to their work. They knew how to say hello and thank you. They knew all the numbers (hana, dul, set . . . ), all the names of different produce, the food. She couldn’t get over the sight of seeing someone who wasn’t Asian speaking her language.

She couldn’t get over America.

On a Friday morning, two months after she had arrived in Los Angeles, she stood at a cart, wiping sweat from her face before stocking shelves of soft drinks—7-Up, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, fruit-flavored beverages in obscene colors that did not exist in nature. She couldn’t believe how much soda people drank in America. She occasionally had a 7-Up when she had a stomachache, but by the looks of it, Americans drank the liquid as frequently as water.

The supermarket owner, Mr. Park, wearing his usual white polo shirt and khakis, approached her slowly with a smile as if he had a little secret to share. Her spine tingled with fear as she froze in place, resisting the urge to run away. He had never done anything untoward, but she hated how he looked at her a shade too long—as if he owned her, too.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“Fine.” The walls of aluminum cans glistened like rounds of ammunition, the bottles like missile shells.

“Making friends?”

“Kind of,” she said.

“I heard you’re making friends with the Mexicans.”

She didn’t like those words in his mouth.

“Hector, Consuela,” he said.

“Yes, they’re very nice.” Her legs trembled beneath her.

“They work hard.”

“Yes, they do.”

“They can’t help that they don’t, you know . . . have the business sense.” He pointed to the side of his head.

She wanted to ask how he would know that. Did he ever talk to them? He was the idiot, creepy and insensitive. Hanging by her side, her hand tightened into a fist.

“At least they work hard, you know?” he repeated.

“Yes.” She exited her body, a shell, as his eyes meandered down. She fixed her eyes on the linoleum floor, speckled like birds’ eggs. Mina had been hiding in the storeroom and the aisles among the boxes and bottles and jars, but in reality, pinned down by his gaze, she had been exposed here, too.

“Anyway, I thought this would be a good time to move you to the cash registers.” He smiled. “One of our workers is retiring.”

She might be safer surrounded by more people.

“That—that would be great,” she said.

“Want to start next week?” he asked.

“Sure.” Overcome with relief, her eyes grew wet.

“Just come in and ask one of the cashiers for Mr. Kim, okay? He’ll help you.” He winked.

“Mr. Kim? Okay.”

“Good job.” Those words were like hands trying to touch her.

As soon as he walked away, tears fell down her cheeks. She could taste the salt, like the ocean. Hastily, she wiped her face.

Although she enjoyed the company of Hector and Consuela and the other workers who greeted her with a smile, a wave, or a nod every day, she would get paid more as a cashier, a job that would also be easier on her body. She was getting older after all. Her stiff joints and muscles reminded her of this daily.

Later that afternoon, she joined Hector in restocking the produce section, which had become quickly depleted earlier that day. As they worked (him grabbing and delivering carts stocked with leafy greens and root vegetables, and her neatly piling them), she thought that maybe she should she tell him that she was leaving the floor. Maybe he would think it would be strange if she didn’t tell him, and one day he found out that she was working at the registers. But she didn’t know how. She wasn’t sure about the words, and she didn’t want to offend him.

“I . . . Monday . . . I go at cash register,” she said in English.

“You?” he said.

“Yes, me.”

“Oh, good, good.” He smiled with warmth, as if patting her on the back. “Good. You do a good job, okay?”

“Okay.”

He stacked the floppy red leaf lettuce with her in silence. She could sense his resignation. Hector and Consuela had been in their jobs forever.

Dealing with Korean customers directly required the Korean language, sure, but at the same time, Hector and Consuela already knew a lot of Korean, and would learn more if they thought it would make their lives easier. It was obvious why she was getting promoted over them.

She wanted to explain to him, to make him feel better, that she wasn’t strong enough to do this job, but both of them knew that was not the truth. The truth was something that would make them both uncomfortable and sad. This was already his expectation. This was already his experience. So she said nothing until the end of her shift.

“Hasta luego.” She tried to smile.

“Hasta luego,” he said, without quite meeting her eyes.

ON MONDAY, MINA MET MR. KIM, THE SAME MAN WHO occasionally greeted her in the aisles, for training. He was indeed a few years younger than her, with his smooth dark skin, square face, high cheekbones, a shy smile that was slightly lopsided on the right. He was not tall, about the same height as Mina, so when he spoke to her, he looked her straight in the eyes, which made her feel self-conscious. She felt dowdy in her slacks and pink polo shirt, her worn tennis shoes.

As he showed her the buttons on the register and the form to fill out for the reports, recording the exact change in the register at the beginning and end of her shifts, she couldn’t help but stare at his arms—thin but muscular, covered in a pale down. She always liked arms. And it gave her something to look at besides his face.

On her first day at the register, she was a little slow with the cash, and the customers grew impatient, eyeing her, too busy with their own lives, their own worries to recognize that she was new and trying to learn as quickly as possible.

“That’s a twenty. Give me back $3.15.”

“Okay.”

“No, here. Let me make this easier for you. I have exact change.”

She was still getting used to the dollar, the denominations, the feel of it, the way each bill appeared the same but different, the sizes of the coins. Fortunately, the bagger whom she worked with, Mario, with his spiky hair but soft demeanor, was patient. He helped her with the breakdown of the cash or smiled and apologized in Korean to the customers as she stood there, perplexed, having to use a part of the brain that had grown rusty over the years with disuse. He spent his time between customers helping Mr. Kim or the other cashiers lift large sacks of rice or boxes of produce onto carts.

After a few hours, she understood the subtleties of the bar-code scanner. She memorized some of the codes for the more popular produce. She received and doled out money automatically.

Although the job was less physically demanding, the presence of all the customers waiting in line for her to do her job quickly while being friendly exhausted her. All those eyes. The nervousness she experienced as a customer watched her scan each item, ensuring that she was charging them correctly. Sure, she would get used to it. Eventually, the customers would become like the bottles of soy sauce that she stocked on the shelves, just another component of the repetitive, ultimately unfeeling nature of her job.

Spinach. Doenjang. Thin rice noodles. Large sack of rice. Garlic. Bean-flavored popsicles. Two oranges. A bag of ginger.

A six-pack of Hite. A bag of potato chips. A bundle of green onion.

At the end of the shift, Mr. Kim, harried and rushed, came by to check in on her. Sweat ran down the sides of his face. Nonetheless, he tried to be as generous and gentle with her as possible. He asked her if she had any questions, checking the remaining cash in her register up against what she had logged in her binder. He wiped his forehead with his bare arm. She handed him a paper napkin she had in her pocket.

“Thank you,” he said in English, smiling.

“No . . . problem?” She laughed, realizing she still couldn’t pronounce the letter L.

“Good job today.”

“Thank you!” Their eyes met, and she returned his smile.