TheBanyanTree: Walking to the 7-11 - a WIP

[Monique Colver]

Thank you Gail!

There will be more!


Monique Colver
Colver Business Solutions
monique at colverbusinesssolutions.com
www.colverbusinesssolutions.com
(425) 772-6218



On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 5:38 AM, Gail Richards <mrsfes at gmail.com> wrote:

> How can something so sad leave me wishing there was more to read??
> Wonderful, Monique!!
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Monique Colver
> Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 11:00 PM
> To: Banyan Tree
>
> Subject: TheBanyanTree: Walking to the 7-11 - a WIP
>
> At night sometimes I’d walk to the 7-11, maybe a mile, maybe a two, down
> the dark highway. I had to walk. We only had one car, and if he wasn’t
> home, which was common, I had to walk, or stay home alone. It was hot,
> usually, for usually I only walked to the 7-11 in the summer, mostly just
> for something to do, mostly so I wouldn’t just be home alone. It was also
> humid, the night air like a moist blanket. This was summer in Louisiana,
> and so I walked to the 7-11 in shorts and a tank top, just for something to
> do. I remember walking to the 7-11 once in the winter, in jeans and boots
> and a sweater, and it was so cold I waited, and then called him to pick me
> up so I wouldn’t have to walk home in the cold.
>
>
> It was late at night when I’d walk to the 7-11, or so I remember it, for
> the night was pitch black, and that could only happen late at night. I
> don’t know why the 7-11, maybe because it was just the closest thing to
> somewhere to go, other than the bar just down the street from our little
> tar paper house, but I wouldn’t go there alone.
>
> It was so humid in Louisiana that after I’d shower in the morning I’d put
> my hair in a bun, and at the end of the day I’d take it down, and the hair
> would still be wet, more than damp, really wet, and it wouldn’t dry until
> late at night, and then just barely. My hair was long then, and wet most of
> the summer.
>
>
> He spent a lot of time at the bar at the end of our street. It wasn’t near
> as far as 7-11, which was good, because in his condition he shouldn’t be
> driving far. His condition was usually drunk.
>
>
> I’d sit at home and wait for him.
>
>
> “Be back in an hour,” I’d say, “Dinner will be ready.”
>
>
> He promised to be back in an hour, and an hour later dinner would be ready,
> or something resembling dinner, and I’d wait.
>
>
> And wait. I would wait for a very long time, usually. A couple of times I
> called the bar, asking for him, and he’d get on the phone and say he’d be
> back shortly. It was a five minute walk, or an even shorter drive if he had
> the car. And I’d wait.
>
>
> I waited a lot.
>
>
> Usually by the time he did get home he was in no condition to eat anything.
> He was usually in a condition to fall down drunk, or to grab at me
> ineffectively if I complained.
>
> My condition wasn’t usually drunk, but often drunk. I was in that stage
> between being an irresponsible teenager and an irresponsible adult, able to
> buy and drink all the alcohol I wanted, and it made living in a tar paper
> shack with an alcoholic easier.
>
>
> Our rented house, as we affectionately referred to it, was four rooms.
> Bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom, which also housed the washing
> machine, an elderly appliance prone to flooding. In the summer I’d hang out
> the clothes to dry on the clothesline in the back, fending off swarms off
> flying insects to do so. I thought I was in hell.
>
>
> The shack came pre-furnished with the sort of furnishings one might find at
> the county landfill, if one were so lucky, and I had covered the couch and
> chair with corduroy bedspreads. I wouldn’t sit on them otherwise. The
> kitchen was infested with roaches, and at night, when it was dark, they
> would scurry about the kitchen. If I came home after dark and came in the
> kitchen door, which we always did, I would open the door and reach inside
> without actually going in, and I’d switch on the light switch, and I’d
> wait. The roaches would disperse after a few minutes, and then I would go
> in, and if I were lucky, they’d all be hidden again.
>
>
> Out back and to the left of the clothesline was a little tar paper garage.
>
>
> We rented this amazing little piece of shit from an elderly woman who lived
> in the big white house around the corner. She invited us over, once, to sit
> on her screened porch with her and her sister and her sister’s daughter,
> and we drank weak tea and chatted about the weather.
>
>
> If it was summer, the weather was hot and humid, hell from sunup to
> sundown, and I hated it.
>
>
> If it was winter, we used a space heater in our tar paper shack rather than
> freeze to death, and one time I lit it and it blew up at me, and it took me
> a month to grow back my eyebrows and the hair on my arms.
>
>
> We loved that tar paper shack like we would love an abusive parent. It
> wasn’t much, and it caused us pain, and it made me miserable, but it was
> all we had. That, and each other.
>
>
> I don’t know if he was miserable. I suppose I didn’t know him well at all,
> though I’d married him. I excuse myself by saying I was drunk a lot, then,
> and didn’t realize what I was doing, but that’s no kind of excuse, is it? I
> was young and stupid and thought it was the best I could do, a perpetually
> drunk airman without ambition, other than finding his next drink. I think
> he was numb.
>
>
> While we lived in the tar paper shack my alcohol obsession waned, and then
> went away. Turned out I wasn’t an alcoholic after all, despite earlier
> predictions. I would still drink, but I could take it or leave it. By the
> time I was 21 the drunkenness as a way to get through life was over, and
> though I thought his might lessen too, it only got worse.
>
>
> And sometimes I walked to the 7-11 late at night because it was preferable
> to waiting at home alone in my tar paper shack while he was out drinking.
>
>
> M
>