February 2003 Issue - Essay # 8
Between
Rest Stops
By Juliet Cordova-Allen
|
The
doors to idealism had been slammed shut, and I could no longer hide in my
vacuum of permanence or love. He
had woken up that morning with his mind made up.
The ultimatum was divorce or death.
After much deliberation, I chose the former.
In six days, he was out of the duplex, and I was standing in the
middle of the living room staring at the furniture refuse; symbols of a
desolate and stony marriage. I
gave my heart two weeks to break and I cried alone at night, curled up
in my blankets, disbelieving that I would never see him again.
Then I turned off the tap from whence my love for him flowed. I
attended university on schedule, went to work as usual, but I needed
something to change. I
wanted tangible proof that I had cast off my old self and had opened my
heart and mind to anything and everything that would come my way.
A strange thought entered, that of the Bedouin tent-dwellers in
the I
sold the pricey items that I had retained from my divorce and purchased
a white Ford conversion van that had been decorated in red shag
carpeting from top to bottom. It
had a fold-down backseat that converted into a bed.
I scrubbed it clean, bought pillows, stuffed dolls, a small
travel t.v. and called it home. Never
to return to my apartment, I mailed the key with a note to my landlord
that the bed and box spring were free to whomever had need of them. It
was early spring and I was feeling light in heart, light on my toes. I
had few burdens. I had no
worries about the rent, the water, the heat, the light, the trash, the
phone, the neighbors, the lawns, the dirt, the dust, the dishes, or the
freezer. Instead, I had only
to keep gas in my van and fluid in the right compartments. As
time went on, I learned to adapt to the change in my lifestyle.
I had already planned out the basics.
I bathed and brushed my teeth on the university campus and even
if I wasn’t a student, I had full access to the locker room showers,
the sauna, the swimming pool, and the lounge.
I studied on campus and did my laundry in town at the laundromat.
I watched t.v. or read a book in the coziness of my van while
everybody else sat bored in the laundromat with their lives suspended
waiting on soiled clothes. Using
the bathroom took a little planning.
If it was late night or very early morning (before any decent
restaurants or the campus locker rooms were open), I sometimes used a
plastic cup or container, the contents of which I discarded in a nearby
grassy area. Most of the
time, I used supermarket, restaurant or gas station restrooms.
For food, of course, I had an array of eateries and grocery
stores from which to choose. Usually, however, I ate my favorites, fried
rice and crab During
the summer, the temperatures during the day became quite unbearable, and
I was somewhat unprepared for its effects on my sleep and bathing
habits. I was working a
graveyard shift and attending day classes, which left me with the late
afternoon to evening in which to sleep. However, being locked up in a
van, even with the windows open, did not provide enough ventilation for
sound sleep. I was waking up
drenched in sweat, feeling like I’d been under running water, my head
throbbing and my nose congested, after I’d already showered for the
day. I had to go to work
smelling like I’d had a workout when all I’d done was sleep.
Looking
for a quick solution, I performed a minor reconnaissance of the campus
lounges and bathrooms and to my amazement, every bathroom had a large
couch in a quiet nook. Even
the library had sofas on the highest floor overlooking the campus
greenery. It promised sweet
relief and I slept well for the rest of the summer. In
late July, I met a guy who intrigued me with his sensuous walk.
It hadn’t dawned on me until then that I had spent the months
preceding in much solitude, if not isolation, although I had not felt
it. After all, I had
acquaintances at work and at school with whom I spent pleasurable time.
But most of my free time was spent studying or reading.
I
had also gained the friendship of a few police officers in the area. On
a few evenings, as I sat parked in the brightly lit parking lots of
supermarkets or shopping malls, a police officer drove past my van and
became curious about the dark windows as I was, by that time of the day,
one of only few vehicles left in the lots.
Upon their closer investigation, I would emerge and explain to
them my quest for freedom. Instead
of being coerced out of the area, I instead met with humorous
appreciation and understanding. They
offered advice on safe places to camp for the night and recommended
scenic points of escape. Of
course, I had to wonder what they had been doing, why they knew of such
havens. Rick
was a student at the university although he lived with his parents.
I spent evenings with him at his parents’ home studying,
watching t.v., and ate dinner with his family on occasion.
The question eventually came up, where did I live?
To speak of awkward moments; this one could have been utterly
embarrassing for all of us. I
wasn’t sure if I would tell them the truth: I was a homeless woman.
I slept in public facilities, urinated in styrofoam cups, brushed
my teeth with my windows down and spat toothpaste out between parking
spaces, and had dinner at the steering wheel with the windshield as my
movie screen. I
brainstormed for an answer a little less bold-faced in its deception.
“Um,” I started. But I
was spared the humiliation when their youngest member dropped her glass
of milk as she carried it back to the dinner table.
I took advantage of the distraction and changed the subject. For
who would understand my need to be free from constraints of all kinds?
Who would know what it meant to grieve for the loss of a man’s
dysfunctional love by throwing away everything I called my own and
living only in the moment? I
had adopted the inimalist lifestyle.
It was the way I had chosen to redefine myself, my priorities, my
goals. To start back from
the beginning. I
mustered up courage one evening and talked to Rick.
I told him only the essentials, that I had moved out of my
apartment. No details were
necessary because at that point, he confessed that he had deduced that I
was homeless. We laughed
quite a bit, but stranger to me than the thought of myself without a
home was the idea that he thought nothing of it.
Eventually, he mentioned it to his parents, and they did not bat
an eye. In fact, they
offered their couch to me unconditionally. It
was not untimely that Rick’s parents had made such a gesture.
By December, I was working the dayshift and waking up to frigid
temperatures, shaking the moment my arms came out from under the
comforters in my van. I will
not attempt to describe my bathroom practices at this time; waking up
with my bladder at explosive levels, I felt as if I was carrying a
football inside. It was
horribly exacerbated by the below-freezing cold.
I woke from sleep with my nose hairs sticking to my inner
nostrils and my feet numb as all my blood supply had kept my heart
beating through the night. I
sought refuge in Rick’s house most nights.
I felt somewhat ashamed, sleeping in someone’s home without
paying rent. A free-loader
and a homeless woman. Had
they started feeding me soup, I would surely have left, never to return.
Other nights, Rick happily slept with me in my conversion van.
Unaware of the existence of camp-style propane heaters, it helped
to have a warm body next to me in my sleeping bag. The
end to my adventure came one blistery night.
I had made the mistake of parking in a supermarket lot in a town
where I was unfamiliar. It
had been a long Saturday and I had gone out drinking and dancing with
Rick. It made sense to us to
crash close by the nightclub as neither of us were alert enough to drive
back to his parents’ home. In
the middle of the night I was startled awake by the sudden flood of
bright lights shining through the curtains of my van.
My heart began to beat rapidly and I felt undoubtedly vulnerable.
Ice covered the streets and driveways in the area and I was
half-naked under my comforters. As
I struggled to get my pants on, someone pounded impatiently on the door
of the van. Rick had had
more to drink than I, and he was still asleep when the noise alarmed him.
He sat up abruptly and tried to dress in haste as well. I
moved up front and rolled down the window.
A gruff police officer instructed me to exit the van immediately.
I obeyed and the moment that I opened the door, he swung it wider
and pulled me out into the cold without a coat.
He demanded to know if anyone else was in the vehicle and I told
him that Rick was inside. Rick
came up front once he was dressed and the officer told us to put our
hands up against the van and we were frisked from head to foot.
I was trembling and could hear my teeth chattering.
Instead of freeing us both, the officer handcuffed me and put me
in his police car. He had
run my plates while I slept and discovered an unpaid speeding ticket
with a warrant for my arrest. I
asked Rick to follow me in the police car and to pay my bail with my
checkbook. To
say nothing of the glaring irony, I was completely humiliated in front
of Rick. The great freedom
that I had perceived for almost a year had completely vanished that
night. I was taken into
custody and physically restrained by a man twice my size and treated
like a common criminal. Was
it the climax to my historically dysfunctional relationships?
Or was it simply a crossroads at which I would essentially have
to redefine what it meant to be unchained? Slowly,
as weeks passed, I came to the decision to get an apartment. It was, in
part, a decision made out of a sense of defeat, but it was also based on
a primitive yearning for home, not simply for four walls where I
resigned myself to remain after my day was done, as my old duplex had
been; but for comfort and family -- for enduring, unconditional love
and protection. Perhaps,
then, it was an expression of personal growth that I was now ready to
stake claim to a piece of the earth as my own. |
| Author's Biography Juliet
Cordova-Allen is working on an advanced degree in Having written for years, Juliet is now in the throws of a dramatic career change as she attempts a crash dive into the world of writing. She recently went on a submission spree and is currently working on a nonfiction book. E-mail Juliet at jcallen8@frontiernet.net |
Essay
Reviews! Site Reviews! We'd
like to know from our readers if they enjoy Seven Seas Magazine! Do
you have praise or complaints? Suggestions or ideas? Get notified! Would you
like to get notified as soon as new Seven Seas issues are published on
the Web? Tell a friend! Do you
enjoy the Seven Seas site?
|
|
Go back to the table
of contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
|
