Array Seka - Inside Seka

He took me to a part of town I had never seen before. A nice part of town. He said, “Okay, we’re home.”

It was a second floor apartment with hardwood floors, a small kitchen, a large dining room, one bedroom, and one bathroom. It was nice except there wasn’t much furniture except for a dining room table and bedroom furniture. There were curtains in the bedroom but nowhere else. It was nice enough. I’d been in a double bed back at home and when I walked in this bedroom, I saw a king-sized bed for the first time in my life. It was sort of like Ellie Mae comes to Beverly Hills. It was the largest bed I’d ever seen in my life.

Hey, at least it wasn’t a trailer park.

I think Frank was a little anxious because he’d never shared an apartment with a woman. He’d fished in a tournament earlier that morning, we had a long drive home, and he had work the next day. So we just went to sleep and that was my first night in my new home.

The next morning I headed out to school. It was weird because Frank dropped me off. It was strange because I still felt like I needed to hide.

Things were all so new between me and Frank. He arranged his schedule so he could take me to and from school. He got off at 3:00 and I got off at 3:30. Since it was such a small town, we were never very far apart.

Frank also made it clear to me he wanted kids — lots of kids. My own feelings about children were still developing and quite honestly, I might have been open to suggestion either way. But this was an area where Frank was insistent and I opposed him very strongly for one important reason: I was still in high school! Here I was, trying to finish out my senior year as conventionally as possible, and he wanted me barefoot and pregnant. Like being “the married kid” wasn’t weird enough. I didn’t want to walk the halls with a big ol’ belly out to here, nor did I want to drop out. Soon after we got married, I went to the doctor and got on the Pill. Frank threw them out — that’s how much he wanted his way. So I just went back to the doctor, explained the situation, and got another supply and hid them from Frank. Frank was willful; I was willful. Kids would be a discussion for another day.

I didn’t really know any of his friends. When we got home, I knew how to fix some dinner. I was going to make spaghetti, but there was a knock on the door and Frank was in the shower. There was some guy about my height — really skinny with long, long hair down to his rear end, a tied-dyed tee-shirt, with sandals and jeans and a cloth pack on his back, with a flute sticking out of the back. Who was this? A homeless person?

He looked like a member of the Manson family. I told him, “Wait here.” I didn’t want to let him in.

I described him and Frank laughed and said, “Let him in.”

He introduced himself as Lee. He said, “Oh, you’re cooking.”

With Frank still in the shower, he took something out of his bag and threw it down on the table. I thought to myself, “Oh, nice of him to bring some herbs.” I thought it was oregano. I grabbed the pack and figured I’d use it. I took some of it and crumbled it up between my fingers, rubbed it between my palms, and started throwing it into the spaghetti sauce. By the time Frank came out to watch they both looked at me like I was crazy and burst out laughing. They were literally on the floor. I was still clueless. Lee was suddenly sitting at the table rolling the stuff up with some papers. I still wasn’t making the connection, even when they started smoking. I said, “What the hell is this?”

Lee said, “Pot,” matter-of-factly.

“You’re smoking pot?!” It was inconceivable to me. I couldn’t fathom anyone doing drugs. It just blew my mind. I went into the bedroom and started crying. I thought I’d married a drug addict. I figured I would have to leave him and go back to my aunt.

They thought it was funny because they were stoned. They figured I was a crazy little broad who didn’t have a clue. And they were right.

I locked myself in the bedroom and hours later I heard Frank’s friend leave. I wasn’t about to unlock the door with him there. Eventually, Frank started knocking on the door. I let him in and he said, “What’s wrong with you?”

“I had no idea you were a drug addict.”

He laughed and said, “It’s just pot.”

I was the perfect virgin. All of a sudden I was thrown into sex, booze, and drugs and didn’t know what to do.

I let everything slide for a few days. The weekend came and between dealing with the bureaucrats at school, I was relieved to just calm down. I asked Frank, “What is it with this marijuana shit?”

“It makes you happy and you want to eat.”

Now it hit me why he was laughing all the time. I figured if it made him happy and he just ate and went to sleep, how bad could it be? Still, I wasn’t in the mindset to try it.

He wanted to teach me how to drive. He had a Volkswagen van with a stick shift. He took me to a huge mall parking lot where I wouldn’t crash into anything. It took a weekend until I could drive the thing. I studied the Driver’s Ed book and right out of the box I got my driver’s license. Talk about freedom. Getting married and getting a driver’s license — it was like the biggest jailbreak of all time.

June was approaching very quickly, which meant graduation. Frank said, “We need to talk about a couple of things.”

I thought, “Uh-oh.” The red flag went up.

“You need to think about getting a job. A real job, to contribute to the household.”

It used to be I’d get out of school and have the summer off and get to play, but this wasn’t going to happen anymore. I graduated, got my diploma, and I was suddenly an adult.

I called my Uncle John, who worked for the Virginia Department of Highways. I figured he might know somebody who could get me a job. I went to this office and got a mail clerk position, distributing all the mail and running all the reports. This was before computers. We had steno machines and I’d have to ink up these big drums and put the reports in there. We used masters to print out hundreds of copies. I even had my own office. I thought, “Wow, this is really cool.”

I liked the people and was finally treated like an adult. They judged me on my own merits, which was really a cool feeling. They were all very helpful and got me oriented to the position.

As time went on, I got to know Frank’s mom and dad, as we ate over their house frequently. They were really nice people. His mother couldn’t hear very well at all and his father pretty much sat in his La-Z-Boy recliner and watched sports and drank beer. She reminded me of Edith Bunker and even looked a bit like her. The whole scene was all very Archie Bunker-ish. His dad was racist, but didn’t know it. It was because of where he was born and raised. But I got along with them okay.

Meanwhile, Frank kept smoking his pot. He was on swing shift — eight to three one week, four to twelve the next, and then twelve to eight. I had never been alone except when my mom had left me. Now I was quite frequently. When he worked the graveyard shift, it was really scary for me. I was just afraid to be in the house alone. I don’t know why. I stayed awake and watched a lot of TV. Somehow, I functioned at work. There were so many new things happening in my life I guess I was just on overload. But as the months went by, I kind of got used to that, too. We would have our weekends together and we’d even go back to the lake to go fishing.

One day while driving to the lake Frank said, “Try this,” and he handed me a joint.

I said, “No,” but eventually relented. The first time I tried it I didn’t feel anything. No sensation. No hunger. No giggles. Nothing.

The speed limit was seventy-five. He started laughing and asked, “How fast are you going?”