Array Seka - Inside Seka

Even then I didn’t want to have children. My childhood had been hard enough. I wanted to live a little, and probably somewhere in the back of my mind I didn’t want to risk doing the same damage to my kids my mother did to me. I probably would have been a good mother, but I just wasn’t willing to find out.

I joined the school work program. It helped you build credits toward graduating. There were certain merchants in town who would volunteer to give students jobs, so I started working in a shoe store. The store was more for ladies and men than it was for children. One quiet afternoon, I was chatting with the other saleswoman who worked there. At the time, I thought she was “old” but she was probably only in her forties. Suddenly, this huge guy walked in and she said nervously, “You wait on him; you wait on him.”

He was very imposing. Wearing dark sunglasses, he had shaggy, disheveled, curly blonde hair and had to be six-foot seven. I was immediately attracted to him because he was like the classic rebel bad boy. He was what every parent would tell a girl to avoid. And being a red-blooded All-American girl, I wanted what I was not supposed to have.

I walked up to him and said, “Can I help you?” Looking down at his huge feet I said to myself, “Holy shit, we don’t have shoes to fit this man.”

Measuring him, I discovered he was a size fourteen and found just one pair of shoes in the entire store that fit him. His own steel-toed safety boots were ragged and we were able to replace those, but we didn’t have a pair of dress shoes for him.

Being a man of few words, he just grinned this sinister grin and nodded his head when I told him we could order a pair of dress shoes. I never thought at the time to even ask him what kind he wanted; I just decided I was going to get him what I liked. I didn’t realize it at the time, but maybe he agreed so he’d have an excuse to come back. He paid for the shoes and picked himself up and left. I didn’t even ask his name.

The store owner asked why I hadn’t taken down his name, but the lady I worked with said, “Don’t worry, he’ll be back.” She must have seen something between us I didn’t.

I later discovered he played pool every day across the street at the pool hall, and he did come back a few days later to see if his order had arrived. That’s when he first introduced himself.

“My name is Frank. You were supposed to order me shoes.”

Being a smartass even at an early age, I said, “Frank what?” I wanted to know his last name.

“Patton. Frank Patton.”

I went in the back and scribbled his name on the package. He paid and stayed there for a few minutes. He asked me my name and said, “I’ll be back later,” which I thought was funny as he had no reason to come back except to see me. My heart began beating out of my chest, I was so excited.

Frank would come in the store every now and again and finally asked, “Would you like to go out?”

“Sure. Why not?”

I was scared to ask my aunt’s permission, because even though she was only five-three, she could be tough. She was the type who even when she was scared of something she wouldn’t show it. But I knew she was a marshmallow inside and she saw I’d always been a good kid, so when I asked she said, “Sure.” That was until she opened the door and saw this giant of a man standing there.

She took one look at him, slammed the door in Frank’s face, and said simply, “Hell, no!”

I just stood there open-mouthed, absolutely humiliated.

“How old is he?” she shrieked.

“Around twenty-five.”

Every time I mentioned his name after that my aunt had him ten years older. “You’re not going out with some thirty-five year old guy!”

The next time he was forty-five. And later fifty-five. It got absurd.

His parents lived on the same street as us. They owned their own home. Nice yard. Clean. Honest, hard-working people. My aunt just thought he was way too old for me.

So I started sneaking around with him.

I told Woody I didn’t want to see him anymore. I really had no good reason to break up with him other than I just wanted to see this long, lean, lanky hunk of a guy. It wouldn’t be fair to Woody, even though lying to him wasn’t fair either. Not wanting to hurt him, I said I had to concentrate on school and sports. He started crying and all I could think to say was “Don’t cry.” I felt just horrible.

Frank would come into the store and the other salesgirls would cover for me during my lunch breaks. It wasn’t like a real date, as my aunt had forbidden it. Since we couldn’t hide in such a small town, we just drove around in his car. I was always scared someone would spot us, since I knew what my aunt would do if she found out.

The funny thing was that we really didn’t talk a whole lot. He was such a quiet person. I was scared to death being alone in a car with a rebel boy and nobody knowing where I was. The only boy I’d ever kissed was Woody, and that wasn’t even a kiss kiss.

It all came to a head one afternoon. I still didn’t have any real close girlfriends, but a group of “bad girls” had a sorority and I hung out with them a bit. They said, “Come on, we’re going to skip school today.” I said I couldn’t do that, but they convinced me. When we got to a vacant house there were guys and girls there. Whoever’s house it was, the parents were gone. The boys and girls were pairing up. It was clear they were about to sneak off to other rooms to have sex. That was something I wasn’t at all interested in. I had never had sex. I hadn’t even come close to having sex. I figured I needed to go home and tell my aunt I had skipped school and take my punishment. I knew I was going to catch hell.

I started walking home and Frank happened to drive by and he said, “Get in the car, I’ll drive you.”

Being a pretty good distance away, I took him up on the offer and he left me two blocks from my house. I told him I was going to be in trouble and didn’t even know if I’d be allowed to go to work for a while. He just grinned. Here was this little schoolgirl with this big grown up guy.

My aunt wasn’t home, but the school had called to tell her I’d played hooky. Evidently in the interim someone had told her I had been in the car with Frank. I was doomed any which way.

When she finally walked in, it got real ugly real fast. She called me a little slut and said, “You’re just like your mother, sleeping with every man in town.” Although she loved her sister, she never approved of her, and suddenly I had disappointed her, too.

Devastated, I told her I hadn’t slept with anyone. But there was no convincing my aunt. With the mere act of skipping school and being in mixed company, she immediately assumed I had committed the “ultimate sin” of having sex.

I was monitored pretty closely after that. I was allowed to go to school. From school, I went to my job. Then home. The Gestapo would have loved her.

She never knew that Frank would come to the shoe store to see me. The strain of it all was wearing on me. One day when Frank paid a visit he asked, “What’s going on?” and my tears just started to pour. I told him about my situation at home and he said, “You don’t need to put up with that.”

“I don’t have much choice.”

Just as casually, he said, “Well, we could get married.”

And just like that I said, “Okay.”

It wasn’t exactly the most thought out decision I’d ever made, but it was a way out. I didn’t want to be away from my uncle, but it would be a way for my aunt not to look at me in disappointment. A way for her not to be reminded of my mother.

I told him I was only seventeen and he said when I turned eighteen we would run away. It sounded exciting, but I didn’t even know what romance was.