Moving and Shaking

“This one looks really heavy duty, and it has wheels,” I said to my husband, directing the mouse pointer to an item on Target’s website.

“Yes, and it’s also $30,” he countered.

As I continued scrolling down the page of storage bins, a memory entered my mind unbidden: rolling a heavy duty, black and gray wheeled tackle-box style container into a motel room. The next morning, wheeling the same bin out to the parking lot, then getting in a car’s passenger seat next to the man who had assaulted me the night before. Not wanting to look at him. Steeling my self, my body, my mind against the thought of his hands on me, his scratchy goatee flicked with gray, his beady little eyes.

He took a left-hand turn out of the motel’s parking lot and cleared his throat.

“So…” he ventured.

While I was unable to stiffen my body any more, I tried anyway.

I said nothing.

He made a pathetic attempt at an apology.

I said nothing.

In fact, I blocked the memory out for years, until well after I quit the job in which he was my supervisor and moved back to my home state, my fresh start soiled by the experience which occurred mere weeks into the job.