Chapter 46
MY NEXT JOB WAS WITH Associates Leasing Corporation or The Associates as it was known internally. Associates Leasing Corporation owned top of the line eighteen wheelers, like Mack, Fleetwood, and Mercedes, which they leased out to independent truckers. I worked for them as a statistical typist.
I was so beat up emotionally, I actually went to work day after day without my dentures. (At this point, the Cafeteria girl’s younger sisters and I guess nieces joined the pack and took turns following me around. In the morning when I arrived at work, they were already there – standing outside the building mingling in with the morning commute crowd. I started each day off with a barrage of taunts.) I was so humiliated that I sat in my cubicle all day except for when I went to the bathroom or out at lunch-time.
The one good thing about working for The Associates was that my salary went from one hundred and twenty dollars a week to one hundred and sixty-seven dollars a week. The extra money went for clothes.
Happiness for me was Lame Bryant’s downtown store on Randolph Street. I’d leave my tiny gray cubicle, ride the elevator down twenty-one stories to ground level, walk three blocks – Jackson, Washington, Randolph and enter through those two polished glass doors. Soon I began feeling like myself again.
Over time I cleared everything out of my closet that was ‘funky and London inspired’. I had a new look that was definitely American city girl chic. I stuck my fake teeth in my mouth and bought Ciara Cologne. I began smiling and talking with other people in the office.
This is when the benign stalkers changed. Not content with their usual taunts, they amped it up.
Riding the ‘el’ home from work in the evenings, they’d sit in various sections of the train and every time the wind blew my cologne through the car, they’d scream in unison, “Oh My God! Sis stinks. Someone make her move away from the window! Oh my God! I’m going to be sick!” Everyone on the train stared at me! And laughed at me!
I switched from Ciara to Jontue Cologne. They only screamed louder. But I hung in there! I stayed on that train and kept right on working, shipping, and trying to improve myself. I wasn’t about to give in to ‘The Voices\Stalkers.’
This amping up of the taunts, torture, and threats would remain a constancy over the next thirty years every time my self-esteem got higher than knee level or a suitable man took an interest in me.
The one absolute thing I’d come to know for a certainty with The Voices\Stalkers is that, EVERYTHING I DO IS ALL BAD. As far as they’re concerned, you will never ever, ever, ever, ever do anything right. And sooner or later other people begin to believe that, as well.
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