Transparent

The years from 2007 through 2011 blur in my memory. Some moments I can barely make out—they’re like streetlights on a rainy night, no more than gauze in the dark. Others interlock, firm. These are the years my daughter and I lived in Oklahoma, where we landed after brief stops in three other states after my release from rehab in 2006. I was, after all the moves and miscalculations, still mind wandering and restless. My daughter was four.

Halfway between Dallas and the Oklahoma border, there’s a 7-Eleven on the northbound side of i-35 in Denton, Texas, where we now live.

After my daughter’s birth in 2002, there were nights I sat in the rocking chair next to her crib, understanding that the world would be better if I killed myself. And her. I’d grip the arms of the chair and flex every muscle in my body to stop myself. One night, I walked into the room where her father was reading and sat on the edge of the bed beside him. I admitted I had no feelings—for him, for her, for myself—but that we could be friends; we could raise her together. We’d be fine. Our lives would be fine.

He left four months later.

The bed-headed clerk rushes back from the gas pumps outside. He’s apologizing, explaining he’s been shouting away the man who hovers in the mornings asking for a couple of bucks from anyone who’s filling up. “Every damn day,” he mumbles. I set my Big Gulp on the counter, fumble in my purse for enough change.

Not long after my daughter’s father left, I described the apathy to my doctor and she diagnosed me with postpartum depression. She prescribed Lexapro, an antidepressant, making me promise to see a psychiatrist, but I knew I wouldn’t do it, couldn’t do it. I was in my final semester of graduate school, and my daughter was six months old. I had classes to teach and seminar papers and a thesis to write. I had very little money, university insurance, and no time. I took the Lexapro anyway. As the weeks passed, I realized I had always felt a little down my entire life. The pills lifted that heaviness.

Twentysomething clerks come and go here, most lasting a month or so except for the stout blonde woman, Sharon, who’s in her mid-thirties and gets her nails painted the color of whatever holiday nears. My favorite so far has been the sparkling silver she had done for New Year’s. She calls me “sweetie” and “babe.” When she’s busy stocking the chip aisle or cleaning the coffee machine during lulls in the morning rush, I wave a dollar in the air on my way to the register, tell her I’ll leave it on the counter. Other mornings, I’ll hand her eighty-six cents on my way back to the fountain drink machine, where I pour Diet Dr Pepper into a plastic cup. Every morning.

A thin boy in a large cowboy hat sets down a twenty, and when the manager hands him two packs of smokes, the boy shakes his head, tosses his hand toward the cigarettes. “No, not this one—the Reds,” he says rudely. The manager, a slight, balding Middle Eastern man, pauses, takes a long look at him before asking for id. Cowboy looks out to his truck at the gas pumps, says he doesn’t have it. The manager slides the cigarettes back, says, “No.” “But I already paid for ’em.” I feel sorry for Cowboy until he stomps toward the door, then shoves it open, hurling a “Fuck you” at the morning.

The Gold Peak tea machine in the back of the store has had a handwritten Out of Order!!! sign taped to it since we moved here about a year ago, and the front window has never been without a Now Hiring sign. I wonder how much 7-Eleven pays, because I see one of the clerks walking back to his apartment in my complex after...