An Early Trip to Walmart
I laid there on my back on the bed with my legs curled toward my chest while my mom changed my diaper. Except she had run out of diapers. She disappeared down the hallway for a moment, grabbing something from the bathroom and then reappeared with a wash cloth. She folded the wash cloth into thirds, pulled my legs up in the air and let my bottom rest on top of it. This was my diaper. She knew wash cloths didn’t cut it as diapers. She used this method before on her younger siblings when she was in charge of them growing up and learned then that they caused infections and rashes.
I went to bed that night cuddled next to my mom in a bed we shared in my Grandma’s basement. I felt the denseness and itchiness of the wash cloth between my legs. The walls of the basement were made of stone and the floors were made of concrete. The door to my mom and I’s room was made out of old wood that made loud creaking noises as it swung open and closed. Next door to our room was my grandma’s food cellar where she kept years supplies of canned fruits, jams, and puddings. The cool temperatures and lack of light in the basement made for a perfect place to store food or for spiders to nest but it was something of nightmares to call home.
The next morning I was woken by my mom quietly grabbing me out of bed. The sun hadn’t come up yet and it was still dark outside. My mom dressed me in warm clothes then quietly carried me up the stairs and out the front door, sneaking away to the car.
Forty-five minutes later we arrived in an empty parking lot of a big store with a lit-up blue Walmart sign. The store wasn’t open yet so my mom reclined her seat put a jacket over her head and took a nap. Once we parked she pulled me out of a carseat and had me bundled in a blanket in the passenger seat. An hour or so later, the store opened and my mom and I were the first ones through the doors. I sat in the front of the shopping cart, with my legs dangling out from the square metal holes, while we strolled along taking our time between the aisles and stopping in the diaper section.
By the time we made our way out of the store, the parking lot that was lit by street lamps and the blue Walmart sign, was now fully lit by a blue sky and it had filled up with cars. We wheeled the shopping cart to our car, unloading a package of diapers and a few other things into the trunk. My mom strapped me into the car seat and we headed home.