Sleepless in Monette

It is 5:15 in the morning in Monette, Arkansas.

The house is quiet—or as quiet as a house containing four cats, several humans, and enough collective irritation to power a small municipality can reasonably be expected to be. Everyone else is asleep. Sensible people are asleep. Even the sun has declined to participate in this nonsense.

And then there is me.

I am awake, staring into the predawn darkness while my brain conducts another emergency meeting that absolutely could have been an email.

Did the check ever exist?

Was it actually mailed?

Where is the money?

How many bills are waiting patiently—or not so patiently—for funds I was assured were already “in the mail”?

At this point, “the check is in the mail” has joined “I’ll call you back in ten minutes” and “someone will get back to you shortly” in the Museum of Things People Say When They Want You to Stop Asking Questions.

Admission is free. The gift shop accepts imaginary checks.

I have been in Arkansas for weeks now, but I still feel as though I have not completely arrived. My body is here. My cats are here, although some of them remain deeply offended by the accommodations, the relocation, one another, and possibly the concept of Arkansas itself. My belongings technically made it to the state after U-Haul briefly misplaced an entire storage cube as though it were a single sock.

But my life is still suspended somewhere between Washington and Arkansas.

I am living out of suitcases, eating wherever there is space, and waiting to sit on my own furniture again. I miss my sofa with the kind of longing usually reserved for lost lovers and beachfront vacations. I want to eat at a real dining table. I want to put something in a drawer and know that the drawer belongs to me. I want to stop treating ordinary household objects like legendary artifacts.

Behold: a chair with padding.

Witness: a table large enough to hold both a plate and an elbow.

Marvel: a bed frame assembled in its natural habitat.

These are the glamorous dreams of a woman who crossed half the country with pneumonia, four cats scattered across the family equation, one functioning voice that has since filed for early retirement, and a moving budget held together with arithmetic, spite, and increasingly creative interpretations of the word “temporary.”

I thought the hard part would be the move.

That was adorable.

The hard part is waiting.

Waiting without answers is its own peculiar form of exhaustion. Your body can sit perfectly still while your mind runs endless laps around the same questions. You check the mailbox. You check the bank account. You check your email. You check your phone. Then you check all four again, because perhaps reality changed during the thirty-seven seconds you spent staring blankly at the wall.

It did not.

There is still no check.

What there is, however, is a fascinating collection of contradictory statements.

On September 3, I was told that some funds had been released and the check was in the mail. Two weeks later, after the alleged check failed to materialize, I was told that some funds could be released.

Had they been released?

Could they be released?

Were they released into the wild, where they are now frolicking freely beside my missing callbacks?

No one seems particularly eager to explain.

On Thursday, I spoke with someone I understood to be a managing attorney. He assured me I would receive a call back in ten minutes.

That was several days and approximately nine hundred imaginary ten-minute increments ago.

Still no call.

Still no check.

Still no clear answer as to whether a check was ever printed, signed, addressed, mailed, misplaced, devoured by the Memphis postal vortex, or merely spoken into existence by someone hoping the phrase “in the mail” possessed magical properties.

As a Witch, I can confirm that it does not.

I know what some people will say: Be patient.

I have been patient.

Patience is not silence. Patience is not accepting contradictory answers. Patience is not smiling politely while the people holding your money treat basic information like a state secret. There comes a point when patience stops being a virtue and becomes unpaid labor performed for the convenience of people who cannot—or will not—give you a straight answer.

That point is somewhere behind me, waving from the roadside.

The cruelest part is that I am not waiting for a windfall. I am waiting to pay bills. I am waiting to replace desperation with groceries, furniture, and the ability to breathe when the phone rings. I am waiting to stop calculating which obligation can survive being ignored the longest.

Poverty—or even temporary, situational poverty—reduces your world with astonishing efficiency.

Your plans become lists.

Your choices become calculations.

Your time becomes waiting.

Can I afford to go anywhere?

Can I afford the gas?

What can I make from what is already in the kitchen?

Which bill is closest to becoming a full-blown catastrophe?

How many ways can one adult woman rearrange the same handful of dollars before admitting the dollars have refused to reproduce?

People talk about being broke as though it is simply the absence of money. It is not. It is the occupation of the mind. It moves into every room and puts its feet on the furniture—which would be particularly offensive if I currently had furniture.

It follows you into bed.

It wakes you before dawn.

It whispers worst-case scenarios with the relentless confidence of a carnival barker.

Step right up! Lose the car! Miss a payment! Watch another carefully constructed plan collapse because someone else could not be bothered to return a telephone call!

And that is how you find yourself awake at 5:15 in Monette, listening to the hum of the house and wondering how many times a person can be told that help is coming before the promise itself becomes an injury.

Still, dawn will arrive.

It always does, smug little bastard that it is.

The cats will demand breakfast as though none of this concerns them. Belisama will likely choose violence. Rosie will deploy the feather-boa tail and flirt her way through whatever chaos remains. The mailbox will eventually be checked again, because hope is persistent even when it has become deeply embarrassing.

And I will keep asking questions.

I will keep documenting every date, every email, every promise, every missing callback, and every version of the story. If necessary, I will send the whole wretched timeline to people whose job is to ask why client funds appear to exist in a quantum state—simultaneously mailed and not yet released.

Because sleepless does not mean helpless.

Exhausted does not mean stupid.

Broke does not mean powerless.

And patience does not mean permission.

So here I am: sleepless in Monette, surrounded by darkness, disgruntled cats, and enough blunt truth to last until sunrise.

There is still no check.

But there will be an accounting.