Petunia pushes past the women until she reaches Mac. Mac greets her, and they embrace.
Then Petunia asks, “Is he the one?”
“He tried to rape her,” Mac says, pointing at me. “He didn’t–” I say.
“That’s convenient,” says Petunia.
Again, I think about running to find Mom. “What are you going to do to him?” I ask, but no one is listening to me. Bane is squirming a whole lot, and I even imagine that I can hear him screaming through his gag. I push back to the front of the crowd.
Petunia looks at Bane’s dick and laughs. She says, “You’re going to want to stay still.” Then she takes out a scalpel and something that looks like a pair of scissors. I feel as though I have been dropped in the middle of a b-horror movie, starring a bunch of has-been actresses. Petunia tells Mac, “Hold his dick out of the way. I don’t want to cut more than I have to.”
Most of the women quiet, then grow silent. Dahlia lets out a small sound of protest. “What are you going to do?” she asks.
Petunia says, “Vasectomy. I’ve had practice.” Some of the women look uncomfortable at this, but they do not voice their opinions. Then Petunia turns back to Bane. Dahlia takes a deep breath. Petunia pushes up her sleeve. Even as Bane thrashes, more women approach him, binding him with more scarves and belts. Mac smiles. She says, “It’s just a small slit. Then snip, snip,”
I’ve had enough. “You are all fucking crazy!” I scream, over and over, until someone turns to me and says, “This is for your own protection.”
As Petunia moves the scalpel through Bane, I yell, “I’ll call the police on you!” The word “police” catches the attention of a few women.
Mac laughs at me. Bane screams through his bit. Then Mac turns to Dahlia and asks, “Did you give her the pills?”
“Yes,” says Dahlia.
“Good,” says Mac, “She shouldn’t remember any of this.”
Mom wakes me. She says, “Lets pack up our stuff and get out of here.”
“Sooner, the better,” I reply. Mom leaves and for a moment I just stare at the orange fabric of our tent wall. It’s glowing. I’m glad to be leaving. If you ask me, this whole weekend has been one boring waste of time.
Once we get everything into the car, we wait for Dahlia, who is having rushed, enthusiastic conversations with Petunia and Mac.
I ask Mom if she had fun and Mom says, “Sure, lots of fun.”
“And what about you?” asks Mom, “You get to say goodbye to your friend Bane?” she drags the “ane” in Bane’s names out for about a minute and a half.
Dahlia gets into the car before I can answer Mom. Though I am relatively unchanged, Dahlia looks like an entirely new person. She’s shaved her head, and she’s got markings on her neck and chest. Her blouse is stained red and she seems to have misplaced her bra. “Don’t worry,” she says when Mom gapes at her. “None of this is permanent.”
It takes Mom and me two full days to recover from Camp and Rant. Mom even lets us skip school. Ever since we got home, Dahlia has been on cloud nine. She is constantly on the phone, making whispered plans with Mac and Petunia. She tells Mom and me that she has been made the youth ambassador of Right to Fight, the same organization that funded Camp and Rant. Then she informs us that she will be leaving for ten days in December for a special women’s seminar that teaches strength in the face of violence. She says it is going to be exactly like Camp and Rant, only more intense. Then she pumps her fist in the air and yells, “You women have seen nothing yet!”
I am singing “Mother’s Little Helper” when a man steps out onto the expressway. I hit him going sixty. He bounces into the asphalt. I pull over. The road is empty.
I never meant to drive all the way to my mother’s funeral, but when I arrived at JFK, the flight to Los Angeles seemed too quick, and the parking fee, too steep.
I remember to dim my headlights before I get out of the car, then I walk to where the man lies. His limbs are bent and his eyes are open, unfocused, drifting. “Hello,” I say. The man is wearing a black hat and a pinstriped suit. For a moment, I consider lying down next to him. I imagine us photographed, me in a long, flowing dress and him in his suit. I wonder if we’d look like two wedding guests. I sink into the ground and scream into my knees until my head pounds. Take a deep breath.
I notice that there is a cut across the man’s nose, but it is not deep. I nudge him with my foot. I ask, “Are you dead?” Then I bend close to his lips to see if he is breathing. I brush gravel from his jacket and pants. His left hand is bleeding and I notice that he is wearing a wedding ring. Somewhere, a car backfires. I take his hand in mine, stand, try to pull him up; he is too heavy.
Wiping the blood from my palms, I get back into my car. I don’t recognize the new song on the radio. I tell myself that I’ll find the nearest hospital, that I will leave an anonymous tip about a dead man on the expressway. I don’t allow myself to look back as I drive away.
After I cross the New Jersey state line, my sister calls. She asks why I haven’t called to thank her for the dress she sent last week. She says the polite thing to do would be to offer to pay for it. Then she says that I am an ungrateful, selfish person. As she talks, I trace the outline of the bloodstain on my leg. I think about telling her about the man I hit. I say, “I did something—” but she won’t let me speak. She asks if I am coming to the funeral. When does my plane leave? How much did Dad pay for the ticket? Am I taking a taxi from the airport? Is Dad paying for the taxi? Do I even have a key to the house?
I tell my sister that I am driving, that I won’t be stuck at home without my car. She laughs, then she says Dad’s going to kill me when he finds out I’m not flying.
I say, “I’m not afraid of him.”
She says, “You screwed up. Now that ticket is going to waste.” I hang up. Minutes later, my sister texts me. I am in mourning. You need to be nicer.
I’m merging off the highway, following a sign that indicates a nearby hospital. “Do you always drive this fast?” The man in the pin-striped suit is sitting in the passenger seat. When he buckles his seatbelt, I notice that his hands are still bleeding. “Girlie,” he says, “I think you’ve missed your exit.”
He introduces himself as Thomas Johnson. Then he says, “Don’t look at me! Look at the road!” He sighs, stretches his legs out in front of him, says, “I don’t blame you for killing me.
For twenty-five years my wife warned me to wear a light when I walk at night.” Then he smiles, shakes his head, cracks his neck, asks, “You headed somewhere in a hurry?”
I pull to the side of the highway, close my eyes, tell myself that when I open them, no one will be there. I breathe deep. I count to ten. Thomas asks, “You meditating? That shit never works for me.”
I try to imagine my mother. Now that she is dead, will she give me strength? I can’t remember the color of her eyes. Mine are green, but for some reason, I think hers were brown. I feel certain that a daughter is supposed to know the color of her mother’s eyes. Since my mother’s death, my sister’s social media has become a sort of shrine to Mom’s memory. I look for a photo of Mom where she is happy. Thomas reminds me that I should be looking up while driving, but nobody else is on the road. I find a picture of my mother and sister at Berkeley. It was taken after Mom moved my sister into her dorm. Next to my sister, my mom looks happy, proud. I wonder why she didn’t help me move, if it was the distance, or something else. I remember arriving in New York, shoving all my belongings into a taxi. Mom had given me cash for the driver. Then she had asked me to send her a picture of myself in my dorm. I never did. If she couldn’t be there to see it herself, I certainly wasn’t going to oblige her request.
“Your nose is bleeding,” I tell Thomas. I find an old napkin and hand it to him. Thomas rolls down his window, he angles his mirror inward. I ask, “Do you have a sister?”
“Dead,” he says. “She died not long after we visited Paris, right after my paren
ts announced their divorce. You mind if I smoke in here?”
My mother always wanted me to embrace my Judaism. I ask Thomas, “Do you know about shiva?” I tell him what I remember about the mourning ritual. For seven days, I must only think of my mother. I must recite stories about her. I must not look into a mirror. I must honor her. I must immerse myself in her memory.
Thomas grunts. After a while, he says, “No one alive who’d sit shiva for me.” He rolls up his window. “Your mom must have been a good lady.”
“Maybe,” I say. “My mom was at Berkeley during the Vietnam War–”
Thomas interrupts me. He asks, “Both your mom and sister went to Berkeley?”
I nod, then I say, “My father told me that my mother was protesting the war and that my grandpa had to pick her up from college after she had been tear-gassed. After my dad told me that story, I asked him when Mom stopped fighting and he said we all lose our spirit in the end.”
Thomas says that I shouldn’t be so critical of my mother. I am used to this reaction. This is because whenever I speak of my mother, whoever I am talking to usually imagines their own mother. Still, it hurts that he isn’t on my side.
Thomas asks me if I have any rock CDs. I play him Aerosmith. He sings along to all of the songs. When Come Together plays, I tell Thomas my father listened to this CD every day, that he played it whenever he drove my sister and me to school.
Thomas asks, “What about the days your mother drove you to school?” I frown, then say, “I don’t think my mother ever drove me to school.”
My father is tall, with long, strong arms. Whenever he’d hit me, my mother would melt into the furniture. She never interfered. Sometimes, my father would cry after. When he’d regain control of his temper, he would tell me that he felt very small and he would ask, “Don’t you feel sorry for me?” If he ever saw me crying, he’d accuse me of putting on a show, he’d tell me that I was just being dramatic, weak. I learned to cry silently. I learned to cry from only one eye at a time. I learned to imagine myself somewhere quiet, beautiful, on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, alone and at peace.
At an early age, my sister was already a master of telling my dad what he wanted to hear.
Did our mother teach her this? Why didn’t she teach me?
My boyfriend calls. He must have just gotten off work. Thomas says that I shouldn’t be on the phone. I tell him to be quiet, that nobody likes a bossy passenger. Then I say, “You are beginning to annoy me.” When I answer, my boyfriend asks, “Who are you talking to?” then he sighs and says, “One of those damn high schoolers put gum in a USB reader. It’s been a difficult day.” He doesn’t know about my mother’s funeral. He doesn’t know about Thomas either. He thinks that I am at work. He asks me if I will be home soon and if I don’t mind picking up dinner on the way.
I say, “My mother is dead.” He says he is sorry. I say, “I am driving to California, to her funeral.” He says it is late and why don’t I come home and set out in the morning? He says it is crazy to drive all that way. I tell him not to call me crazy, and he asks when I found out my mother died. His voice is cold, absent. He asks why I didn’t call him right away. He says he feels hurt. When I say I didn’t want to bother him, he cuts me off. He says he has a headache, that he will call back later. He reminds me that he has had a difficult day.
When I get off the phone, Thomas demands to know who I was talking to. “My boyfriend,” I answer.
Thomas asks, “Is it serious?” I say, “We live together.”
Then Thomas asks, “Did he ask you to move in with him or was it the other way around?”
“I asked him.” I say, “It’s hard to find cheap places to live.” Thomas spits out the window. I ask, “Is that how an old man is supposed to act?”
I fill up the car at a gas station in Pennsylvania. The air is crisp, empty. I stretch my legs.
I ask Thomas if he wants to also, but he says that he’d rather stay inside. He asks me why I didn’t bring any extra coats. I say, “I wasn’t planning on hitting you with my car.” Though Thomas’ nose and hands have stopped bleeding, his left eye is bruised. I tell myself that if he were in any real danger he would bleed more.
There is a large birch tree growing where the gas station asphalt meets a field. With the exception of Thomas and me, the station is empty. The attendant is absorbed in a magazine. As I climb over the small fence that separates asphalt from field, I use a tree branch to steady myself. On the other side, I sink into the ground, grab fistfuls of dirt, breathe.
When I get back into my car, Thomas is drinking a beer. “Where’d you get that?” I ask. “Nicked it,” he says. “I never stole anything in my whole life. Nicked this bottle of gin too. You want any?”
I tell him it is irresponsible to drink and drive.
My sister calls again. She says she is on a plane and that she will be in California days before I will. She asks if taking off from the bookstore was a problem. She asks if I have anything to wear to the funeral and if I want to borrow something. She keeps talking. She never takes a breath. Thomas is drinking quickly, freely from the bottle of gin. In between gulps he asks, “Who you talking to now?” My sister says most of her clothes won’t fit me, but if I ask nicely I can borrow the black dress she wears when she is on her period and she feels bloated. I can’t think of anything to say. After a minute my sister says, “I’m busy, you know,” and then she hangs up.
Thomas says, “Good, you’re off the phone. I’m going to take a nap. You’ll keep it down, won’t you?”
I endure about an hour of Thomas snoring before I pinch his arm. He doesn’t wake up. I don’t know whether or not to feel relieved that he is solid, something more than a hallucination.
Thomas says, “It is freezing in here. Turn up the heat.” I wrap his neck and face in my scarf. I call the bookstore where I work. When my boss answers, I say, “My mother is dead.” Then I ask for two weeks off from work. He laughs. But when I say that this is not a joke, he tells me to take all of the time I need, that I’m good at my job, that I’m a hard worker. He says that the store will be waiting for me when I get back. I think I am supposed to feel comforted, but I feel trapped instead.
Thomas asks, “Do you really need two weeks?” Then he says, “It doesn’t sound like your mother loved you anyway.”
I didn’t learn how to drive until I was eighteen. My mother had promised to teach me, but she could never find the time. I’d sit in the car, wait for her to get off the phone, or to finish grading just one last paper, but she’d never come outside. I stopped waiting for her. My father tried to teach me, but he was too impatient. It took me four times to pass the practical exam. My father had driven me inland, to a small town where “any moron” could get their license. We’d driven two hours. Before he dropped me at the DMV counter, he said, “If you don’t pass, you’re walking home.”
In Missouri we are stopped at a DUI checkpoint. Thomas says, “I already got two DUIs.” Then he tells me to unlock the trunk, and climbs in. An officer shines his flashlight in my eyes. Even though I have not had anything to drink, I am scared that he will smell the gin. The officer clears me to drive. He says, “You drive safe now!” Thomas reappears without me having to let him out of the trunk. “How’d you do that?” I ask.
My father calls. I put him on speaker. He says, “Your sister told me that you are driving here? Just what the fuck are you—”
Thomas growls.
“Please,” I say, “I couldn’t think about flying.” Then my father says I am putting too many miles on my car, that I will crash and die and I won’t be able to pay it off. He says they’ll put me in jail if I can’t pay off the car and that I will lose my job at the bookstore. He says, “You’ll be homeless.” He says if I crash and die, he will have to pay off the car and he doesn’t have that kind of money. He says, “You never think about anybody but yourself.” Then he says, “Driving here is just dramatic.”
I say I won’
t crash, that I will be careful, that the car will be paid off.
Then my father tells me I’m responsible for writing the eulogy. I don’t know what to write about. I say I never knew Mom very well. My father says this is ridiculous. He says, “You are only trying to hurt me.” He says, “Your mother loved you very much,” and, “She was weak, but you are stronger.”
Thomas says my dad sounds like a narcissist and a real asshole. He tells me his dad was an asshole too. Then he asks me about my childhood. I tell him stories. I tell him about the time I came home past curfew, how the dog woke up and started barking as soon as I pulled into the driveway. When I opened the front door, my family was waiting for me. My dad pushed me up against a wall and yelled while my mom and sister cried. I didn’t yell back. My father stormed away and my mother sank into the floor. Speaking into her lap, my mother asked, “Why can’t you guys get along?”
And my sister said, “Everyone was having a nice night until you came home.” Afterwards, my father asked me to forgive him. He said he was only scared. He said,
“You could have been anywhere, with anyone. You could have been dead.” I showed him a circular bruise around my arm. I said, “You squeezed too tight.” He didn’t believe that the bruise was from him. He called me dramatic. When I said that I was going to file for emancipation, he told me to get the fuck out of his house. I slept in the car and when the sun rose my father was there, knocking on the driver’s side window. He had a plate of pancakes in one hand and twenty bucks in the other. I rolled down the window to accept the pancakes. Dad cried while Mom watched from the upstairs window. When she saw me looking, she retreated. My father asked, “Why don’t you love me?” He said he hadn’t slept all night. Then he said if I came inside he would give me the twenty bucks and take me to a movie.
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