“Mama? Why is your car bleeding?”
“ I told you to stay in the car, Char.”
“ I want to help.”
I
don't respond. In all honesty I don't know how to respond. The child is
in her bathing suit, which was not wearing when we got into the car at
the motel an hour ago. She is wearing one cowboy boot and one flip
flop. Her hair is in one braid, just like I put it this morning , and
the other in a loose high pigtail of her own invention. I approach the
five year old , take her under her arms and lift. It is clear that I am
not amused but somehow she always seems to be smiling when I do this to
her. I put her in the car.
“
Child. The car is not bleeding. Cars do not have blood. You can’t
help. I am not even sure that I can help. I need you to stay in the
car, put your clothes back on, and be patient so I can get us out of
here.” She watches me closely as I talk. her brown eyes looked on my
face, concentrating. I smile. She is as beautiful, in all her craziness,
as the day i had her. She smiles back. She nods her head. “ Good.
Stay in the car.” I set her in her seat in the car and close her in
and walk back to the front of my old green pontiac sunfire, and looked
down as a liquid in the most obnoxious color leaks from the bottom. I
don't know what made me think that I could take a roadtrip in this car. I
have owned it since i was 16, and it has been around my parents house
since the beginning of time, but I wanted Charlotte to see the ocean for
her birthday, and to meet her grandma before she died.
I
shake my head and look to my phone and think. We were in
Maryland...maybe they were one of those states that considered this
sort of thing and emergency. it appears that it is my only choice so I
dial 911. I tell them that i was driving around their crazy highways and
my car stopped moving. I give them the mile marker and breath a sigh of
relief as they tell me that I am right. They are sending someone right
away.
When
I get in the car my child is dressed again, and has her face plastered
to the driver’s side back window and is watching the cars whiz by.
“
Mama! I feel like I am in a spaceship! “ I chuckle and roll my eyes. I
lean my head back on the seat and take a deep breath, hoping that
whatever is wrong with the car wont be too expensive.
“
You know...” I say without moving my head. “ I rubbed my butt all over
that window yesterday...” A smile creeps over my lips.
“ You did not! Ewwww! “
“Why don't you come sit up here with me until the people get here.”
“ What people? Is Martin dead? “”
Martin
is what the child has named my car. She said that it looked like a boy
and that she liked the name Martin and it stuck. I shake my head.
“
I don't think so. “ I take her hand and kiss it as she climbs and sits
next to me in the passenger seat. I run my hands through the dark
brown pigtail , and she wrinkles her nose.
“
Are we in Washington D.C. yet? “ I looked at the at strange spread of
highway there were in , surrounded by large hills and trees.
“Yup.
The president lives in that tree over there. “ I say casually, smiling
as she tired of my playing in her hair, and took my hand and hugged it
her small chest, my senses meeting with the beating of her heart. She
looks up at me and smiles, showing of that gaps from the tooth she had
lost the other morning in their small apartment trying to run to the
bathroom .
“ mama? Are we close?”
I
smile and look her, I lean forward and kiss her nose . What a question?
I know I am answering the question in a way she is not meaning to
connect it with with, but I tell her anyway.
“ Yes, baby. So close. “
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