Picture Us In The Light(77)
Once I’ve pulled out of the parking lot, my parents explode. I’ve ruined everything. I’ve betrayed our family. I have put all of us at risk. My duty is to our family and yet I’ve lied and disobeyed and broken their trust. I grip the steering wheel as hard as I can as we pass the 7-Eleven, their words rattling around in my eardrums. We pass the Ace Tutoring building, the Apple extension. And then a barrage of threats—
“You won’t go back to Cupertino,” my mom says.
“And we’re taking your phone.”
“Yes. You won’t talk to Regina or Harry or those others from there again. They’re bad influences and you don’t know who you can trust.”
“You’re going to come to work with me and sit in the car as you obviously can’t be trusted to be home by yourself.”
They have left the land of rationality. And now what? The paper’s finished and Sandra’s still gone, and whatever it was Regina needed today, she couldn’t have found it in Mr. Denton’s office or sobbing in front of the school on a concrete bench. The road wavers in front of me, then holds again.
“You knew it was wrong,” my dad’s saying now, low and furious and also kind of disbelieving, like he’s stunned I could do this. “Do you know what could happen? I can’t believe you would be so selfish.” His face is pinched white. “What if they try to send someone to the house now? Or they look at your records more? What if—”
“Why did you get arrested for assaulting the Ballards?”
It’s like drawing a shade, the completeness of the silence, the void it leaves behind. They stare at each other in the rearview mirror. Then my dad says, his voice low and dangerous, “Quiet.”
“You didn’t tell me you got arrested. You didn’t tell me we were losing our house. You’ve never even told me how my sister died.”
My mom makes a choking sound. We’ve just passed the police station when she says, “I can’t breathe. Daniel, pull over and—”
“Don’t pull over now,” my dad orders. “We’re right by the police station. Keep driving.”
“Who cares if we’re right by the police station?”
“I said keep driving.”
“She said she can’t breathe. I’m pulling over.”
“I said—”
My heart is pounding in my throat. I can feel myself careening past control and I can feel, too, the lure of obliterating whatever part of me might still feel regret or shame. When your anger is big enough you can let it swallow you, and then there’s nothing left of you to have to face it. And maybe it’s a relief. “I don’t care what you said.”
He reaches for the steering wheel. I wrench it back, hard, so hard the car fishtails across the lanes. The wheel feels hot under my hands. And even as it happens I can feel how many times this scene will play across my mind and how even after that I still won’t quite be able to separate the sequence of events, break them down into discrete moments. I know my mom screams, and I know she says, Daniel, watch—and I know my dad curses and then there’s a loud honking and that I panic but that by then it’s too late, and then the feel of the impact, how you feel it all the way down to your teeth and the door I’ve opened flaps all the way open and then slams back, pinning my shirt so I can’t twist around.
I wish I could say that it was just an accident and that accidents happen, and I wish I could say that even though I was angry I never meant for anyone to get hurt. But that’s not true. The truth is that I saw the telephone pole, and in that split second I understood what I was doing, that if I swerved, just moved my hands a matter of inches, I would cede control, and for an infinitesimal amount of time that felt like some kind of out. And I wanted to cause damage. I wanted the crush and chaos of metal on metal, and the pain, and their panic. You could’ve run the future past me, given me a chance to stop it, and I think in that moment I still would’ve said Yes, play it out. I wanted them to be sorry.
I meant for it to be me, though. But when you light a fire you don’t always get to choose where it burns. The car spins to a stop and then there’s a stillness, and then people start running toward us, shouting. There must be someone who pulls my mom out, there must be calls to 911, but for a long time all I’ll remember about this part is those seconds of my dad screaming Anna, Anna, open your eyes.
Galaxies die and climates change and eras end while my mother lies on the sidewalk motionless. It could be ten seconds, maybe, I don’t know, but each one stretches out whole lifetimes. I watch through the window, frozen in place, and even after she opens her eyes and squints at the strangers standing over her, groggy, I don’t come all the way back to the world until my dad yanks me out of the car so quickly I stumble, my legs giving out against the pavement.
“Can you breathe? Is anything broken?” He’s frantic, patting me all over for injuries. I tell him I’m okay, but he doesn’t believe me. I’m shaking so hard it’s hard to stand up.
My mom is hunched over on the sidewalk, two strangers crouching next to her trying to talk to her. I was only going thirty miles an hour and I thought, maybe, that it didn’t feel that fast at the time, but the car is totaled—the hood crumpled like paper—and my mom’s eyes are squeezed shut in pain. She can barely speak.