SOME BOYS are chasing me on their bikes. I did something to one of them, they say, and they’re going to give me the dirty-girl treatment, but what I did escapes me. Maybe I took a boy’s rabbit’s foot or maybe I said something about one of them, but whatever it is, they’re going to get me. I think, as I look back on it now, that they liked me. I’m sure of it, in fact. But whatever it was I did, they were chasing me. Maybe they thought I was pretty, with my red hair, as they chased me down the broad streets, calling my name, out onto the open road that leads to the desert.
They chase me for a long time, until my legs get weary and the sweat pours down, but I’m afraid to stop, because I don’t know what they’ll do if they catch me. So I keep pedaling and pedaling, and I can imagine their faces, leering behind me. I take a wide turn in order to head back toward town, and that’s the last thing I remember about them chasing me. I remember only my bike going out from under me and my hands reaching out in front of me, but for what? What are they trying to grab? The air, the ground. They were beautiful, poised, as if I were diving into water and not the side of the road.
When I come to, my mother is there. She sits in the car, window rolled down, cigarette in her hand. “Get in the car,” she says. “I’m taking you to the doctor. Get in. You’re a mess.” She rushes me to the emergency room, where a nurse with cool hands rubs my brow and a doctor removes the gravel and dirt from my legs and arms and face and my mother paces nervously around the emergency room, saying over and over again, “There won’t be any scars, Doctor, will there? I don’t want her to be scarred.”
Later that night as we tell the story to my father and Sam, I ask my mother, “Why didn’t you get out of the car? Why didn’t you help me and get out of the car?”
And my mother looks at me as if I’m insane. “What are you talking about?” she says. “Of course I helped you. Of course I got out of the car. How do you think your bike got into the trunk? You didn’t put it there.”
That night, wrapped in bandages from head to toe, I sit up until my mother comes into the room to say good night. The window is open and a breeze blows in through the curtains, which rise and fall like ghosts. “I don’t remember you getting out of the car,” I tell her again.
“What are you talking about?” she asks, amazed. “I rushed right to you. I picked you up in my arms.”
So why don’t I remember this, even now? Why do I always see my mother sitting in that car, the window rolled down? What difference does it make if she got out or didn’t? What matters is that I remember that she didn’t.
I rose the next day to a snap in the weather. A heavy fog had settled in; I had always thought of the city as being immune to natural phenomena. Tidal waves could not strike our shores, earthquakes could not shatter our streets. Hurricanes would never break our glass. Of course it was ridiculous. None of us was immune.
Walking down my street with Bobby on the way to the store, I spotted a man rummaging through the garbage across the way. He was a large white man with a big beer belly, and he was collecting cans in a shopping cart. He appeared to be somebody down on his luck—somebody who had perhaps just lost a job. But what drew my attention to him more was that he had two small children with him, very close in age, perhaps four and five, and he was shouting at them as he dug into the garbage. “I told you not to do that, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you to do what I said?” He handed the little girl several cans. “Don’t you do that again,” and as she was dropping them into the shopping cart, he struck her with his open palm across the side of her head. The little girl shrieked and he struck her again.
“I told you,” he said. “You’d better do what I say. You’d better not mess around or you’re really going to get it.” He raised his hand again, and both the girl and her brother pleaded with him.
I had stopped, my hands on Bobby’s stroller. In the fog and gray, it was not that easy to see me, but I stood perfectly still. Anger and indignation rose inside me. “If you lay a finger on that child,” I shouted at him, “I will call the police. If you harm that child, I will testify in court against you.”
What if he saw me across the street and came over to beat me up? What would I do then? But he did not see me. He did not know where I was or where the voice had come from. His eyes scanned the buildings and then the skies. Dropping his hand, he looked as if he had heard the voice of God.