ONCE I WAS FIVE. I RODE IN THE CAR FREQUENT. I SAT next to Daddy in the front seat on the hump. The hump went down the front seat where there wasn’t any sewing. It raised me up so I could see. It was my special place. Once we drove all the way to Frankfort, Michigan, and I sat on the hump all the way.
Then one day my dad took Jeffrey and me to Hanley-Dawson Chevrolet to buy a new car. We went in our old car, I sat on the hump. Then we got in the new car. It smelled funny. Daddy got in and started it. Then we went. I looked out the back window and waved to our old car. I said, “What about our old car, Dad?” And he said, “That hunk of tin, who cares?”
I looked in the front seat. There wasn’t any hump. My dad said, “That’s because this baby has the engine in the back, see all the extra room it gives us?”
I put my chin on the back of the back seat and watched our old car out the back window. I cried maybe. Jeffrey said, “What are you crying about now, baby?” And I said, “I don’t have anywhere to sit.”