“Come on, kids,” my mother said one day after a long shift at the gypsum factory, “pack up your stuff.”
She walked into the room, dropped her keys on the bedside table, then headed to the sink to wipe the white powder from her hands.
“Come on now,” she called from the bathroom, “let’s get ready to leave.”
Just like that.
Just when I’d begun to get used to the ease of motel-room living, we were leaving. I’d grown attached to the stiffly laundered towels, the cool tile floor clean against my feet, the magic of indoor plumbing. But we were moving, my mother said, tomorrow after school.
This time we were headed east, back to Rochester.
“You were born here,” my mother said as our car exited the New York State Thruway and we headed north, to the city’s core. “We’ve lived in this city before.”
I pressed my face against the glass of our overwrought car as it pulled down Grand Avenue and parked in front of number seventy-eight. I remembered bits of the city, of course, and we’d had visits, but I’d never noticed how close together the houses were, how they seemed to lean on each other for support.
I sat there, and though my body somehow stretched into its new surroundings, a part of me never really unfolded myself from that car. A part of me stayed there, cheek pressed against glass, trying to take it all in.