“What are you doing here, Mom?” I asked as I entered Mr. Reynolds’s office, confused by her presence, her expression drained.
“I’m leaving your dad. We’ve got to go.”
And off we went, out of Wilson Middle School, straight into her black Bonneville, speeding out of the parking lot and toward our 23rd Street home, where we’d ransack the house in a panic, anxious about Dad’s return.
“Pack a bag with some of your most important things, Babygirl,” my mom said.
Some clothes and my Teddy Bear Blanket were all I needed to feel safe. That, and my mom.
My heartbeat raced, fast, like a river current forced toward the falls that separate the States from Canada.
He didn’t come home that day.
But to this day, my stomach still curls into knots imagining if he had. I can see it:
His van turning left into the driveway, tires crunching the gravel.
His eyes locked through the windshield.
The rush of his feet to the front door.
In my mind, he beats her to it, again.
Slams her fingers between the frame and the wooden block, again.
My mom would cry.
I would cry.
And maybe, just before all that, I’d hear the sound — pshhhhhloooo — as one of her tires gave out.
The kitchen knife slicing through rubber.
One tire.
Then two.
Then all four.
Before he’d go on to destroy every strand of her limbic system.
But he didn’t come home that day.
Not then.
That time, we made it.
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