Authors: Renee Lewin
The time reads 12:30 on the clock on his nightstand. I sigh. “We’re gonna be late. Is it possible for you to just lean on me for balance, or is that more embarrassing than using the walker?”
“
Nothing
is more embarrassing than using a walker.”
So I become Joey’s human crutch. He rests his arm across my shoulders, I
hook
my arm around his waist, and we start walking to the front door. We stop for a moment and stand by the pale blue couch in the living room so Joey can rest.
“Sorry, Laney.
My leg is cramping. I know I’m slowing us down.”
“No worries, Joey.” I give him a friendly pat on the back and ignore the flushed feeling I’ve been experiencing all over my body from the moment he pressed his body next to mine. As I help him up into the passenger side of the truck, I cringe. I get a glimpse of the surgery scar at the back of his head for the first time. His short hair is still not full enough to cover the triangular scar. I close the door behind him. As I walk around the truck, I brush my fingers against the miniscule scar I have on my lip. Is this what you call ‘an eye for an eye’? Manny hurt Joey because Joey hurt me. Joey is scarred because he scarred me. I’ve been hurt, so I have hurt Joey. Joey’s been hit, so he hit Manny. I hurt Joey so Joey hated himself. I hate myself for hurting Joey. This cycle has got to end one way or another. It seems like everyone is blind with hurt. We need to give each other our eyes back.
******
“Do you mind if I read some of it?” I ask. From the time I saw her journal tucked between our seats and the gear stick, my hands have been itching to flip through its pages.
Nevermind that my hands have been aching to touch her.
In half an hour, we’ve gone from no contact, not even a handshake ever shared between us, to having her arm around me and my arm around her and I want to experience more of this new level.
Are we moving too fast?
“It’s nothing you would find interesting,” she answers.
Nope. We’re not moving too fast at all. She still thinks I’ve headed too many soccer balls to possibly have any brain cells left to be literate. “Why? You don’t think I like to read?”
She drives out of
Merjoy
, and with a sharp left turn we’re racing up the main road. “No, it’s just that some of it is depressing and most of it’s not very good,” she says.
She’s got to be kidding me! Not good? Before I can protest and be discarded on the side of the road because I’m not supposed to have read her journal to know her stories are good, the dash display of the truck makes a dinging sound.
“My favorite little tune!”
Elaine proclaims sarcastically.
“You overgrown gas guzzler!”
She smacks a fist onto the truck’s steering wheel. Her action triggers a flashback that keeps me quiet. She pulls over to Mr. Jeremy’s store to get some gas in the tank. She reaches a hand down the front left side of her vest and pulls out a small wad of cash from which she peels a twenty. The rest of the money she slips back into her black vest. She adjusts the red shirt she is wearing underneath it. “Be right back.” She leaves and I think to myself that her hidden vest pocket is more than a little racy. It makes my mind wander to…interesting places. I sit in the truck and watch her march into the convenience store with determined boot steps. She doesn’t even try to be fascinating. She just is. She doesn’t even know she is. I glance longingly at her journal still tucked between the seats. I never finished reading that last story she had and she’s probably written something else since then.
Out the corner of my eye I see someone come out of the bar next door. It’s Denise’s father. He’s actually a nice dude when he’s not drinking, but he’s an angry insensitive drunk and through his beer goggles his daughter Denise looks just like her mother who ran off on him. By insensitive, I mean racial slurs fall out of his mouth. They say alcohol lowers your inhibitions and reveals your true colors, but honestly the man is cool when he’s sober. He and I have a weird relationship where I have to beat him up sometimes and then he thanks me for it afterwards. He saunters from the bar towards the store, probably going to buy some cigarettes, and does a double take when he sees me in the F-150. He pauses, waves, I wave back, and he enters the store.
I can’t step in and save Mr. Hyde from Dr. Jekyll anymore. It’s not just because of my current handicapped condition. The accident has put a few things into new perspectives. I have always been willing to offer a hand to anyone who asks, I especially have a soft spot for girls and women in need, and they just have to allow me permission to do what I think should be done and I’ll do it. Now that I’m not able to jump up and solve every issue, I realize that some of my overextended family should want to help themselves. I can’t protect Denise from him now or maybe not ever again.
The state of my future is up in the air right now and I have some hopes about where I want it to fall into place. My landing won’t be right if I have all this extra weight on my back dragging me off course. Helping these girls makes me feel needed and useful, strong, smart, and worthy, so in a sense when I tell myself I’m caring for them, I’m using them. Unintentionally, they use me as well. There’s a cycle we’re stuck in. As far as I know, I started the cycle and it’s my responsibility to end it by redefining the limits of my relationships with them.
Elaine strides out of the convenience store and to the side of the truck and starts pumping the gas. Then I see Denise’s dad walk out of the store with Mr. Jeremy trailing right behind him. Mr. Rubio walks quickly back towards the bar where he will most likely spend the rest of his day. Mr. Jeremy, on the other hand, stands outside the entrance of his store and yells some greetings to me at the top of his voice. It’s as if the old man believes the accident caused me hearing loss or that Elaine’s truck is soundproof. I give him a tight smile and a nod in answer to his questions. His smile is making me nervous. Mr. Jeremy has always been nosy. I convey that our little conversation is over by no longer meeting his gaze. I look out my window at the stretch of desert beside the store. Some people think the desert is a curse, but I see how the wildflowers and the cactus flowers bloom; how beauty springs up miraculously out of dust.
I sit in the truck in the same white shirt I wore a year ago to the place Miss
Marna
was buried. A grass stain remains on my cuff from that day. Distraught, I had pounded my fist into the fresh grass at her grave, angry that I let her leave this world with those bad memories between us. I hear some murmured voices outside. A crowd of people has formed in front of the truck and it’s growing.
The blinking, expectant eyes of all the townspeople twists a knot of anxiety within me.
I didn’t want them to see me like this yet. A few people smile, wave, or nod. Most just stare at me, intrigued, and whisper to the friend or family member standing next to them.
My heart races.
I’m not used to this anxiousness that has revisited me since I woke up in the hospital. Anxiety was never such a loud emotion before the accident. Elaine’s voice draws all the expectant eyes, including mine, in her direction and I lose my train of thought.
“Come get your tickets, people! Step right up!” She walks away from the gas pump and towards the crowd with her hands on her hips. “I said, step up and get your tickets, dammit!” Speechless, no one moves. Her hands come down from her hips and form angry fists at her sides. “I might as well start charging some folks so he can make some money for being your damn entertainment!
¡No es un animal enjaulado
!
¿No tienen ninguna vergüenza
?
¿Ninguno respeto?...”
She breaks off into high speed Spanish and I don’t catch much, other than the phrase “not an animal.” I should have paid more attention in Spanish class. Whatever else she is yelling, she is saying it very passionately and I can’t take my eyes off of her. I’ve never seen her get this worked up. I, on the other hand, can’t keep my mouth shut or my hands to myself to save my own life. This scene is so out of character. Elaine is the one yelling and I’m the one composed. Elaine is screaming at these people and it’s on my behalf. I’m a bad influence already. After Elaine switched her rant to the language that most of them where scolded in by their mothers, their inner guilty child is reprimanded and they sulk off back into the store and the bar, mumbling to themselves and others, not daring to start a confrontation with Elaine.
My eyes follow her as she walks to the side of the truck, finishes filling the tank, and opens the door to climb back into the driver’s seat. I want to grab her around the waist, pull her to me and taste that bold bilingual mouth of hers, but I’m too embarrassed about being the town curiosity to speak or move. She rubs at her moist eyes with her thumb and pointer finger and mumbles something about the gas fumes irritating them. She exhales and starts the truck and we’re breaking the speed limit up the Main Road. Her demeanor is calm. Her driving says otherwise. Out on the highway her driving becomes intimidating, looming too close behind average sized cars and switching lanes quickly and often.
“Elaine?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Do you have to drive quite so fast?”
She veers around a Mustang and into the next lane, right in front of a barreling
semi truck
. I look over my shoulder at the approaching sixteen-wheeler.
“We’re already half an hour late to your appointment, Joey. Every minute of that therapy is going to be an opportunity for you to improve,” she says gently and then accelerates from 70 to 75 miles per hour. She honestly has me scared stiff in the passenger seat, just waiting for our truck to finally make impact with something.
“Elaine,” I laugh nervously, “I can’t go to physical therapy if I’m dead.” I am pitched forward against my seatbelt as she abruptly slows down. The driver of the semi behind us gives her a horn blast and she submissively changes lanes to allow him passage.
“You shouldn’t joke like that. There was a time when everyone thought you might not make it.” She gives me a quick glance with gentle brown eyes. I don’t want to mull that fact over. I turn on the radio. After a few minutes of settling on a rock station and then switching to another once they play a sorry excuse for a rock song, I find an 80’s music station and start singing along to “Take on Me” by A-Ha. Of course, Elaine looks at me as if I’m insane, but she’s smiling a little, so no problem.
“Don’t look at me like that. You know you want to sing…
You’re
aaall
the things I’ve got to
rememberrr
!
”
“I don’t sing. Mom was the singer in the family.”
“
You’re
shyyying
away,
I’ll be coming for you anyway!
Taaake
onnnnn
meeee
!”
“Please no.”
“
Taaaake
meeee
onnnnn
!”
“Hush!”
“
I’lllll
beee
therrrrrrre
.
In a day or…
TWOoOoOoO
!”
“
Awoooooooo
!”
Elaine howls like a wounded dog, mimicking my cracking, high pitched voice. I laugh with her. “You are so stupid,” she grins.
“You could say that.”
“I did.” She gives me a big smile as we drive into the entrance of the Canyon Outpatient Physical Rehabilitation Center. I marvel at her bright expression, everything perfect except for a minuscule mark on her bottom lip. The tiny scar for some reason unnerves me and causes my thoughts to race and finish nowhere. My approaching date with physical rehab in no way calms me.