excerpt from “passing cars”

i was three and knew if i wanted to survive, i would have to find a way on my own. surely life, whatever that was, was more than beatings, rat bites and hiding bottles from my dad. surely, there would be something else worth staying alive for.

i read about others peoples lives, (my uncle taught me to read early,) so i knew mine was a bit off, tho i had to figure it out, what the disconnect was. no one else was even looking at, let alone capable of handling, a three year old who knew too much, who scared others by saying things three year olds weren’t supposed to be aware of, quoting Shakespeare at length for sweets.

reading helped, especially the books with children being their own heroes and saving themselves. in my head, i classified people as characters i had read. some people were easy to understand, their motivations were almost always the same, symptomatic of a world that had gotten sick but they were just trying to live. that was okay. some people made me sick right away, even from across the room, like a taste, a loud “no” deep inside that told me to stay far away from them. though then i was still little and got dragged here and there and everywhere by force, so sometimes i didn’t have a choice~ i would have to hold my sick back, smile and let them give me a kiss, tell them “thank you.” i meant almost none of it, there were lines i was required to say for a play i didn’t even want to be in, but not playing along meant i was “acting out,” and we couldn’t have that. so i grew quiet. i watched.

i remember when my grandfather passed, he was very young, 49 if i recall correctly. i was glad he was dead. i cried anyway. it was complicated. his coffin was placed in grandmother's formal living room for three days. my dad and us were dirt poor, but he paid MawMaw rent for land we had a single-wide cracker-Jack-box of a trailer on, even when we had no food, tho she had a custom-built lake house with two formal rooms. one was for adults to dine and one for adults to converse, neither welcoming to children. it was a dumb set-up since she built a house to host in even though she was a deeply inhospitable person. to be fair, the love of her life died young, though he wasn’t really the love of her life as there was never love in that house, only sadness, anger, pain, even before he was gone.

for my grandfather’s wake, we were required to sit: quiet, unmoving, unheard- we had to sit on the fluffiest whitest softest Sherpa carpet there ever was and we weren’t allowed to even touch it. i imagined it was like petting a lamb. every once in a while i would decide that risking a smack on the hand or back with a switch was worth feeling that softness~ it’s been over four decades and i can still reach out and feel the luxurious fibers in minds eye. weird, i know, tho i was a kid then and it was “fancy.” i clung to every little thing that felt good that i could,

i was seeking life in a world that painted the dead prettier, holier than they ever were living. it always felt “off.” i remember my dad tried explaining to me that i was different. that whatever i did, however i “understood” people and things, was like a gift, a gift he shared, tho he was drunk at the time, he almost always was then, it took him decades to stand up to himself, give himself grace.

we never really talked much about it, he was a volatile alcoholic with serious ptsd from his family, life, the war, so i made it my business to read him and stay out of his blast radius, though he understood, even though he couldn’t put it into words. i had a feeling even then that a big reason he drank was to drown out the noise from being real in a collectively sick world.