I could have died when a
black car ran the red light, hurtled toward me through the intersection.
Half a second before
impact, I saw it coming. Stamped on the gas pedal to avoid inevitable
collision.
Black car hit me smack in the middle, passenger side, wham whang
of metal rending.
Felt my car jar, slide sideways, skid, spin. Time went slow-motion,
threw me against the window.
Street whirled, then stopped. Quiet. I opened the door of the totaled
car with one side stove in.
The other car’s black bumper lay in the road. Kept thinking it must be
mine. The other driver
in a black ski cap got out of his car, which had ended up against
a yield sign
and was still running. For five minutes I walked around my car
in circles
as if I were sleepwalking. The driver, small man my age, kept repeating
“I’m sorry,
I’m sorry.” Only the cars were broken. We stood in the cold, waiting
for the police. Anger
and adrenalin surged through me, voltage along high-tension
lines. I was
alive, shouting—a live wire shorting out, sparking. The police officer
said, “Sir,
get back in your car. Calm down.” I finally did as I was told.
The car would not
start. I froze. At last, the tow truck came to haul my car off
to the scrap yard,
boneyard. It hit me again. My mother dead six months was never
coming back.
There is no body shop for the body. At the end, we are twisted
metal that will
not resurrect. In Georgia, where I once loved to live, lived to love,
“wreck”
is an intransitive verb. My student who had missed one class
announced at the next
with a wide grin, “Ahhh wreeecked!” I reckon
you, he, she, they,
we all wreck. We all get totaled. That’s the size of our demise.
What can anyone
say to that excuse? Our only homework is to wreck and to retell
our luck
and recklessness with a smile. You can’t file an insurance claim
with Death
& Death, Incorporated. The day after I wreck, I go
to Home Depot
and walk the three long aisles marked “Lighting /Iluminación”—
hundreds of floor lamps,
wall and ceiling lights pouring their wattage over me—
to feel warmed,
held, comforted as if by a closer sun. I let the incandescent
light from six-foot-tall
torchieres, bronze finish, from semi-flush-mount
fixtures,
“aged champagne glass domes,” from nine-light chandeliers
with crystal glass prisms
wash over me. I stand beside a five-armed, multicolor floor lamp
that reaches out
like an octopus with its purple, orange, blue, green, red plastic shades
on flexible
goosenecks. I watch the cone-shaped lava lamp heat up, pink
bubbles of all sizes
rising like planets with their moons through blue-black outer space.
So many fragile
lights—glass-beaded shade with polished nickel finish,
tulip pendant,
upside-down blossom of green Tiffany glass. We are lights someone turns on,
then off.
A black car speeds through a red light and crashes into my white Prius
at twilight. We are
dusk-to-dawn lights. Only the darkness makes us shine.
Here’s a disco ball
with stars, black finish. The black ball turns and turns. Its blue,
red, orange, green
stars burn, throw colored shadows on the walls. A warning runs around
its base: “Keep
from the reach of small children.” Child, hold hard this disco ball, our earth.
(originally published in Crazyhorse)
