| Eight
Daddy, this is me writing you now from far away in another city. A town really, a place where I can't pick up any station clearly on the radio, where all the signals sent out from larger markets begin to fade and fold and distort to static. A place where I do my hair at home in my little grad school efficiency cause there is no salon that knows how, no place where I am willing to take the risk. (There are many days when I don't even bother with my hair, when I wear a cap with a puny ponytail hanging from the back). A nowhere-burg where there is no trolley or bus, no mode of transport other than one the inhabitants themselves can provide. Here, I get around in a used Honda, tangerine-colored and slowing going to shit. I struggle with the door sometimes, the lock freezing. (Here it is always snowing). But I don't give up easy. Daddy, you would not believe it: I have become a deft mechanic, an uncanny un-locker of doors. I work and I work and I keep on working till I get that lock. Cinch: it may take me a while to get the shit going, but once it's going, I'm gone. * We gathered Murk into the car, into the gray Escalade. By this time, my friend with the motorcycle had taken off, so I needed a ride home. I got in the Escalade with Kevin, your nephew, and Aunt Evelyn, your sister. Murk had called everybody, figuring, I guess, that somebody would make it over to him in time. And it just so happened that Kevin and Evelyn--with Evelyn's fancy Escalade and all--had gotten there before I had. Murk sat up front, his eyes wide from the panic attack but all right enough to play with the radio dial as we drove off. He could not be left there in that Delancy street house. I don't know why someone had not come to attend to him sooner, figured that with the strike and everything he would not be okay alone. I sat there surrounded by our family. I stretched out my aching legs, my tired feet. I sat slouched, the mosquite bite at my left elbow cool against the seat's leather upholstery. This was rest, but somehow it did not suit me. We came to a stoplight and I got out of the car. I told them to go on without me. It was dark, nine o'clock by then, but I said that I'd be okay. I joined the lines of people with no car and no money for a taxi or hack. I joined the lines of people walking and followed them west, back home, to you. React >
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