Accident

Biking to a nanny job in Oxford, England, I was hit—bumped, actually—by a car. I wasn’t hurt, just extremely rattled. The bike was unridable, almost unpushable with its tire grating against the frame of the wheel, the front wheel angling in a different direction from the back one. When I met the mother that morning, I didn’t tell her for several minutes, maybe to affect a British stoicism, maybe to heighten the drama of finally telling her (an Americanism?). I was also worried because it was her husband’s bike. She fussed over me as any mother would, though I was the one supposed to be expending energy. I was her day nanny, taking care of her first two children as she rested upstairs in bed, pregnant with her third. She had hyperemesis, severe morning sickness, and could eat nothing but crackers and red soda.



Breach

As a second grader, a patrol guard with an orange sash takes me across the first street. Then I walk up a block to the busy intersection to cross with Mr. Zenner, a teacher in an orange jacket.

One morning the patrol doesn’t arrive. As minutes drag on, my heartbeat increases, and my eyes start to tear. The first bell rings. I can cross the street safely—I know how—but I’m afraid to break the rules. Finally, more scared of a tardy, I cross. When I reach Mr. Zenner, he asks if there was a patrol at my corner. How did he know? You can’t see one end of the block from the other since it’s obscured by a hill and some trees. I tell him no, and he takes me across the last street.

The rest of the day I am tight with fear, sure he will come get me out of class, that I am in huge trouble. But nothing ever becomes of my first moving violation.



Another Place I Live

There are hills and ivy, gymnastics classes and kindergarten. Peanuts and cheese for snacks, footprints on the carpet that I like to fit my feet into. But Kentucky also has tornadoes, tall, brusque principals, and angry kindergarten teachers.

My parents drive me to school. One rainy day, a biker with wet brakes runs a red light, and our car hits him. My friend and I sit in the back seat, watching the scene unfold through gray streaked windows, seatbelts still taut. An ambulance comes. The biker claims that he’s fine even though he has bloody scrapes from skidding on the asphalt. I wait forever. I worry about being late for school.

When we arrive we walk through the empty gym, where we would have lined up with our classes in the inclement weather. The principal is still there for some reason, or maybe he finds us in the hall after we exit the gym. His inquiries terrify me, and I explain the situation, more unnerved by this encounter with authority than by the crash. When I get to my classroom, Mrs. Hayes is discussing bicycle safety, and I can hardly contain myself, blurting. She asks that I wait for my comments until she’s done speaking. I sit on my voice like I have to go pee really bad. I believe then that the world is ordered through astounding coincidence, and that I must tell others about my discovery.



Mobility

Language makes me stumble. The words from one place do not transfer to the next. Words dislocate in the space between. Travel uproots my sentences.



Another Place I Live

Wheaton isn’t Chicago, but Mom sometimes calls it Chicago when asked where we’re from. Chicago is wind and water, buildings that look like they’ll fall on me but don’t. Chicago is easier when I’m inside—looking at Christmas tree lights from the car, or seeing stars on the planetarium dome. Wheaton is made up of houses: mine, Nana’s, Aunt Suzi’s, the Wood’s, and the Jones’s. We drive to church and to the grocery store. I like to sit under the grocery cart basket as Dad pushes me and my little sister in the seat above. We eat animal crackers from a small red box with a string handle. Dad pays for them later when we check out.

Mostly, Wheaton is two blocks kiddy corner from each other. I can see my school from my front steps. On the drive when my parents first point out the house we will move into, I think they’re indicating the school gymnasium. I spend several weeks trying to reconcile living in a huge, brick rectangle.

Next to the gym, on the large blacktop where I cower in games of dodge ball in physical education, my dad teaches me to ride without training wheels. There is a slight slope to the tar; we start at the top and move diagonally across it. I pick up speed and feel something between excitement and terror, my long hair streaming behind me, my feet struggling to keep up with the pedals. I can hear my dad’s running shoes keeping pace with me, his hand on the back of the bike. At the bottom of the lot we stop, both breathless. Dad tells me, no, he wasn’t holding the bike up—it was you—and I feel betrayal, gratitude, and pride all at once.



Echo

Between my third and fourth grade years we moved from Illinois to Minnesota. My sister sat in the U-haul with Dad, our collie at her feet. My mom followed in a brown Honda with me and my infant brother in the back seat; my job was to take care of him. At the beginning of our journey we crossed the railroad tracks that bisected the town; Mom and I saw the U-haul tip precariously in front of us. We gasped, but Dad and my sister were surprised when we told them the story later.

When my brother got fussy, I took him out of the car seat and put him in my lap, my hands around his torso, bouncing my knees in a rhythm more consistent than the car’s. I didn’t have a good enough hold of him, and when we hit a bump, he toppled over, his head softly bumping the arm rest. He cried even louder; I gripped him tightly in panic, sure that I had done something irreversible.

His slight forehead bruise was one of many. Our new house had wood floors, and as my brother learned to sit and stand and walk, he hit his head repeatedly. His head was often adorned with a knot or two, a veritable halo of purplish brown. As he grew into a more accomplished walker, he began to demonstrate the family talent for falling not only down stairs, but up them as well. I remember sitting on the sofa upstairs once and hearing the thumps and the ooph; I hooted with laughter. Except for my dad, we were all clumsy. It was just my brother’s turn to fall.



Another Place I Live

I don’t notice the faint light, only the brightly colored beads on the necklace I made, strung together on twine. They are the same colors as Legos, the same as train cars I run on a wooden track.

I live in a rectangle, and I ride my tricycle around the square formed by my house and three other rectangles. Once, I crawl out my ground-story window to see if I can. The stucco on the side of the house scrapes, something I didn’t anticipate. The front door is locked, so I have to ring the doorbell to get back inside. My mother is not happy.



My Car

Joy had air in her brake lines, leftover from a botched brake job. I’d slam the pedal to the floor and nothing would happen. After pumping furiously, the pressure would magically return, and Joy would halt. I felt terror and then almost a shame after they began working again. The third mechanic believed me and bled the air from the lines.



Ticket

Guard it. Don’t lose it, whatever you do. You fear that it won’t have the correct bar code when it’s waved under the red laser, when the conductor scrutinizes it. Pack it somewhere easily accessible—a coat pocket, the outside flap of your bag—and then forget where you put it when you get to security. Finger the flimsy paper. You accidentally tear some of the perforation; futilely press the edges together to make it appear intact.

After the trip, hold on to the ticket for years. Find it in an old coat, under piles of papers, in back folders. Put it back where you found it. Keep it as a record of your passage.

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