Backseat Dreams
That was when we were living in the Buick Skylark, and Mom still managed to look like a million bucks every day. Iâd get to school early, sneak through a side door, hustle into a bathroom and wash my hair in freezing water, neck bent hard so I could fit my head under the short tap. Iâd have a headache afterward, the water was so cold.
Mom slept across the front seatsâevery night she laid a small cutting board and a folded towel over the plastic console. Clem and I stretched out in the back, side by side, trading off who would cling to the edge of the seat and who would spend the night squashed against the rough upholstery.
Mom was always neat. She kept her clothes in a small suitcase tucked into the footwell of the front passenger seat. The glove compartment was for toiletries and important documents. My âclosetâ was a backpack behind the driverâs seat, Clemâs a sports bag behind the front passengerâs. In the outside pockets of our packs we each kept a toothbrush, library card and current two books.
The library was our savior. The librarians never asked questions and answered every one of ours. Weâd spend long evenings in the library, moving between the cityâs seven branches so no one would suspect. Not that there was anything to suspect, Mom would remind us even as we snuck around guiltily. We werenât doing anything wrong, only going somewhere warm, with solid surfaces to do our homework on.
Mom always loved us and looked after us. It wasnât her fault that rent was two grand a month and the waiting time for public housing at least half a year, so we were told. When I tried to fall asleep at night, Clemâs bony knee hard in my back, Iâd visualize our family name, hand-printed in blue inkâKILPATRICKâinching up a list at the public-housing office, ticking upward to the top spot. Then shining keys lowering from on high. The three of us climbing the last few stairs to a freshly painted door, fumbling with the lock and arguingâthe best kind of arguing, the kind you do to pass the time, the kind that is tangy with teasing; come on, butterfingers! My goodness, Angie, didnât I teach you how to unlock a door?
Iâd drift into sleep with that picture in my headâMom, Clem and me on the top step, fighting for the keys to our subsidized palace. But the keys always shrunk in my hand, and Iâd wake to the rough seat beneath me, my neck crooked against the door, Clemâs heavy arm over me. Iâd frown into the dark. Lie there in that black soup. Until I heard Mom purring in the front. She refused to let the bare-knuckle hours of our days get in the way of a good sleep. Iâd join her in the forgetting place. We always slept well in that car.
Through-Line
Actually, some nights we slept less well in the Buick Skylark. One time, four teenagers rocked the car, and we opened our eyes to their squashed faces at the windows. To them, we must have been like fish in an aquariumâblurry, bleary, unwary, swimming in our sleep. One of them licked the glass. Mom made a move to open her door, and they ran down the street, whooping.
At least they werenât the police, who had rapped on the windshield once or twice, stung our eyes with their flashlights, told us to move along. But they stopped. Got used to us, got to know Mom and understand that we were neither lazy nor criminal, only unlucky. One cop even dropped things off for us, tucked them under the car if we werenât âhomeââa twenty-pack of Timbits, scratchy blankets, pairs of black acrylic socks and, at the start of September, two binders and a five-hundred-sheet pack of loose-leaf paper.
I was embarrassed by my binder. First of all, it matched Clemâsâclose as we are, that wasnât cool, not when we went to the same school. And the binder felt brutally clean somehow. Righteous. I walked down the hallway my first day back at