The drivers' ed teacher told us girls to learn to change a tire. He said, In case a man doesn't pull over. He said, Ask your fathers to show you how.
I asked my mother how to change a tire.
She said, Ask who you marry to do it for you.
She said, You'll marry if you fix your nails.
I was arrested in the graveyard that night. The boy was arrested. I'd say the cops were pushy that night. They said things to me I can't remember. Though I do remember the boy laughed hard. The cops laughed too.
They pushed me into one car, the boy into another.
I can't care about what they said.
And besides. It doesn't matter. None of it does. In Missouri everything changed.
I was standing in straw with the cat. I was waiting for something. I don't know what. A man I thought.
Early, I had driven toward a sunset. A song came on. And the night felt holy, as I mentioned, somehow. Then more so as the sky turned black. I soared like a rocket through the dark. The road was wet. It was black everywhere the headlights weren't. The headlights hit the straw and again. I was looking at all that straw thinking, Come on already, Happen already. I knew something would. And then the car skidded. The wheel turned on its own. I recall the dark thrill of a hydroplane. We had learned of these in drivers' ed. The road was wet enough to skid on. Perhaps it was then the tire blew What did they teach us of hydroplaning. To turn the wheel to the shoulder. I remembered. I veered the car toward the shoulder and the car stopped past in a ditch.
I was stuck.
First thought: It's quiet.
Then: I have no flares.
And, as mentioned, I had never even considered flares. And if I'd had them, I would never have lighted them on the roadside for various reasons, one having to do with a fear of the straw catching fire and then, in time, of farmland Missouri going up in flames.
But the straw was wet and wouldn't catch fire. I knew this. It was too wet.
Regardless.
I wouldn't have wanted cops to see flares and find me there stuck in a ditch. Because I knew how cops could get when a girl made a dumb mistake.
My mistake was not checking the tires before I went. There was a way to check. A way to kick.
My mistake that one night was not ducking lower in the grass. We should have ducked low, me and the boy. I should have ducked my head to his lap. He should have lowered his head to my shoulder. But he kissed my nose, this boy, behind the headstone, and it felt like something, his kiss. Sandpaper. Predictable.
The cops came prowling through the graveyard with flashlights, with nothing better to do but prowl, and saw our heads above the headstone.
They said, Look at this.
We didn't jump.
We weren't scared.
Our legs touched in the grass.
When drivers' ed ended, the boys went driving. They drove their fathers' cars. I drove a car my mother bought. The boys didn't want to ride with me. The boys stopped going to the graveyard. They all thought I was too good now. This, because I owned a car. The teacher's son owned two. The boys had told me this. That he owned two. They told me one night in the graveyard. Our first night there. Nothing worth mentioning now. A night I told them I could get pills. I said, I can give you what you want. We sat and talked, big deal. We talked about getting high. We sat in a circle, and I said, I can get you pills.
The boys said the teacher's son had a sports car.
Well, then, I would see this car. I would tell the boys about it. I would tell the boy I wanted.
I said, Next week, I'll get you high.
The boys said the teacher's son lived in a house.
I would see the house, then, too.
The teacher's son had a mustache.
When he picked me up in his long red car, my mother wasn't yet home from work. He knocked. I wanted to call out, Later Ma, before leaving the house, but she was still at work.
And so I drove his car through Baltimore. It felt vast and light, like pushing a weightless building up the streets. And now I can say it was euphoric, pushing this thing. I have not felt anything like it since.
Look, I was laughing so hard, pushing slow and loose and light through the streets, that the teacher's son said, Are you on pills.
It doesn't matter that he said this.
I knew better than to drive on pills.
And yes his car had a type of power despite what I said.
Regardless.
What matters is what happened later.
I was stranded on the roadside in farmland Missouri. I was stuck there standing in straw like a cow.
What matters is the car that eventually came.
I didn't wave down the car.
I stood there waiting as if waiting for nothing.
I thought of my mother as I stood there. I thought of what she would have done. She would have waved down this car with her fixed up nails, screaming, Stop.
Her rings would have glinted in the headlights.
She would have said to me, Straighten, as the man stepped from his car.
She often said, Straighten.
She often said, They want one thing, Give them what they want.
She often said, Here's five dollars, Fix your nails.
I always took the five dollars. I bought small white pills with the money.
Because no one was looking at my nails.
I should have said, Ma, they're looking at my tits, You know this.
They weren't huge.
But I saw how the teacher's son looked when I drove.
He said, Can you change a flat tire.
We were drifting past rows of small houses.
He said, I can teach you.
He said, Pull over.
We were drifting outside a small house, and he said, I live in this house. He said, Let's change a tire together.
It was his house, not his father's. He lived in his own house because he was old enough to live alone. And he had the thick mustache of a man, not sprigs of hair that felt like sandpaper on my face. He said, Pull over, and I let the car drift toward a tree. It felt so easy and lightweight drifting. He pressed the passenger brake for me when I didn't brake. He said, You're really something. He reached over and put the car into park.
He said, Come on.
And I thought, split second, Don't.
I thought, So you will never know how to change a tire. I thought, Big deal, Make him drive you home.
But I went in the house.
Because the boy would want to hear of his other car. His sports car. And the boy would want to hear of his house. And I wanted that boy. So I went.
But look. I never told the boy a thing. I never had to. And still, we sat in the graveyard that night. What does this mean. That he wanted me, this boy. It didn't matter, the teacher's son's house. It didn't matter what I saw.
Still, I got him in a way. The boy that is.
Still, we were in the graveyard that one night just doing nothing, a kiss.
Big deal the cops found us, our heads sticking up from the headstone. Big deal they pushed me into the back of a car. They pushed him into another.
In a small room, it was me and a cop. He shook a bag in front of my face.
He said, Are these your pills.
He said, Then whose are they.
I wasn't on them anyway at the time.
He said, Where did they come from.
My mother walked in.
He said, Come on.
I said, Ma.
The cops said things. They called me things. I can't care about this.
My mother's face was all unfixed. She said, You're high.
I wasn't high. But I should have been. I had almost swallowed a pill. I was sitting in the grass with the boy. The bag was open in my lap. I was holding a small white pill. The boy was holding two. We were working up spit enough to swallow.