Footprints of Mud

By Kiki Opal

From an early age, author Kiki Opal faced a host of challenges. Her single mom battling multiple sclerosis and later dying. A father who isn’t there. Opal herself fighting to overcome depression. A sister who often pretends none of it is happening. A grandmother trying to cope with it all, and a grandfather who is affected by it all more than he lets on.

In Footprints of Mud, Opal shares her journey through the good times and the challenging, to the ones she thought she’d never recover from to the ones that made her realize that the dark times make the bright times brighter.

From reflections on her first memories, to revelations through teenage journal entries, to letters from her mother, Opal narrates the story she promised her mom she would tell. Footprints of Mud chronicles a journey of sickness, health, depression, and finding your way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532059193

Kiki Opal

Kiki Opal earned a bachelor’s degree in English and secondary education from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and her master’s degree in community counseling from Argosy University, Chicago, Illinois. Opal is a teacher and a mental health counselor She and her husband live in Chicago with their two dogs.

Book preview

FOOTPRINTS

OF MUD

KIKI OPAL

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FOOTPRINTS OF MUD

Copyright © 2018 Kiki Opal.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-5918-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-5917-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-5919-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018911875

iUniverse rev. date: 07/02/2020

Contents

Introduction

Prologue

A Picture of Mom

Chapter 0 When I was young (*letter to mom*)

Part I FOOTPRINTS MADE OF MUD

Chapter 1 The Fall

Chapter 2 A Long Way ‘Home’

Chapter 3 My Auxiliary Home

Chapter 4 Commotion and Comfort

Chapter 5 Florida As I Knew It

Chapter 5, Part II

Chapter 5, Part III

Chapter 6 The sink

Chapter 7 Flight of Stairs

Chapter 8 Florida, age seven

Chapter 9 Florida, also age seven

Chapter 10 The cane

Chapter 11 3rd grade, ‘The rock’

Chapter 12 Our apartment

Chapter 13 Take Me Home

Chapter 14 Where do we go from here?

Chapter 15 Background

Chapter 16 Darn it

Chapter 17 Most Bees Sting

Chapter 18 Breakfast

Part II DAILY DAZE

Chapter 19 It’s hard to say

Chapter 20 Mom, Grandma, and Grandpa

Chapter 21 Where exactly is dad?

Chapter 22 In Florida…to stay?

Chapter 23 New day, Next Chapter, Another Piece of the puzzle

Chapter 24 Back Home August 18th, 6:18p.m.

Chapter 25 September 1st, 1997

Chapter 26 September 6th, 1997

Chapter 27 First Days of School

Chapter 28 A Letter

Chapter 29 A Prayer

Chapter 30 Either way…

Chapter 31 Another Tearjerker

Chapter 32 Excuses

Chapter 33 Pickles

Chapter 34 To a rodeo and back

Chapter 35 It could all be alright

Chapter 36 It is Clear

Chapter 37 A Wish

Chapter 38 Normal?

Chapter 39 Medicine

Chapter 40 Weird

Chapter 41 Home Alone

Chapter 42 Status

Chapter 43 Pros and Cons

Chapter 44 Shit hitting the fan

Chapter 45 Home was Here the Whole Time

Chapter 46 What the f?

Chapter 47 The House that Never Sleeps

Chapter 48 Moving On

Chapter 49 A poem

Chapter 50 Always there

Chapter 51 Good vs. Bad

Chapter 52 It’s all okay

Chapter 53 Trying not to be troublesome

Chapter 54 Calm

Chapter 55 Continuing to try not to be troublesome

Chapter 56 Staying out of trouble for the most part

Chapter 57 Reminds me of when I was Four

Chapter 58 Don’t be a moron

Chapter 59 Legal

Chapter 60 A better start to a new school year

Chapter 61 Junk

Chapter 62 Family

Chapter 63 Black and Blue

Chapter 64 Can I handle something good?

Chapter 65 And so it continues

Chapter 66 Getting Serious is a Good thing

Part III Pulling myself out of it

Chapter 67

Chapter 68 Options

Chapter 69 Senior year starts

Chapter 70 Life is Precious

Chapter 71 No more ‘curfew’

Chapter 72 A visit

Chapter 73 No control

Chapter 74 What is going on?

Chapter 75 Continuing on

Chapter 76 Not quite 18

Chapter 77 A stop sign

Part IV Not ordinary, but could be close to normal

Chapter 78 A Blur

Chapter 79 Shayna is always there

Chapter 80 Not at Home

Chapter 81 Living my life

Chapter 82 A drink

Chapter 83

Chapter 84 Funerals

Chapter 85 Floating

Chapter 86 Hard to Process…it takes time

Chapter 87 Moving On

Chapter 88 A letter to Mom

Chapter 89 A new year

Chapter 90 Back in Champaign

Chapter 91 Changes for the better

Chapter 92 Functioning, and then some?

Chapter 93 Studying Abroad

Chapter 94 Continuing to study abroad

Chapter 95 Ebbs and flows

Chapter 96 2003

Chapter 97 Another dream, and more of my reality

Chapter 98 Grandpa

Chapter 99 Tripping

Part V I made it through

Chapter 100 Better

Chapter 101 Still good

Chapter 102 Groundhog Day

Chapter 103 The Real World

Chapter 104 New Life

Chapter 105 Mom’s Baby

Chapter 106 A Letter from Mom

TO THE READER

Hey Mom, I finally wrote the book!

Mom, this is for you.

It is also

dedicated to Aunt J., Aunt C., Grandma, and Grandpa

Introduction

I’M AN ORDINARY GIRL. AT least when you look at me. But how can we know when we look at a person, what he or she has seen, what they have done, what has happened to them, where they are going?

Prologue

A Picture of Mom

MY DREAMS MESS WITH MY mind. Sometimes my dreams transport me to the past, either to my childhood or to recent days, and I am standing there watching a past version of myself. In one particular dream, I was back at the old condo in Florida. I was there to visit my mother, who had gone somewhere periodically, so I was waiting inside the condo, where all the furniture had changed from pastels to black, with myself and my sister as kids looking strangely at the present version of me. I told them that I used to be a good friend of their mother, and that someday they would understand who I was. But my mom never came back from wherever she had gone. I was in her bedroom for quite some time, making her bed and trying to sense her presence, but that was where the dream left off. I woke up with the feeling that I had to go meet my mom somewhere. Then I realized that yet another dream had played a trick on me.

Though such dreams are essential prompts for me to remember my mom in times that it is simply easier to forget because of the pain, the recollections are either too intense or not at all intense and therefore painful because they are mere ghosts. And these dreams always make me wish I had more control over my subconscious mind. If only I could ship myself off to days of my past which I can’t possibly remember…the days which I can only create by looking at pictures of my mom with me as a baby, me as an awkward child, the days where everything was seemingly happy and perfect and that perfection looked as though it was set in eternity…

Chapter 0

When I was young (*letter to mom*)

WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG, the world was great and rarely let me down. The reason for this was twofold: first, I was so naïve that I wasn’t aware of any of life’s downfalls, and second, the person who was most in my life, my mother, protected me from all that was evil. She created a world for me that was so filled with love and energy and learning that it shielded off sadness like sunscreen protects you from the sun. Looking back, it was like a dream world that was yet so realistic and so true that it could never be replicated. Moments are often sweeter upon reflection, but these moments were even sweeter at the time than my memories will allow me to make them. In those moments, I felt so free and I thought that they would never end. Looking back, I wish I could live in the moment and for the moment as much now as I did then. In those days, the future was only a myth and the present was a never-ending sunny day.

Part I

FOOTPRINTS

MADE OF MUD

Chapter 1

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The Fall

WE GOT READY AND WENT into school that day like every day to come before it, but not exactly comparable to our school days to follow. I see myself so clearly now, so innocent, so little. I am turning my head slightly…I see Shayna sleeping in the old bed adjacent to me. The L in which our beds were formed in order to save space in our modest bedroom kept her always near me, for nine hours each day, a breath away, her head mere inches from mine.

My bed faced the window and with it came night after night of being lulled to sleep by the stars, an eerie and sleep-inducing awareness of what existed beyond the fading cream painted walls, an illusory and hazy sedation of surreal images from a child’s imagination blurring into the darkness of the night sky…the blackness of my eyes shut, the reality of my night dreams coming into focus more clearly, blending the line between the tangible world of the trees and buildings outside my window with the effervescent visions of my mind as I’d float away from the bed I laid on.

Shayna’s bed, conversely, faced the bedroom door, through which my mom’s presence was felt as her room was two feet beyond. Shayna would be the first of the two of us to exit the room during the night should some unforeseen incident arise that might require us to relinquish our beds. I would follow her.

On this particular morning I awake well-rested and Shayna awakens shortly after me. Mom enters our room and directs us as we go about our morning routine. Our white collared shirts and blue plaid jumpers are hanging on the dresser hooks as always, and we proceed to don our uniforms and prepare to move into Mom’s room for her to do our hair.

As always, the second that Shayna sits down on the big chair, there is drama and commotion. Mom tries to tame Shayna’s hair, a mess of long blond curliness. She brushes it out, nearly snapping the brush in two during the process, creating a globe-like effect of frizzy insanity around Shayna’s head.

As they both struggle Shayna yelps, Mom! Oww! No, you’re doing it wrong! I haaaate you!

Had Shayna walked into school at that point, she would have been met with an insurgence of either laughter or crying from her fellow first graders. Indeed, one friend told me that she was afraid of Shayna even when her hair was contained in a rubber band, pulled away from her small face), while others would have found a new sense of pride to assert now that the pretty girl was reduced to such a state.

But Mom, despite all of the fighting, tears, and pain that ensued from creating the daily hair masterpiece, would never allow such horrendous events to happen.

Though it required waking up an extra half-hour early each day, Mom was even more dedicated to taming Shayna’s hair than Shayna was to avoiding ridicule at school. As it stood, Shayna and Mom were not so much fighting with each other as they were fighting against the obscene genetic odds of Shayna coming out with hair even curlier, even thicker than my mom’s, about fifteen times more rebellious and unruly as my father’s. This absurdness was felt day in and day out for the better part of my sister’s childhood.

As Mom yanks the mess atop Shayna’s head straight to pull it back into a more manageable vestige of hair, Shayna squirms and looks up at Mom with eyes to pierce a soul: "That hurts! Stop it.! You’re making it look ugly!"

Sit still, Shayna; you’re only making it worse. We’re almost finished, she says as she wraps a ponytail holder twice around the profuse handful of hair, her hand slightly shaking, as she focuses to steady it.

"You are making it look stupid, and through gritted teeth, you need to start over."

Shayna, we’ll be late for school if I do it all over again. Now it’s fine, just don’t move.

Shayna looks into the mirror, rips her hair accoutrements out, and throws them on the floor. With this, my mom’s patience is almost done.

Shayna! You can NOT do this. I have not even done Kiki’s hair yet. Sit back down NOW! as she points to the oversized master bedroom chair.

Shayna sticks out her lower lip and pouts. Mom takes a deep breath, closes her eyes for just a second, regains her posture, picks up her tools, and they try it again. This time they settle on a side ponytail secured by a pre-tied thick blue and white striped bow with a button in the middle, Shayna’s head now an asymmetric ball of frizz and confusion.

That’s it, Shayna. We’re done.

And Shayna stands up, looks into the mirror for a solid fifteen seconds, a slight frown reflecting back at her, and then turns around and marches off to sit on Mom’s bed and turn on the TV for the latest installment of Jem.

I am next. Mom brushes my straight brown hair, and together we choose a head band with fake pink flowers of a scratchy fabric to adorn it.

Our hair is done.

We eat our Cheerios, feed our fish, and gather our bags, walk out first our apartment door, and then the outside door, and get into our eight-year-old dark drab-green Volvo, an emblem of Mom’s relentless push for safety and conservativeness.

We drive twenty-five minutes, from our Rogers Park neighborhood in the city to our Catholic school in the suburbs.

Whether Mom enrolled Shayna and I after she was hired here, or she took a job here once she decided this was where her children were going, I am not positive. I began kindergarten at St. Pete’s at the young age of four going on five, and I think it had more to do with Mom’s position at the school and less to do with any strokes of genius on my part. But it must have always made sense to her that this is where we should end up every day. She, along with her two younger brothers and two younger sisters, was a St. Pete’s alum herself, and after their eight year experience at the school, it seemed like the only option for me, Shayna, and four of our cousins. And I, of course, didn’t know that there was an option. For Mom, this was another element of safety that she could control. Her kindergarten classroom was in between my kindergarten room and Shayna’s first grade classroom. She could be at either of our sides in less than a moment’s notice; she had lunch duty as Shayna and I ate our little tins of school-provided mush, and she was there as we played hop-skotch and tag on the playground.

Today school starts as an ordinary day. Mom, Shayna, and I are in early, at least 45 minutes before class begins at 8:00a.m. As Mom does her lesson planning, Shayna and I watch the Little Mermaid on the rollaway TV/VCR combo.

By 8:30, I have completed a morning task of coloring a page with an outline of Jesus and Mary, marking his clothing with browns and tans, and shading her clothing a light, pale blue. Even as Kindergarteners, we were often given assignments which directly, but sometimes inadvertently, dealt with Jesus and his counterparts.

This, of course, was no oddity; no choice was involved. It is a school assignment, a grade; the difference between a star sticker and no star at all. It is what we, or at least I, live for at the ripe age of four. This, and recess.

After lunch, during the anticipation stage of recess, was when it happened. Without the full gravity of the situation being even near close to registering for me in the deep extent of its possibilities, I was yet taken aback for no reason but embarrassment.

As my class is making its way down the hall, traversing from the downstairs cafeteria to the parking lot (our playground) one of my classmates, the really tall boy, remarks, to no one in particular, Did you see it? When Ms. O’Shea tripped and fell on the stairs!?

While not accustomed to talking to this boy, my ears immediately open wide, my eyes popping to an unnatural state of largeness, more sensory alertness engulfing me than I can remember up to this point in my life. I am laser-focused on the tall boy and any human surrounding him.

Another boy replies, "I saw it! She fell!"

And four or five of my fellow classmates erupt into laughter.

No way! When?

Really?! Why? What happened?

She was just walking, and then she fell!

And then she got up!

I helped her up!

No you didn’t; you didn’t even see it happen. Only I did.

Though impossible that they are unaware of my presence, it doesn’t seem to matter that this is a mom, my mom, my mom…and a teacher whom they are talking about, gossiping about.

I tuck myself inside of me. My eyes lower, my ears shut. I do not want to be seen; I do not want to hear…anymore. I want to run to find my mom. I want to yell at her. I want to hug her. I want to push this tall boy, make him not so tall, not so talkative. If only we all knew at this moment that karma will visit him next year, in the first grade.

As he crosses the room to make his way to the washroom, he will be too late. He will not make it there without first stopping in the middle of the class, in the front of the room by the blackboard where everyone can see him, peeing all over himself, leaving behind a puddle with his pride. Red-faced and quivering, he will feel shame, much to the extent that I, at this unending moment, am feeling.

This is the first time I feel true embarrassment, and not even for myself, but for the one person whom I idolize, whom I trust and look up to as a Greek would a goddess.

I do not say anything. I do not make contact of any sort with any of my classmates then or for the rest of the day. I look over at my mother during recess. I look, but I stay away. I am reduced and inflated at once to a state of confusion, empathy, anger.

While I go about the rest of my school day as usual, I am in a daze. Not knowing at the time whether the embarrassing accusation is truth or myth, my life from that point on will never again be the same. This, I feel to a certain extent, without knowing the full implications of the occurrence the day that my mother tripped and fell.

Chapter 2

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A Long Way ‘Home’

THE GREEN SQUARE OF GRASS in front of our apartment building, much like the mail foyer and the side cement wall outside, about my height, dappled with a pattern of cut-out shapes and designs, served as a secluded world for Shayna and me. It was quite an escape from not only the apartment within the tan brick walls, but also from the Chicago streets lined with old houses and 3-story apartment buildings much like ours. Our front yard, though cookie-cutter similar to most other front yards in the neighborhood, had a unique presence, a magical spirit wrought with numerous idiosyncrasies and layers of possibilities available and seen by us and us alone.

To the left of the green lot was an enormous pine tree, bigger than the house it stood before, under which Shayna and I liked to reside with our big red handmade quilt for the occasional and necessary picnic. The cement wall, a little shorter than ourselves, to the right of the yard, was just beyond a narrow walkway up to the mail foyer and an even more narrow strip of grass. In the intricate holes of the wall were where Shayna and I kept the ‘birdseed’, or blades of grass, for our animal sanctuary, and the ‘candy’, or rocks, for our candy store.

But on the actual plot of yard, where my mother could have direct eye contact with us from her 3rd-floor bedroom window, was where the most amazing games and stories unfolded.

A frequent source of entertainment for Shayna and I was a metal intrusion, an underground water pipe of sorts jutting a couple of inches above the grass, with a small circular lid as a cover, which we often removed in order to peer into the hole, about four or five inches in diameter, an entire near microscopic sub-world evolving and thriving beneath. As soon as that cover was removed, Shayna and I instantly surrendered to the life half a foot below ground; the natural, outdoorsy life that existed in an unnaturally constructed habitat. The pipe housed rollie-polies, the teensy gray bugs which, upon any obtrusive movement or danger directed towards them, would roll into almost perfect spheres. Their response system is quite similar to a turtle, the head averting unwanted attention, using the rest of its body to fold into itself, a response eliciting much joy and wonder in children, the mysteriousness of it all an element similar to a child’s reaction.

It is on one of these days that we are crouched over the rollie-polie hole, utterly absorbed in the conglomeration of dirt, dampness, and stark grayness, our twigs prodding the peculiar animals, a colony unto themselves, into shy submissive roundness, that Shayna lets me in on the details of a developing secret.

You know, Kiki, she says, resting her twig on her shoe, and catching my eye quickly, they sent you here from very far away.

She has my attention and she is pleased as she notices her affect, the look of bewilderment and terror slowly spreading over my innocently round face. At the ripe age of six, seventeen months my senior, Shayna is very cognizant of her power over me, using all resources to her advantage in order to sway me, woo me under her spell, her relentless desire to catch me off guard and spin her web of deception and victory.

What do you mean?, I say, not catching on to her brutal assault as it has been quite some time since she has brought up the unmentionable topic.

Kiki, the Indians. Don’t you remember? It was the Indians who brought you here. Mom didn’t have a choice. She had to take you.

My lips form a pout, the bottom one trembling as I say, What Indians?

I told you before. When you were born, the Indians had you. And then they brought you all the way here from really far away. They didn’t want you anymore.

Yes they did want me! How would you know?

Mom and I found you when you were a baby. You were tied to a pole at the end of the block.

I concentrate on an upside down rollie-polie. I don’t look at Shayna, but I know that she is looking at me.

I know that you don’t remember, but you can’t tell Mom.

Why not? I want to ask her.

No, Kiki. If you ask her then they said they will come back for you. They will take you away. And if you do anything bad, they will come for you too.

I look directly up, and see my mother’s face in the window. She waves down to me, and I smile and wave back.

But why? I want to stay here with Mom.

It doesn’t matter. They will come get you anyway.

Mom won’t let them.

You’ll see, she says with a casual air. I sense that she is getting bored, though, that she is done discussing this. She has two bugs on her twig, which she is digging further into the six inch abyss.

I put the lid back on and stand up. I tell her that I am going to talk to Mom.

DON’T say anything, Kiki. I’m warning you!

I push open the outside door and climb the stairs rather quickly. As I open our apartment door, Mom is walking into the kitchen from her bedroom.

Hi, honey, she says. You having fun?

Yes… I am pondering whether or not to say anything about what Shayna just reminded me. She had told me parts of this story once before, but I hadn’t paid it much attention. Though it scared me, I thought that the more I dwelled on it, the more it could be true. Mommy? I look up at her, and she is waiting patiently. I hear Shayna ascending the stairs rather raucously.

I am speaking quickly, breathily now: Is it true that the Indians tied me to the pole and you found me and you took me when I was a baby, and that they are coming back for me?

My mom is looking at me with a concerned expression, and as Shayna comes through the door, her stare turns on Shayna with dismay and disapproval. Shayna seems nervous as Mom severely says her name.

What did you tell her?

Nothing, Shayna says.

"Kiki, of course that is not true. Shayna is making it all up. Don’t listen to her, okay? Come here."

She wraps her arms around me and tells me that she was there the day I was born and it was one of the happiest days of her life and that she hasn’t been apart from me one single day since the day that she had me.

And I know that she can’t possibly be lying. It feels like the truth, plus Shayna is looking down at her shoes. Mom is ignoring her.

It was a long time before I listened to Shayna again.

Chapter 3

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My Auxiliary Home

THE RAGAMUFFINS!, GRANDMA WELCOMES US, like so many other days, as we enter her house. Shayna and I, preceding Mom, shuffle inside, our uniforms still on.

I have something nice for you. Ohhh….wait til you see what Gaga has! as she rubs our shoulders and ushers us to the kitchen.

Presents! Shayna and I say in unison.

No, says Grandma in utter disbelief, what presents? Who is sweet enough to get presents on such a random day? I don’t know anyone, certainly not two little girls, who would deserve anything so nice.

"Gaga, you got us presents from Florida," I say.

Oh, are you sure? I don’t think I would do such a thing. What was I thinking?

Yes, Gaga! You did! Let‘s open them!, says Shayna.

Well, now, I don’t know…you’ll have to be awful good…

She trails off as Shayna, and then I, commence to open the wrapped boxes sitting on the kitchen counter.

It’s an outfit! Shayna says as she lifts her pink two-piece ensemble out of the box.

I excitedly unwrap mine to find that it is a green version of Shayna’s present.

Overwhelmed with glee, we decide that we must wear these outfits now; de-layering, temporarily, from our blue and gray plaid uniforms; discarding, if only for a short time, our white button-up blouses and black shoes.

We are free, we are now decked out in Florida gear, bright neon green and neon pink, little ruffly skirts and cut-off shirts with big black polka dots.

Mom and Grandma look on amusedly, continuing to assert that these presents are not for us at all, but that whomever they are for must be very lucky indeed.

Look! It fits perfect!

Yeah! Gaga’s the best!

And we run outside to test out our new outfits, to receive an approving compliment from the outside world.

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We are sitting at the table eating candy. The assortment of goodies in the chocolate, gummy, sugary department is always magical at Grandma’s. Mom indulges in more than she lets on, but she cannot hide her sweet tooth. She rationalizes that she can eat much more candy than we can because she is an adult; but when it comes to children, there is a set limit or else bad things like cavities will happen.

I am thinking about what my cousins and I often talk about: What if candy was as good for you as eating vegetables? What if you could eat candy but it was just the same for you as if you were eating broccoli? I could never wrap my mind around this unfathomable concept, yet at the moment, how could this sugary sweetness be anything else but good?

Chapter 4

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Commotion and Comfort

WE ARE ON OUR WAY to the Ground Round, where kids eat for A Penny a Pound. While I think that this deal only applied if the adults ordered a meal, I cannot remember Mom eating once in all of the times, week after week, month after month, that we went there.

Shayna and I are in the back seat. While four of my cousins often accompanied us on the Ground Round expedition, all of us piling into the green Volvo (which was easy because Shayna and I were always tiny kids; our meals at the Penny a Pound restaurant cost somewhere between the upper thirty cent and lower forty cent range, and two of the four cousins were younger than us; thus we could share seat belts), today it is just the three of us.

We are approaching the restaurant: my stomach is rumbling. The car is veering left, we have cleared the turn. We are getting near. The next time I look up is when I hear the awful, nauseating sound of metal crashing and feel the horrendous jolt as Mom slams on the brakes. As the blue car pulled in front of her, Mom apparently did not react in time. I feel her breaking down inside.

Girls, oh my God she says almost immediately, after her eyes briefly close and she accepts, unwillingly, what has just occurred, are you okay?

I begin crying, and Shayna looks at me.

Stop it, Kiki, she snaps, yet you can see the fear in her eyes.

I look down, not wanting to look up again, not wanting to accept what just happened.

Mom says, Hold on, stay right here. Keep your seatbelts on. And she opens her door and steps out into the mess of mini light bulb fragments, a metal grill, orange and clear thick plastic shards, and various unidentified pieces of inanimate material that have made contact with the asphalt.

When I look up, I see her talking to a woman, older than herself. She comes back to the car to retrieve something. She tells us, Everything is fine, don’t cry. Just a little accident.

But this feeling is all too familiar. No matter how many times we had gotten into a car accident (and by this point I believe it was four), the feeling, the gut-wrenching, heart-stopping, deadening yet panicked feeling has not lessened.

When I later looked at the pictures that Mom had taken of the smashed Volvo in the driveway of my grandparents’ house, I see the immensity, the overpowering effects of the crash. And I want to run to Mom and give her a hug.

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It is a familiar scene. Two nights after the car crash, Mom, Shayna, and I are all in Mom’s bedroom. Shayna and I are sitting on her bed with our legs folded Indian-style at the edge, and Mom is sitting on the floor with her legs bent to one side, her back against the side of the bed, right in front of Shayna and me. In between my sister and I is a bowl of pretzels, and our hands hold cups of V8 juice. We are focused on the small television on my mom’s dresser.

The theme song for The Wonder Years begins, and Shayna and I light up, we begin to sing along… lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song… I will try not to sing out of tune…Have a little help from your friends… and then some unknown words, merely guttural sounds which Shayna and I plow through with passionate butchery.

Mom watches the episode with just as much eagerness and interest as we do. We chat about Winnie and Kevin as though they are our own friends.

I love her hair. Mom, I want to grow mine as long as hers, I tell Mom.

Sweetie, that will take a long time, even though your hair is getting long.

Do you think that Kevin is going to kiss Winnie? Shayna asks.

I think that they love each other, I say.

Shayna and I look at each other, and my mom laughs as we emphatically, in unison, proclaim, Eeewwwwww!

Mom reaches for a handful of pretzels. Shayna can’t get enough, as though the pretzels are steadfastly evaporating from the bowl, and she hogs the dish as Kevin and his family are gathering around the kitchen table, Wayne making a crude comment towards his younger brother. I look over at Shayna, wondering if she relates more to Wayne, in the same way that I feel a connection to Kevin.

Shayna, you’re just like Wayne. He’s always making fun of Kevin. And I’m nice like Kevin is.

No, I’m like Kevin too.

I say no way, and I can tell that Shayna knows I am right. She even seems to be picking up pointers on how to treat a younger sibling from the older, vulgar brother; studying him and rooting for him as we watch the show.

As we finish our thin pretzel sticks, and the episode comes to an end, I am sad it is over. I have to wait an entire week until next Wednesday, when we will repeat this necessary ritual, this near-forbidden but never compromised half hour of TV on a school night. Our V8 glasses on the table are emptily coated with the light red pulpiness, and as soon as Mom picks them up and brings them to the kitchen, we know that it will be time to get ready for bed.

Mom? I say as she stands up.

She looks at me, saying Yes, honey, what is it? without saying a word.

I want to be an actress. Can I get into acting?

Maybe someday, Kiki. But now you have too many other things going on. You have school and swimming lessons, and soccer. You wouldn’t have time.

But lots of girls do it. Why can’t I?

"It’s not that you can’t. That has nothing to do with it, but people in acting, famous people usually get started by knowing other people who are famous, who get them into it. We don’t really have any connections, so it might be hard."

But we can try, right?

Of course. If that’s what you really want to do then we can try. Let’s wait and see.

She smiles at me, and picks up the V8 glasses. While she’s in the kitchen, Shayna and I get underneath the covers of her gigantic bed, a bed that I often felt I could get lost in it is so overwhelming with comfort and excessiveness, and we lay here, looking at each other and giggling, waiting for her to return.

She walks in, equipped with an all too commonly used word: Girrrrls! The intonation of her voice rises instantly as she says it, looking at our two small heads peeking out from under her brown, tan, gold, and orange flowered comforter.

Tell us a story! Tell us about the country girl and the city girl!

Mom looks at us as if to say I really shouldn’t because you girls need to get ready for bed, but I guess we have time for a short installment tonight.

We see her caving in. The story plot wheels are turning in her head. She is at once trying to remember where she left off the last time, and which activities the girls had yet to exhaust.

Okay, she says, settling next to the side of the bed, her head level with ours, it is the first snowfall of the winter. The country girl and the city girl are each sitting inside their homes. They both want to go outside and play in the snow. It is really coming down out there, and all they can think about is all of the fun things that they will be able to do together once there are a few inches of snow on the ground.

Shayna and I look at each other, knowing this will be a good one, our faces lighting up as we imagine these two strange girls whom Mom created who are inexplicably similar to Shayna and me.

Wait Mom, I say, stopping her as she takes a breath before starting in on the next segment of the story. I’m the country girl right?

Yes, Kiki. And I’m the city girl, Shayna responds for Mom.

Kiki, you know that. You are always the country girl. Shayna is always the city girl.

Okay, okay. Fine, I say, imagining for the umpteenth time what I look like as a ‘country’ girl. I’ve got the image: a little girl with braided pigtails and plaid clothing, with a horse and a dog as pets, and cornbread to eat all day long.

Now, Mom continues, the city girl is home all alone in her high-rise apartment. She is very lonely as she sits on her couch, staring out her window. She is getting lost in the white falling snow, so full of airiness and light, her thoughts lost in daydream. The country girl is finishing up her chores in the kitchen, and standing on the step stool by the dishes, she looks outside and feels herself drifting away with the snow. Her grandmother catches her standing there, looking out the window, and asks her, ‘Casie, have you finished your chores? Casie tells her grandmother ‘Yes! I have’ and asks ‘can I please go outside Grandma? Pleeeeease?!’ Her grandmother says, ‘Yes, but you must be home by dinnertime.’ The city girl is still staring out the window when she remembers, for a second, her homework. But she says a prayer that there won’t be school tomorrow, and with this wish, she goes down the elevator, and steps out into the blizzard. She begins to walk through the fluffy snow. The girls meet halfway. They talk about what they can do in the city and what they can do in the country. They decide that they will make snowmen in the country today. Then they agree to meet in a couple of days to go ice skating in the city. They start to make large snowballs, rolling them in the snow, which is good packing snow, great for making snowmen. They make the biggest snowman anyone has ever seen. When they are finished, neither girl wants to leave, but it is starting to get dark, and they know that it will not be safe if they wait any longer to walk home. So they hug good bye and promise to meet again soon to go ice-skating in the city."

Mom, tell us more about the city girl. What does she look like? And what does the country girl do for fun in the country? Shayna pleads.

Not now, I’ll tell you more about the girls next time. They have a lot more wonderful things awaiting them. But that’s all for now. My two girls need to go to sleep.

She walks us into our bedroom,