You're the stranger without a face (darkened by the shadows inside the car) who picked me up in the third grade as I walked in the rain. You gave me a ride home. I knew not to tell anybody I'd gotten a ride home from a stranger, and I'm not sure why I was walking home in the rain in the first place. I can't see your face and I wasn't afraid then or now, but I wonder if I didn't get raped and murdered. I have wondered many times about that, if I died and this is just a memory of me, a pretend version of what it would be like had I lived.I think there were many times in my life when I could have died and the rest of my life is just an imagined thing, a way to avoid the mourning left in my wake. Maybe this is why I've always had the feeling I'll live forever -- thanks to you and other tragedies like you -- because I'm already dead, walking among the living, just pretending I'm here. It's like some Hitchcockian idea; I tiptoe through life so I don't wake myself up and see you hovering over me, engorged, enraged, too close, too close.
2 comments:
I love all the pictures!
I wonder how many adults have a weird childhood stranger-in-a-car memory. Mine happened with my friend Hopie in the ally between Clay Street and Benton. The car was white on the top, light green on the bottom, with a distinct lightening bolt on the side. The man mumbled something to us and we approached the car to better hear him - no fear. Standing at the driver side window, Hopie placed her arm on the ledge. The driver grabbed her arm and began to pull away. I yanked her back causing us to fall onto the dirty pebbly ally, speechless, believing it was us who'd done something wrong. There is a song called, Riding My Bike, written about a different girl, a different car, the same block, just another stranger-in-a-car memory.
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