Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson Page B

happened when people were dying. She still didn’t notice me. She smiled up at Ted, her face swaying. “Wa-wa for the little lotus flowa.”
    Ted turned to me. “Your mother is drunk,” he said, smiling his zipper smile. “She’s had too much to drink.”
    “I am not drunk!” she screamed as Ted stood up to go to the kitchen, to get her a glass of water.
    “You’re disgusting,” I said, looking straight down at her. Then I took dry clothes into the bathroom and locked the door.
    Later, Ted knocked and asked if I wanted McDonald’s. I said no, I was going to take a bath.
    I packed a blanket and pillow in a brown paper grocery bag and put on my boots and coat over pajamas. I stuffed my robe in the bag, too. It was nine o’clock and our whole house was dark and asleep. I slipped out the front door and walked towards the Cadillac. There was a new lawn of snow on the ground. I knew my mother’s car in the garage would be safer, but it was old and the seats were vinyl and one of the windows wouldn’t go all the way up. Besides, the doors would be locked.
    I wanted the Cadillac. I sat on the front seat and let my legs dangle outside while I pulled off my boots. I laid my robe and then the blanket and pillow on the backseat and I wrapped the boots in the thick brown paper bag. Then I crawled low so no one could see me and pushed the locks down into the doors.
    I felt safe there with the snow falling in one bank on the slanted back windshield. The leather warmed under me. The streetlamp lit the snow. I closed my eyes and thought about driving all night on a dark road, the car moving smoothly, my mother and father sitting in front, my mother’s arm falling down over the seat on my stomach, patting my hands under the blanket, telling me to Don’t worry, go to sleep, it’s still a long ways away. They would wake me up when we came to California, before, so I could see us crossing over, riding in.
    Then I jerked the way I sometimes do and it feels like my heart should stop but doesn’t. The streetlight was glaring and now it was hot in the car. It was still night. I took off my pajamas and sat, naked, in the driver’s seat, with my hands on the wheel, making it swivel. I slid down to reach, but I was afraid to touch the pedals with my feet. I thought I might make the car go. I could feel the leather sticking to the moisture of my skin. I wondered if my body would leave a stain. I moved my thighs and my arms as if I were making an angel in the snow. That way my print wouldn’t be recognized. I would seem to be someone larger.
    Then I heard a noise. There’s a difference with the things you imagine, that make you jerk in your sleep, and the things you know are real. I crowded down in the footspace and put my pajamas on again. I took my boots out of the paper bag and pulled them on my bare legs. They were heavy rubber boots, much wider than my legs. When I sat up, I saw it was the snowplow, dragging chains, coming down our street, mowing the banks like hedges on either side, blocking all the driveways.
    I ran back in the house and to my room. The alarm clock was still ticking, too early to ring. My mom and Ted’s door was closed and I could hear them inside, breathing. No one knew I had been gone. I couldn’t fall asleep again, so I dressed for school. I sat on the kitchen floor against the refrigerator and worked on my homework. I noticed the kitchen windows coming light and I was still working. It seemed like I had endless hours. I worked out all my math problems and copied them over on a new sheet of paper, the numbers neat like houses on blue lines. I read my reading, called “The Sound of Summer Running,” about a boy who didn’t have money for new sneakers. Finally, I was finished. I stacked my books up in a neat pyramid and sharpened all the pencils in my case.
    For the first time I could remember, I was ready to go to school. All of a sudden, I was starving. I pulled up my knee socks and went to the sink.