I wake again from the dream of snow and cars. In the dream, I am blanketed by soft white, too cold to feel the cold, but my head hurts, and there are spots of red everywhere – at the corners of my vision, on the snow, and covering my mother’s face. A mask of red, and she is unmoving, but I am crying.
My mother left my father, taking me, two boxes and three suitcases. A broken and defeated exit, all done swiftly during the day when he was at work and the neighbor was not at home. He was friends with the neighbor, who would have alerted him to the movement at my house, so the planning was purposeful yet sudden. Though she said we were going for a nice ride, the panic underlying her jaunty speech alerted me to the true nature of our departure. I was only 6. I clutched Mr. Bunny and kept silent, doing what I was told. I never saw my father again. In truth, this was the best part of everything that came after – maybe the only good part. My father was not a nice man.
Living in the car wasn’t too bad at first. Being tiny and having low expectations certainly helped. A series of small towns and fast food stops, moving steadily away from our home, not pausing for long. She didn’t share the goal with me, but I imagine now she thought she would know when she reached it. Far enough away to not have to look over her shoulder, far enough away to cut the strings that bound her to an abusive man and an existence marked with bad memories and healing bruises. Today there might never be a distance that would suffice, but back then the world was less connected, and people floated more freely, making less of a mark.
We were pulled over, sleeping in the car, when the snow started. I thought it beautiful at the time. It covered the mud and the ugliness and created a landscape both stark and detailed. The lighted signs flashed under the covering, like Christmas lights. I remember dozing with ice cream hills in my mind. I awoke to pain and snow and red everywhere.
The car that hit us pushed us over a small ravine. I slept through the collision and the impact, a head injury to thank for that. My mother didn’t wake at all. Later I would find out she was nearly decapitated, but at the time I saw only the mask of red.
I could recount the rescue and the hospital and the concerned social worker. I think you can imagine it, having been overloaded on Tv with medical dramas. I could recount the call to my father that thankfully went unanswered. I was only a consolation prize, and without my mother, he didn’t want me. I could also fill pages with the foster care system – the good, the bad, the horrible. The punishments and the sick to your stomach feeling of being touched all too wrong, prodded, used up, and the moments of joy peppered throughout. But none of those things are who I am. I will let you imagine it all if you like or forget it if you don’t.
Some days I am a success, moving through the world, and no one is the wiser. Others I am a husk, a mask of my own covering things that bubble to the surface. But I keep moving, keep going forward. I think I will always be this person of two halves, and that’s going to have to be enough for me. And I think I will always wake to dreams of snow and cars, and red, always the red. And I will remind myself that the cold isn’t real, and the snow is my blanket, and until I leave this world, the red is only in my mind.