Writing Excerpt: Until the Wheels Fall Off

It's been awhile since I've posted anything substantive. After breaking down and deciding to take some time away, I'm working back into my normal schedule. I came across this sketch this morning, and I thought I'd post it here. Pretty early draft that I'd like to see become something bigger. Maybe a statement on how, when I was growing up, we had to use everything we had until it fell apart. We didn't have the resources to replace things very often. I learned pretty early on as a kid to take care of the things I owned because I might never have the chance to own it again if it got lost or broken. At any rate, here it is. Thanks for reading.

from "Until the Wheels Fall Off"

One of my first memories is of my mom backing over my tricycle as it lay haphazardly in the gravel driveway. I remember the moment I heard the crunch and squeal of metal, the moment I saw the look on Mom’s face, the moment I realized I’d left my tricycle in the gravel. She got out of the car, angry. She walked to the back of the car, pulled the fractured and broken red trike out from under the fender and held it out to me.

“See this?” she said.

I nodded. I knew a good thing was gone.

“It’s ruined,” she said, growing angry. Her voice was growing louder. “It’s completely ruined.”

I started to cry. My face grew hot, and my eyes were wet. My nose ran. I had shorts on and a tanktop. It was hot outside, and I felt tired and cranky.

Mom set the tricycle down next to the driveway. “See if your dad can do anything with it,” she said, calming. She climbed back into the brown Plymouth Duster and started her exit once again. As she pulled away from me, she leaned out the window. “I’m sorry,” she said, tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

Tears in my eyes and tears streaming down my dirty suntanned face. I waved to her. I was mad at me, but I wasn’t. I was mad at her, but I wasn’t. I looked around, and even though I was a kid, I knew that she and I were in this together. We were not enemies, my mom and me. We were allies in this, in this life. In this dirt. In this alley lot in a small town. In this heat. In this poverty.

My dad was on the same team, but he wasn’t really there the way that Mom and I were. We were victims. We were small and soft and easily wounded. We were mice in the corner. We took what came at us and absorbed it all, like skin that bruises when hit with a blunt instrument. Not Dad. He didn't bruise. He deflected everything. Nothing touched him. He let it bounce. He let it fall away. He was tall and lean and muscular. He was harsh and angular, and he could be sharp. As a knife.

I turned and walked back to the trailer, looking for Dad. We lived in this trailer until about the time I started elementary school. It wasn’t much, but it was a roof and walls, and it was all my parents could do at the time. It was simple, white with a yellow sun-washed stripe that ran across the top just under the roof. Inside was dark: rich brown paneling that would splinter under your touch, dark brown and orange shag carpet, dark brown chairs, and a dark brown couch.

I found Dad and got him to follow me. He looked at the tricycle. “What happened?” he asked.

Wiping the sniffles away. “Mom ran over it,” I said.

“You shouldn’ta left it in the driveway,” he said, accusingly. He turned it this way and that. His hands were blackened and calloused. He worked long hours in a foundry not far from the river in Havana. His nails had work grime caked under them, thick black semi-circles at the tip of each finger. “Goddammit,” he said under his breath, not to me. Then, “Well, there’s nothing I can do about this.”

I shrugged my shoulders. There really were no words.

“See what you get for leaving your stuff in the driveway?” he asked. Looking at me, he glared.

“How many times have we told you to move your tricycle out of the driveway?” He got up and went back inside.

I sat on the ground, clutching my knees to my chest crying. The jumble of metal and little rubber tires heaped by my side. I mourned because I knew I’d lost the only tricycle my parents could ever afford to give me. I mourned because I knew I’d never have a tricycle ever again. And I never did.

Even now, when I see a shiny metallic red and white tricycle with the metal frame and the small rubber tires, I feel a pang of envy at the children who will get to ride it. And somewhere inside me, I long to return back to that day and to be responsible and to put my tricycle where it belongs so I can ride it until the wheels fall off.