Chapter 2
Car accidents happened under my bedroom window. Mom said sometimes sailors drive too fast, and their cars didn’t make the corner by our house. They’d go off the road into the creek by the waterwheel. Lights and sirens meant go back to bed.
I hear flashing lights, sirens, and voices. A peek over the protective 2 x 4s nailed across my upstairs bedroom window finds no car in the creek, so I tiptoe downstairs to find men packing Mom out on a stretcher. My Dad is crying. It’s Mom’s first day home from the hospital after a major, and seriously botched surgery. I am told to stand back. Something is very wrong. No one will tell me anything.
The next night I crawled into their bed and snuggled up with Dad and his whiskey breath, trying to get warm. My nose ran. I want Mom. Dad is holding me close and patting my back. After a while he shifts me and rubs circles on my tummy. “Shh shh, it’s all right, baby, it’s all right.”
The clock ticks and the house squeaks. “S’alright, baby…” The furnace rumbles on, and an owl asks, “Who?” while the soft circles and crooning nearly lulls me to sleep. I open my eyes when the circles start going out of their sphere, dipping lower and lower still, my eyes wide when his hand slips beneath the elastic of my pajamas. It’s all right, baby…
In the next millennium, grown up me will remember this for the 1,000th time when I put pen to paper and think, No one can see this scene in the photograph, no one but me.
Writer in the Forest 
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