They continued talking as the car door opened—a signal for us to get in. The pinging engine of the ’60s model VW Bug drowned out their voices, but their heads bobbed in conversation. A familiar cloud of sweet pungent smoke wafted from the car, curling itself around the smell of exhaust from the rear engine. Mom sat inside with Graham, her new boyfriend with long bushy hair that matched hers, only in red like the hair on my Raggedy Ann doll. The Beatles played on the pushbutton radio. Mom giggled and mouthed the words, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
We stood there, my brother and me, waiting for Mom to shift the seat forward so we could squeeze our way into the back. Mom never got out of the car to lift it forward. The round black knob on the side of the seat stared at me like a dark eye.
Obediently, our arms at our sides, we waited for Mom to see us, only she pulled the door shut and the car lurched away.
I looked at my brother, his face crumpling. I looked back toward the car; it got smaller and smaller, neither slowing nor stopping. I scanned the schoolyard. The other children had gone. Through a window I saw a stooping shadow version of my teacher, scrubbing paste from tables or maybe pinning my tempura painting to the line with clothespins.
I turned toward the street that stretched out in front of me and tried to imagine Lucy in the sky: Did the diamonds float around her like fairy godmothers, or were they tacked behind her like wallpaper?
Michelle Gonzales
Michelle Cruz Gonzales recently finished a memoir, Pretty Bold For a Mexican Girl: Growing Up Chicana in a Hick Town, and she teaches English and Creative Writing at Las Positas College. Michelle has never published, but she played drums and wrote lyrics in an all-female punk band in the 1990s. The band, Spitboy, toured Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and the United States. She blogs about writing and recollections here and lives in Oakland with her husband, son, and their two Mexican dogs.
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