Remember Me
Chapter 10
My parents were in their entrepreneur phase. My mother ran Joy French Beauty Salon, where a circle of loyal customers watched our family grow up one haircut at a time. I played on the floor among my dolls while women confided their marital troubles, worries, and disappointments. Their laughter always returned before the rollers came out.
Meanwhile, my dad wore the blue uniform of a United States Postal Service letter carrier by day and operated French Electric in the evenings. He ran the business out of a GMC Handi-Van outfitted with everything he needed for wiring jobs. The van overflowed with spools of wire and electrical supplies, but my eyes always landed on the wooden oar hanging inside.
Dad explained the oar in the same calm tone he used to point out a flashlight or extension cord. If I ever saw him being electrocuted, he said, I was to grab the oar and hit him hard enough to knock him loose before the current killed him. To my five-year-old mind, this seemed like valuable information. I pictured a Looney Tunes character with bulging eyes and a flashing skeleton, then imagined myself wrestling the giant oar off its hook and saving his life.
By the time I started kindergarten at Patrick Henry Elementary, waking to the sound of my parents already in motion was simply how mornings began. My mom ran our mornings on a tight routine, barking orders. “Shoes on! Toothbrushes put away! Grab your lunch!” She usually moved us through the house like an air traffic controller, getting breakfast ready while loading lunches and bookbags into the station wagon. That morning, though, the commands never came. We drifted through the house unsure of ourselves.
Her hand was bleeding. Bright red seeped through the paper towel, and she kept wrapping it with another. “Mom, you’re bleeding!” I asked what happened, but she brushed me off and said she hurt it going out the door.
She kept her injured hand lifted awkwardly away from the steering wheel while driving with the other. Every few minutes she checked the paper towel wrapped around her finger. When we pulled up to the school, she barely stopped before ushering me toward the classroom doors.
The school day came and went. When the last bell rang, I burst from my seat and ran outside. The walkers headed home, and the car riders searched for their mothers in the pickup line. Mine wasn’t there.
Our champagne-colored station wagon was usually near the front, my mother eager to get back to the ladies lined beneath hair dryers at the salon. That afternoon, though, I watched car after car pull away. The line grew shorter and shorter until only a few of us remained. Our wagon never appeared.
I spotted a group of walkers heading in my direction and joined them, keeping close as we crossed the busy intersection in a line like ducks. At four feet tall, the traffic sounded enormous. Engines idled beside us, and a passing truck rattled the ground beneath my sneakers while exhaust drifted through the warm Oklahoma air. My house sat near the end of our street. Before long, the other children peeled away one by one until I was walking the last stretch alone.
I entered my mother’s salon through the side door like a regular customer arriving for a rinse and set. Mother’s finger was now wrapped in so much gauze it resembled a white sausage roll. The screen door slammed, causing every head full of rollers to turn my way. My mother’s comb pinged against the floor when she dropped it. The ladies broke into a chorus of gasps and scolding the moment they realized I had walked myself home.
That afternoon, I learned that even the people I counted on could forget.
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Is there one ordinary day from your childhood that you still remember vividly?
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