Break Any Woman Down

Markers

markers When my big brother calls me up and tells me to do something, I do it. That's all. He couldn't drive mama to do her errand today because of his double-shift at the sprinkler factory , but somebody ought to, because it's one of the hottest days on California record, and our Mama ain't got no business standing around waiting for a bus on a day like this, and could I drive out and do it? he asked. Told. Driving with my mother, I'm imagining all the things I will have to do when I get back home to Max, who will be there waiting to 134 loudly tick off all the items I will have inevitably forgotten. All the tomatoes IVe chosen that are too firm or too soft, asking me why did I buy the cheeses at the cheap local market, disgusting, when I should have gone to the gourmet market where, any idiot knows, they have the best cheeses, Avery, he'll say.And then he will start on how late I am, where have I been? What have I been doing all this time? All that time just to run an errand with my mother? But because he and my mother don't know each other so well, not even after four years, he will have no idea how these things can take so much time, how maddening it can be that my mother doesn't know where she is going. She never knows, because in all her fifty-six years she's never learned how to drive. She relies on markers, like they used to when she lived in Arkansas, I guess. When you see the tree stump down the road, turn right That kind of stuff. My visits with her turn into taking her here or there, around and around, looking for a place, only to end up where we left off, nowhere near where we need to be. It's 102 degrees and my Jaguar has no air-conditioning. The car's old—1975—and hasn't got much else going for it, really, except several dents in the body and expensive engine problems. This carwas one of those Max ideas that seemed like a good one at the time. He was tired of getting phone calls from me, broken down, whining to be saved from odd places at odd times. I couldn't afford a new car, so he bought me this one. One thing I could afford wasto paint over the dull, peeling brown, so I did. Red. Because if I'm going to have a classy car, I want it to look good, at least. "You need to keep it clean. That's what you need to do," my mother always says. "You got all kinds of Wendy's and Burger King papers and whatnot, talking about painting it. You throwing bad money after bad!" she said after I told her about my paint job. markers 135 She doesn't get it, my mother. She thinks sparklingclean-on-theinside makes the same statement as clean on the outside, the kind of thinking that's the most frustrating thing about her. She thinks either/or, and is alwayssayingwhy dont you just "Why don't you just make a right here?" she says. We've done that, turned right, turned here so many times that there's no number for it. Still, I turn right. We're driving the San Gabriel Valley, somewhere in parched Pomona. I'm anxious. I'm not comfortable in these broken-down neighborhoods. They bother me, like not being able to rest until you figure out a forgotten name, reminding me of when I was a little girl and lived in South Central L.A. It's painfully hot in my car. The heat and the smog are too much. Something bad and unhealthy must be happening to me and to my mother. Because what is it in the air that makes our eyes water and burn so much? And yet, my mother doesn't say anything about the heat. I actually whimper, but she wipes her brow with a wrinkled tissue in silence. The heat waves above the pavement make everything seem like I'm looking at it through an orange, smoggy film. For reasons that I haven't been able to afford to find out all summer...