Little Avalanches by Becky Ellis

Author:Becky Ellis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regalo Press
Published: 2023-12-27T17:08:08+00:00

A Death Trap

On a Saturday a few weeks before my seventeenth birthday, my mother sprang into my room and drew back the shade. A flood of warm sunshine poured over my shoulder and spread across a row of record albums lined up on the floor against the wall. We had moved back to Modesto, where I was born, where my grandparents lived, and where the summer’s heat neared one hundred degrees at noon.

“Time to get up,” my mother said and set a hand on my leg, gently rocking. She wore a lightweight cardigan, buttoned halfway up.

“It’s freezing in here,” I said and rolled away from her, tugging the sheet over my shoulder.

“It’s almost noon,” she said. “You don’t want to sleep the day away. Charles and I are going out for lunch.”

Charles was my mother’s new husband. He was a big man, bulky and towering over all of us at six foot two and worked as a field man for Heinz, the ketchup company. My mother seemed to be relieved by the stability of a partner and effortlessly slipped into the wife she thought she should be. She took care of the house and the dog and the kids, fixed dinner every night, and worked full time as a nurse. Charles made all the decisions. Where the thermostat was set, what music they listened to, what news stations they watched, and what time we ate dinner.

I groaned and pulled a pillow over my head.

“Up and at ’em,” my mother said. “There’s something in the driveway for you.” Her voice was eager, the pitch rising.

I flung the pillow to the floor, threw back the sheet, and looked out the window.

A sporty little coupe was parked behind Martin’s old green car, a red ribbon tied to the door handle. It was a 1967 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, sky blue.

I turned to my mother, wide awake and beaming.

She held out a single key dangling on a metal ring. “Happy birthday, dear,” she said.

Martin had received an old car on his seventeenth birthday too. We still visited our father every other weekend and on alternating holidays, but Martin, with his own car, came and went when he wanted. He’d arrive after dark, dip out for two a.m. donut runs, and take off early. A car felt like freedom on four wheels, and now I had one too.

I threw my arms around my mother, squeezed tight, and snatched the key from her hand.

Barefoot and in pajamas, I ran out the door, down the driveway, and circled the car. The paint was chipped, the rear wheel well was dented, and the hubcaps were rusted. I hopped in the front seat and scanned the interior. The dash was cracked from sun damage and the seats were tattered, but this two-seater had potential, and it was mine.

I spent hours scrubbing brown grit from the hubcaps, and hand-sewing seat covers out of imitation leather. I washed her a dozen times, then gathered six months of earnings from minimum wage jobs

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