This is something I did in Creative Nonfiction. It doesn't totally suck.


Early Memory


I do not remember much of my early life. I had three separate head injuries as a small child which may explain this. One injury was from when I literally ran into a wall. I told my mother I just couldn’t stop. Another injury happened only a week later when I was once again running, this time I tripped and fell into a luckily very sturdy glass table. The third injury is my earliest memory and is still fairly vivid in my mind.

My family was in my father’s taxi. My older sister Marjie, my older sister (the one I actually like) Vickie, and my older brother Shawn were in the back seat. I was between my parents in the front seat since I was just a tiny three year old. Ah, those good old days in the 70s when you could put toddlers in the front seat and booster seats were something you used at restaurants so the wee ones could reach the table.

I remember my mom smelling as she always did, a mixture of French fries, grilled meat and cigarettes. Her skin was the color of russet potatoes. She had not yet begun to get her “summer color” as she called it that would darken her normally to an espresso and sometimes to a chocolate. Her eyes were bluer than the sky could ever hope to be even on the clearest of days. Her hair was a thick chestnut brown cut to graze her shoulders. My sisters and my brother were like her reflection in a pool.

I was my father’s reflection. I shared his pale complexion, his baby fine hair, his dark cloudy blue eyes. I did not inherit his red hair which had turned white by the time I was born. I had pale blonde hair that would darken and gain red highlights as I aged. That day in the taxi, my father smelled of cheap beer. He had not had any beer yet, but his alcohol use was so frequent and extreme, his sweat would take on that odor. His scent mingled with my mother’s reminding me of bowling alley.

My mother had insisted on putting my seat belt on even though it was difficult to get it tight enough to fit around my tiny waist. My sisters and brothers were buckled in and then we took off. I do not remember where we were going to, only that we were going. So we pulled out of the parking space and I was excited.

I wanted to look around me but I could not see my sisters or my brother in the back seat. I had no interest in looking at my father to my left. My mother was too familiar to maintain my interest. I couldn’t see over the dash and out the windshield so I started looking at all the neat things that a taxi has up front. Like my father’s hack license. I was still a year from reading so I did not know what it said but I recognized my father’s picture and some numbers. My eyes then went to the meter. It had numbers and those letter things that my sisters were learning in school. It had a bright red flag that was pointing to the ceiling. It was amazing thing. Then my mom screamed.

“Shit!”

I heard metal hit metal and the red flag flew at me. Pain enveloped me and blood erupted from my forehead.

“Mommy!”
“MOMmy!”
“MOMMY!”

And then blackness