The winter I turned six, I was in my first car accident. Along Anderson Valley Way, our bus driver, a notoriously cranky and frightening man, whipped around in his seat, yelling “
Shut up!”
The bus veered into a long patch of mud beside the Johnson farm.
The bus slid and flipped onto its side into
the pasture. The bank of windows that hit the ground split, and mud oozed in through the broken glass. As I crawled out of the back window, I felt a flash of pride. My cousin
Luis, four years older, had helped to pry open the emergency exit, and I thought myself
famous by proximity. The biggest kids pulled the smallest out of the mud, onto the cracked concrete of the road.
In the cafeteria, the school secretary passed out
raisins and peanuts, and one of the teachers took our statements. “I lost my shoe.” “My lunchbox is broken.” “My arm hurts.” Another teacher read
what was intended to be a soothing story. “And what do you think happened next?” She turned the page. When it was my turn to speak to the record-keeper, I said, “My shoe is muddy. I lost my
homework.”
At home, my mother sent me to the room I shared with Laura to change out of my muddy clothes. As I opened the
bureau drawer, I felt for the first time my
heart fluttering, hard and loud.
“Mom!”
She stood at the door. “What’s the matter?”
“My heart is beating too fast.”
“Oh,” she said, “that’s from adrenaline. When you’re in a dangerous situation, your body responds by making you really strong and really fast. Adrenaline
makes people able to do things that they couldn’t normally do.”
I shook as I shed my dirty jeans and pulled on my favorite
corduroys. I didn’t need to be strong or fast. My mind had slowed but my heart kept rushing.
The adrenaline lingered, kicking in from time to time over the next few months. Each time I waited for what would happen next. My heart raced in
anticipation, though I did not know for what.
The feeling would pass, but I couldn’t shake my sense of dread.
from The Book of Revelation
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