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By Victoria Leigh Bennett
(Twitter: @vicklbennett
Website: creative-shadows.com)
I want to try it to see what it's like and see what my stuff looks like when I take it from inception to completion.
Content Warning:
The author is disabled herself, and is sensitive to the issues involved, though they concern a different disability. But as human nature is various, a character like this could easily exist; therefore, she ask humor and tolerance be the guides in interpreting this character portrait.
I’d wanted to be ahead of the game, was always in a hurry, first to grow up, then to have advanced placement for college, any sort of acceleration I could get, nothing was too fast.
My relatives joked that I’d been born with wheels instead of feet.
This was an old-fashioned joke, ignoring how many people in the world were born without feet, or were at some point in their lives forced to get around with wheelchairs, so I just put on what my mother referred to as my “smug and superior” face, and said nothing.
It was like that other old joke applied to my sister, who talked incessantly, that the doctor stuck her with a phonograph needle when she was born.
This wasn’t as negative a joke as the one applied to me, because it was simply out-of-date; most people didn’t keep turntables anymore, and those survivalists and retro-fans who did were not known in our circle.
My sister and I got along all right: I ignored her when she talked too much, and she rolled her eyes at me when I was in a hurry.
It was summer after graduation. Haste had aided in the writing of papers rather than manifesting itself in obvious signs of disorder.
Then, the accident happened. I still didn’t know how to drive, had never taken the time to learn since there wasn’t to be a car at my disposal.
Everywhere there’d been a transit system ready to take me up for a small fare, though I was always tired of waiting at stops and impatient as most lethargic riders weren’t.
I’d snibbed a ride home with a guy I knew slightly, a friend of a friend, so I wasn’t expecting him to present problems.
I didn’t see anything wrong with him at first, because all the windows were rolled down when we pulled out from my dorm, my stuff loaded up with his in the back seat.
Maybe the candy wrappers and potato chip bags in the floor should’ve warned me, but who blames a guy in college for being a slob with his own car? You just don’t date him or marry him.
As we went along, though, I began to smell a certain familiar niff clinging to his clothes. He was driving okay, fast, which was fine with me. I was in a hurry.
But when he pulled out a packet of rolling papers from one plaid work shirt pocket and a bag of weed from the other, all expertly while driving, looking down from the road to aid in rolling, I felt a certain lack of ease.
“Do you have to do that now?” I asked, as his foot pressed the gas at the same rate, a speed I’d enjoyed but now was nervous about.
I knew how many accidents there’d been near campus involving drivers who were high, as the campus police obligingly broadcast figures on a flashing billboard with a warning each week.
The billboard was hard to avoid, mounted on the main street through campus.
“Don’t grip up, I’m a good driver; I know what I’m doing.” He started to toke, and then turned to me. “You want some?” he asked, holding out the thick joint he’d made.
I faced him, irritated, preparing to scold and demand that he put it away, and he grinned crookedly, like he thought he was a sexy rock star, and patted my thigh with the back of his hand that was still holding the joint.
It was while we were warring glances that we accelerated, crossed into the far lane and ran straight into an oncoming vehicle.
When I came to after a week in the hospital, I was told he was dead; I had lost the use of my legs.
My dependable legs, that had taken me so fast, to so many places.
My relatives blamed him, didn’t go to his funeral, and if they scolded at all, didn’t scold me, but were rotten with a sick sympathy, which I’d seen them display with others in wheelchairs.
But I was forced to take stock; at that point, I had an unreasonable but final sense of completion.
It’d been my mistake to ride with a stranger rather than with a friend. Now, I really did have wheels instead of feet. I hate myself for blaming myself, and I’m in therapy now to deal with it. You should see me fly down the sidewalk when I’m late for my appointments.
About the Author:
Victoria Leigh Bennett, (she/her). Greater Boston, MA area, born WV. B.A., Cornell U., M.A. & Ph.D., U. of Toronto, English & Theater.
In-Print: "Poems from the Northeast," 2021. OOP but available on website along w/9 novels (free reads), "Scenes de la Vie Americaine (en Paris)," [in English], 2022.
From Aug. 2021-Dec. 2022, Victoria will have published at least 27 times in: Roi Faineant Literary Press, The UnconCourier, Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art, Barzakh Magazine, Amphora Magazine, The Alien Buddha Press, The Madrigal Press, Discretionary Love, Winning Writers, Cult of Clio. She has been accepted with 4 works for Bullshit Literary Magazine for 4/21/23.
Victoria is the organizer along with Alex Guenther & Dave Garbutt of the poets' collective @PoetsonThursday, up each Thursday on Twitter. Victoria is ocularly and emotionally disabled.
You can follow Victoria on:
Website: creative-shadows.com: "Come for the shadows, stay for the read."
Twitter: @vicklbennett