Storms 01 - Family Storms

The raindrops had become more like pellets. I kept my head down and lifted my eyes just enough to see her soaked old sneakers pasted with sand and mud plodding forward awkwardly.
    “Where are we going?” I cried. I was tired and would have gladly just slept in the rain.
    She didn’t answer, but from the way she was moving her arms and hands, I knew she was talking to her imaginary self. I could see the top of a bottle of gin in her shabby coat pocket. There was no one else on the beach but us, so there was no one to appeal to for any help. I was feeling worse than ever. The only way I realized I was crying was by the shudder in my shoulders. My tears were mixed in with the rain.
    Mama suddenly turned and started toward the sidewalk. I hurried to catch up. She carried her suitcase limply. It looked as if it was dragging. Even though I was exhausted myself, I wanted to help her, to take it from her, but she wouldn’t let go of the handle.
    “I’ll carry it!” I cried.
    “No, no. This is all I have. Let go,” she said.
    The way she looked at me sent a sharp pain through my heart.
She doesn’t recognize me,
I thought.
My own mother doesn’t know who I am. She thinks I’m some stranger trying to steal her things.
    “Mama, it’s me, Sasha. Let go, and I’ll help you.”
    “No!” she screamed, and tore it out of my grip.
    We stared at each other for a moment in the rain. Maybe she realized her momentary amnesia and it frightened her as much as it had frightened me. Whatever, she turned and surged forward.
    I sped to keep up with her. We were at a traffic light on Pacific Coast Highway, and it turned green for us. She stepped into the road, and I caught up with her to walk side-by-side. We were nearly to the other side when I heard car tires squealing and looked to my right.
    The vehicle struck Mama first and literally lifted her over my head before it struck me hard in the right thigh. I saw Mama slap down on the pavement just before I fell and slid in her direction.
    That was how my life began.

1
The Accident
    T he pain was hot.
    Although I was lying faceup in the road and the rain was sweeping over me in a downpour, I no longer felt the slightest chill. It was as if electric heaters had been placed all around me. I heard myself groan, but it seemed to come from someone else. My first thought was that I was dead and this was the way a soul left its body. Any moment, I expected to be looking down at myself lying there on the road, shocked, my eyes two balls of blue glass, my mouth opened in a silent scream. Souls don’t cry, souls don’t laugh, but they can be surprised when they realize they are no longer part of their bodies.
    Cars began stopping, some nearly rear-ending the ones that had stopped already. Looking through what was to me a curtain of gauze, I could see some men directing traffic, shouting at drivers, waving off the curious. I started to move, but the pain shot so fast and sharply up the back of my leg, up my back, and into my neck that I immediatelystopped and closed my eyes. I was vaguely aware of someone beside me, holding my hand. There was a man’s voice and then a woman’s. I realized the woman was trying to get me to talk. I heard more shouting. I tried to open my eyes, but they wouldn’t open. The noise began to drift off, and then it came surfing back on the wave of sirens.
    “Mama,” I thought I finally managed to say. I wasn’t sure I had spoken. I drifted away again and then opened my eyes when I felt my body being lifted. When they began to slide me into the ambulance, I had a funny thought. I envisioned a freshly made pizza being slid into the oven. Slices of pizza were our lunch more often than not and sometimes all we had for dinner.
    I looked back and saw another ambulance.
They’re getting Mama,
I thought, and that gave me some comfort. The paramedic beside me was saying soothing things and putting a blood-pressure cuff on me. There was so much conflicting noise, mumbling voices, cars, people still shouting, that I could make little sense of anything else the paramedic was saying. Finally, the doors were closed, and I heard the siren again as we began moving.
    “Hot,” I said, and lost consciousness.
    I awoke in the hallway of the hospital emergency room. My clothing had been removed, and I was in a hospital gown. I saw what I knew to be an IV bottle and stand beside me. The tube was attached to my right arm. There was a blanket on me, but there was no doctor,