What Happened Was

Flip-flops wrapped in the accident report made a lovely gift.

Happy birthday.

Note that I was not going in my usual track of travel and that I was also very pregnant and tired after a long day at work at the wastewater lab where I "used my degree" after quitting my zookeeper job at the Animal Kingdom because it took three people's signatures for me to handle the rabbit.

In the car's player was a Hypnobirth CD with its warning ignored: Do not listen while operating a moving vehicle. They put that on everything - sleep aids, antidepressants, wine - and everyone just sets it aside. Note that I was accustomed to listening to that Hypnobirth CD while in the car, mostly on my lunch break, by myself, while not operating the vehicle. The audio disc came with the book, the premise of which had latched itself onto a familiar track that I could get behind - convince yourself that something painful doesn't hurt. Childbirth. Childhood. Easy.

When I woke up at the wheel and realized I had dozed off and rear-ended the Pontiac, I ejected the CD and hurled it into the backseat like a burner phone chucked into the river.

The pictures of the damage decreased in intensity from my car forward. The pristine condition of the Pontiac's beak filled me with confidence to not venture forward and check in with the driver of the third car or snap a photograph of their Camry. The third driver pulled over with Robert and me just to see if I was alright, or so I told myself.

Robert tried so hard to be mad at first. White Italian t-shirt, gold cross atop a field of silver chest hairs, and an unlit cigarette spit-glued to the corner of his mouth. He pinched the cigarette in readymade fury as he emerged from the driver's seat in a cursing rage. Then he saw my belly.

"Jesus Christ. Are you alright?" He flicked the tobacco butt from his lips to the pavement. "I was so pissed at you for ruining my joyride with my lady friend here, but look at you. Are you sure you don't want me to call you an ambulance?"

I shook my head.

"Don't worry about that guy," Robert said, "he's a real mamaluke."

"Hey!" I said, instant kinship erupting between us. "I know that word! I'm Italian, too."

"And Latina," Robert said, reading my license.

My mind set a place for Robert at the table, and I fed him spaghetti and meatballs, my mother's recipe, her mother's recipe, the kind with raisins in them that he loved and asked for more of, the style adopted by the Italians from the Middle East. Forever, I imagined, he'd sit next to me at the table on holidays and we'd make fun of my aunt's haircut. He'd send birthday cards with twenty dollar bills inside.

"We saw you coming up quick and were waiting for you to hit us," Ladyfriend said. She stared down the driver of the Camry and threw racial slurs his way on the breeze. "I hate Spanish people," she said.

Javier wasn't worried. I made it home. Alive. Still pregnant. No call from no authority. He wanted to know what happened.

What happened was I got into a little car accident.

"Like the time you backed into your dad's car in the driveway because you were on the phone?"

No.

"Like the time you rear-ended me at the stop sign because you were reading while driving behind me?"

No.

"Like the time you cut off the guy on the on-ramp because you thought you could make the turn faster than him?"

"No, this time I was hypnotized," I said.

He nodded, looking over the report. "Who's Juan Roach?"

"The Camry driver," I said. "A real mamaluke."