Juliet Waller
I Had the Light
I had the light, so I crossed. It was the blind spot, the undeployed airbag, bulky and ironic, rolled up into the frame that kept him from seeing me. He wasn’t on his phone, he just, truly, did not see me. He needed to make the light and, going fast, he hit me full on.
1. I was named from my grandfathers, Jewish Sam and English Sam, the Jewish one dead before I was born, making the name available.
2. Lost in London aged nineteen, a hippie gave me free reiki then took me down into the tube station and showed me how to get home. I bought him a roll of Murray Mints from the machine.
3. English Sam liked numbers.
The car stopped. The driver, a young man, did not flee. He got out and saw his future soar in, meet his past and bend, cutting off the flow, a sudden tourniquet for possibility. I saw my life flash inside my mind, strobe like, all jumbled, fighting for my attention.
4. In the seventh grade Spring orchestra concert, I started too early and played eight bars solo on my violin. A mediocre player, my vibrato came in right then. I’d never sounded better. I got my period that night. My mother slapped me gently.
5. My father, angry that I had not done any of my chores on a summer day when I was too old for camp and too young to work, used two fingers to rap on my sternum. I pretended to faint.
6. When Jewish Sam arrived in New York at age twelve, they put him in kindergarten to learn English. One month later, he didn’t even have an accent.
The police asked for the driver’s license of the man who hit me. The young man’s hands shook so hard, he could barely get it out. The policeman called him Samuel, though he was Sammy to everyone else. Samantha and Sammy and our grandfathers. So many Sams brought together on this street corner. The policeman said, “Have you been drinking, Samuel?”
“I’m not twenty-one,” Sammy replied and though this answer might seem funny to some, the policeman felt Sammy’s earnestness, literally felt it, like a burlap sack swiped across his face.
I had been on my way to the shop called Reimagine. It’s a gift shop where all the goods are repurposed from things discarded. I wanted to buy my friend a birthday present, maybe a candle that used to be the ends of several candles. When the car hit me, I kept my eye on the door, spotting it pirouette-like, and thought, “I’m discarded, repurpose me.” Then I smiled because that’s a silly thought. Then I screamed and all the thoughts and smiles went away.
So many people began to yell at once that it hurt my ears. I tried to cover them, but my hands didn’t know where to go. I searched for the door to Reimagine again, but my eyes caught two crows on a wire staring at me instead. One of them opened its mouth, and I realized I could understand it. It said, “Dinner?” and the other bopped it with its wing and said, “It has a mother!” and the first one said “So?” Then they started yelling, “Help!” More crows joined in. They were just out of sync with each other at first but the louder they got the more in sync they were until finally they were all in unison. Help. Help. Help.
7. My first real boyfriend had had sex with three girls before me. This propelled my need to have sex with him as soon as possible. I did not yet understand how to be my own person. I let whatever thought or emotion stroll in and take over. He was gentle with me. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t feel good. It just was.
A lady slapped me like we were on a tv show. She said, “Stay with me, stay with me.”
A male voice said, “For her head.” And something soft was pressed to the side of my skull. It smelled of cigarettes and detergent, just like my Uncle Jello, obviously not his real name, obvious also, in its origin.
8. When I got stung by a bee in the fifth grade the PE teacher sent me to get a cigarette from the principal. I held the cigarette while the secretary walked me to the water fountain where she showed me how to open it up, get the tobacco wet and put it on the sting.
I heard an ambulance approaching. It seemed I could understand Siren now as well as Crow. While the sound an ambulance siren makes is plaintive, if you speak Siren – like me – you can hear that it’s actually singing the theme song from the 1960’s TV show, The Monkees. I realized, as I lay on the ground, Uncle Jello’s smell all around me, that this is exactly what you want to hear when you know the ambulance is coming for you. It’s jaunty, goofy. Just before the gorgeous people jumped out of the ambulance – anesthesiologists who administer epidurals and EMTS are always the most handsome people in the world – everything went quiet.
9. We sat around on the grass in a London park. Jewish Sam, who spoke Yiddish but we still understood him, offered all of us a cigarette and English Sam ate his. That was weird, even for this situation. Although I sat on the grass, another me stood over by a trash can that said, Litter, playing Voluntary on my junior high violin, a rental. My father strolled by with my first boyfriend. My father died from pancreatic cancer and my first boyfriend overdosed and even though I couldn't hear them, I knew they were comparing deaths. The hippie who’d given me reiki thirty-five years earlier came and sat down. He also ate a cigarette, so I started to realize that I did not have all the information. The hippie, his mouth full of tobacco and a spongy filter, said, “I’m Simon. Thanks for those Murray Mints by the way.”
10. I looked around at my grandfathers, only one of whom I’d met in real life. “I don’t understand. I don’t believe in heaven. I don’t believe in afterlife stuff.” The other me continued to play Voluntary on repeat by the trash can as the men on the blanket started to laugh. A bee as big as a robin, swooped down and stung my arm. It hurt and I sucked air in through my teeth. Simon and English Sam spat their tobacco on the sting. Other me stopped playing Voluntary. My dad walked by once more and waved. English Sam said, “Numerals rule the world.”
I returned from London and found myself in an ambulance with two supermodels. Back in front of Reimagine, the policeman let Sammy call his parents. They were divorced but still got along. They said they would be there as soon as they could. They called each other from their cars on the way to worry if their son had any more future left.
11. Simon sat at the end of the gurney in the ambulance giving me reiki. He told me that he died at Covent Garden while talking to an old French woman. He’d had a heart attack right there. The supermodels tended to me. They didn’t notice Simon and he didn’t seem in the way. A tube came out of my arm in the same place where the giant bee had stung me. Simon pointed to the tube and said, “Some chemicals are necessary chemicals.” I felt calmer from his reiki. I heard the ambulance siren singing the Monkees’ theme song again. I smiled and opened my eyes. One of the Supermodel/EMTs looked down at me.
“Hey. Hey, there,” they said. “Glad you’re awake. You’re going to be ok.” Simon echoed these words until he went back to London.
I said, “I thought I might see Uncle Jello.”
The EMT touched my hand and said, “You can eat all the Jell-o you like at the hospital. It’s their specialty.”
I quietly sang along to the Monkees’ theme song as we sailed down the street.
As soon as I was able to articulate it, I said that I didn’t want Sammy to be charged with anything. I didn’t know how those things worked, having not been hit by a car before but I hoped it would have some influence. It seemed to have worked because he ended up paying a fine and taking an online class about safe driving.
When I could get around on my crutches well enough, I went back to Reimagine. The woman behind the counter screamed when I came in. Her giant mane of blue streaked black curly hair bounced as she ran up to me. She squeezed my shoulders, talking quickly about how she’d run out of the store when I’d been hit, that she kept me awake by slapping my face, how she was sorry for slapping me but glad that I was ok.
I bought the candle that I’d originally come in for and decided to also get a candle for Sammy. He’d written me a letter a few weeks after the accident, when I was finally home, leg immobilized, incisions itching. He’d handwritten it and put it inside a Get Well Soon card from Trader Joes. My friend, the intended receiver of the candle, read it to me. She visited me regularly both because she was a good friend but also because she had some guilt, knowing that if I hadn’t been headed to get her a gift, I wouldn’t have been hit.
Sammy told me how sorry he was, how people had always told him that your life could change in a moment but he’d never really believed it. He said he was so, so sorry for changing my life, too. He told me he’s working through stuff that’s been going on since the accident, that he’s been having kind of a hard time dealing with everything so his dad found him a therapist and his mom makes him check in every day. He doesn’t drive anymore. His therapist told him he could always try again later, that there was no rush.
I realized that we both have our scars. If you unzipped the ones on my right leg, you’d see the reason for my subtle limp, the scar tissue that took root around bone and metal screws. Sammy’s scar tissue wound around his heart and squeezed it until anxiety squirted a little out of his pores.
My friend wrote him back for me. I thanked him for his thoughtful apology. I told him that I'd had the same experience of truly understanding that life could change in a moment. I asked him to keep me posted on what he was up to.
I never told anyone about my grandfathers, my first boyfriend, the cigarettes. I told my mom about seeing my dad because I thought she might like to know. It made her uncomfortable so I didn’t bring it up again. I almost always sing the theme to the Monkees when an ambulance goes by, but I can’t speak Siren or Crow any longer. I’m glad the crows didn’t try to eat me. I’m glad I survived. Getting hit by a car is such a loud experience and having those dead people around brought some quiet to the noise. Dead Simon’s reiki also helped. I knew you could give reiki remotely but this was more than I imagined.
The candle I got for Sammy was shaped like a squirrel. The wick came out of its little squirrel head. It did not feel appropriate, but it also didn’t feel inappropriate. The lady from Reimagine asked who the squirrel candle was for and when I told her, she said, “But he maimed you!”
The expression on my face must have been one of horror because she apologized and gave me twenty-five percent off.
I left with my candles, my limp, and gifts for people I cared about even if they hit me with a car. I felt a little out of sorts so, while I waited for the light to change, I slapped my own face gently.
Juliet Waller is a Seattle based playwright, short story author, and playwriting & theater teacher. Her pieces have appeared in, among others, Gold Man Review, 3Elements, Third Street Review, and New Delta Review. She has an upcoming piece in Mountain Bluebird Magazine.
