JOURNAL, Thursday, Nov. 22nd

It’s taken me a few days to be able to write about what happened last Saturday on the way home from shopping. On Monday I had to reconstruct every detail for the insurance investigator. It’s amazing how many things you can remember from a split second in time.

I was driving down the street following traffic, going just a bit over the speed limit. I came up over a hill where there’s a convenience store about a half a block ahead. Two little boys stood on the sidewalk in front of the store, candy in hand, ready to dash across the street. I slowed down. They weren’t looking in my direction. They didn’t see me.

As I slowed I remember focusing on their body intention, prepared to slam on the brakes if necessary. As the nose of my car passed where they stood on the sidewalk I remember relaxing a bit and applying more pressure to the gas pedal, feeling we were past any possibility of an accident.

The little boy who was closest to me turned and looked at my car and slapped his friend’s back. Why did he do that? I don’t understand. Was he pretending to push him out into the street as kids sometimes do when they play, planning to grab the collar of his jacket to pull his friend back from harm’s way? Did he really not see me or misjudge my speed, thinking I’d be past them by the time his friend reacted?

Whatever his intention, the other one accepted that nudge against his back as a signal that the coast was clear and, without seeing my car as it passed in front of him, ran right into the passenger’s door hitting his head against the handle and shattering the side mirror. He was thrown onto the parking lot where his head snapped back against the gravel.

I don’t usually react quickly in emergency situations. I find I take time to think of what to do, unlike some people who can move on instinct. I remember thoughts going through my head as I pulled into the parking lot, my heart pounding, my breath coming in shallow gasps:
- Should I take my keys or leave them in case someone has to move the car?
- No one will believe this – a kid ran into my car.
- I wonder what grade he’s in?
- What were these two little guys doing anyway, crossing this busy street by themselves?

I pulled over, put the keys in my jacket pocket and ran to where he was sitting alone on the pavement. I guess his friend had no stomach for being questioned – he had disappeared already. I remember thinking how strange it was at this hour on a Saturday morning, on a normally busy street, that we were all alone, just the two of us for those first few seconds. It was spooky, like we were acting out a scene on stage.

I helped him to his feet and saw the stream of blood as it made its way down behind his ear, pouring onto his torn Blue Jays jacket. He was small enough that I picked him up in my arms and went into the store. I asked for something to put over the cut; I remember so little from the first aid course we had to take in teacher’s college, but I did remember that they said to apply pressure to stop bleeding. At any rate it seemed more sensible to keep the blood in his head than to let it pour out.

The owner of the store gave me a roll of paper towels and called 911. He seemed very nervous – was he concerned about his own liability?

I sat down on cases of cat food beside the ATM machine with this little mouse on my lap. He didn’t shake or cry; he just sat there, his head leaning against my chest. I wrapped my right arm around his shoulder, reassuring him while my left hand covered the wound with the wad of paper towels. He never cried.

I cooed and reassured him and asked him small detail questions for information that I thought I might need when the ambulance arrived. He never spoke. He just sat there on my lap, willing to accept my help, not looking for anyone else – anyone familiar – to console him.

I found out from some of the people who had gathered around us in the store that his name was B.J. and he had just turned six years old. He lived across the street and his older brother was supposed to be looking after him. His mother was at work.

B.J. never flinched; he made no move to leave my lap. Was he in shock? Did he know that it was my car that had hurt him?

The ambulance arrived and the attendants assumed I was his mother. They asked standard questions as they looked him over where we sat cramped in the corner of the store – stacks of boxes and wire racks of snack food towering beside us. The attendants took B.J.’s temperature and blood pressure. They snipped his hair away to better see the wound. One of them replaced the blood soaked wad of toweling with a gauze pad, shaking his head at the amount of blood: “Head wounds,” he muttered.

One of the men lifted B.J. from my lap and brought him outside to lay him on the waiting stretcher. The policeman who had arrived, said that he had a few questions for me and suggested that we would be more comfortable in his car. I told him what happened but I kept asking my own questions: Why were they alone, these two little six year olds? Why would his friend appear to push him into the street? Where was the older brother? Why were they alone? He never answered me.

I didn’t cry. How strange that the tears that have been stalking me with such determination these past few months, were nowhere to be seen. When I got home, I brought my groceries from the trunk of the car and climbed the stairs to my apartment. I remember thinking that I didn’t want to rush, that closing the door to my apartment behind me and being alone might somehow make me lose control. I put the bags on the table in the kitchen and sat down in my wooden rocking chair without taking my coat off. Pussywillow jumped up on my lap and worked her head into the palm of my hand, stretching out right where B.J. had been not forty minutes ago. I stroked her ears absently and let some time go by. Her rough tongue against my hand was reassuring. I looked at her sweet face and saw that she was licking the blood from my fingers.

Blood – I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid of blood. It’s more that I’m unusually revolted by it.

As a young teenager, I awaited my first period with dread. I remember when it finally happened, I got out of bed before I realized that it had come at night. As I stood up, I felt something on the inside of my leg and looked, horrified at the trickle of blood – red and thick, running all the way down to gather in a large drop just under the arch of my right foot. I felt dazed and light headed. I didn’t want to move. I threw up.

Almost as if my body had willed it to be so, through my teen years my periods only came sporadically – every five or six months. I suppose that a child with an observant mother would have been trotted off to the family doctor, but I was just grateful not to have to deal with the whole mess on a regular basis. I kept quiet.

When we had to take first aid in teacher’s college, I tried to explain to them that I don’t do well in these medical intervention situations. I fainted during one of the exercises when we were rolling a donut bandage to go over an imaginary puncture wound.

I hate blood: the feel and the smell of it, the loss of control that it represents. Yet there I was on this Saturday morning, rocking B.J. on the case of cat food as his blood covered us both, comforting him with the same controlled soothing voice that I would have used had he pinched his finger in the schoolyard.

Eventually I put Pussywillow on the tile floor of the kitchen and got out of the rocking chair; I passed by the full-length mirror on the pantry door. I was shocked to see how much of B.J.’s blood I had on me. My coat was covered as were large areas of my jeans – dark and rust coloured as it dried into the fabric. I stood there looking at myself covered in someone else’s blood and was shocked to realize how little revulsion I felt. It looked like I had been hit with an exploding bottle of chocolate sauce.

I changed in the bedroom and washed my hands – strange that I didn’t even think to take a shower. I got out my journal from the bookshelf. I was drawn to reread the section that I wrote last week about Claire’s birth; I wasn’t sure why until I read the last line about being in the bathroom and the bloody towels. I sat down on the couch in front of the window, curled up with an afghan and stayed there for most of the afternoon, letting what had happened settle inside me.

As I started to cry, what I came to realize is that I wanted to cry for B.J., for how alone he was, and that he would take such comfort in the consolation of a stranger. The tears that I had for B.J. were real tears, from a true source inside me: sadness, confusion, guilt. These tears – slow to come, almost sought after didn’t scare me. They were natural.

And through the sobs for B.J. I kept thinking of young Starla sitting alone on the bathroom floor and I cried for her too.

I’ve been noticing how much the writing has come to mean to me. Not just what I write to Claire and read to Jean, but this journal writing too. I’m writing in a different way now. It lets me look at what has happened, one word at a time, and allows me to touch how I feel about things. Sometimes when I reread what I’ve written, I pretend that Starla and Claire are children that I know from school. I like them. I delight in their bond with each other. I recognize Starla’s need to be noticed and loved.

I’m glad that B.J. made me cry for Starla – I feel a lot better.

Copyright 2003