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I took the Neighborhood Trolley to the doctor today\u2013 thanks to all my readers who gave me some help to get the repairs done.<\/p>\n
It was surreal dropping my car off at the body shop for several repairs, and then walking down to the bus stop. I haven\u2019t taken a bus in four months. And then I waited in the library for hours, like I used to do after I missed the bus. And I took the bus around in a big time-wasting circle, chatting with old acquaintances and listening to bus gossip, just like I did for the first nine and a half years of Rosie\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
Something about the trip, the smell and the sound of the bus after so many months without it, made me a little sick. I felt like I was having a flashback.<\/p>\n
Poverty is traumatic. I hope my body of writing has made that clear, if you didn\u2019t know it before. It\u2019s not the same kind of trauma you can get from being assaulted or being in a war; it\u2019s a different trauma. I\u2019ve been very fortunate. I\u2019ve had lots of help from family and friends to shield me from a lot of the most terrible things. I don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like to be homeless. We only got a utility shut off once\u2013 the gas in the summer, which is pretty painless as long as you don\u2019t mind cold showers. We got rescued from our slum apartment and moved into a better place when things went from bad to worse, and some people don\u2019t have that help. Still, living from day to day, having to stretch out the EBT benefits<\/a> to get through the last part of the month, having to catch buses all over town when the town is too big to comfortably walk across yet too small to have good transit and the bus only comes once an hour, dealing with agencies,<\/a>\u00a0living in a scary neighborhood, <\/a>not being able to move when neighbors are abusive<\/a>, trying to help neighbors and failing<\/a>,\u00a0 these are traumas. The worst part about the trauma has been watching Rosie grow up in this mess. I\u2019ve felt terribly guilty about her having to defend herself from neighbor children<\/a> and learn to ignore the menacing neighbor\u2019s madness, rarely getting to go any place exciting, no vacations except an overnight in Pittsburgh when I was at a conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is all very scary. I felt anxious riding the bus. I started imagining worst case scenarios. When the mechanic called me, I fully expected him to say that the car had blown up and I\u2019d never be able to drive again. But he just said it was finished and ready to go.<\/p>\n I walked from the last bus stop, two blocks to where the Neighborhood Trolley stood waiting for me. The mechanic had done a great job. I paid, patted his dog, and drove off.<\/p>\n The clouds burst as soon as I was halfway home: a severe thunderstorm, rivers of pewter-gray water rushing down the one-way streets of LaBelle, my neighbor dashing around her yard to bring her potted plants inside as if they\u2019d drown. I got soaked merely by walking from the curb to the house. My secondhand red shoes, the thin comfortable ballet flats I call my \u201cdriving slippers,\u201d were bleeding dye so my feet looked like I\u2019d run a mile over glass. Rosie was there to meet me, and laugh at how wet I was.<\/p>\n I apologized, with more than the usual Mom Guilt, that now we couldn\u2019t go swimming as we\u2019d planned to do as soon as the car was fixed.<\/p>\n I asked how her day had been: \u201cBoring,\u201d she said, and my heart sank.<\/p>\n We watched the sheets of rain until they stopped abruptly an hour later. The cloud front rolled away across the Ohio as quickly as it had come, and there was still plenty of sunshine left.<\/p>\n \u201cYou PROMISED you\u2019d take me someplace fun,\u201d Rosie needled.<\/p>\n \u201cI did,\u201d I admitted. But the pools were all closed for the day because of the rain. There\u2019s really nothing fun to do in Steubenville, especially when it\u2019s muddy. \u201cWell\u2026 you said you wanted to see what a car wash was like. Want to do that?\u201d<\/p>\n Rosie scampered to get her sneakers on, and I crammed my red feet back into my soaked driving slippers.<\/p>\n We went for a drive.<\/p>\n The car wash I\u2019d looked up directions to was closed, so we drove further on. And then we drove further, way past the end of the usual bus route, to the place we never could have walked to.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s see what the next part of Wintersville looks like!\u201d I said. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve been out this far before. It\u2019s a whole new world!\u201d<\/p>\n Wintersville is a much smaller, quieter town than Steubenville. It\u2019s basically a housing development, a high school and a few shops and diners, along a single stretch of road. There\u2019s not really a business district or anything exciting to see. But that wasn\u2019t the point. We were going for a drive, on a sunny evening, and every few minutes of driving made the weight of fear and poverty and Steubenville slip off my shoulders. And we were up out of the river valley at a higher elevation, away from the cliffside at the end of LaBelle. It felt like being in a different world.<\/p>\n After awhile we stopped at Big Lots.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not terribly exciting, I know. But if you\u2019ve been trapped in one town for more than a decade, raising a child, hardly ever doing anything fun, always shopping at the same grocery stores, going to a new store is an adventure.<\/p>\n We sat in the recliners and chairs for sale, testing them out. Rosie fell in love with a memory foam mattress much more comfortable than her own bed, and I had to keep her from lying down on it for a nap. We found an aisle full of tacky pink unicorn-themed decorations for a girl\u2019s bedroom, which made Rosie gag, and I teased her that I\u2019d redecorate her superhero-themed bedroom if she wasn\u2019t good. I bought a box of gluten-free pancake mix with sprinkles in it for Rosie\u2019s breakfast tomorrow. They don\u2019t sell that locally. The saleslady signed me up for a free Big Lots rewards card, which I took reverently as if it was a golden ticket to Willy Wonka\u2019s factory.<\/p>\n We drove back towards Steubenville, to another car wash.<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t been in one of these in twenty years,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n Rosie watched with interest as I swiped my card and pushed buttons.\u00a0She giggled when the light turned green and the robot voice told us to drive forward, stop, drive backward, stop, put the car in park.<\/p>\n We both squealed when the machine passed over the Neighborhood Trolley again and again, spraying clouds of soap, until it was so covered\u00a0 that we couldn\u2019t see.<\/p>\n And then came the curtains of water, just like the curtains of rain that had fallen earlier. And finally, a blow-dryer that made the droplets on the windshield climb straight up in defiance of gravity.<\/p>\n I drove around the side and fished in my purse for two dollars to use the vacuum. Rosie was a lot more meticulous than I was about cleaning out her backseat.<\/p>\n \u201cCan we do this every few months?\u201d Rosie asked.<\/p>\n \u201cYes. We can.\u201d<\/p>\n We got back home, just as it was clouding over again. I think you\u2019re supposed to be annoyed when it rains just after you paid for a car wash, but all I felt was joy.<\/p>\n It\u2019s going to be all right.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Image via Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n Mary Pezzulo is the author of\u00a0Meditations on the Way of the Cross\u00a0<\/a><\/em>and\u00a0Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy<\/em>.<\/a> \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 I took the Neighborhood Trolley to the doctor today\u2013 thanks to all my readers who gave me some help to get the repairs done. It was surreal dropping my car off at the body shop for several repairs, and then walking down to the bus stop. I haven\u2019t taken a bus in four months. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2694,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1738,22,665,1569,10],"tags":[13177,556,466,13180,396,179,49,257,9765],"class_list":["post-15143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-appalachia","category-fear","category-food","category-motherhood","tag-big-lots","tag-bus","tag-car","tag-car-wash","tag-fun","tag-poverty","tag-steubenville","tag-trauma","tag-wintersville"],"yoast_head":"\n
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