—after “Leap” by Brian Doyle
People heard it from a half mile away
down on San Pablo Avenue.
People heard it from across the street.
Yasmin texted her husband the construction worker
before calling 911 and reporting the accident.
Mr. Ayres’ son Mark rushed over with his fire extinguisher,
as did Liz, whose husband Steve was not home yet.
The new neighbors diagonally across the street
came out of their house, saw the car plough through
four cars at the intersection at 5 PM,
saw the pickup hit the house. Saw the fire,
wondered if someone was inside.
But there I am inside
sitting in the leather chair,
hearing almost crashes, skids outside
then
screech crash boom
then
enter enter louder louder
walls layer by later
pushed pushing through
closer and more
closer and more and louder
and it keeps coming and
no no no no
the cats run upstairs
I stand up from the chair, leg muscle twists
Neighbor calls “don’t go out the front door,
there’s a fire” and I run upstairs
don’t see the cats, but close the door anyhow
grab my purse,
what else to take—laptop, oboe—
and I leave without it all.
Outside the house police and fire
a white pickup truck stuck in the bottom of the house.
Neighbor in front of her house talking to another neighbor,
across the street a dense population watches
like it’s a New York corner.
Cars dead in the intersection, a wooden sided trailer
in the middle,
or did I see it pulled to the side?
What happened first?
What did Yasmin see from across the street?
I have to tell someone I am okay. The policeman says,
“In a minute. We’re taking statements from eye-witnesses.”
The fireman crawls under the house,
then he and PG&E go into the dining room, and I follow.
Shattered plaster walls,
bookcases dumped like trash onto hardwoods
all the words out at the same time—
Adrienne Rich, Margaret Atwood,
Trees of Northern America, East Bay Out,
maps from everywhere I went or wanted to go—
where did I want to go?
the “Bay Region” map AAA doesn’t make anymore
Mother’s pictoral map of Spain.
The Sachses’ dining room table and chairs untouched,
the jade and blue bowl by Kimmi Matsui cracked.
In the kitchen I see the linoleum floor buckled, pale dust
underneath, “asbestos” they say.
Plaster walls popping off, earthquake cracks made new
with a herringbone pattern as if someone took a razor and cut,
brown teapot on the floor. It was already broken.
People heard it from a half mile away.
But there I was inside, unable to think.
Days later, I will be told all objects need to be wiped before packing—
“don’t go in there”, don’t. You will get sick,
you will sue the owner.
But the toxic report will not have come back yet.
One expert will comment “there are a few types of asbestos,”
and it becomes a pattern, like everyone’s estimate of the time it will take
to put it all back together.
And the boom keeps coming, as I box up wreckage.
Wreckage not because of being broken,
but because I can’t—
the scene is too new, too loud, and inspectors, engineers, and architects keep coming,
along with the Nashville musician chimney expert with his bright yellow truck.
They all prod and comment
and just like that I’m back with my Mom in rehab,
then assisted living, then board and care, then the nursing home—
how people treated her as wallpaper, not as a person.
She was—
the same way here
as I go through belongings from devastation.
Neighbors walk by, don’t know the insides
don’t see my body tensing—
how my leg at the moment of the accident,
standing up from the chair, wrenching—
how my ears, ringing—
They don’t know how three years earlier, I couldn’t absorb the shock of Mom’s stroke,
the question in the ER that night, how they asked, “does she wear a diaper?”
how they saw my Mother
while to me she was fully competent—
what they saw—
she was invisible to them.
As I am now. part of the wreckage.
This is not a flash of enlightened realization
I do not know where the story is heading,
the car tearing into the house a part of
my skin like a never return,
like a bomb.
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