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It is my birthday, and I have run from the house with Boy in my arms. I am barefoot and my feet are scratched by a million brambles, but I don’t slow until I reach the barn, and beside it, the old car.
The keys are in the ignition, like always. For a long time, it seemed to me that the Mothers just sat inside and the car magically went wherever they wanted it to go, as if it could read their thoughts or functioned as an extension of their desires. Then one day, Mother took me to the grocery. ‘I trust you,’ she said. ‘It’s time.’
I saw the way she turned the key, the way her foot pressed the pedal to make the car go. The car no longer seemed any more magical than the tractor or the machine we used to cut grass. But there was magic in taking the road all the way to the end, farther tha
