Sex & Cars
Telle Mère, Telle Fille
1993 Nissan Sentra
Flames poured out of Sadie’s driver and passenger sides as smoke engulfed the car. We’d left the front windows rolled down before torching her. There she was, my black 1993 Sentra, named after those high school dances that girls ask boys to go to. I always had to ask boys on dates because they were too wimpy to ask me, so Sadie was fitting. Her fire lit up the night sky, orange fading into a speckled black abyss, creating a smell of burning metal and rubber I could only describe as solace.
I looked down at my feet as an ember landed inches away, catching a glimpse of my mom’s foot shuffling toward me. Wrapping her arm around my waist with an acidic smile on her face, she pulled me in for a cathartic hug. A new beginning, we hoped.
Everything good and bad in my life, I inherited from my mother. My skin color. Large breasts. A terribly dark sense of humor. Her Haitian skin was much darker than mine, though my humor darker than hers. She could’ve easily blamed my fairness on my father’s presumably western European genes but didn’t. She rarely mentioned him. I’d never seen a photo, so I couldn’t say for sure which traits were his.
It was as if she’d had me all by herself, defying the laws of biology and nature. She’d told me hundreds of times, I had her to…
