Sunny sat in silence while all this was going on. Suddenly, my mother turned to her. “And you’re just as bad, Sunny. You promised you wouldn’t let her drive. What’s wrong with you? You’re a liar. I can’t trust either one of you.”
Then in her typical fashion, she started worrying aloud.
“What does the other car look like? I don’t have insurance. I’m probably going to be sued or arrested.” I was in the habit of tuning her out when she started obsessing like this but Sunny was still there, looking very uncomfortable, so I stood and said, “I’ll walk you out to your car, Sunny.”
When I came back in the apartment, my mother had gone into her silent treatment mode. She didn’t speak to me for days, but for once I welcomed it. I figured my punishment could have been far worse.
Just as my mother was beginning to trust me again, I’d broken a promise—and destroyed her new car in the process. I had no excuse.
I didn’t tell my mother we had gone downtown because Sunny had insisted on it. And I didn’t tell her Sunny had told me I had room to pull out of the parking space. She didn’t like Sunny anyway, and that would just have caused her to dislike her even more. Besides, I blamed myself, not Sunny. After all, I didn’t have to go along with her.
My mother’s new car was totaled. I felt absolutely horrible about it, and about the fact that she had to pay for the man’s Cadillac to be fixed. Even though I’d only dented his bumper a little, they had to replace the entire thing, so it came to hundreds of dollars. Fortunately, the man was kind and agreed to have my mother pay him back over time.
It was a Friday night in the fall of my first year at junior college, and Sunny and I decided to “cruise” Chester Avenue. That was what most teenagers in Bakersfield did every weekend; it was a way to be out and about, see people you knew, and meet guys. But Sunny and I had never gone together because we weren’t that interested in who had what car or in meeting the guys cruising up and down the street. We usually preferred to just be in each other’s company and talk.
When we pulled onto Chester Avenue, guys whooped and whistled at Sunny, motioning for her to pull over so they could talk to her. But she ignored them, as always.
We turned left into the parking lot of Stan’s Drive-In, a popular hangout and also the place where everyone turned around to go the opposite direction on Chester. Sunny drove through the parking lot and sat at the exit, waiting for traffic to pass so she could turn left and go back down the avenue. When the coast was clear she slammed on the gas, but instead of turning left she drove directly across the street and into a parked car.
I saw it happen as if in slow motion. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I yelled at Sunny to stop but it was too late. When the VW smashed into the side of the parked car, my head hit the wind-shield, smashing it into a spider web design. Both Sunny and I sat in silence as a crowd of kids gathered around us. I looked at Sunny and she seemed okay. She didn’t ask me if I was okay, even though my head was bleeding.
It was clear to me that she’d deliberately smashed into the parked car. For days afterward, I asked myself why she would do such a thing. Of course, I didn’t ask her about it and I knew she didn’t want to discuss it.
She’d totaled the VW, but instead of punishing her, her stepfather let her borrow his second car and we were back in business. Sunny acted like nothing had happened.
I began to see that I had become too compliant in our friendship. I had a big personality, and with most friends, I automatically became the leader. But Sunny had a confidence I didn’t have—the confidence born of a comfort with her looks and being accustomed to social acceptance, even admiration. And since Sunny was the one with a car, this gave her authority over where we went and when. I had fallen into the comfortable role of allowing her to take control.
I had always liked and admired Sunny’s spontaneity, just as I had admired Ruby’s. Like Ruby, Sunny never worried about what other people would think about her, and this was very attractive to me. Being around her was a way for me to rebel against my mother.
But Ruby wasn’t only spontaneous and adventurous, she was reckless. She had been reckless with herself and she had been reckless with me. Over the past few months, I had come to realize that Sunny was also reckless. And now this last car crash had moved her into another category entirely—someone who was not only reckless but dangerous. I started to feel unsafe around her.
chapter 37
At some point, Sunny started therapy. I don’t know what prompted it, or even how she found a therapist; it may have been that Yvonne referred her to someone like she had with me. However it came about, she began seeing a male psychiatrist once a week, and even though it was the proverbial elephant in the room, she didn’t talk about it with me.
A few months into her therapy, Sunny had what appeared to be a psychotic break. Her mother called me to tell me what happened. Apparently, her psychiatrist had decided to call in another therapist to get a second opinion. He’d explained to Sunny that the other psychiatrist would be joining them for their session but he did so only a few minutes before the man arrived, and something about the other psychiatrist’s shoes acted as a trigger for Sunny and she began to scream. She ran out of the psychiatrist’s
