Etta fell asleep in the first fifteen minutes of the movie. But it was okay. We were together.
The movie was cute and funny, and the laughter of the older children was improving my mood. Tired as I was, I had discovered that being home with my mother was far more tiring than going out and finding a moment of peace.
I draped my arm around my little girl’s shoulders, and I could feel the slight vibration of her snoring.
Every now and then my love for that child hit me so hard I felt bowled over. Like a turtle knocked upside down onto its shell, unable to right itself. This was one of those moments.
I watched the rest of the movie and savored that small feeling of everyday joy. Or maybe it wasn’t small at all. Maybe it was everything.
Or, most likely of all, maybe it was small and everything at exactly the same moment.
My plan was to put on my seat belt to drive home.
I had Etta strapped into her car seat, still snoring like a miniature soprano buzz saw. I was sitting in the driver’s seat of my mom’s Mercedes, trying to get my own belt done. Sounds easy enough, but I was wearing a big, long sweater, and the folds of it kept getting in the way.
I go back to this moment a lot.
It wasn’t much of a struggle before I gave up. It wasn’t that frustrating. Which makes it even harder to explain after the fact. To myself or anyone else.
As best I can figure after the fact, it was this: In that moment, I was happy. I was out in the world with my child, enjoying one of those perfect moments made perfect by the simple fact that I had her. I was in a state of joy, which felt increasingly rare.
When that moment of slight frustration arose, I didn’t want to spoil anything.
I drove away with my seat belt undone.
I was stopped at a red light when it happened. And the best I can say to describe the ordeal is the most trite statement of all: it happened very fast. What I’m about to describe in some flawed detail happened in a matter of seconds. Single-digit seconds. Six or seven, tops.
A whole life changed in six or seven seconds.
I saw the shape of a person moving fast toward my car window. Purposefully. It startled me, because it was clear that he was coming right for my driver’s side window.
He pulled his arm back as though he was about to throw a punch. I swear he looked as though he would punch the car window, except he was a couple of steps too far away for that.
The arm came forward again.
I saw a small object sail toward the window. Toward my head.
But it was so small. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but it seemed too small to be afraid of. Too small to do me much harm. And yet I was instantly afraid, because of the violent intention behind someone hurling a small object at me.
The window shattered. And I do mean shattered. In slow motion.
The window turned from solid glass to a sea of glass pebbles. And just for a flash of a second, they didn’t fall. They just hung there in the air between me and the outside world.
I realize that’s not entirely possible. But it’s what I saw.
Then all at once the pebbles were bouncing all over my lap. All around my feet.
My brain felt frozen. My gut felt frozen. The sudden fear had taken me outside of myself somehow. I felt as though I were watching this violent moment play out from a short distance away, both physically and emotionally.
I punched hard on the gas pedal to get out of there.
I knew as I did it that it would send the Mercedes out into the intersection, and I had no idea if a car might be coming. But I had to do something. There was an arm reaching into my car. A strange, dangerous arm. I instinctively felt that anything I did would be better than doing nothing at all.
The gloved hand on the end of that arm grabbed the steering wheel and pulled hard, and the car veered around in a half circle.
Then the hand opened my door from the inside.
I was still punching the gas pedal in my panic. But the guy was not getting left behind. He was staying with the car. Part of me was mystified. Another part of me could see that he was simply bracing his armpit over the top of the door and he had one foot braced on the bottom of it.
He was riding along.
I looked once at his face before it was all over. I had a distant, detached thought that said I should see his face. To be able to describe it. All I saw was a dark ski mask.
The driver’s door was fully open by then, and that was the end of that.
If only I had been wearing my seat belt. If only I had taken that extra minute to put on the seat belt. I could have stayed with the car. It would have been hard to pull me out of the car.
I felt my foot come off the accelerator.
I felt myself out in the air of the night.
I landed on my hip on the tarmac.
I looked up.
The driverless car had slowed, but not stopped. The door was still yawning open. The dark shape of a man was jumping in.
I heard the tires scream on the pavement as he roared away.
I sat up in the middle of the street.
In my peripheral vision, I saw a car stop for me, its driver step out and run in my direction. But I didn’t look. I just watched my mother’s Mercedes speed off.
I was having this thought, this feeling. Noting that I was alive. That I continued to exist beyond that desperate moment.
The car was just
