The Trailer I Backed Through the Cones

The Call at Daylight

The reason my kids were in that office at all, instead of home in their beds where I had promised them they would be, was a phone call at ten minutes past five that morning.

I was already up. I had been up since four, because I do not sleep the night before anything that matters, and I had my boots laced and my license papers in a folder on the counter and a pot of coffee going.

My mother’s name came up on the phone. Diane. I answered it with the sink running and a dish towel over my shoulder, and I was already smiling, because I thought she was calling to say she was on her way.

The plan had been set for three weeks. My folks were going to come at six and stay with the kids. Dennis would get Cody to the bus for the late start, Diane would keep the two little ones, and I would drive the forty minutes to the school and take my test with a clear head.

“Misty,” my mother said. “Honey, I have got myself in a spot.”

I turned the water off. I knew that voice. That voice had come for me my whole life.

“Gina’s got that dog thing this weekend,” she said. “The show up in Des Moines. And she cannot find a soul to keep the other two, and you know how Brutus is with strangers, he will not eat for anybody but family.”

I stood there with the dish towel on my shoulder.

“So your daddy and I are going to run over and stay at her place,” she said. “The dogs cannot be left, Misty. You understand. You are so good at figuring things out. You always land on your feet.”

I have thought about that sentence more than any other sentence anybody has ever said to me. You always land on your feet. She meant it as a compliment. She had been handing me that compliment my whole life as a reason to do less for me.

“Mama,” I said. “My test is this morning. You have known that for three weeks. It is written on your calendar. I watched you write it.”

“Well I did not know Gina would be in a bind,” she said, like that settled it, like Gina being in a bind was weather, a thing that simply happened and could not be argued with.

I looked down the dark hall at the door behind which my three children were sleeping. I did the only math there was. There was no math.

“Okay, Mama,” I said. “Tell Gina to have a good show.”

And I hung up before my voice could do anything I would be ashamed of, because Ruth who raised me in that same church would tell you a woman does not scream into a telephone at her own mother, no matter what.