P—

Thank you for your phone message . . . I have been quite a mess. My usually strong stomach seems to have given out on me. It’s *terrible*. I’m not vomiting or anything, but I’ve got pain both sharp and acute that comes in waves and doubles me over, I can’t eat without nausea or pain, so I’ve given up on that and taken to fasting, drinking fresh vegetable juices (carrot, ginger, kale, beet, red cabbage, and pineapple), lots of water, mint tea, vitamins, primadopholus. Kelly and Andre have both been absolute angels of care and nurturance.

Now, yesterday was quite a crazy day. I want to tell you about it before too much time has past and it loses its immediacy.

In the morning, I was roused by Andre’s waking up. This is unusual. I customarily sleep like the dead. Andre mentioned that she really wasn’t looking forward to rollerblading to campus. She’s doing work at U.C. Berkeley and it’s hell to try to drive over there and find parking and all of that, so she usually rollerblades to the BART station, takes BART and then rollerblades up to campus (which is how I came and went from here to there my last semester of school). So, groggy, I offered to drive her. I put on some clothing, brushed my teeth and stumbled into the sunshine, still sleepy and confused. I am not a morning person. I was fully intending to come back home and go right back to bed.

Alas, ‘twas not to be.

I dropped Andre off near her lab and took Martin Luther King to the 24W freeway entrance. There’s a whole bunch of merging that happens right there. I merged and, flicking my turn signal lever, was getting ready to merge some more. The little green left arrow was not flashing. This was curious. I looked more closely. Sleep was, after all, still embedded in the corners of my eyes. No arrow. This was unusual. It wasn’t on the list of things that generally go wrong with my car. I wondered if it was just that the indicator light wasn’t on, but the left blinkers were actually flashing. I stuck my head out the window to see if the lights were on or to see if it looked like folks could tell I was trying to switch lanes.

That was when I began to lose speed.

I gave the car gas.

I continued to lose speed.

Fuck. I made my way to the insufficient right hand shoulder. There was just barely room for my Tercel to fit. Cars were flying by about two inches from my head. I turned the car off and tried to stay calm. I was really afraid a car was going to clip me and I was going to die.

Fortunately, as you might have guessed by now, I didn’t die. When there was a break in traffic, I fled the vehicle. Slammed the door and took position about fifteen yards behind it, leaning against the guard rail. I tried to determine what my situation was. I couldn’t even tell what highway I was on at that point. I was on a highway about 15 feet above another highway. Ahead of me were the options to go towards 580 west or east. There were no call boxes and there was nowhere for me to go. I was on something of an island of shoulder that did not extend infinitely in either direction. I didn’t have a cell phone. I didn’t have a book to read. I’d left the house so unprepared for anything like this.

The sky was brilliant and blue and had sweet little wisps of white cloud. There was a BART station in the distance. Down below, I could see the tops of cars and farther on, I could look down into back yards where clean laundry hung to dry. Now that I was out of the car and was less full of panic, I could appreciate the fact that I was standing someplace I’d never stood before. I could feel the highway bouncing up and down with the weight of the traffic. I looked at the sky and laughed my head off. This whole situation was so ridiculous. I might still die. But how silly, how comical, how perfect, how strange!

I could do nothing but wait and trust that someone would help me. That felt kind of lovely. A way of trusting that the universe will take care of you.

Or will kill you. You never know. But no need to fret about it, either way.

A truck pulled over. Two light brown skinned men, freckled, one with a rich lion’s mane of dreadlocks, the other with his hair pulled into a large knit cap behind his head. “Sister, what happened to you?” I explained everything, so grateful to have support / assistance / the promise of a cell phone. I did, at least, have my Triple A card in my wallet and my wallet in my pocket. I called Triple A and a very nice woman (I always think the people who work at Triple A are very nice) said that she was putting “a priority” on my case and that a tow truck would be out immediately to help me.

I don’t have health insurance, but I do have Triple A, thank god.

The woman on the phone was delighted that I seemed to be handling the situation relatively well and was in good spirits.

The guys talked to me about what they figured was the problem, according to what I had told them happened. The alternator. Surprise, surprise. How come nobody told me that when the alternator gives out, it could cause the car to shut off while driving at 70 miles per hour? That would have been real useful information to know.

I asked them if, by any chance, they knew how to install alternators. As a matter of fact, one of them did. So we exchanged contact information and then they invited me to a reggae party that was happening the next night (tonight). And it occurred to me as they drove off that my hair might have something to do with everything about that interaction.

Weird.

Then I was on my own again and waiting. And this other beautiful light skinned black man pulled over. Now, he was really really beautiful. Mixed, I think, with honey cream brown skin and red hair on his head and in a goatee at the bottom of his sweet round (mind the cheekbones face). Oh, and just round muscles coming out of everywhere. Biceps and shoulders, not overdone. Very sweet demeanor. Just chatting with me, since help had already been summoned. And I was beginning to think I had the trick. So, *this* is how you meet intelligent, attractive, soft-spoken, sweet black men. How come nobody told me?

So, off he went and then I was back on my own again until a member of the highway patrol came to keep me company. Everybody I encountered seemed extraordinarily concerned about the fact that I was alone. I found this perplexing. The fewer people stuck out in this scary situation, the better. And wouldn’t it be awful if I had an infant with me—or worse, a four-year old!

Anyway, the cop was nice enough. We chatted and talked about ourselves. Another intelligent brown man. The cop waited with me and made sure that my tow truck was on its way. It arrived, eventually, hitched up my car to take me home (because I just didn’t have the wherewithal to figure out where else to have them tow the thing). The officer said that if I saw him on the road, he expected a wave. He had expressed that he, too, was amused that I was in such a pleasant mood. Usually, he said, folks he encounters in these situations are pretty upset or irritable or late for something or anxious. I did not appear to be any of those things. It all just seemed like a kind of poetic situation to me and really enabled me to appreciate my day that much more.

When I got home, my neighbor Amy was just heading to work, said she’d been up all night with some awful stomach something. Told me in a grave voice to drink lots of water. I solemnly agreed, took a few sips when I got inside, and forgot about it (until I came down with something painful and ominous).

I called Andre and told her what had happened.

She was excited that I was still alive and shaky, as if that living was not yet certain.

Which is how I felt, excited and shaky, understanding that living is never, ever certain.