I sat on the floor with group members, who today are nameless, faceless, and no more important than what I had for lunch on that particular day. They merely stand as importance because they were there and they sustained me until I walked the torturous manila halls towards my family members dressed in black. I was in third grade and we were ending our grueling section about multiplication. I had mastered the skill days earlier and fantasized about division as my group members sat on the floor bending their fingers appropriately to the nine times table. Understanding multiplication meant a whole world of new things. It meant that third grade was almost over and I would soon be traveling to fourth. Fourth grade resided about four doors past my third grade class room. Past the lunch doors on the right, past the other three third grade classrooms on my left, and past the stairs that led to the basement of the school where the music room was. That was where we would receive our recorders. And when we were done practicing our recorders we would walk back up those stairs through the doors and not to the right, but to the left. That is were four classroom doors stood. Two on each side, each holding fabulous beams of light where I just knew I would get the best teacher in the whole school, Mrs. Brigaman. For now, though, I was stuck with whoever these kids were, dreaming about the back of the school bus and being Mr. Gianfrido's (our principle) favorite student. That was when I heard the phone ring. Mrs. Lux called to me and I felt the bending fingers of my classmates inside my stomach. They were opening and closing their fists against my already hungry tummy, tempting me to vomit all over them right then and there. I made a face at my group members and they looked at me as if they were apologizing. I grabbed my things and went to stand up, but as I looked I saw my father in the doorway. He was in all black and was waiting for me to leave with him. Although I had no friends besides Caitlin Courtemache in this classroom I almost begged him not to make me leave. Instead, I grabbed my things, smiled at Mrs. Lux and gave my dad the least emotional hug possible. As I walked into the hallway where the walls and tiles collided in a haze of eggshell white I saw a few others in black heading towards us. Together we all piled into a few cars outside and drove for what felt like hours but was only down the street.
As we drove, I quickly became bored and decided to unlatch the back of my seat. My father had bought this Barney Purple 1995 Ford Escort because while he was away at his summer boot camp his car broke. The car he had owned before was a New Yorker, it was maroon red and the ceiling fabric was falling away from the roof of the car. I used to poke it, which only made it worse and although I was embarrassed by the way the car looked I used to love riding in it. The New Yorker has a bench seat so I could sit right next to my Dad and wear the lap belt instead of the seat belt that pulled on my hair when I moved. I could also snuggle up to my Dad when he would pick me up after his "midnight madness" shifts at Bernie's, the local appliance store, which seemed to happen biweekly. I was also able to steal sips of my father's coffee which was loaded up with sugar and stolen creamers from coffee shops. Once my dad caught me, he told me the coffee would stunt my growth, and then smiled at the fact that I enjoyed his favorite drink. From then on, I always drank it. The best thing about the New Yorker, though, was that my father had a tape of "yo men, yooo men" that he played every time we got in the car. Harry Belafonte was probably the only oldie but goody my father had exposed me to and I thoroughly enjoyed singing about the tally man even when it was after midnight on a weekday. So when the New Yorker finally died my father found it imperative that I had a say on his new car. Although I was much too old to be watching Barney, I still did. Therefore, the only thing I cared about was that the new car was Barney Purple. As I responded with this ridiculous request, my aunt, who I had been staying with, laughed her head off. She thought there was no way my dad would come home with a Barney Purple car. Two weeks later, when my father returned, there he was in the driveway with the closest thing to Barney Purple that he could find. The car turned out to be a hatchback, meaning when I was sick of sitting in the car, I could climb into the trunk and hide. On this day, I really wanted to hide. When we finally stopped, I realized that no one was going to come find me, so it did better just to get out of the car.
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