I'm entering. Each entrant can submit up to three personal essays. Winner gets a bit of a money and published in Sunstone magazine. Yay...ish. I don't really care about that. I get class credit though. BIG YAY. So far I've got two essays. Doubt I'll get time for a third. Keep in mind that these are rough drafts. What do you think?
Cherry
I am my father’s daughter and we do not cry or say “I’m sorry” or “I love you.” Rather we hide or give one another blueberry pop tarts or hammed up good-night hugs. It comes naturally most days. But today, today I have to try so hard not to let my taboo emotions leak. I gulp and look out the window away from Dad. If I look at him I know I’ll cry anyway, un-kosher or not. Justy, you are quiet for once, your usual grumbling and good-natured shrieking mellowed to a worried hum. I think you know where we’re going. Oh, my Justy, my Cherry. What will I do without you?
Dad brought you home when I was fifteen: a red-neck’s Mini Cooper; he’d needed a new drive-to-work car after his ancient green truck died. You had ripped seats with the stuffing showing and a healthy helping of dents and rust and the license plate number 815 MJS. You were born the same year I was. Mom and I gave you a racing stripe on Father’s Day. Dad laughed. It felt good. From the beginning, I was always the first to volunteer to ride with Dad in his car: you. One day I went with him to work. I had school, but I didn’t care. We drove with a dented radio sitting on your dash. We had to crank it to hear the country music over your outraged roar: you’re muffler was broken then. We left you to nap next to the tanker trucks and that day I rode with him in a cab higher off the ground than I was tall; he taught me to spit sunflower seeds onto the runningboard. I don’t think he and I said a word to each other all day. I am my father’s daughter and we don’t have much to say.
When I was sixteen Mom and Dad taught me to drive you: my lessons consisted of ten minutes explanation, a drive home from the store, stalling you five times in the same intersection, a lot of yelling, and then a terrifying statement accompanied by your keys that night: “Here you go, drive to work,” he said. I think you were as appalled as I was. But you behaved. I made it to work…and back. I drove you everywhere from then on. I hung a plastic cherry necklace from your rearview mirror. The boys were impressed that I could drive a stick. I thought I had the best car of anyone at school. Oh, I loved you. I still do.
A few years later I went to college and I was petrified. Dad would send you with me for a week or two here and there to save me from walking alone too much in the dark. By the end of the semester he requested two hundred bucks and you were mine. Mine, all mine. You drank oil like a thirsty camel, still do. Dad taught me to check your oil. The bottles piled up in your unused back seat and Dad would give me grief every weekend.
At Christmas I drove home in a blizzard and you broke down in rush hour traffic in the middle lane ten miles from home. Some kind man pushed us off to the side of the road while I cried and called home. I sat in you clutching your wheel with a bag of bagels in the passenger seat. Dad came fifteen minutes later to get us. Your battery was corroded; such a big fuss for such a small complaint. You always were the drama queen. But Dad could fix anything and he taught me to jiggle your cables to coerce you to move again.
Most weekends I’d find your gas tank had been filled or your oil topped off and once there were even new tires. As I’d drive back to school on Sunday nights I’d smile to myself. I am my father’s daughter and we do not say “I love you.” But he took care of my car. He took care of you.
Summers passed with all your windows down—I never cared that your air conditioner was broken and that it got so hot the radio melted; falls too, with drives in the pouring rain. Winters were the worst. You hated it as much as I did. I prayed for the springs and you shivered. Springs came and we passed my favorite house and fields of corn and the corner light. But with every season you got older and more stubborn: gears slipping like old lady joints. Dad tinkered more and I pretended all was well. For a while it was.
Then this last spring you gave up and sat quietly in the driveway. Dad sadly shook his head. I held my tongue and hoped. Months passed. You gathered pine needles. The rain fell through your open windows. The sun bleached your seats even further. I knew you liked the feel of the water and warmth as much as I did. Dad and I and the family discussed funeral ideas: turn you into a convertible, take you to the cabin to be a target for rock rollers, enter you in a demolition derby. We laughed so hard at all our silly ideas; I am my father’s daughter.
But finally, last night Dad shook his head for the last time. This morning he pointed me to the shop-vac. I gulped and did my duty. I sucked up the pine-needles and threw away an armful of oil bottles. I climbed into you again and sat for just a minute. I put your plastic cherries away—to remember. Then I gave the keys to Dad. I wanted to ride in the passenger seat one more time, the way I had in the beginning. And so here I am.
The sun is warm and you are calm and quiet. Dad is a certain sort of silent that doesn’t mean he’s happy. I watch the fields and birds and pond pass away as we drive west. Mom follows behind in the plain, boring Saturn. She’s nothing like you. I lean my forehead against your window. Five minutes more and we’re there.
Turning into a junk yard we stop next to a row of other cars: some cheerful, some morose, and a few that I can feel: someone loved them once. Dad and I slowly get out and walk to a trailer and bang on the crooked door. The man lets us in, he’s expecting us. Dad hands over the title and the man hands me fifty bucks. There’s a grease smear on the bill. We walk out. Neither one of us has said a word. I hand Dad the money. I don’t want it.
Mom is waiting to drive us home and I pass you by to plop my tired body into the Saturn’s backseat. Mom pulls away and I stare out the window. I look one more time: but all I see is an ancient, red, dented, little car. Just a Justy. Not my Cherry anymore. You’re gone. If there’s a car heaven, then you’re there. I smile and face the front again and gulp a little more. But I don’t cry. Mom looks back at me. Dad doesn’t. I smile again. I am my father’s daughter.
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