Driving Lesson

Now here is a story. I’m fifteen. I have my car, a Volkswagen Bug, 1969. There remains some debate as to where the car came from, and how much it really cost since my parents don’t actually remember the interaction, and what other products might have been traded for the car. But I don’t care, I just need to learn how to drive it, get my license, then it’s mine.

Robert’s giving me my first driving lesson in my car. It’s a stick. The last time my step-dad gave me a driving lesson was on a Kawasaki KX80, at Superstition Mountain. That day, he sat on the back, gunned the throttle, and jumped off the back of the bike while I careened toward the sand dune. I was ten. Today, I am wiser to his ways, so I’m prepared when he tells me from the passenger seat, “Okay, drive.”

We drive to 7-11, me rolling through the right turn on a red light because I can’t work the clutch and the brake at the same time. I am reminded of that first driving lesson when I shift gears and I wonder to myself if I should’ve been using the clutch on the motorcycle when I shifted from first to second. No matter, we’re at 7-11 now, and he is buying me Snickers, Chick-0-Sticks and Abba Zabbas, rewarding me for putting him in a potentially deadly situation. He suggests we stop at his friend’s house, just around the corner from 7-11. Everyone thinks Al is nice, but I don’t like him. Something about him. More destinations mean more driving though, which I am all for.

Al’s house feels weird when I walk through it, but fifteen year old me doesn’t yet know to leave when something feels weird. There is a garage in the back that seems to be Robert and Al’s destination, so I follow, bag of candy in hand. Two pit bulls come toward me, I smile at them and say hello. I pay no attention to my dad as he jokingly tells the dogs to “sic em.” He does this with our dogs all the time and thinks he’s hilarious, but I’m over it.

In a blur, I am face down on the ground. Something stabs me in the back. Where is my candy? Pain shoots through my leg this time, much sharper and deeper this time. I scream out “Fuck!” and immediately worry that I’m going to get in trouble. I can’t get up, something is on me. Somebody’s hands lift me and throw me against a stucco wall. My dad is standing in front of me, facing the other way, crouched down in an umpire position. He growls, “Come on! Come the fuck on!” I hear one of the dogs whimper. From the safe spot behind Robert’s legs I can see eight dog legs, but now they seem too scared to lunge at me. I am crying. My back hurts, my leg hurts, my heart feels loud in my ears, I can’t hold my own weight.

I see Al, dog collars in his fists, as he leads them to the garage. Robert turns to me and asks if I am okay. But I don’t know. We see that I have a bite on my back and a deeper bite on my butt. I am crying again, still. My favorite pants ripped, bloody, ruined. And what about gymnastics tryouts tomorrow?

Robert takes me out to my car, this time he gets in the driver’s seat. He tells me that my mom will only freak out if she hears about this, so we should just go straight to the hospital. No no, I tell him, she would never forgive us if we told her after the fact, and besides, she will worry if we stay gone for three more hours without explanation. But he was right, she freaks out. I turn the hysterics over to her. It’s her job. Mom will take care of it, so I can relax.

At the emergency room, two other patients have arrived before me, one comes in later. Mom and Robert become mad when the person who came after me gets to see the doctor first, but I don’t mind. It’s not hard to see that she is having trouble breathing, while I am just bleeding from a hole in my butt. She can go first.

Now I lie face down on a hospital bed. How embarrassing, these people are standing around looking at my butt. Thank God they place a sheet over me when they stitch me up, but how the hell am I going to tell everyone at school that I got stitches in my ass? And what about gymnastics tryouts tomorrow?

The doctor gives me some white pills; they will take care of the pain he tells me. I will find out they are antibiotics, not codeine, after I hand them out to my friends—who now call me Dimples—on Friday night and ask the doctor for more at my next visit. No wonder we didn’t feel anything.

In the years since this happened, I have learned that Al was a pretty notorious dealer in the town. The pit bulls that attacked me were mother and son, the younger one doing the most damage to my body. That same dog attacked another girl, who was eerily like me, and put her into an emergency surgery that included melting her skin together in an attempt to stop the bleeding. She ended up with hundreds of stitches and more than a year on crutches. Her gymnastics career ended that day. I am lucky.