and we start for home.

Things are fine for a while.

By now it’s dark

and the streetlights flicker on

and brighten up the

gray-colored road.

For sure,

nighttime in Florida

can feel darker than it is.

Maybe it’s the humidity,

or the trees stretching

over the road,

or maybe

it is just the thoughts

sitting in the back of my head

about my sister.

I’m squished in the front,

with Mari

between me and

her grandmother.

The thirty-minute ride takes

us an hour and a half

because the car lights

keep flashing off and on.

Every time the lights go out,

the old woman weaves

over the dotted line

into the wrong lane,

to the side of the road,

scaring even the ditch,

I’m sure.

Grandmother,

Mari yells,

you are gonna kill us dead.

Pull over.

Her grandmother parks on the side

of the road, and we wait

for the car lights to brighten up some

and send out a weak bit of light so

we can get on home.

It’s hot outside

and there’s no breeze

coming in through the open

windows.

The mosquitoes eat us alive.

They must be attracted

by my pounding heart.

Almost losing your life

several times over can

really make the blood flow.

I’ll get out here,

I say,

a mile from home.

I can’t die

with my hair looking like this.

Chicken,

Mari says.

But I laugh at her and climb out

of the car, slamming

the door shut.

I jog,

taking shortcuts through

empty fields,

passing houses,

keeping to the edge

of our dirt road.

Once I get to the trailer

I set to work

putting my hair back to normal.

77.

I find out three things

this evening:

1. There are worse things than staying with your best friend and her grandmother in a death-trap Chevrolet, weaving or no weaving.

2. L’Oréal doesn’t work any better than Clairol.

and

3. Buttercup Yellow doesn’t work for me, either.

78.

Momma comes in

to where I sit that night,

folded in a beanbag chair,

reading Heck Superhero.

She’s been watching TV all day.

She looks nervous,

something I don’t see from her often.

Hey,

she says.

I just got a call

from the hospital.

I go all cold in my guts

and the freeze

seems to leak through

my whole body.

Liz?

I say,

though my tongue feels

thin as a slice of ham.

Is it Liz?

Has she managed it?

Has she done

what she had set out to do?

Is my sister dead?

She’s okay,

Momma says,

though there’s not

a lot of improvement.

She’s talking a bit.

Up and around.

Momma touches at her hair

that she’s pulled back with

little girl barrettes.

Pink plastic ones.

Some days she dresses like this,

in blue jeans and baby clothes,

like she’s not a mother

or

a prostitute.

You figure out where

that diary is of hers?

Momma says,

her voice lean.

I seen her writing in it.

You know where it is?