The Passenger | ANGELA JONES

The Passenger

ANGELA JONES | VERMONT I never learned how to drive. As someone who grew up in the Motor City, people are always curious how that happened, but I never seem to have a reason that makes sense to them. Perhaps it was that cars weren’t something we could ever rely on. My mother drove used car lot gas guzzlers that would break down at the most inconvenient times and places. In the middle of a snow storm or in the middle of nowhere. One night we were driving home from a late night movie and broke down on the side of a busy freeway. My mom, my brother, my sister, and me, walked fox-footed along the shoulder to the nearest off ramp, hugging the concrete median dividing the road. No one dared risk a pile-up to stop and help. But I imagine make-shift prayers being tossed our way out of windows like crumpled fast food containers. The silhouetted drivers from behind the wheels hurrying, lead-footed, to get home to their own families. At one point my mom picked me up and carried me the rest of the way. Looking back from across her shoulder I watched the blinding headlights of the cars speeding towards us, and felt the cold rush of wind on my face as they passed.

I never learned how to drive, but I still needed to get places. So I resigned myself to being driven there. To class, to the video store, to the Tracy Chapman concert, to the wiccan retreat in the Cazadero Hills, to my apartment after spending the night in a jail cell. The ones who drove me around, they were always capable women like my mother who carried the weight of responsibility, which I imagined was a lot heavier than my guilt. I was never the one who had to worry about whether the gas in the tank was enough to get me to work in the morning. Or about the weird sound that the engine was making even though “I just got the damn thing checked. Must be the transmission”. About what I would do if I got a flat tire because “doggonit, I never replaced that spare”. About my expired license. My expired tags. Parking meters. Parking tickets. The guy in the Buick just ahead of me who was driving “like he’s out of his mind”. So many worries. So much weight to them.

I was always just the passenger. I couldn’t even call myself a co-pilot because I wouldn’t have been able to take the wheel. Maybe the navigator at best but I was never very good with directions. I could reach into the glove compartment and “hand me that map” or I could “grab my bag, it’s in the back seat”. I could even hop out and “stand in that parking spot so that nobody else gets it”. I was good at that; hopping out, grabbing things, and leaning out

of the window to get a better look. And listening. And talking. And spending hours watching the road rush by while we both listened to the music that took us to places beyond merely our destination.

When Michelle and I were driving back to her place from the restaurant, I cued up Michelle, Ma Belle on the car stereo. We sang along, pretending that we spoke French. She had introduced me to her raucous friends and we drank too much saki. I asked her if she was okay to drive. She said that she drove better when she was buzzed and I was too smitten to argue. When Paul McCartney crooned “I love you” three times, I sang it with him. Loudly and off-key. The taillights on the highway twinkled softly as she cackled. The tires skipped over the seams in the concrete and they thrummed a muted percussive sound that accompanied the quickness of my pulse. I was high. Off of Michelle, off of the saki, off of George Harrison’s guitar, and off of the warm rhythms of the highway. I let myself be driven and it felt like floating home.