Before We Go Extinct by Karen Rivers

walk to the baggage claim and wait for my bag to drop down onto the belt I feel like something inside me has been shaken free.

 
    12
    A car pulls up in the roundabout in front of the airport. This Canadian air feels thinner and somehow smaller than the air at home, like even the molecules of oxygen are more compact and more polite, not big sprawling stinky American air. It smells like sleep breath and the threat of a storm, something crackling behind something else.
    The car is purple and makes a sound like a gray whale singing for a mate. Which is great and majestic if you’re a whale, but not so good for an old station wagon. Underneath the peeling purple paint are patches of green, brown, and rust that look like bad camo gear. I had no idea that people really drove cars like this. It looks like something from a movie about hillbillies, something that is nothing to do with me.
    Shame crawls around under my skin like an army of caterpillars with sticky feet. It’s a good thing I’m not talking because I don’t have to decide what to say. Hello, hi, hey there . And there are no names for him that fit: JC Sr.? Papa? Dad? Father? Sir? Yeah, right. Dad is about the furthest thing from a “sir” you could ever imagine. He’s a “hey, dude” at best.
    The King’s dad is a “sir.” He commands it. The way he moves into a room. The way his smile crawls into place with a slow deliberation that puts you in your place. My dad doesn’t smile. Dad is a grinner .
    The word PEACE is painted in gold sparkly paint in letters about a foot high across the rear door of the purple car, like it’s been graffitied by a band of wayward hippies. The sight of that word and the way it is crooked lets me know all I need to know about my dad’s so-called life, which involves caretaking a stopped-in-progress hotel building site on an island with nothing else on it.
    No roads.
    No stores.
    No residents.
    No one.
    Nothing but trees and whatever animals lurk in their shadows. Deer, I guess. Probably rats.
    Dad’s “career” involves running off kayakers and campers to protect the property from fire and vandalism. For that, he gets paid in room and board and who knows what else, and he buys time to write his painfully crappy novels that he self-publishes and makes enough money from to send Mom a check for fifty dollars once a month. Impressive my dad is not.
    My phone buzzes. Daff.
    I type Arrête without reading what she wrote.
    I add, Au revoir.
    Why doesn’t she get it? Why don’t I get it?
    I am quickly running out of French. Pretty soon I’ll be reduced to saying, Where is the library? and Please pass me a pen. Or Can you show me the way to the metro?
    The car grinds to a stop, then revs up, chokes, and goes again, circling. Sweat drips down my face and into my shirt, which is good because it disguises the wet patches I made when I was crying, but sucks because I stink. I’m guessing a washer and dryer are not things he has, and I know for sure there is no Laundromat.
    The purple car circles me.
    And circles me.
    And circles me.
    I am prey, with nowhere to go. Pretty much stunned into submission, unable to surface to get a breath of air. I only hope that it doesn’t hurt too much when it finally bites.

 
    13
    I have only ever seen my dad when he comes to Brooklyn to visit me, which he does because that’s what the judge said he has to do and not because he wants to do it, which is painfully obvious whenever it has happened. Awkward is stuck on him like a cobweb he walked into by mistake, covering his face and hands and everything he says. He takes me places I hate and fills up the space around us with a bunch of joviality and trying : baseball games and the Empire State Building and the freaking zoo, like he didn’t get any updates when the calendar flipped over each year and I went ahead and got older and older and older and older and I hate