Raising My Children Alone

My knuckling hands were gradually squeezing the aging, cracking steering wheel as I was trying to make it to the university to attend my classes.  I kept squinting my eyes; it was hard for me to see the road ahead.  The snowflakes were pasting their fast melting bodies on the windshield as fast as the weather worn wipers could swish them off.  My fingers were fumbling as I was reaching down trying to find the knob on the radio.  I finally located it.

"There," I said flicking the radio on and turning to the news.

Crime and drugs were spreading disease across the country from Los Angeles to Detroit like a raised hand sweeping through the air with its ugly dangling fingers dripping a powdery crystallized substance.  The hand looked like dope pushers hovering from city to city.  The dope pushers were finding inner city children an easy prey.  I was imagining the pushers looking like twisted fingers on that raised scaly drug infected hand coming down hard in Los Angeles and Detroit.  My radio was nearly full volume as I was listening to the gruesome news. In Los Angeles, a youth was found beheaded with rats tracking blood from his body back into their infected dens.  In Detroit, two boys ages twelve and thirteen were found with their hands and legs bound. Shot to death! Gangster style! I could visualize a gravedigger driving a backhoe earth-moving machine.  The driver pushed a lever lifting the dirt filled scoop in the air.  The jagged edges in front of the scoop looked like fingernails on a drug-infected hand.  The driver hit the lever again and the jagged edge scoop began pitching and sifting the dirt of death looking as a cupped hand flicking the dirt of death from under its ugly pointed witchery fingernails.  The dirt of death was clumping on the graves of those four misguided boys. Thoughts began racing through my mind about my three sons.  I was afraid of the prey! Reality was closing in!  The reality would statically have less hold on my daughters. My unborn baby nudged my rib cage reminding me to keep driving for the sake of my children. “My sons!” I silently cried out.  I grabbed the knob and flicked off the radio. I couldn't bear the thought of hearing anymore.  Then, I shut down my imagination on how that scaly infectious hand of crime and drugs was finding rich nourishment among young innocent children.  I shot my foot down on the gas pedal, and I felt the old jalopy dip behind as it lunged forward with the force of a leopard.  While the old jalopy was heading for that final stretch toward the university, thunderous black clouds began sprinkling rain, sending snow scurrying off to the sides of the interstate. As the old jalopy was picking up speed, white stripes on the black asphalt were skipping past me so fast, I suddenly realized that I was putting myself in danger of being pulled over by a state trooper and cited for speeding. I careened the old jalopy off I-75, following the semi-circle onto the state highway eastward.  The rain had stopped, and lying in the hills on both sides multi- lighted windows of a newly built subdivision were staring at me through a wet, misty foggy morning like yellow eyed jungle cats waiting for prey. I swerved the old jalopy onto the campus ground, hoping to get a park where I was taking my first class. I conveniently parked near the Paul Roberson Theater.

As I glanced at my watch, I thought, "I have only eight minutes to get to my French Class."

As I was walking in the door, the petite teacher held up a book while directing her attention towards me, "'qu,est-ce-que, C,est?"