As For God - Bonnie Smetts

I’m done yelling at Roy, I’ve just used up every last bit of energy I got with him. I can see something’s changed in him and I got no hold on that change. He’s on that path that I’d seen my momma on. He’s drinking and he’s crazy. Seems like it wasn’t that long ago that he’d been so sweet with me. Now all I gotta do is let him go, I’m mean not like when I said I wasn’t gonna be loving him. That was easy compared to right now.

I’m sitting outside his trailer in my car. I’ve been sitting here long enough that it seems like daylight not the middle of the night. The bugs are chirping and an owl, didn’t know we even had owls right here. I’m surrounded by little animals I can’t see, chirping and hooting and sounds of tiny things moving in the woods. Only light is the one Roy’s got on in his living room. Probably be on until morning, him passed out where I left him.

And I’m surrounded all the tiny, noisy creatures and here I am sitting in my big shiny Curtain’s car. I wish I could cry, but I can’t. Tears are for when you can’t do nothing else. I got lots of things I can do, I guess. But right this minute, everyone’s gone, practically. My momma, Sissy, Roy, and my Baptists, my Curtains. As for god, I’m hoping that tiny bit of what the Curtains told me about god is true, even if a tiny bit. Somebody’s there all the time, bigger than anything you or me can imagine. Something’s that inside of me and outside of me, and even inside that owl hooting away not too far away. And maybe the car’s got a tiny bit of that god too. I’m hoping that god is inside the car and along the road that I’m gonna be driving home.

It’s the only reason I start the car, to see if I can feel god as I’m driving along. I’m creeping through the dark and I don’t turn on the lights and I got my window down to see if I can feel god. The slower I go, the more I think I can. I can hear the tires rolling over the rocks of the road and I smell that summer blooming vine and I think I feel god. I’m breathing in what I’m hoping is god, I’m hanging my head out the window, gulping in god. And all fof a sudden, shitgoddamit, what the fuck, I swerve off the road almost into a ditch. Some crazy hillbilly zoomed past me and almost taking off the back of my car.

Shit, I don’t have my lights on. I sit there, half off the road, trying to get my breath. Rawling, you are so stupid, girl. You’re driving this big car and you almostt get yourself run over because you think you’re feeling god.

I straighten up, sit up, turn the car back on, and the lights, and drive straight on home.