Hand Me Down

It was very close to New Years Day 2003, and I had just paid for lunch that I should not have been responsible for, but that was no different than normal. The old woman sitting across from me was essentially a stranger, but her eyes were kind and honest. They weren’t like his. She looked at me with acceptance; she gazed at him with unconditional love. I used to gaze at him with love, which I had thought was unconditional too.
He was arrogant, even in the way he dealt with his grandmother, and he was going to be my husband on July 31, 2004. His hair was naturally as curly as mine but much darker. It was held tightly in place by some over-priced salon product that I had probably paid for. Even his hair style was arrogant. The features on his face were strong; they seemed straight and honest. At first impression, he also seemed straight and honest, but he wasn’t. His eyes were green, but they often changed to brown. His eyelashes were long and thin. They hung in a way that made his eyes look bald. I had thought them pretty once.
The car ride from the restaurant to his grandmother’s house should have been much shorter than it seemed, and it reminded me that she was a stranger. Not only was I in the backseat of my own car, being ignored, but he drove in a way that made me nauseous. That’s what our relationship had evolved into. He acted, and those actions made me nauseous.
“So why are you kids going to Santa Cruz in this weather?” His grandmother asked.
She was right the day outside was ugly. The sky was an incredibly dreary color, more dusty brown than grey. The clouds drizzled gloomily, almost as if they were weeping in silence. Just like his grandmother, I couldn’t remember why were going to Santa Cruz.
“To look at the ring Tonya has on layaway for me.”
“The ring?” She innocently inquired.
“For when we get married, remember Grandma?”
I was still in the backseat. They were standing on the sidewalk in front of her house now. However, I could hear them as loudly and clearly as a gunshot. Suddenly, the backseat got smaller. A piercing screech sounded off in my head. It was more alarming than a police siren. My chest became dreadfully heavy, and my vision distorted. My struggle to breathe hardly seemed worth it. I would have wondered if my heart had stopped beating, if it hadn’t been hammering so violently in my chest cavity.
“You gettin’ in the front seat or what?” His voice cut through my panic attack like a razor knife, and he was grinning at me. The gaps of his teeth churning my stomach, while my psyche grumbled. Someday I would have to pay to get his teeth fixed.
He had already walked his grandmother to the door, so I crawled from the backseat to the front, and we were on our way. The drive started with a discomfited silence. One I doubt he noticed; he was too selfish to notice anything. Music would have to be my escape for the next two and a half hours.
One song followed another, but the same feeling played in my stereo. It was a miserable sadness. I slid a new c.d. into the deck, one that I had never heard, but knew he would hate. I never could have imagined the impact it was going to have on the rest of my life. One track after another danced away my sense of panic. The tunes soothed my feeble, rolling stomach. I almost forgot I was with him. The melody line changed, and a soothing voice of spin and circumstance crooned lyrics I would never forget.
“From what I see, you’re just one more hand me down, ‘cause no one’s tried to give you what you need. So lay all your troubles down. I am with you now. Lay them down on me. ”
It captured me like thousands of butterflies fluttering around me in the breeze, and out of the blue, I was in love again. Not with him, but with music, with the possibility of what I might find, and with track number seven. I knew that I would never feel those butterflies again, without the help from a song, if I didn’t change my situation. My future became cloudy, but my decision was exceedingly clear. He must have caught the estranged look in my eyes out of his peripheral view, and as if on cue he spoke. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I replied, “but everything is wrong with us.”
That was it and we both knew it. It was the end of the only plan I had made so far, and it was the beginning of a brand new perspective. It was the day that track number seven saved my life.