Devonne Brown

Mom lost her mind and married Roebuck. None of the kids could stand him, but she was entitled to her midlife crisis, same as anyone else. Since his house burned down on their first date, something about gunpowder gun cleaning equipment and an explosion, such a catastrophe, that they moved to Texas soon after they got married. That’s what he decided anyway.

Roebuck’s decision to move them to Texas gave Mom the notion to drive herself from Texas to West Virginia for a sanity break. I drove her back to Texas   I remember three fun things about that trip: the moon, the swamp, and a roll of paper towels, 

Somewhere way in the middle of the Oklahoma night, the road rose up to the moon. Nothing in my life had been so big. The moon took up the whole sky. It was like an impossible iMax theatre moon. “Mom. We’re not in Kansas anymore,” I said. 

“I don’t know where we are. They said everything’s bigger in Texas, but isn’t this kind of showing off a little bit?” asked mom. The moon really was that big, but grew smaller as we drove toward it and away. The memory of that giant moon intimidating me as I crested the hill is well… intimidating.

The fog made clouds on the road. It wasn’t long before warning signs appeared every hundred feet or so on the highway, “Emergency Call Box. Stay In Vehicle.” We were on a bridge. The thump, drive a bit, thump under the tires, Mom took her flashlight out of the glove compartment, sure enough, gator eyes flicked back at her from the safety of the car windows. Red ones. Eyes that make you want to slink down low in your seat. We passed a name sign…it was long, Cajun, ended with the word Swamp. We may have been crossing the “Gatorgonnabiteyou Swamp.” In fact, I’m sure of it.

The night was hot around the swamp; the car a/c was stale. I pulled windows up and down for positive air movement as well as entertainment value. We’d been in the car nearing twenty hours and little things meant a lot. The humidity was horrific, so the windows went straight back up and so did the a/c. Mom complained that the air conditioning made her nose cold and wrapped her head in paper towels. Her mouth sucked the paper towels in and blew them out when she breathed, she panted. She looked like a blank muppet when she talked.

I ugly laughed and snorted at her white cylinder head when I pulled  my mirror back over. “Did you like what you saw” I kept laughing. She was claiming indignation and sleepiness, but the towels remained wrapped around her head as she leaned against the window and nodded off.

I laughed again. That’s just what I needed, Mom, at 4:00 a.m. down in a Texas swamp. “Hello officer. Yes, this is my  mother. She has paper towels wrapped around her head. Please don’t disturb her. She’s grouchy if you wake her up, she might not bite you, but she would me. Yes, I know it looks like a body, but it’s Mom… Mom, Didn’t I tell you,? I told her this would happen. Somebody would see your head wrapped in paper towels in the front seat of my car, but no…” I said, giving Mom the explanation I would have to give the cop that would pull me over for driving through a swamp with a human wrapped in paper towels.

“You’re lucky there isn’t a law about it,” she said and fell asleep.

Mom had a mouth on her.