The Color of Water

by James McBride

Mommy had never driven before as far as I knew. She was afraid to drive. She was a certified dyed-in-the-wool New York City transit passenger who could tell you what subway train went anywhere, which stop to get off at, and how far it was to the next one if you missed your stop and had to walk back. Depending on public transportation meant she was late for everything—for work, for open school nights, for picking us up whenever she had to. Every summer when I returned home from Fresh Air Fund camp, the yellow school buses would drop us off in Manhattan and I’d mournfully watch three hundred hugging, kissing, slobbering happy reunions between campers and parents while the counselors flipped coins to see who would wait with me, at which time Mommy would finally turn the corner at Forty-second Street—I could spot her bowed legs a mile away—and run up breathlessly, hugging me as the counselors looked on with looks that said, “I had no idea!” But those days were gone. We needed a car. It was time for Mommy to drive. “I hate this,” she said, as we climbed in.