::Angels In The Clouds::

When I was a child, I could see angels in the clouds. The day I ran away from school, after the woman at the gas station took me home, I laid on my bed and watched them out the window. That was the day my Daddy dropped me off at kindergarten late again. The day Sister Isabel said late comers would get in serious trouble.

I waited till my Daddy had driven his car out of the school parking lot; then, instead of pulling open the heavy door and going inside, I turned around and walked away.

I walked my five year old self across the busy intersection. Rush hour traffic. I walked as far as the culvert leading down to the river. The one the bridge crossed over, the one where my brother sat on the floor board in the back seat and squeezed his eyes closed every time daddy drove across. That one. I sat in the tall grass, and thought to myself: where should I go now? I’m stuck. A little thread of panic made my heart jump, and for a minute I thought I might cry.

I looked over my shoulder at the Phillips Sixty Six station on the corner. There were people there, so I got up and made my way toward them. My legs were itchy from the grass, and I was getting sweaty. I tried to unbutton my coat, but I couldn’t make my fingers work right.

I stepped onto the concrete and saw a lady with a little girl sitting in their car. The filling station guy was checking her oil. I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but I thought a little girl’s Mama might be okay.

I wandered closer, stopped a little ways from the car, and stared. The woman was paying the gas station man when she saw me. She sat there for a minute, then she and her little girl got out of the car and came over to me. She said,
“Honey where’s your Mama?”
“At home,” I whispered.
“Do you know your address?”
“22336.”
“I don’t think that’s an address. Is that your phone number?” I was confused; I knew it was something, I just wasn’t sure what. I dropped my head, looked up at her under my eyelashes, and sucked my finger.

She must have decided she couldn’t leave me there, so she put me in the car with her little girl. I remember thinking she smelled like flowers. Her little girl had curly hair and dimples. Her bonnet matched her coat.

She gave us each a stick of Wrigleys Spearmint, and when we got to her house the lady called my mother at 22336. She wrote down my address, then she and her little girl carried me home.

When we got there my mother thanked the woman profusely, but once the door was closed behind them, she was furious. We were Catholics, and that woman was the wife of a Protestant preacher, how could I have embarrassed her like that? She frowned, held her hand under my chin, and made me spit my gum out.

It was Mama’s laundry day; she stripped off my clothes down to my undershirt, painties, and socks. She told me to go get on my bed and stay there. The sheets were being washed, so I laid down on the mattress pad and scooched over to look out the window. That’s when I saw them. The angels. I’d seen them before. But today, more than ever, I was glad they were there. And given the adventure I’d just been through, it seems pretty clear they’d been with me all along.