Fourteen years old and I am straddling my Huffy, sailing down a sidewalk left slick by a sudden summer rainstorm. My hair is drenched. Wind rushes across my scalp and cools my ears. My white t-shirt sticks to my chest and stomach like a second skin. Hands gripping the handlebars. Feet locked onto the peddles. My strong, young thighs pump up and down like a pair of leathery pistons.
I don't see the trench at the end of the block until my front tire nearly meets its lip. Construction work. Curb gouged out. Not a single warning flag or sign in sight. Fuck you, you lazy, thoughtless bastards.
My brakes are nearly shot. My tires are balled, and slippery from slicing through the newly formed puddles. Too late to stop. Too late to turn. I am gonna roll right over this trench whether I like it or not. I clench my teeth, tighten my gut. I brace myself for what I fear will be a nasty, painful jolt in the crotch.
But the jolt never comes. Instead, my front tire drops right into the trench and a I am airborne. I fly over the handlebars and spend an eternal, exquisite moment in contact with nothing, nothing but air. I even have time to blink. To swing my head right, then left. But before my eyes can focus on anything, it's over.
My right shoulder smashes onto the blacktop with an sharp, audible "crack!" The rest of my body crumples down around it. The impact blasts the air right out of my lungs. For the first time in my life, I have the experience of drawing breath with all my might and coming up empty. I literally cannot breath. I try again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Somewhere nearby, a car horn is blaring.
Sheer animal panic sets in. I roll onto my back, gaze up at the sky. Please, God, let me breathe. Let me breathe, God.
The sky is bright, blue. Empty.
I try to draw breath again. Nothing. Mushroom clouds are bursting in front of my eyes, billowing patches of black on black. Something wet and sticky and hot is filling them up, blinding me.
Then suddenly, the air rushes back into my chest in a torrent, a glorious cloudburst blessing a parched and dying land with sweet, cool rain. I breath in, breath out. Breath in, breath out. Then I cough. Then wretch. Then start to cry.
I can hear footfalls and people's voices nearby ("What happened?" "Is that kid okay?"). A youngish black lady in lavender scrubs kneels down next to me, face hovering over mine. Her hair is short and sweeps away from her face in a series slick, delicately sculpted waves. Huge gold hoops dangle from both her ears. Her cheekbones are high, sharp. Her eyes are soft, like an angel's.
"Baby, you all right?"
She doesn't wait for an answer. Instead, she pulls a clean white hankerchief from somewhere and presses it, hard, against my forehead just above my right eye. Her hands smell clean, like cedar...
I must have gone into shock after that, because I don't remember much of what happened next. I surived with a concussion and a broken collar bone. The latter still aches some days, when it rains. But that was the first day I felt in gut, as well as understood in my brain, that I was mortal.
