I can’t remember exactly how old I was, but I can still see the dark leather inside of the Mercedes Benz. It was a white car with 5 seats, the first car I memorized the license plate on. BCZ-267. 

It was a hot day back home and my parents were in the front of the car, my brother and I in the back on either side of my little sister. The air was thick, and I almost couldn’t breathe. It was my dads birthday, and we had just gone out shopping for his gift. We knew he was super picky about things like this. So we’d planned a family outing, he could choose the gift and we would buy it for him. We were driving home now, with no gift and a constricting feeling in my chest. Then they started shouting, my dad was angry, my mom was upset. This was normal, but even so, each time felt worse. Each time I wanted to get up and leave, run till I couldn't feel my feet, run till the physical pain outweighed whatever it was my heart was feeling. But I couldn’t leave them, my little sister, with her wispy bangs, and stuffed animal hippo tucked under her arm, always living in her own little world. My brother, older, brave, strong, but inside, so scared. And my mom, my sweet sweet mom. I could feel my mothers heart, slowly tearing, and then slowly encasing itself in a hard metal to protect itself. I was always so wide awake when the shouting would start, my brother and little sister had acquired a coping mechanism that I couldn’t. They would fall asleep, doze off or day dream into the distance. I couldn’t, even if I tried. I was always so wide awake, too wide awake. The car continued forward with the flowing traffic and the arguing continued. It happened so fast, my mother opened her car door, opened it into the wild and rushing road, and my heart stopped. If she left, what then? I used to imagine a world without my mother all the time. It wasn’t because I wanted her gone, it was because she was always sick, in and out of the hospital. There were so many times we thought she wouldn’t make it. So what then? She didn’t jump though, she wanted to. I could see it in her eyes, and it felt like her heart was beating loud enough for me to hear. But she didn’t, she didn’t jump and my dad didn’t say a thing.

​

My brother and I still hate Mercedes Benz, they're an unreliable car. You can’t count on them. Ours was constantly in the shop, constantly having problems. And lots of them weren’t easily fixed. The parts for a mercedes, and that particular model weren’t easy to come by back home. Everyone thought it was fancy, but even though I was young, I knew it was better to have a reliable car than a car with a fancy coat of paint and a well known logo.

The cars were always strictly my fathers, none of us learned how to drive at home. We weren’t allowed to. It would have given us too much freedom. If we had been allowed to though, I would have wanted to drive the jeep. It was a metallic forest green jeep with 8 seats. It was an elegant beast. I loved sitting in the back of that car, because the back seats had a fun little button panel that lit up, these buttons could control the ac and lighting. We all loved that car, but it was a gas guzzler, and so it had to go. A car none of us would have wanted to drive was the jaguar, it was a small dark blue car, impractical for a family of 5, or 7 when my older siblings would visit from college. The car had a light brown leather inside and a shiny silver jaguar figure leaping out of the bonnet. We broke the silver jaguar, It was an accident. We were playing ball in the yard and the ball knocked the jaguar right off the car. We didn’t mean to, and we wired it back on. Well enough that my dad never found out. And we never told him.

We also never told him about the guinea pigs, the sad friends we had to bury in the backyard. We never told him about the apple core we hid under the stairs, or the antique vase that my cat broke. My oldest brother never told him about how much he wanted to finish his college degree, my sister never told him about her boyfriend, I never told him that I failed my chinese class. We never told him about his grandkids. My mom never told him how afraid she was of him, and we never told him how brave she was for sticking around. I never told him that sometimes it makes me sad that my dad won’t walk me down the aisle, and I never told him that that thought never lasts long because I wouldn't want him to walk me down the aisle. I never told him that I learned to drive, that I bought a car my first year at college. A white Toyota Corolla, cheap and reliable. And we never told him that after he left, a few years later after the shock finally wore off. We were happy. We never told him that.