THE BABY WHO SURVIVED BEING THROWN OUT tHE WINDSHIELD   

They found her under a sagebrush,   

not breathing, hips broken, but since   

she was only ten months old, the cartilage   

hadn’t yet made its way to bone.  

I say “they,” but I mean my Grandma Linda.   

Later, her and her little sister Mae would argue,  

claiming it was her who had rushed  

around the accident scene, on the roadside  

at Naschitti. My memory tells me  

I was crying, wanting to defecate, holding  

the hand of my grandma. I don’t remember   

which one. You see, they’re both my grandmas:   

both by blood, and one by marriage.   

After Grandma Linda divorced my cheii   

for throwing her around in the tub  

when she was pregnant, and having lost   

her baby, she couldn’t stand it anymore,   

so my great-aunt Mae, a wild child, as she tells her story,   

decided to settle down with my cheii, marrying   

her older sister’s ex-husband soon after.   

“She wasn’t even crying, when I found her,”  

Grandma Linda said. “I’m lucky I even saw her.”  

Of course, there was a gaping hole in the front   

windshield of my Aunt Vicky’s car. We had been  

following them in my cheii’s truck, about 15 minutes   

behind. When coming out from the mountain   

turnoff, we had headed north, only because   

I wanted a sucker. My cheii appeased me, taking me   

to the nearest trading post, even though   

we were all caravanning south for Pepper’s birthday  

party in Gallup. She was turning 5 that day.   

We were going for pizza. There was a soldier  

on leave from some base in California, driving  

home to the Midwest. I was in the back   

of my cheii’s truck, alone, with a pink heart  

lollipop, and had gotten into my aunt’s make-up.   

My husband and I recently returned  

home to New Mexico to help care for my dad  

when he came down with Covid-19. We sifted  

through some old cardboard and found a box  

full of my old favorite toys: all pink.   

It was my favorite color; I think because  

it was soft and feminine. And I liked Minnie  

Mouse’s bow and shoes and Hello Kitty.   

I still have the tube of lipstick my mother  

had been using at the time. It was one   

of the things her aunt and cousin didn’t raid  

after hearing she had passed away. My baby  

sister and I, between the two of us, share  

her eyes mostly. She looks more like our mom  

and I look half dad and half mom.  

Vince is just like dad.   

Dad was working  

as a P.E. teacher in Red Valley, AZ when  

it happened, when they all left: my mom,  

my older sister Pepper, my aunt Vicky,   

and my cousin Shelley Dee. Vince was drinking  

rootbeer in the back seat and Billie was in   

my mother’s arms in the front passenger seat,  

none of them buckled in; this was before  

child car seats. Little did we know—  

in that moment, I was a 3-year-old  

getting ready to become a woman,   

spreading eyeshadow across my eyelids.