6.

Beatrix Oswald was born in the desert in the back seat of an old blue Volvo station wagon. It was midday, sunny, and stringy long clouds wiped across the sky. The yellow Nevada dust was spotted to the horizon with towering sequoias and squat prickly bushes. Her mother, Ophelia Oswald, had been driving home, when her insides twisted around and shocked the blood out of her toes. She slammed on the breaks and waited for the tightening twist to pass. She turned the car, shifting dust, and meditated, thinking only about shifting gears, the hot leather seats and cold dry conditioned air on her knuckles, not the accumulating drum of blood behind her eyes and the heat and twisting in her stomach. There was an impatient kick inside.

A few minutes later she stopped again, crawled into the back and lay down, sweating and breathing fast. She pulled off her underpants, positioned an old jacket under her head and waited, breathing.