Research: Journals
The Journal
Issue 32.1
First Girl
by Elizabeth England
Victor said that there was no way of seeing the opossum before I hit it. I felt the thump and pulled over quickly, without signaling, without looking behind me. "Breathe," he said. "It wasn't your fault." I imagined something large, a buck, a moose even. "We would be dead if it was one of those," Victor said. I got out first and looked. "Tell me, tell me," Victor said. When I didn't say anything, he too got out of the car and looked at the opossum with me. The soft belly pulsing, the skinny bald tail limp on the road, one eye blinking. Victor said, "Thank God, it is only that."
I had only one orange emergency cone and a large flashlight in the trunk to put near the opossum until we came back with help.
"No one will see that," Victor said, taking off his orange ski sweater. He put it on the pavement. It looked like a shrine, the cone, the flashlight, the sweater.
