The rain slices its way across the windshield. You watch as the windshield wipers flash quickly across the clear, thick glass, swiping the drops of water away, only to be faced with fresh globules of the clear liquid. You stare emptily as the car travels speedily down the highway, passing minivans and sports cars, buses and semis. You know this route like the back of your ten-year-old hand. The burned remnants of a barn correspond with the scar on your thumb where you accidentally cut yourself with the scissors. The airplane tower's flashing red light reminds you of the freckle in the middle of your hand, and the grassy valleys between the rolling hills are comparable to the flesh-colored dells sandwiched between your knuckles.

Your father is seated in the driver's seat, his eyes alert, but the tired circles beneath them belying his supposed energy. You notice that he no longer hums along with the radio like he used to, filling the car with his deep rumble. He no longer does many things, you realize. Once upon a time he would tell you stories to pass the time, or ask you what you wanted for your birthday, even though it was still eight months away. He used to tease you about your button nose, and sometimes he even promised to buy you a pony. He never bought it, of course, but you lived for the days he would promise the impossible, because he always managed to make the impractical seem realistic.

This time, though, your father can't work his miracles. He can't chase away the reality of the cancer that is slowly eating away at your mother, sapping her energy and stealing your hope. He can't help you ignore the stench of sterility that pervades your clothes after your visits to see your mother in the hospital, and nothing he can do will rid her body of the disease.

The impossibility of the situation enrages you, and you wonder if it's your fault that your mother is dying. You think back on all the times you lied about brushing your teeth, on all the times you cheated during Candyland, and you blame yourself for her illness. She will die because of the bad things you thought, said, and did. Now that it's too late, all you wish is to fly back through time and fix all the mistakes you made. Now you're sorry that you punched Tommy Fuller in the nose and pulled Evelyn Flint's ugly brown pigtails last summer-but it is far too late. Your mother, you know, is being punished for such naughty deeds.

You rub your fingers lightly over the soft gray upholstery that your mother insisted on when the car was bought a year previous. It feels smooth and warm, and you sniff, finding comfort in the familiar scent of your mother's perfume and father's cologne that the seats have absorbed. The odor of dust mingles with the clean, flowery aroma, the warm air from the vents unsettling the brown-colored particles. You take a quick glance inside the vents and glare disapprovingly at the dust collected there. Your mother used to clean out the car every week, but for the past three months neither you nor your father have touched it. You promise yourself that you will scour the car with a dust rag tomorrow.

You've reached the outskirts of the city now, and the green fields have been replaced by apartment buildings and laundromats. You miss the comforting familiarity of the farm scene that reminds you of home, because once you reach the city you can't pretend anymore. You can't pretend that you're on your way to a picnic by the lake, or that you're going to go pick up the pony your father bought for you. The cold gray concrete of the buildings forces you to acknowledge that you're visiting the biggest building of them all-the city hospital.

Suddenly your palms grow sweaty, and you clench your fists tightly to keep from crying out in fear and guilt. Your too-long nails are biting into the flesh of your hands, and even they remind you of your dying mother. She used to cut your fingernails every week, but now she's too weak to help you any longer. You'd ask your father for help, but whenever you ask him to do something that your mother used to do, his face screws up and grows white with grief. Instead you just let them grow until they break off on their own, leaving jagged little tips that hurt when you scratch a bug bite.

The car's passing the supermarket now, and happy memories of picking out heads of lettuce and bags of carrots with your parents spring to mind. You feel the warmth of tears behind your eyes, but you refuse to surrender to your grief. You will wait until your mother is gone before you shed a tear over her, for you don't want her to see you cry. You've already caused her enough pain.

You drive beneath a bypass, the cement bridge overhead giving the windshield a brief respite from the rain. As you travel underneath it there is a vacuum that sucks the sound from the car, and for a split-second you hear nothing but your own mind thinking. Then the quiet elapses, replaced by the pitter-patter of raindrops and the grinding of semis switching their gears. Your young mind compares the lack of sound beneath the bypass to death-quiet, still, and dreadfully boring.

You can see the hospital now, the multi-storied building rising from the sea of smaller edifices. The drapes in the window are open, and the empty panels of glass remind you of unseeing, uncaring eyes. You detest the hospital, and secretly you want to burn the whole building down. You want every last sterile, white room to go up in flames, the smoke obscuring the scent of the disinfectant that burns the inside of your nose. The ugly stone-colored building exudes false hope and friendliness, and you know that all that lies inside are dashed optimism and harried doctors that don't care that you caused your mother's sickness.

You glance at your father, whose face is expressionless. You observe the slight flaring of his nostrils, however, when he spots the sign that directs the traffic to the ramp that will lead to the hospital. The place upsets him as much as it upsets you, although you suspect it is not for the same reasons. Last week he sent you down the hall to the waiting room to watch the TV set, and when you grew impatient enough to return to the room, you caught him crying at your mother's bedside. Her hand rested weakly on his head, her fingers moving in a listless effort to comfort him. Neither of them spotted you, so you crept out of the room, feeling guilty for observing your father's weakness. The hospital, you gather, is where frailty befalls even the strongest of men, and your father fears the institution for just that reason.

Your father is steering the car onto the ramp, and you feel the rise of the road and you push against the car door to prevent yourself from falling into it as you travel along the steep curve of the slope. He pauses at the red and white yield sign, and you want to mention the dirty word painted across the sign, but you refrain, hesitant to break the tense silence of the car. Before your mother was diagnosed you asked questions all the time, although your father would never tell you what the naughty words meant, only saying that you were never to use them. Not knowing what they meant, however, didn't stop you from recognizing them when you saw them, and every day you would ask what it meant, hoping that someday your father would consider you old enough to explain. Now you wish you were too young to even recognize the words, because then you'd be too young to understand that your mother is sick and will never live at home again.

After a blue van rushes past your car, your father pulls out onto the main road. The car tire dips into a puddle, splashing water onto the side mirrors. You blink at your watery reflection, slowly reading the printed words at the bottom of the glass. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. You don't understand what the words mean, but you like reading them because mirror and appear rhyme. Someday, when you're not visiting the hospital, you will ask your father what those mysterious words mean.

You hear the clicking of the turn signal and you divert your gaze from the mirror to see the hospital parking lot full of cars and trucks, the myriad of colors clashing and complementing each other, some fighting for dominance, others trying to blend in. You raise your fingers to the cool glass of the window as you pass a green truck, wishing that you could buy that truck and give it to your mother as a present, because green is her favorite color.

Your father pulls into the parking ramp and stops when he reaches the ticket machine. He rolls down his window and takes the tiny square of paper. You feel the rush of cool air and smell the damp cleanness of a rainy day. When he rolls the window up again you notice the streaks of water that the action caused. He hands you the ticket and you place it in the glove compartment beside the napkins, scraps of paper, and hard candies your mother enjoys.

He pulls into a parking place and turns the car off. You both sit still for a moment, listening to the silence of the vehicle. For the first time in an hour he turns to look at you. He doesn't say a word, but he takes your tiny hand in his large, capable ones. You look up at him, staring deep into his sad brown eyes, seeing only your reflection. You remember, in days past, you could gaze into his eyes and see nothing but an endless pool of brown-but now, in his misery, the mystery of their depth is obscure. You continue to watch, hoping for a sign of life, and for just a moment you catch a glimmer of the same feelings coursing through your body, and for the first time in months you understand that you are not alone in your guilt.