Black, Blacker, Blackest

This might be totally inappropriate, but I'm gonna go there anyways.  First of all, I said I'd tell the truth.  Secondly, if I cared enough about what other people think, my hair would be clean.

Here goes:

Where is that woman?  Seriously, where is she? 
I have tried so hard to be the bigger person, put myself in her shoes, blah, blah, blah...
but look, that was Cory that she mowed over, and I have not heard one word from her since I ran hysterically onto the scene.

I never even saw her face.  I heard a voice from my right side say, "I'm sorry, I didn't see her!".  And then she was gone.

Apart from those fantasies of bashing her head in with her own garden gnome, I try not to think about her at all.  I listen to other people talking about how I should feel bad for her and the hell her life must be, and I come up short every time.  I'm sorry, guys, I'm just not that good of a person.  I can't feel bad for the woman who ran my daughter over, making her body fly high up into the air.  Did you know the police report lists one of the witnesses describing the "thump"  they heard upon impact?  What kind of sick shit is that?

I have tried and I have tried, but "knocked out of her shoes"  is a phrase you just can't get past.  I do sometimes wonder how Cory's one time serious boyfriend who happened to be pulling into the Urbandale Plaza and saw her body go up into the air is dealing with that image burned into his brain.   I seldom wonder how the driver is doing- maybe because I've had no contact with her whatsoever, whereas I've talked to Cory's ex-boyfriend a dozen times or more.

I have, in better times, tried to put myself in the driver's shoes.  Anyone who knows me knows I am not the best driver.  What if I had made that sudden snap decision?  What if I had killed someone's child?  It is hard to imagine, but I would like to think that I'd be begging the family for an audience, or at least sending a heartfelt written apology.

So this silence is maddening.  Like, what, you hit her, you killed her, and you have no remorse?  Did she just walk away, and go on with her life?  No ticket.  Not even twenty bucks.  Like Cory's life was worth nothing to the city of Battle Creek.  Still behind the wheel.  Another death of someone's beloved child a real possibility.  Is that mean to say or just harshly realistic?

When I discussed this with Hannah, my new friend that I met at the Florida conference, she was quick to correct me.  "Nicole, she must be pushing it all down.  She is in survival mode, just as you are."  I looked at her, the disgust palpable on my face.
 She looked up to the right, tucked her hair absently behind her ear, and met my eyes with an intense gaze, "But at the same time, I would want to hunt that woman down.  Do you understand me?  I would want to hunt her down, and grab her up, and scream into her face, 'How dare you?  How dare you take my daughter without my permission?'  And then I would smash her head in."

Yes, Hannah, that's how it really feels.  She took my daughter without my permission.

When I got home from the police station with Cory's things, I cleared out the narrow little lingerie drawer in the dresser nearest my bed.  Inside it, her glasses (frames only), her belt, her rubber bracelet, and her Hello Kitty shoes sit.  I've opened that drawer maybe twice since I put them there.  I can't look at them, but I want them near.  Any time I look at them, I begin to shake all over.

That's what I'm going through.  What is the driver going through?
Beats the hell out of me.