The car was dented. The whole thing. It was one big dent, with the fender drooping toward the asphalt and the doors buckled and the roof caved in like an anorexic's stomach. The car was gone. It was a shiny pile of black tires and green paint, like something a Norse god dropped from the sky.

Meta remembered it that way, but it was amazing she remembered it at all. The doctors said she should have died. Her body should have twisted up like the car, and they should have found her body a piece at a time, her new baby-blue manicure still perfect and glossy, instead of stripped away for emergency surgery.

Her hands were barren.

When she woke, they told her about her injuries. They said, "bruised" and "fractured" and "lung" and "ribs" and "concussion" and "memory" and "lucky." They said, "better" and "worse" and, "Here's your mama" and, "Don't you want to eat something?" And Meta stared at the ceiling, counting the days until she could go back to Lucky Nails and get a baby-blue manicure.

Her mom held her hand, but Meta's fingers were so ugly that one day her mom didn't come back. The doctors shook their heads slow and whispered to each other, and Meta knew it was because she was ugly. Meta knew she wasn't good enough because her mother read poetry and looked at art, and Meta was nothing but an unemployed twenty-five-year old with hair the color of cow manure.

When her mother left her the first time, Meta knew then, as she knew now, that it was her fault. The doctors said, "No Meta. She's sick, Meta," but she didn't believe them for one second. The firm white pillows propped behind her back whispered in her ear as she lay still in the hospital bed. If you had been better. If you hadn't wrecked that damn car. If you had finished college and found a boyfriend and kept your job at Kroger and been a good girl who doesn't overdose on sleeping medication and keeps her nails painted your mother would still be here. The pillows whispered in starchy tones and told her what everyone else was afraid to say.

She was thankful.

But she was also afraid.

She bought a beat up Corolla with money her dad sent her, to make up for not coming to the hospital. It smelled like cat piss and had a dent in the side, but at least the whole car wasn't a dent.