Gingerly, creeping, my mother drives her “safe” back way home, winding through the subdivisions bordering downtown Orlando, Florida. The little truck doesn’t have air conditioning. I stretch my arm out the window as if I might be able to feel the Spanish moss hanging from the trees like witch hair.
“Please, please, keep yourself inside,” my mother insists, afraid I will lose my arm.
My arm swims in, then goes right back out to touch the world.
Between the 1950s and ’60s houses, I occasionally glimpse straight rows of citrus trees, their leathery leaves shining. The old groves, not yet fully covered by development, show how this place used to be.
