Rubber

   The day after I had a one-night stand
   and the condom broke, my car tire went flat
   on West Main. All these men offered a hand,
   but none of them could loosen the lug nuts--
   a middle-aged one with a cowboy hat,
   jeans too tight; a young truck driver on his knees,
   browned




				

				
				 
				


 biceps bulging, cranking the jack.
   Someone done screwed these on too tight,
   he cursed, handing me back
   the wrench. I thanked him, waited for
   the tow truck's hulking girth. Damn,
   it was hot--over ninety--and that street
   was shadeless; not even the bus shelter held shadow
   from the white, merciless yolk of sun.
   I was sweating, nauseous from the pill
   the doctor gave me that morning. Was it
   consensual? he asked. Yes, I breathed, willing
   myself to answer, feet spread
   in stirrups covered with yellow
   wax-paper booties like small shower caps,
   his two fingers in me, my face
   turned toward the wall. It was an accident. He nods,
   one hand pressing my uterus from
   the outside, asks Are you in a relationship?

   No. He nods again, writes a prescription for Plan B--
   birth control with irony, a name
   with a sense of humor. Not diaphragm, sponge, IUD,
   or worse, the wall chart of birth-control pills
   pinned above the Medical Waste bin
   in their pastel hubcap containers--pink, yellow, white,
   like dandelion clocks: Orthocept, Lo-Ovral,
   Alesse. This plan, B, was meant for unplanned disasters,
   "the morning after"--like the wreckage of an overnight
   bombing.

   It was an accident, I repeat.
   I want him to know I'm responsible,
   not like that sign in the Registrar's Office
   back in college: "Poor planning on your part
   does not constitute an emergency on ours."

   He nods, like the tow-truck driver would
   later that afternoon, like the cashier at the service station
   would too--walking under my car jacked high in the air
   while the mechanic in blue coveralls pointed to a tear
   on the side of the tire, then the rip
   in the boot cover, the axle problem.
   Clueless about the inner mechanics
   of cars, all I knew to ask was How much?

ERIKA MEITNER is Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow for this year at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Her poems have appeared in Green Hills Literary Lantern, Fuel, and Arts & Sciences....