Countdown to my Mother's Birthday 5

I was nine. We were living on an Indian Reservation in South Dakota where evenings we played Blackjack and fell asleep on the couch--head to foot--watching Vanna turn letters on Wheel of Fortune. The winter was horrific, and we had to drive a hundred miles for groceries that got packed on dry-ice so they wouldn't spoil on the drive back.
The Honda packed with paper sacks, we raced through the Badlands. I remember mom telling me that some people thought the Badlands were beautiful, and I couldn't even imagine it; they seemed haunted and desolate and lonely, seemed a little like us.

But the day I'm thinking of we hit a patch of ice, and the car spun and spun, and mom yelled, This is it, kid, and we held our breath ready to die, and when we didn't go over the edge, when we actually lived, we got all giddy and rolled down the windows and yelled like hyenas the whole way home.