The trailerpark I grew up in used to be nothing but old people and one Cuban guy named Marco Valdés who escaped from Communism when he was seventeen years old on a raft he made out of milk jugs and yarn. He jumped on a train in South Florida and hid there for four days until the train car he was sleeping in got dropped off at the switchyard a hundred yards from Black Lake Mobile Court. Marco slept under trailer homes until the chubby lady named Brenda Biggett – who wasn’t nearly as old as anybody else there – found him out and took him into her trailer for sex. He stayed there and started calling Brenda his old lady, because she was. She called him her husband, even though she didn’t have the same last name as him.
Mona Reardon showed up at Black Lake Mobile Court when she was sixteen. She had run away from a bunch of snake-handling religious crazies who were her family back in Georgia somewhere and stopped at the icehouse near Camp Blanding, where a dapper-looking soldier named Randy took her to his secret trailer home to have sex with her. When he was done, she wouldn’t leave. He tried taking her back to the icehouse, but she kept finding her way back and would be there waiting when Randy showed up with another girl, and would cuss her out like Randy belonged to her.
When she got pregnant, Mona figured that would make Randy want to settle down, but she was wrong. He told her about his wife and kid in Tallahassee, then left and never came back. Eventually, Mona decided she had squatted in the trailer home long enough that it belonged to her.
Brenda and Marco lived next door in lot #5. Brenda took Mona under her wing and got her a housekeeping job at the fancy hotel in Keystone Heights where she had worked for years. After the baby was born, Brenda was more than happy to baby-sit so Mona could hang out at the icehouse and look for a husband. She didn’t find a husband but she met a lot of men who acted like they might consider such a thing if she had sex with them. They always went to her trailer home because it was close by, and if the baby started crying while they were doing it, sometimes the men got nervous and left, sometimes before they were even done doing what they were there to do. Because of this, Mona came to despise the baby girl she had named Rona.
In the years that followed, Mona got to where she was on a first-name basis with the abortion doctor in Gainesville. But then, three years after Rona was born, Mona got pregnant again and didn’t realize it until she was too far along and the doctor wouldn’t give her an appointment. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say she felt more affection for the babies she killed than the ones she didn’t. That’s the world I was born into. Mona named me Randy, because she didn’t know my daddy’s name and because she couldn’t think of anything else to call a baby boy she wasn’t expecting.
Rona and I knew we didn’t have the same daddy; mama told us over and over that those men were just bastards with brains in their tallywackers. She didn’t like us calling her mama either because that wasn’t her name. Sometimes I did it anyway, which would get me a slap across the face or head. I didn’t mind too much; in the middle of the Seventies in the middle of Florida, that was the only thing anywhere near affection going around in lot #4.
Marco was nice to me. He protected me and told my sister not to call me names, even though he always called me Fuego, because of my fire-colored hair. I didn’t mind it so much coming from Marco. He kept a broken-down rv that he bought for four-hundred dollars in lot #10 across the courtyard from our trailer homes, and he let me watch him work on it, which I did not because I had any interest in greasy dirty engines but because he never wore a shirt when he worked on the rv and I liked to watch the tattoos he had done on himself dance on his tan skin when he moved. Sometimes Marco touched my hair with a dirty hand when he talked to me. In bed at night I could smell the grease and it made me feel safe.
In the summer of 1976, the sky was more full of fireworks than ever before. The best place to watch them was from the train tracks, which had an open view of Melrose and Putnam Hall, the towns near Black Lake where people lived in houses without wheels and with grass in their yards and real American flags, not just a rusty flagpole in the middle of a cracked shell courtyard like we had.
The week after July Fourth, somebody at the auto shop where Marco worked gave him a grocery sack full of leftover fireworks. Marco gave me all of the firecrackers but said he was keeping the fancy ones for a special occasion and because he didn’t want me blowing off my hand and ending up like Victor the Vietnam Vet in lot #9 (even though Victor was missing his legs and not his hands).
Early that summer, right after school let out, mama kicked Rona out of the house after they almost got run over by a car when they chased each other out into the middle of Route 21, one of them with a butter knife, the other with a broom. Marco let Rona move into the rv for the time being, but only until he got her running because he was always saying Lady Liberty was his ticket out of Black Lake. Lady Liberty was what he called the rv. He never mentioned taking Brenda with him. Brenda didn’t believe Marco would ever get the rv running, so she felt safe in saying she had no interest in leaving Black Lake Mobile Court. He argued that he would get Lady Liberty running because he was ingeniosidad. Brenda just rolled her eyes when Marco used his Cuban words.
I was twelve-going-on-thirteen that summer and all I cared about was my firecrackers. They took the place of my obsession with squashing pennies and cans on the train tracks. I learned pretty fast that firecrackers would not blow up a train when it ran over them. They wouldn’t do much of anything without fire, and even less after they’d been squashed under big metal wheels.
After I used up all of the firecrackers, I bugged Marco about the hidden grocery sack of fancy fireworks. It was already August, school would be starting soon, and still no special night had come. He said, “Un poco de paciencia, Fuego,” which was Spanish for “Not tonight, Randy.”
Mama and Rona hardly crossed paths that summer, which was probably for the best, and since mama and Brenda were always on the same side of any argument, Brenda never ventured over to Lady Liberty, even when Marco was there. If she had something to say to him, she sent the message through me.
Mama gave me groceries to take over, cans of vegetables and soup, bread, cheese and condiments. Marco kept beers and grape sodas in the short little refrigerator. He let Rona and me drink as many sodas as we wanted, and he asked me to open beers for him, which I was proud to do.
The nights mama and Brenda both worked late – which was every night except Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays – Rona made dinner for Marco and me and we all sat around the table-that-turns-into-a-bed and ate and talked and laughed. It was the best time of my life so far. I told them I hated school because I didn’t have any friends and because kids called me names. Their favorite one around that time was “Pansy Rear-end,” which I didn’t like one bit, and they knew it, and if they said it in a certain way, I couldn’t help myself, I started crying, which seemed to make the kids very happy.
Rona told me school was dumb and that she wasn’t going back that year because she was sixteen and nobody could make her. She said she hated school even more than I did. I didn’t think that was possible because nobody ever called her names; she would have slapped them across the mouth if they did. I saw her do it, but it was because somebody called me Pansy on the bus in front of her. She made the boy’s lip bleed and it swelled up to the size of a pecan, and she almost got expelled for it.
I thought maybe that was why she hated school more than me, because she always had to take up for her little half-brother. I don’t know why she did it; she didn’t have any problem calling me bastard, retard, baby or even pansy sometimes when we were living under the same roof and nobody else was around. Moving out of our trailer home made Rona a much nicer person.
I liked sitting in Lady Liberty while Rona was cooking and talking to her, and I liked peeing in the odd little bathroom, which she didn’t always let me do because she said it was gross to pee in there while she was in there. She usually told me to pee on the cacti to kill them. But if she was in a good mood, she let me use the rv toilet, so I always asked because it wasn’t easy to tell what kind of a mood Rona was in just by looking at her. She got that from mama.
The last time I peed in Lady Liberty, Rona was in a better mood than usual. Things were different around there. The grocery sack of fireworks had been moved from its hiding place into the squat shower across from the toilet. The first thing I thought when I saw it was maybe this was the night Marco would be putting on the Black Lake Mobile Court fireworks show. The second thing I thought was to reach into the bag and take the first thing my hand landed on. It was a roman candle called “Shooting Stars.” I shoved it into my back pocket and lifted my shirt over it.
Rona yelled my name when I came out of the bathroom and scared me into thinking I’d already been caught.
rona: Randy!
me: What?
rona: Marco brought chicken home!
me: Chicken? What for?
rona: ‘Cause we’re celebratin’!
me: With chickens?
rona: To eat, dummy.
me: Oh, I thought ya meant real chickens.
rona: You’re a retard.
me: Shut up.
rona: Don’t tell me to shut up.
me: Don’t call me a retard.
rona: Retard.
me: Shut up.
Mona huffed and turned away.
–What’re we celebratin’?
rona: We ain’t celebratin’ nothin’; me an’ Marco are celebratin’.
me: What?
rona: I cain’t tell ya.
me: Well, why’d ya just tell me that then?
rona: Stop whinin’. You’re such a baby. I cain’t tell ya yet.
me: Well, when?
rona: When we eat. Marco’s gonna grill the chicken. Why don’t ya go out an’ help him.
me: I don’t know how to grill chicken.
rona: Just go.
Right about then I remembered the roman candle in my back pocket. I backed out of the trailer and twisted ridiculously around so neither Rona nor Marco could see the stolen property.
marco: Hola, Fuego!
me: Hey, Marco. What’re ya doin’?
He was spraying the rusty barbeque grill with a water hose.
marco: I’m about to fire up some breasts, tipo! You like breasts?
me: I don’t know; I ain’t never had ‘em.
marco: Oh, man, breasts are good. Any kinda breasts. Entiendes?
me: Huh?
marco: –Ya wanna help me?
me: I gotta go home first.
marco: All right, man. Your sister’ll holler when dinner’s ready.
me: Thanks.
I backed away to the front of the rv then turned and ran home. On the way I was thinking I would hide the roman candle in my bedroom, but as soon as I saw one of mama’s lighters on the sofa bed, I knew I couldn’t wait. I barely slowed my steps as I grabbed the lighter, turned and ran out of the trailer, across the courtyard past Marco and the grill, around behind Victor the Vietnam Vet’s trailer home to the trailhead, past palms and pines and cacti, a hundred yards to the train tracks.
Earlier that day I had seen an open train car stacked high with timber, it was still there and I was ecstatic. I ran to the car, found the ladder steps made out of bent rebar at the front corner, secured the roman candle between my teeth the way I’d seen men do with hunting knives in Tarzan movies and climbed to the top of the pile with more strength and agility than I knew I possessed. I stood victorious on top, hands over my head, roman candle in one, lighter in the other, breathing too deep to let out the joyful scream inside of me.
The trailer tops were ugly gray rectangles over the tree tops; the grapefruit groves down the track farther than I usually ventured (because they were lined with electric fences) looked like Christmas trees with their perfectly round flesh-colored globes peeking out from the deep green leaves.
Several times the roman candle almost disappeared down into the cracks between the logs before I found a space between two that held it in a precarious but almost straight-up position. I squatted over my prize and flicked the nearly empty lighter, shook it like I’d seen mama do when they were almost out of “juice,” and flicked it again and again until finally the paper tag marked light here caught fire. The flame went out immediately but I blew on it and kept the red lace growing and moving toward the top flat part of the roman candle.
I thought I had lost the battle and was leaned close over it when a fountain of silver erupted, startling me and sending me backward onto my butt. In an effort to keep myself from rolling off of the top of the train car, I kicked my feet out and struck the roman candle, tipping it onto its side. The first shooting star skittered across a log, off the end, down the railroad tracks and into the ditch, ending with a hiss of smoke under a patch of cattails.
A second shooting star, this one greenish, shot out of the canister and down a different set of train tracks. Suddenly, I imagined a hug fire burning through Black Lake, and me the sole cause. I stomped at the roman candle with my shoe, trying to put it out, but my efforts didn’t work. The canister fell down into the unreachable darkness, the mouth pointing downward. The remaining “shooting stars” ejected into the middle of the stack of logs, down into the belly of the beast, creating the beast and waking it up at the same time. The darkness below me glowed like a furnace.
I stood over the scene terrified by what I had done, unable to move, wishing it away. But I didn’t have any wishes to be granted that day; the sweet smell of burning pine told me that. My next plan was to run away from home, disappear from society, live under a bridge somewhere, or maybe make a raft out of milk jugs and float away from my pitiful fate the way Marco had escaped Cuba.
Too many ideas were coming into my brain, gumming up the works. There seemed to be no easy exit from this tragedy I was currently in the process of causing. I don’t know if it seemed the best choice, or merely the only option, but I decided to go home, pretend I knew nothing at all about what was going on at the switchyard, hope for the best. I hoped it couldn’t be traced back to me. Would they find the spent roman candle in the ashes? I seemed to think they wouldn’t, even though I watched plenty of cop shows on tv that seemed to prove the opposite. If they did find it, it would more likely be traced back to Marco than me. Was I willing to sacrifice Marco to save myself, to cover up my mistake? In that frantic moment, I wasn’t so sure, but I knew that Marco would fare better in prison than I would, if that’s what it came to.
I climbed down from the train car the same way I had climbed up, but the ends of the logs weren’t positioned for an easy descent, so I jumped halfway. My ankles stung. I didn’t want to cry, that would only seem to make things worse, and would give away my alibi. I ran to the trail feeling tears cutting out of the sides of my eyes. I could smell the logs burning, could practically feel the heat of the flames right behind me, chasing me home. I ran and ran until Victor’s trailer home came into sight, then I cut through the woods, the long way around the back of the trailerpark, past the Richardson’s trailer home and the next couple until I spied my own home. I ducked behind a sago palm and looked out at the trailerpark, never more peaceful than in that moment. Slowly I crept into the yard between our trailer home and Brenda’s. I jumped to reach the doorknob because there were no stairs to our back door, sending new pain into my ankles. Grunting, I tugged myself into the trailer – no strength or agility left – closed the door and crawled across the hall into my bedroom.
I sat on my bed without turning on the light, I sat there and rocked and thought about the fire. I thought of the prison cells I’d seen on tv and the horror stories Marco had told me about visits to see his father in a Cuban prison. I still had the lighter clutched in my hand and tried to flush it down the toilet but it just sat at the bottom of the bowl like a bright green dead weight. I fished it out, dried it off with my shirt as I stumbled to the front and put it back on the sofa bed where I’d taken it from.
I heard Rona hollering my name, made my way quickly back to the bathroom, turned on the light to look at myself in the mirror and tried to adjust my face to the look of calm innocence. Rona called again; I walked as casually as I could out the front door, meeting up with Marco halfway across the courtyard at the flagpole.
marco: Your sister’s about to send out the dogs, Fuego!
me: Why?
marco: ‘Cause, man, she’s been callin’ you and callin’ you.
me: I didn’t hear nothin’.
marco: Where you been?
me: Nowhere. In my room mostly.
As we neared Lady Liberty, he put his arm around my neck.
marco: Hey, you smell that?
I thought for sure he could smell the burning wood.
me: No. What?
marco: That’s my breasts cookin’! You like breasts, Fuego?
me: I dunno. I ain’t never had ‘em.
He reached down and pinched my nipple. I ran giggling into the rv.
rona put her hands on her hips: Where the hell have ya been, Randy?
me: Nowhere. Home.
rona: I’ve been callin’ ya and callin’ ya.
me: How many times?
rona: A bunch.
me: Well, I only heard ya twice.
rona: So, why didn’t ya come?
me: I did. I was in the bathroom.
rona: You’re a liar, and a bad one at that.
me: Nuh-uh.
marco stepped into the trailer behind me: We’re all here now, amiga.
The three of us fumbled around each other in the tiny space. Rona went back to the stove and stirred the contents of a saucepan. Marco pushed me down on the far side of the table next to the kitchen sink. In the middle of the table was a plate of steaming lumps of golden meat with black stripes on them from the grill. Marco opened a cabinet over the sink and brought out a loaf of Wonder bread and two plates then reached into a cabinet under the sink and got out three forks and a roll of paper towels. He put these things down on the table hurriedly while Rona took her time, stirring the pan under the lighted vent hood. I slid the plates around the table, one on each of three sides, the one with the four pieces of chicken in front of me. I leaned over it and inhaled the amazing smell.
Marco reached into the low refrigerator for two grape sodas and a beer. He set them on the table then slid one of the empty plates in front of me and the one with the chicken on it to the center position. He sat across from me and scooted around the bench until his back was to the driver’s seat of the rv and his knee was touching mine.
me: Hey, Marco.
marco: Si, Fuego?
me: I think I’m gonna like breasts…!
marco laughed and winked: Maybe some day, amigo, when you’re a man!
Rona came to the table with the pan and one of Brenda’s kitchen towels. She placed the towel on the table and the pan on the towel then sat down. I leaned over the pan and peered in at the contents, stirring with the spoon. Green, yellow and white vegetables floated under a cover of gray liquid.
me: What’s this?
rona crossed her arms and huffed: It’s vegetables, ya retard!
me, stirring with the spoon: It’s all gray.
marco took the spoon from me: Sit back. Stop bein’ such a feo.
He stabbed a chicken breast with his fork and put it on Rona’s plate, stabbed another and put it on my plate, and kept the other two for himself. Rona opened the loaf of bread and took out a stack while I opened the canned beverages. Marco dished vegetables onto each of our plates and spooned vegetable water over the chicken like it was gravy.
I reached for the chicken but noticed Marco and Rona sitting with their hands in prayer position, like always.
marco: Fold your hands, Fuego.
I did as I was told. Marco closed his eyes and prayed.
Bendice esta comida y esta mi familia, amén.
rona clapped her hands once: A-man!
A siren wound up in the distance and started moving toward us.
marco looked over his shoulder out the rv windshield: Sounds like fire.
me, as nonchalant as possible: Where?
marco mussed my red hair: Maybe they think your head’s on fire, huh?
We all laughed.
me, talking around the chicken: What’s the surprise?
rona: What?
me: Ya said y’all had a surprise to tell me.
rona turned to Marco: Can we tell him?
marco was distracted: Can’t y’all smell it?
rona: Smell what?
marco: The fire. Don’t you smell that?
I didn’t speak. Marco leaned toward Rona.
Let me out, amiga.
rona: Marco, no, dinner’ll get cold.
marco: Aw, come on, amiga. There might be a trailer on fire.
rona: Who cares?
Marco twisted around again and we all leaned to look out of the rv windshield. The siren was growing louder.
marco: We’re missin’ somethin’.
rona leaned back and crossed her arms: I don’t care. I don’t wanna get up. I wanna eat dinner before it gets cold. Marco, please?
marco shrugged and went back to eating: Oh, all right.
rona: I hope they all burn down. I don’t care about this stupid place no more.
We ate in silence a few moments, smacking over the sound of the siren.
me: What’s the surprise?
rona: Can we tell him?
marco: If you want.
rona: I’m pregnant!
me: What?
rona: I’m gonna have a baby!
me: How?
rona: Don’t ya know where babies come from, Randy?
me: Yes.
rona: When a man puts his tallywacker in a girl’s cooter she gets a baby.
marco laughed: Tallywacker!
me: I know that. Who put his tallywacker in your cooter?
Rona smiled big. Marco shook his head and ate.
Who?
Silence.
rona: God, Randy, you’re the dumbest person in the world!
me: Shut up.
marco shook his head: Rona…
He looked at me, smiled and winked.
me: What, you?
He kept smiling.
rona: Ya cain’t tell nobody, Randy, till we’re gone outta here.
me: Gone? Where are y’all goin’?
rona: Outta this hellhole. North.
me: Where?
marco took a sip of his beer: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
me: Where’s that?
marco: It’s in Pennsylvania.
me: What’s it like there?
rona waved her fork like a wand, vegetable water rained all over the table: It’s like paradise!
me: I wanna go.
rona: Ya cain’t.
me: Why not?
rona: Randy, we don’t have time to wait for ya. We gotta get out quick. Before I start showin’.
me: Showin’ what?
rona: Tsk! The baby. In my belly. I’m startin’ to get fat.
She leaned back and rubbed her scrawny waist.
Ya better not tell, Randy. Cain’t nobody find out till we’re gone. Mona or nobody.
marco snickered: Or my old lady!
rona: Yeah, especially not Brenda!
They laughed.
me: When?
marco sucked his teeth: Soon. Tonight maybe.
me: How?
rona: In Lady Liberty, retard.
me: But she won’t start.
marco, confident: She will.
me: I wanna go.
rona: Ya cain’t.
I turned to Marco desperate.
me: I wanna go, Marco.
marco: You can’t, Fuego.
me: Why not? I want to.
marco: You’re too young. I’d get deported for kidnapping you.
me: I’m thirteen.
rona shook her chicken breast at me: Not till next month.
me: Close enough. –Why does she get to go?
rona: ‘Cause I’m pregnant.
me: I wanna be pregnant!
I didn’t mean to say it, it just came out. Marco and Rona laughed and laughed. I pushed my plate away and buried my face in my hands and cried.
marco patted my back: It’s okay, Fuego. Don’t cry. Be a man.
I tried to shrug off his hand.
Maybe someday you can come to Pittsburgh and live with us.
I looked up.
me: Really?
marco: Once we get settled in Pittsburgh and I get a job, we’ll send money for a bus ticket.
me: Ya swear?
marco: Yes.
He pushed my plate back in front of me.
Now stop crying and eat your dinner.
rona: Yeah, Randy, don’t be a baby.
marco put a hand on Rona’s leg: Tsk— Rona…
I tried to eat but it was hard to swallow because my throat was swollen and the chicken was overdone.
As soon as we were finished eating, Marco told me to go home and get in bed so nobody would find them out. I cried myself to sleep that night. I thought about confessing to catching the train car on fire, but I wasn’t sure that would help my case. They surely wouldn’t want somebody running from the law riding with them, not with Marco being in such danger of getting deported. I had seen plenty of cop shows on tv; Kojak always caught the bad guy in the end. It was just a matter of time for both of us.
I slept restlessly and was awakened by the closing trailer door in lot #5. I knew it was Marco going home before Brenda came back from work. I lay awake thinking that maybe Marco couldn’t get Lady Liberty started after all, that we would all wake up in the morning and everything would be the same as every other day. I rolled over and smelled the faint grease stains on my pillowcase and hoped Marco would always be there to take care of me.
The raspy El Camino rolled over cracked shell to the parking spot between our trailers. Two car doors opened and closed; mama and Brenda mumbled their usual goodnights to each other and went into their separate trailer homes. Mama dropped her purse and other stuff just inside the door like always. I heard the lighter I’d ruined in the toilet flicking several times, then heard it hit a wall with a curse from mama. She found a different lighter, lit a cigarette and fell onto the squeaky sofa bed with her usual late night sigh.
I fell asleep again, and again was awakened by closing doors, and then an engine sputtering to a start. I knew without looking what it was, but tortured myself and stood on my pillow and looked out of my small rectangle window just in time to see Lady Liberty floating past with no lights on. She looked like a houseboat floating by under the full moon. I heard myself say one more time, quietly, “I want to go,” pictured myself running outside and begging to be taken, but I knew that would ruin everything for everybody.
The brake lights turned everything in Black Lake Mobile Court bright red as the rv reached the paved road at the front end of the trailerpark. The headlights came on and lit the trees across Route 21. Lady Liberty floated right and forever out of sight.
I tiptoed across the hall and opened the back door. The moon shone down into the emptiness of lot #10 where the rv had always been. I couldn’t imagine anything ever taking its place. Victor’s wheelchair ramp stood out. I looked at it until I felt heavy, afraid that Marco and Rona would never call.
The next morning Brenda came howling into our trailer home like a sick dog. I followed her and mama out and across the courtyard where the only thing standing in lot #10 was the rusty old grill they’d left behind, the lid open and chunks of celebratory chicken breast stuck to it in places. Both women looked at me and demanded answers. I didn’t say anything except that I didn’t know anything. I didn’t want to ruin my chances for a possible future escape.
Brenda went on an around-the-clock diet of rocky road ice cream, which I imagined tasted salty from all the tears she cried into it. I thought mama might slap her because she didn’t like people crying around her, but I guess it was only kids she didn’t like crying. She only kept trying to convince Brenda that Marco was a stupid wetback with his brain in his tallywacker.
No one ever questioned me about the fire. I sneaked out to the scene of the crime early the next week when mama and Brenda were at work and I had more freedom than ever before until school started up again. I found some charred pieces of timber lying around but the train car was gone and everything looked pretty much like it always did.
Another week went by and on a Sunday evening the phone rang. It was Rona. I was excited to hear her voice, but she didn’t want to talk to me. She was sniffling and asked for Mona. What I found out later was that Marco had gotten into a wreck somewhere in Georgia and was in a jail not far from the town mama ran away from when she was Rona’s age. While she was on the phone with Rona we only heard half of the conversation, Brenda at the kitchen table with a tub of ice cream in front of her, me on the sofa bed next to mama watching Sonny and Cher.
mama: And what do ya expect me to do about it?
Rona’s voice came through the receiver in high-pitched cries.
Don’t call me mama. That ain’t my name, Rona. –Do ya want me to hang up right now?
A muddled response came through.
–For fuck sake, Rona, pregnant?
brenda sat bolt upright: Marco?
mama put her hand over the receiver: Who the hell do ya think, Brenda?
Brenda ran to Rona’s old bedroom and collapsed on the bed coughing and wailing.
–You made your bed, Rona, you sleep in it, same as ever’body.
Rona started to respond but mama cut her off.
–I don’t care. –I said I don’t care. Why in the hell would ya dare callin’ here after all you’ve done to us? Ya got some nerve, missy.
More squeaks from the receiver.
–I don’t give a good goddamn!
And more.
–That’s a sack of shit lies, Rona, and you know it! –Fuck Marco! And fuck you for thinkin’ he was gonna “take care” of ya!
There was silence, then Rona attempted to say something in a calmer voice; I couldn’t hear it over the tv, but I could tell she had changed her tone. But not mama.
–I hope he does get deported, Rona! It’d serve him right. He’s been nothin’ but a pain in all our asses!
Mama kept hollering and cussing at Rona; Rona kept hollering and cussing at mama; Brenda was hollering and cussing into a pillow down the hall; and a tv commercial was hollering at anybody who would listen.
I turned off the tv and went outside barefoot and in pajama bottoms. I walked to the train tracks and stared up at the stars, thinking about how everything had changed that summer, nothing would ever be the same. School was starting the next week; maybe it would be different this year.
The wind chilled me and I started shivering, but the moment I decided to go back home I heard the clacking of a quickly approaching train heading north. I pictured myself jumping on it and riding it all the way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I would find Rona and we would live in Lady Liberty together, her and me and the baby. Marco, too, if he didn’t get deported. I imagined all the meals we would have around the table-that-turns-into-a-bed, all the stories, all the laughs. We would live happily every after in a place like Pittsburgh.
The train rattled by too fast for me to jump on; plus it was dark, I wasn’t dressed, and I had no idea how far it was to Pittsburgh, so I changed my plans again and walked slowly back along the trail, trying to convince myself that things would be better in the eighth grade than they had been in the years before. Maybe I would make friends with somebody.
Mama wasn’t in her usual place on the sofa bed. She was lying next to Brenda in Rona’s old room, comforting her in a voice I had never heard come out of her before. Brenda was sobbing into the pillow and mama was petting her back. I stood at the doorway for a long time, watching this odd exchange, wanting to be a part of it. Finally, I spoke, but I said the wrong thing.
me: Mama…
She ignored me, so I said it louder.
Mama?
She stopped and looked up at me. Her gentle face returned to the Grinch look I was familiar with.
mama: How many times do I hafta tell ya—
me: I’m sorry, Mona, I just—
mama: Cain’t ya see I’m busy here, Randy? Leave us alone. Go to bed or somethin’. God!
I felt the tears coming up as I dragged myself to bed. Mama kept at it.
I don’t know why they always call on me, Brenda.
brenda, pitifully: Mona…
mama: I wish he’d gone with ‘em.
brenda moaned: Ohh…
mama: I do! Those kids ruined my goddamned life!
Mama ranted on at least until I was asleep; Brenda cried and so did I. Lot #4 was a trailer home full of people feeling sorry for themselves that night and for many nights to come.