Captured by the Mafia Bad Boy

When I think of the trailer, I think in scents. The ones of cigarettes, metal, and the faint wisp of gasoline that lingers in the orange shag carpet, a souvenir left over from one of my mom’s long-gone boyfriends. The scent of poverty that’s interwoven into my clothes, seen in the limpness of my hair, in the cut of my jeans. There’s no denying it. It colors my skin white and proceeds my name in the form of poor, and white, and trash. I dream in smells. I suppose one trailer looks like every other. This one happens to have school pictures of me hanging in crooked dime-store frames, a white fridge with a broken ice maker, and the yellow stove with a broken everything. There’s a screen door that never hangs right, and four to five cars in the dirt drive with only two able to run at any one time. And the wild flowers in the yard that in better times we mow down like grass, and in other times let them blow free through the backwoods of Texas. There are walls, of course. Cardboard thin and papered with the fake wood pattern, not much better than the doors that are just as thin as curtains and only a little more sturdy. And the sounds that bleed through both—the crack and pop of beer cans when opened, and the rustle a trash bag makes when being filled in a steady rhythm. I’m not sure about other trailers. Maybe they have clocks. Like the ones that hang on the wall and make ticking sounds as the hands chase each other. But time here isn’t measured that way. Time here is measured in Little Mule six-packs, Lucas’s cheap beer of choice, rather than hours. The first one starts at 4:00 p.m., marking the end of a long work day spent cooking meth and delivering merchandise. The second one, if it stops there, still means there’s a possibility of dinner. The third always precludes the start of any sporting event on TV—football, racing, UFC fighting. Doesn’t matter the day or season. I fall asleep to the lullaby of animated sports announcers: Did you see that punch? What an amazing catch! It’s a race to the finish! I dream in sounds of cheering fans and men’s shaving commercials. And of a knife. Tucked safely between my mattress and box spring. Then sometimes, only sometimes, when the sun is as far from Grove Oaks as redemption, and the only people up are the strippers on their way home and the bartenders cleaning the last of the glasses—there’s a fourth six-pack. The fourth six-pack always ends in a fight. Not sometimes. Not often. If he’s gotten to four, there’s a fight. Tonight is a four six-pack night. “Where the hell have you been?” Yells Lucas, my mother’s latest man in the long string of men. “Working. Where do you think I’ve been?” My mother has been a “successful” stripper if one can define success that way. But even the most experienced dancers lose their tips as they get older. Hence, the late-night shifts when the customers are hopefully too drunk to notice breasts that have lost their perkiness, and the fishnet stockings that do more to hold things in than to excite. “Getting some side jobs from one of your customers, is what I think,” he shoots back. I give up on sleeping. Even in the far bedroom, with earplugs and a pillow over my head, I can hear the beginning shouts and curses that mark a long, drawn-out fight. I try not to be irritated when my mother’s shouts turn to cries, but I hate being this cliché—trailer-poor, stripper mother and her loser boyfriend. My life could be every episode of Cops. Which, of course, I don’t even think of calling. They wouldn’t get here on time. Wouldn’t do much anyway. Lucas would just get bailed out the next day and come back to the trailer more pissed off than ever. I can’t call a neighbor either. A year ago, Mom decided she needed a change of scenery and wanted to go live out in the country, but I know it’s because an ex-boyfriend became too obsessive and smacked her around some. That’s one thing my mom never tolerated—getting beat up. I wonder at that sometimes, but realize deep inside my mother is a businesswoman with her best asset being her looks. Mess with that, and her ability to make a living goes way down. But even if we did have neighbors, no help would be given. Lucas is the younger brother of Marcus, the meth dealer, who controls not only the town of Grove Oaks, but two towns in either direction. It’s simple—you mess with Lucas, you mess with Marcus, and with a string of body parts found in the desert, no one wants that kind of trouble. “You can’t treat me like this. Get the hell out!” My mother screams her trademark battle cry. If I had a dollar for every time…well, you know the saying. I wouldn’t be living in this trailer, that’s for sure. I know Lucas’s response even before he speaks. It’s as predictable as an overplayed song on the radio, heard a thousand times, the one that gets stuck in your head so you can’t stop humming it. “I pay the bills. This is my trailer now,” he says. Which, unfortunately is true. We’ve never had to depend on anyone else before. When I was younger, my mom had brought in good money. Not enough to get out of this trailer, but enough to call this tin and plastic box our home. Apparently, no one told my mother that twirling on a pole doesn’t come with a good 401k plan, and now at the age of forty, she should’ve retired years ago.