Sugar Daddy's

3

He let out a humorless laugh. "You don't want to know."

We walked to the loop intersection in contemplative silence. Now that evening was settling there were signs of life at the trailer park...cars turning in, voices and televisions filtering through the thin walls, smells of flying food. The white sun was resting on the horizon, bleeding out color until the sky was drenched in purple and orange and crimson.

"Is this it?" Hardy asked, stopping in front of my white trailer with its neat girdle of aluminum siding.

I nodded even before I saw the outline of my mother's profile in the window of the kitchenette. "Yes, it is," I exclaimed with relief. "Thank you."

As I stood there peering up at him through my brown-framed glasses. Hardy reached out to push back a piece of hair that had straggled loose from my ponytail. The callused tip of his finger was gently abrasive against my hairline, like the tickle of a cat's tongue. "You know what you remind me of?" he asked, studying me. "An elf owl."

"There's no such thing," I said.

"Yes there is. They mostly live to the south in the Rio Grande Valley and beyond. But every now and then an elf owl makes its way up here. I've seen one." He used his thumb and forefinger to indicate a distance of five inches. "They're only about this big. Cute little bird."

"I'm not little." I protested.

Hardy smiled. His shadow settled over me, blocking the light of sunset from my dazzled eyes. There was an unfamiliar stirring inside me. I wanted to step deeper into the shadow until I met his body, to feel his arms go around me. "Sadlek was right, you know," he said.

"About what?"

"I am trouble."

I knew that. My rioting heart knew it. and so did my weak knees, and so did my heat-prickling stomach. "I like trouble." I managed to say. and his laugh curled through the air.

He walked away in a graceful long-legged stride, a dark and solitary' figure. I thought of the strength in his hands as he had picked me up from the ground. I watched him until he had disappeared from sight, and my throat felt thick and tingly like I'd just swallowed a spoonful of warm honey.

The sunset finished with a long crack of light rimming the horizon, as if the sky were a big door and God was taking one last peek. Good night, Welcome, I thought, and went into the trailer.

My new home smelled agreeably of fresh-molded plastic and new carpeting. It was a two-bedroom single-wide with a concrete patio pad in the back. I'd been allowed to pick out the wallpaper in my room, white with bunches of pink roses and a narrow blue ribbon woven throughout. We had never lived in a trailer before, having occupied a rent house in Houston before we moved east to Welcome.

Like the trailer, Mama's boyfriend, Flip, was a new acquisition. He'd gotten his name from his habit of constantly flipping through TV channels, which hadn't been so bad at first but after a while it drove me crazy. When Flip was around, no one could watch more than five minutes of any one show.

I was never sure why Mama invited him to live with us—he seemed no better or different than any of her other boyfriends. Flip was like a friendly, oversized dog. good-looking and lazy, with the hint of a beer belly, a shaggy mullet, and an easy grin.

Mama had to support him financially from day one. with her salary as a receptionist at the local title company. Flip, on the other hand, was perpetually unemployed. Although Flip had no objection to having a job, he was strongly opposed to the concept of actually looking for one. It was a common redneck paradox.

But I liked Flip because he made Mama laugh. The sound of those elusive laughs was so precious to me, I wished I could capture one in a Mason jar and keep it forever.

As I walked into the trailer, I saw Flip stretched out on the sofa with a beer in hand while Mama stacked cans in a kitchen cabinet.

"Hey, Liberty," he said easily.

"Hey, Flip." I went into the kitchenette to help my mother. The fluorescent ceiling light shone on the glasslike smoothness of her blond hair. My mother was fine-featured and fair, with mysterious green eyes and a vulnerable mouth. The only clue to her monumental stubbornness was the sharp, clean line of her jaw, vee-shaped like the prow of an ancient sailing ship.

"Did you give the check to Mr. Sadlek. Liberty'?"

"Yes." I reached for sacks of flour, sugar, and cornmeal, and stowed them in the pantry. "He's a real jerk, Mama. He called me a wetback."

She whipped around to face me, her eyes blazing. A flush covered her face in delicate red patches. "That bastard." she exclaimed. "I can't believe—Flip, did you hear what Liberty just said?"

"Nope."

"He called my daughter a wetback."

"Who?"

"Louis Sadlek. The property manager. Flip, get off your ass and go talk to him. Right now! You tell him if he ever does that again—"

"Now, honey, that word don't mean nothing." Flip protested. "Everyone says it. They don't mean no harm."

"Don't you dare try to justify it!" Mama reached out and pulled me close, her arms wrapping protectively around my back and shoulders. Surprised by the strength of her reaction—after all, it wasn't the first time the word had been applied to me and certainly wouldn't be the last—I let her hold me for a moment before wriggling free.

"I'm okay, Mama," I said.

"Anyone who uses that word is showing you he's ignorant trash," she said curtly. "There's nothing wrong with being Mexican. You know that." She was more upset for my sake than I was.

I had always been acutely aware that I was different from Mama. We garnered curious glances when we went anywhere together. Mama, as fair as an angel, and me, dark-haired and obviously Hispanic. I had learned to accept it with resignation. Being half-Mexican was no different than being all-Mexican. That meant I would sometimes be called a wetback even though I was a natural-born American and had never set so much as a toe in the Rio

Grande.

"Flip," Mama persisted, "are you going to talk to him?"

"He doesn't have to," I said, regretting having told her anything. I couldn't imagine Flip going to any trouble for something he plainly considered to be a minor issue.

"Honey," Flip protested, "I don't see no point in making trouble with the landlord on our first day—"

"The point is you should be man enough to stand up for my daughter." Mama glared at him. "I'll do it, damn it."

A long-suffering groan from the sofa, but there was no movement save the flick of his thumb on the remote control.

Anxiously I protested, "Mama, don't. Flip's right, it didn't mean anything." I knew in every cell of my body that my mother must be kept away from Louis Sadlek.

"I won't be long," she said stonily, looking for her purse.

"Please, Mama." I searched frantically for a way to dissuade her. "It's time for dinner. I'm hungry. Really hungry. Can we go out to eat? Let's try out the town cafeteria." Every adult I knew, including Mama, liked going to the cafeteria.

Mama paused and glanced at me; her face softening. "You hate cafeteria food."

"It's grown on me," I insisted. "I've started to like eating out of trays with compartments." Seeing the beginnings of a smile on her lips, I added, "If we're lucky it'll be senior citizens' night and we can get you in for half-price."

"You brat," she exclaimed, laughing suddenly. "I feel like a senior citizen after all this moving." Striding into the main room, she turned off the TV and stood in front of the fading screen. "Up, Flip."

"I'm gonna miss WrestleMania," he protested, sitting up. One side of his shaggy head was flattened from lying on a cushion.

"You won't watch the whole thing anyway," Mama said. "Now, Flip...or I'll hide the remote for an entire month."

Flip heaved a sigh and got to his feet.

The next day I met Hardy's sister, Hannah, who was a year younger than me but almost a head taller. She was striking rather than pretty, with a long-limbed athleticism that was common to the Cateses. They were physical people, competitive and prankish and completely the opposite of everything I was. As the only girl in the family, Hannah had been taught never to back down from a dare, and to rush headlong into every challenge no matter how impossible it seemed. I admired such recklessness even if I didn't share it. It was a curse, Hannah informed me. to be adventurous in a place where there was no adventure to be found.

Hannah was crazy about her older brother and loved to talk about him nearly as much as I loved to hear about him. According to Hannah. Hardy had graduated last year but was dating a senior named Amanda Tatum. He'd had girls throwing themselves at him since the age of twelve. Hardy spent his days building and repairing barbed-wire fencing for local ranchers, and had made the down payment on his mama's pickup. He'd been a fullback on the football team before he'd torn some ligaments in his knee, and he had run the forty-yard dash in 4.5 seconds. He could imitate the song of nearly any Texas bird you could name, from a chickadee to a wild turkey. And he was kind to Hannah and their two young brothers, Rick and Kevin.

I thought Hannah was the luckiest girl in the world to have Hardy for a brother. As poor as her family was, I envied her. I'd never liked being an only child. Whenever I was invited to a friend's house for dinner, I felt like a visitor to a foreign land, absorbing how things were done, what was said. I especially liked families that made a lot of commotion. Mama and I were quiet-living, and even though she assured me two people could be a family, ours didn't seem complete.