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I turned my attention away from the rough-sex memories derailing my brain and focused on the present. Mom sat on the sofa opposite, glowing with joy. She was always so happy when I came home. I knew I should visit more often, but there were reasons I stayed away. My HIV diagnosis being just one of them.
Theotherbeing that while the trailer was cozy and warm, and it smelled like my mom’s soft perfume, it was also full of bad memories.
At least I’d neverlivedhere with my father. We abandoned the old house we’d shared with him not long after “the incident,” as my mother called it, or “the rape,” as I did. For years we’d stayed away from my dad as best as we could. That’d been easy enough while he was in prison, but once he was released…
I shivered, remembering.
He’d found us.
And the last time he found us, I’d been here…
I shook off the blaze of rage and hate that threatened to engulf me again, the way it always did when I thought of him and of what he’d done.
Of what I’d done.
Whatever the case, this trailer was now home, and given my shortened life-expectancy, it would be my last one. Mom wouldprobably live here for the rest of her life too. It was the best she could afford, and she’d decorated it just the way she liked—country-chic with gingham and lace fixings. Trashy, really.
But we were trash. So, it made sense.
Mom worked at the local diner, which didn’t bring in a ton of money, but years ago she’d made friends with Marlene McPeak—my best friend Daniel’s mom. That had been a few years after Daniel’s father died, and Marlene had needed help with her younger kids. Mom had been happy to step in. It was her Christian duty, she’d said, but aside from that, I think she truly loved being needed by someone.
After their bond had been forged, Marlene helped pay my mom’s bills from time to time. Eventually, she bought us this trailer for three-thousand dollars when we’d unfortunately lost our lease on the two-bedroom rental house we were staying in. She’d gifted it to Mom as a thank you for assisting her during her many alcoholic relapses. That was a secret even Daniel didn’t know because I’d promised to never tell him. He thought my mom had bought the trailer with her saved-up tips from the diner.
Hilarious.
As if she could have ever earned enough tip money from the gut bombs served at HeyDey Burgers to buy anyplace livable.
The trailer was decent, though, and Mom felt safe here. But I’d always dreamed I’d get a job with TVA one day in river ecology, and I’d buy her a real home—a nice, big house of her own.
Dread curled in my gut.
Now none of that would happen. Now I was going to die, and she—
“Baby,” Mom said, interrupting my horror spiral. Her eyes shone brightly. “Have I showed you what I found at KARM?”
She leapt up from the stained, cream-colored sofa we’d had since the “before times,” as we called the years when we’d lived withmy father, and I averted my eyes from the brown spot she’d been sitting on. The bloodstain hadn’t come out. I’d scrubbed and scrubbed, but it remained. I’d always thought we should have bought a new sofa. But we hadn’t.
Mom held up her latest acquisition from the local charity store. A black pot with a spindly spider plant drooping within, set snugly wrapped up in a tangle of cord and beads.
“That’s atrocious,” I proclaimed.
“Hush, you.” Mom stood on her tiptoes and lifted the pot by its horrendous macramé holder so that it dangled in front of the window over the sofa. “Now I just need you to hang that wall hook I asked you to bring. Did you remember it?”
I nodded. With every way I’d failed my mom lately, I wasn’t going to let her down on the little things. Of course I’d brought the hook. And a hammer and nail too. “It’s in my backpack.” I gestured to where I dropped it by the door as I’d come inside. “I’ll hang it for you after dinner.”
Mom kissed my cheek, and the scent of her floral perfume rushed over me as her long, blonde hair draped around my face for a moment. Then she grabbed my hand and tugged me toward the trailer’s small kitchen area. “Talk to me, baby, while I finish up in here.”
The scent of chicken soup bubbling in the crockpot was rich and warm, and I watched as she checked the status of the rolls she’d put in before I arrived. “Nearly done,” she declared before dropping into one of the chairs at the tiny, battered, two-person table. I gingerly took the other one. “Tell me everything,” she said with a grin. “What’s happening in your life?”
She’d been so excited for me to start back to college for my senior year. She knew I loved my classes and my friends, but she had no idea about the dark turns my life had taken in recent months. I planned to keep her ignorant for as long as possible.
“The usual. Going to classes. Dancing at Tilt-a-Whirl. Hanging out with friends.”
Lies. All lies.
I hadn’t been going to Tilt-a-Whirl or hanging with friends much lately becauseI was HIV positive.My mind had been far too taken up with panic over that—or clouded over with the aftereffects of rough sex with a guy who hated my guts, despite churning them regularly with his dick—to want to party and have a good time.
I flashed to Kyle’s expression as he’d shot his load into me, the rage followed by the pleasure and the complete surrender. I’d broken him again. Made him need me, made him feel things no one else ever had.
