“and we’re just barely getting by.”
“I brought you some fries,” I say, gesturing toward my
dad’s hand stuck deep in the bag. “They’re still good.”
“I don’t want fries,” my mom declares, though she slides
right over to snag a few. “We need real help. A minivan
to help get your dad around. A lifting recliner. He can’t
hardly get up out of that chair. Look at him, Jane!”
On cue, my dad gets out of the chair and stumbles
toward the kitchen, mumbling something about ketchup.
“Tragic,” I sigh. “Now, where the hell is that grand-
daughter of yours?”
She glares at my dad, his perfectly capable body sil-
houetted by the fridge light. “How the hell should I
know?” she mumbles.
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I drop into my old seat on the sectional and put my
feet up on another corner. “Traditionally—and I know
you have no experience with this—the adults in the home
keep tabs on any child who lives there.”
“Child?” she spits. “That girl thought she was a
grown-ass woman. She treated us so badly, Jane. Her
own grandparents.”
“Mm-hm.”
“You don’t understand because you abandoned us.
You don’t know what she was like. Men pounding on
our door at all hours of the night looking for her. She’s
a nasty little slut.”
Having heard it all before about my own teenage self,
I just roll my eyes and wait for her to move on.
“I gave her a place to stay because she couldn’t get
along with her mama, and that was more than I owed her.”
“So she paid you rent?” I drawl, knowing full well
my mom doesn’t have a grandmotherly bone in her body.
She blows a raspberry through loose lips and I grimace
with distaste. “Not enough rent,” she mutters. “We had to feed her.”
“Right. I’m sure there were homecooked meals nightly.
Has she come by or called even once since last month?
Has she texted? Dropped by to steal something from your
purse? Anything?”
“No.”
Shaking my head, I close my eyes and take a deep
breath. Much to my disgust, this place actually smells like home. Old cooking oil and the rose perfume my mother
favors in between shampoos. The smell of my childhood,
underlain by a chemical pleasantness of new walls and
carpet that I never experienced in my youth.
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Problem Child
I don’t feel any of the things I should be feeling.
Nostalgia or sorrow or love. All I ever felt in my last few years in my parents’ home was anger and restlessness as
I worked toward a scholarship just so I could rub it in
their worthless faces. But even those feelings are hard
to remember now. My parents have no power over me.
When this discussion is over, I’ll walk out of here and
leave them to their misery. I guess all I feel right now is victory.
“Just tell me what happened,” I say with weary impa-
tience. “Did she leave with that Little Dog loser?”
“She didn’t leave with anyone, not that it’s any busi-
ness of yours. She took off on her own. I’m too old to
go chasing after stupid girls doing things they shouldn’t
be doing.”
I glance at my mom. “What things?”
“What things do you think? Men. Weed. Drinking.
Hell, her full-time job was hitchhiking, as far as I could
tell.”
“Did she catch a ride out of here?”
My questions seem to push her over the edge, and my
mom snaps. “What the hell are you doing here, Jane? You
don’t give one goddamn about your family! Your daddy
almost died and—”
“This is getting us nowhere,” I interrupt, rising to my
feet as I slap my hands against my thighs for emphasis. “Let me check out her room. Maybe there’s something there.”
“This isn’t your house!” she screeches. “Why are you
even here?”
“Because I love my family, Mama. Come on.”
She stares blankly at me as if she’s trying to puzzle out
the words and the meaning behind them. Am I serious?
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Of course I’m not, lady; can’t you tell by the thick twang
I just laid on?
I push past her and march down the short hallway
toward the bedrooms.
“Hey! I’ll call the cops, missy. This is trespassing.
You can’t just…” Her protest fizzles out, and I hear the
swish-swish of her polyester shorts coming up behind me.
The room is tiny and messy, just a bed and a dresser
and a dark blue sheet tacked up over the small window
to keep out the sun. I remember those glorious teenage
days of sleeping until 2:00 p.m.
“Have you bothered to look for her?” I ask.
“Look for her? Even the cops think she ran away. Such an ungrateful piece of trash can stay gone.”
I smirk. “Show me the worried-grandma act you put
on for the cops. I bet it was a great show. You love play-
ing the victim. Did you cry? Wail? Rage at them to do
something for your little baby?”
She blows air through her teeth in a hiss, a warning
that she’s about to lose her temper. The wet sound would
have scared little Baby Jane, a warning of screaming and
slapping to come, but today it doesn’t elicit anything more than an urge to shove her.
“You get outta my damn house if you can’t be re-
spectful,” she growls.
I step deeper into the messy bedroom. “Speaking of:
Where’d you get this house, anyway?”
“Fund-raiser.” The anger in her voice immediately
slides into slimy pride, just as I knew it would. “After
Daddy had that stroke, he couldn’t get around the old
trailer in his chair. Doors were too narrow. Central Baptist was nice enough to host an event to help with a down
payment and delivery fees.”
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Problem Child
“Ain’t you proud.”
“Yes, I am, and I have a right to be. It’s a beautiful
home.”
“Sure is, Mama.” I start sifting through a pile of crap
on top of an old dresser that used to be Ricky’s. His
name is still carved into the front of the middle drawer.
A family heirloom.
“What are you even looking for?” she snaps.
“Any hint about where she might have gone.”
“She took off for the truck stop looking for a ride.
That’s where she went: the hell out of here.”
This is new information. I’d ask which truck stop,
but there’s only one that needs no name around here.
The first big twenty-four-hour junction in the county
seat, complete with showers and rentable bunks. The year
they added a KFC, the kids in my school made so many
chicken runs out there after class. “So she really did run
away? On purpose?”
“Sure.”
I pause and turn to glare at her. “Did she tell you she
was leaving or not?”
When she shrugs, I notice how much
her shoulders
droop now. She’s only sixty-five, but she’s already caving in on herself, skinny all over except her gut, and that center of gravity is dragging her in. “She didn’t say anything,
but she was always out there looking for a ride, looking
for money, whatever she did. That girl was mean as a
snake, just like you, so either she’s fine or she got what
she deserved. Who even knows?”
“Mean like me, huh?”
“Yeah. Sneaky. Beady eyes always watching me.”
She’s losing her needy act completely now. “I was going
to kick her out anyway. She had men coming around
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here like dogs after a bitch in heat. Nothing you can do
for a girl like that.”
“I mean, you could try to keep grown men away from
her. But that probably didn’t occur to you.”
She smacks her lips together, then barks out a hard
laugh. “Men’ll take whatever anyone’s giving and you
damn well know it. That’s just life. If you haven’t learned that by fifteen, good luck to you. Hell, you gave away
enough yourself when you were her age; you should
know.”
“Shit, Mama, I was giving it away by age seven, wasn’t
I? Walking around here in tight shorts for any man you
might rent a room to. How are they supposed to control
themselves when there’s a hot ass around, right?”
“Oh please. You always were a little drama queen. You
climbed up on his lap given half a chance every damn
time. Didn’t look too scared to me.”
She told me their new friend would watch me when
she and Daddy weren’t home. I was so happy at first.
Hopeful. I pushed the last dregs of my best feelings into
that warm hollow of hope and cradled them tight. I
wouldn’t have to be alone in the house at night! Instead
of Ricky ignoring my snotty crying, there would be an
adult here to keep monsters at bay.
He was a dream come true at first. He cooked me
actual food. SpaghettiOs and grilled cheese and burgers.
Even homemade cookies. I can still remember the taste
of warm oatmeal cookies. I was thrilled with this new
arrangement. I was safe.
He told me I could call him Uncle Pete. I did. I asked
him if he would take care of me. He promised he would.
He said he loved me like I was his own little girl.
Then my parents left me alone with him for five days.
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Problem Child
That was the last time I remember feeling anything
much at all. They let him live here for six more months
before he moved on.
Instead of punching my mother in the face, I start
digging through Kayla’s belongings again.
“There’s no money in here, if that’s what you’re look-
ing for.”
“Jesus Christ, Mama. What kind of grown woman
would steal cash from a teenage girl?” I flash a wide grin
over my shoulder so she knows I’m insulting her nasty,
greedy, grubby little fingers. “Wait a minute!” I gasp. I
even press a dismayed hand to my chest. “How do you
know there’s no cash in here? You didn’t already paw
through everything looking for it, did you?”
“I was making sure there weren’t no drugs in here!”
she barks as I snort in disbelief. “What if the social workers came by to check on the environments?”
I open the top drawer of the dresser to find a combina-
tion of fun underwear full of pink cartoon drawings and
racier white lace. Not so unusual for a sixteen-year-old.
Disappointingly typical. When I shove the panties aside,
I spy a little stack of business cards pushed into a corner.
Not quite so typical.
The one on top is from a school resource officer she
probably got in trouble with a few times. Beneath it
are several more cards. One from the youth minister at
Central Baptist Church, one from the head of a kids’ soc-
cer league, and one from the owner of a local equipment
rental company.
Hm. “Does Kayla have a job?” I ask.
Another raspberry from my mom. The woman is
truly a master of Shakespearean buffoonery.
“Okay. Does she play soccer?”
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“Yeah, right. She’d get her skinny ass kicked up and
down that field.”
Interesting. I slide the cards into my pocket and poke
around a little more. The dresser yields no more surprises, and the rest of the room is crowded with more boxes
of my parents’ belongings. I have no idea what they’ve
managed to accumulate so efficiently over the years. A
bunch of crap anyone else would throw away, I suppose.
“I don’t know why you’re so worried about some
niece you don’t even know,” my mom snipes again as I
rifle through the clothing in the tiny closet. “You can’t
even be bothered to worry about your own parents. We
couldn’t find you anywhere! What kind of a bitch changes
her number after her own daddy has a stroke?”
“The kind of bitch whose loving mother calls her a
bitch all the time would be my best guess.”
“I call a spade a spade and a bitch a bitch. You are a
goddamn devil child and you always were.”
Her insults used to enrage me, but I’ve heard them
so many times, they inspire nothing but amusement.
My mother and father made me who I am, so let them
experience me in all my glory.
When I consider my childhood—and I rarely do—it’s
strange to me that I turned out this way when others
incest. Nobody locking me in a crawl space or chaining
me to a bed. It was just the drip, drip of emotional abuse
and endless neglect accented with a dash of sexual assault, same as so many other kids in this world face.
It was the constant knowledge that my parents, with
their immaturity and idle cruelty, would disappear at the
drop of a dime, removing even the semblance of protection
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Problem Child
from everything scary in the world. I was too vulnerable.
Too scared. Too hurt. So my brain made everything easier.
Thank you, brain.
I assume my genetics helped. My parents are both
screwed-up and narcissistic, and Ricky isn’t far from
sociopathy himself. What a nasty little genetic brew my
folks created.
Ricky caused more trouble than I did growing up,
but my parents mostly left him alone. I’m not sure if that
was straight-up misogyny or if my mother hated me in
particular for some reason. It’s not even worth puzzling
over. She’s worthless and mean, and I’m too strong to
bother with her anymore.
“Do you think that Little Dog guy could have taken
her? He’s gone too, or so people are saying.”
“Who knows, but he didn’t come around here look-
ing for her like everyone else.”
I set down the pillow I was looking under and turn
to narrow my eyes at my mother.
“Who’s ‘everyone
else’?”
There’s a quick flinch of the lined skin around my
mom’s eyes. A deep swallow as her gaze darts away from
me. “Friends. Acquaintances. Whatever.”
I could threaten her, try to force her into some kind
of truth, but my mom is slippery if she’s anything. She’s
conned so many do-gooders out of so many donations
over the years, and pinning her down on her lies is like
trying to nail snot to a wall, as the old saying goes.
She might even have less shame than I do. But she
does love to talk shit about people.
“You said there were grown men coming around
here. Boyfriends?”
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Victoria Helen Stone
“Boyfriends!” Her smile is a hard, mean line, just
lips stretched straight over teeth. “More like customers,
considering the cash they flashed around.”
“Did you tell the cops that?”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffs. “Like I want everyone in town
knowing what my granddaughter is. One guy wanted it
so bad, he paid me money! That girl must’ve sucked the chrome right off his hitch. Looked like a cop too.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs, still smiling tight and mean. “Serious. Bald.
Wearing a sport coat. And I saw he had a gun on him.”
“And then you … sold him information about your
teenage granddaughter.” I’m not the least bit surprised.
She blows another raspberry. “All I did was point him
toward Little Dog’s place. Figured Mr. Man could ask
his questions there and stop bothering me. You think I
need all the neighbors gossiping about who’s knocking
on my door day and night? This is a respectable home,
despite her best efforts.”
“When was this?”
“Week after Kayla took off.” She tugs a cigarette from
her pocket to light it. “We need to talk about Daddy now
that you’re home. He’s your own flesh and blood.”
“I ain’t home,” I correct her, and walk straight toward
the hall until she’s forced to back out of the doorway and
let me through.
“You owe us,” she spits at my back.
“Lady, I don’t owe you shit.”
“We’re your family!”
“Fat lot of good that ever did me.”
When I pass my father, he’s set the fries aside and taken
up his bourbon again. The TV is blaring now, our little
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Problem Child
family reunion insufficient to hold his interest. I breeze