Holy Night at the Trailer Park

I’ll never forget the night I tried coffee for the first time. It was the same night Sally from next door overdosed on Morphine and Mushroom salad.

I don’t remember much about the taste, but I'm sure I liked it.

It was after one of our fights. Mom wanted me to clean my room. But her idea of cleaning is taking everything out and throwing it in a pile on the curb. If there’s something that’s the opposite of a hoarder, that’d be Mom.

Our trailer must be the tidiest in all of Nebraska. She even threw out our microwave once. I had to go out and bring it back inside when she went to bed. If I hadn’t, we’d have gone hungry with all our frozen meals left to collect freezer burn.

Picking a fight with Mom is an old game we play. So it was exciting when she threw my first taste of coffee into the mix.

I didn’t want to toss my CDs and comics out onto the snowbank for pickup. I had just replenished my collection from her last cleaning kick. So, I retaliated. When she came into my room, disturbing my nap, I said she could clean her room if she wanted, but my shit is my shit. She scoffed and went to the kitchen to put a cup of instant coffee in the microwave.

I brought the blanket up to my chin and looked out my window. I could see Sally sitting on the floor, staring at her bedroom ceiling. Her blonde head bobbed along to a silent song.

Sally used to be a teacher. Rumor has it she used to confiscate her students’ bud and smoke it in the teachers’ lounge.

Other people say she never was a teacher, just a gal with a dream of becoming one.

They say she was a bad student with a knack for tricking male professors into letting her pass.

Others say she was a perfect student, but she just couldn’t hold down a job to save her life.

As for me, I think Sally might have been something much cooler than a teacher. Like a substitute.

Mom came back holding the little cup between her red-polished fingers and urged me to chug it down. She held the steaming cup to my face and told me that if I was so mature, I could drink the bitter concoction, no problem.

It’s too hot, I complained. But this was Mom’s version of making me smoke a pack of cigarettes. There was a lesson somewhere I was supposed to be learning. So, I plugged my nose and poured it down my throat. It burned the roof of my mouth and left bumps along the soft flesh behind my teeth.

I’ll make you another cup, she taunted. I told her to go to Hell and that really set her off. Don’t know why though, considering Mom doesn’t believe in angels, God, and shit like that. Hell wouldn’t be so bad. At least it’d be warm.

Mom yelled and ran back to the kitchen. She threw another cup of coffee at my bed as I hid under the blanket. She never meant to splash me with the liquid, just scare me a little with the threat of burns.

Around the half-hour mark of her tantrums, Sally usually called the cops. I could always count on her.

But no sirens came to calm Ma down that night. I sat up to check on Sally, and one final cup went flying in my direction. It left a red star on my wrist. Mom stopped and started crying. She went and ran a cold rag under the sink and told me to hold it in place on my red skin.

I turned back to the window, wondering why Sally ignored us. She was still staring at the ceiling, but her head was bobbing in a new way. Guess it’d be too hard for her to call the cops since she was busy gargling up something white and frothy.

Her light stayed on all night, and I kept looking at her until my eyes couldn’t stay open any longer. It wasn’t until the next morning that police arrived. The cops know us pretty well by now, so I was a little miffed when none of them looked through Sally's window to say hi.

Ma may not believe it, but Sally is some sort of angel. One of those crazy ones with a thousand eyes.

I know because she watches me from the cracks of the ceiling.

We stare at each other and have come to an understanding of how shitty a place like this is. Mom says it’s just squirrels landing on our roof. But I bet Sally saw the whole fight that night. I just didn’t look hard enough.