Her Mother’s Grave

Chapter Thirty-Eight

JOSIE – ELEVEN YEARS OLD

Her mother’s small blue Chevette sat outside the trailer looking like a discarded toy, slumped to one side, its front passenger-side tire flat. Red paint streaked the bumper where her mother had hit a shiny red Mustang when they left the liquor store. It had been two days, but Josie’s neck still hurt.

Her homework was spread out on the kitchen table. Fractions. Josie hated fractions. They had started them in the fourth grade, and she still hadn’t mastered them. Her mother paced from the kitchen through the living room and back, stopping at the front door on each pass to stare at the broken-down car and curse under her breath.

Josie heard the sound of a car jolting over the large pothole two trailers down before the same red Mustang pulled up beside the Chevette. From the kitchen window, Josie could see that it was waxed to perfection, except for the long thick streak where the paint had been gouged from the front of the driver’s side to the back. Josie watched a man climb out of the Mustang, flicking a cigarette into the grass as he walked toward the front door of their trailer. He was tall and thin, older, but not as old as Josie’s gram. Dull brown hair peeked from the back of a worn blue ball cap. The sleeves of his white T-shirt had been torn away, revealing wiry arms with faded black tattoos that Josie couldn’t make out. Beneath a long, bulbous nose, a wide moustache stretched across his upper lip. Old stains dotted his faded blue jeans, and the toe of one of his boots had a hole in it.

When he banged on the door, the sound reverberated through the whole trailer. Her mother stood frozen between the kitchen and living room. She brought an index finger to her lips, signaling for Josie to be quiet. They waited without moving as the man kept knocking, harder and harder. The minutes ticked by. Then he began shouting, “I know you’re in there, dammit. Just answer the door. You’re not getting away with this. You hit my car and then drove off.”

More knocking. More shouting. “I know who you are, Belinda Rose. The lady at the liquor store knows you. Told me all about you. Now come on out here or I’ll call the police.”

At this, her mother took a few tentative steps toward the door. “Shit,” she muttered.

“I’m giving you ten seconds,” the man hollered. “You don’t come out in ten seconds, I’m leaving, and I’ll be back with the police.”

Josie’s mother pulled the door open. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Here I am.”

“You gonna make me stand out here, or you gonna invite me in? Least you can do is offer me a drink after you wrecked my car.”

Her mother rolled her eyes and stepped aside, letting the man inside. “I hardly wrecked your car,” she remarked.

The man stood in the middle of the living room, eyes panning the trailer until they landed on Josie. He offered her a toothy smile. “Hey, sweetheart.”

Josie lifted a hand in a half-hearted wave. Her mother went to the drainboard and snatched up a glass, filling the bottom of it with the vodka she’d bought at the store. She handed it to the man, and he knocked it back in one gulp, handing her the glass back. She put one hand on her hip and stared at him. “What do you want?”

Again, he smiled. “What do you think? I need a paint job and you’re gonna pay for it.”

“Oh yeah? How’s that? I don’t got no insurance.”

He laughed, his eyes drifting to Josie and then back to Josie’s mother. “Of course you don’t.”

“How much is a paint job?” her mother asked.

He looked out the front door at the Mustang. “For a beauty like that? At least five hundred.”

“Five hundred dollars?” her mother exclaimed. “Are you shitting me? For some paint?”

“Honey, that’s a 1965 Mustang GT. A classic car. Took me years to restore it.”

Josie’s mother sighed and threw her hands in the air. “I don’t have no five hundred dollars. You come back in a week and maybe I’ll have something for you.”

The man walked over to the couch and sat down. “I don’t do payment plans, and if I leave, I told you, I’m coming back with the cops.”

Her mother followed him, standing between his legs, staring down at him. “Cops don’t solve nothing,” she told him. “Stop bringing them into this. This is between you and me.”

He stretched his arms out across the back of the sofa and smiled at her like they were old friends. “Is that right?”