RE: Trailer Trash 59, 59 pt 2 (Patreon)

    “Hannah?” Tabitha gently knocked on the little girl’s door. “May I come in?”

    “Come on in,” Officer Macintire answered.

    She hesitated at that, but even after waiting another few moments, Hannah herself didn’t speak up. When Tabitha opened the door and peeked inside, she saw why—post-tantrum, Hannah was curled up at the far side of her bed, hiding her face against the wall. The girl’s father sat on the edge of the bed and had a comforting hand on Hannah’s side, and it was clear from the situation that Hannah was not speaking to anyone right now.

    “Sandra just left to take my mother home,” Tabitha explained. “Hannah, may I sit?”

    “Hannah?” Officer Macintire prompted her with a slight shake. “Tabitha’s talking to you.”

    Hannah remained unresponsive.

    Hmm, Tabitha wanted to sigh in dismay. Maybe I shouldn’t think of this as ‘POST-TANTRUM’. I think the lead up to an outburst is like the rising action towards a narrative climax, and then this surly display is the falling action. It’s all part of the same tantrum, really.

    Tabitha didn’t remember throwing tantrums herself—or perhaps the way she had expressed frustration and anger had simply always been avoidance, like her mother said. Looking back through her life through that lens, maybe her descent into isolation and introversion had been her own kind of continuous tantrum against the world. From her recollection of child development, tantrums tapered off when children learned to reason and communicate—which meant instead of meltdowns and outbursts, the child instead argued anything and everything. The article she’d read that from had suggested with wry humor that that phase was no easier to deal with than tantrums—and in some people seemed to stretch on for the whole rest of their lives.

    Arguing over everything as an adult is seen as juvenile, and then throwing actual tantrums as an adult suggests you have a mental illness, Tabitha thought. If avoidance was my own brand of tantrum, then what would be next in that line of development?

    Just this morning it felt like she had babbled out a semi-coherent tirade on Amanda in first period Personal Fitness. It was nothing like the ‘robotic’ elocution she had used with adults when she found herself incredibly stressed—it felt like an emotional outburst. Tabitha talking like a robot was cringeworthy but could be characterized by an overabundance of control, while being provoked to go off on Amanda felt like a loss of control. Now she had to wonder if this was an embarrassing developmental milestone for herself, or if the difference in her response was just because she was facing another teenager rather than an adult.

    Because… my mindset has certainly shifted in the past months, and I see teens as my fellow peers rather than adults.

    Tabitha crossed the pink and purple room that was overflowing with toys and joined Officer Macintire to sit on the bed with Hannah.

    I think I AM a teenager, now, Tabitha thought. But, I’m a very strange one. Most teenagers had just been children, while for me my young years are very, VERY far away and a very distant memory. I’m not an adult, but I remember THE FEEL of being one. When I look at my parents, or the Macintires, or my teachers, I SEE them as adults, but that isn’t as much of a mystery to me as it would be normally. I’ve peeked behind that curtain, I understand being an adult now, even if I can’t call myself one again for a while.

    “I’ll let you girls be,” Officer Macintire gave Tabitha a small smile. “Hannah? I know you’re upset, but it is still late, and you need to be good for Tabitha. Remember you still haven’t brushed your teeth, yet—make sure you’re responsible and take care of everything before you go to bed. Okay?”

    Hannah reacted only by hunching in even closer against the wall, and Officer Macintire gave Tabitha an exasperated look as he bounced up off the bed. He faltered again, just as he had back in the employee break area back at Food Lion—rising up from a sitting position to his feet he was struggling to slowly unbend himself, and Tabitha hurried to lend him a hand. She had to wonder what was causing that—the wound he was recovering from seemed to prevent him from having full range of motion, sometimes.

    “I’m alright, I’m alright—” Officer Macintire grumbled in annoyance. “Just gettin’ old. Hah.”

    The man waved off her hand and then hobbled out of the room—Tabitha thought the ungainly walk was exaggerated from the quirk of his smile, but found the whole situation there troubling all the same. Being left alone with Hannah was also awkward, because Tabitha was responsible for the little girl’s tantrum in the first place. But, what could she even do about that? The problem came about because Hannah was obviously growing too attached to her, but Tabitha also adored Hannah in turn—she had no earthly idea how she would have gone about setting boundaries between them.

    “Oh, Hannah,” Tabitha sighed. “I know why you’re upset. I’m upset, too—just, when I’m upset I bury it all deep down inside; I repress everything. But, that isn’t something that’s good, either, and it’s not something I’d ever want you to do. I wish I knew how to fix everything. Your mother just told me how much you need me here, and it really made me realize how much I need you and the Macintires. How much healthier I’ve been here. Finally free of enough of my problems to, well, to focus on starting to clear up other problems. It’s given me time to process growing up, I’ve been able to start dealing with the whole school thing.”

    “Then stay,” Hannah finally spoke.

    “I am, I’m here,” Tabitha said. “But, also—Hannah I can’t stay here forever. I can’t just ignore my parents, repress all of my problems with them. I’d just started turning my mother’s life around, somehow, and I think she’s in a very very vulnerable place. It’s strange for me to see her like that. When I grew up, she was the mean scary mom. I—well. I think almost losing me really took that way from her. I mean when I was in the hospital, when I almost lost my life. Now, it’s like she’s losing me but in another way, because I’m here instead of there with them.”

    Hannah seemed to stew in silence over that, but that was okay—Tabitha needed a good listener, right now.

    “My dad…” Tabitha on reflex didn’t even want to talk or think about him, and that was a problem she was beginning to recognize. “He’s not that bad. He called me and apologized—I told him I needed time before I could forgive him. Only… I guess I haven’t even been trying at all. It’s easier for me to just shove all of those feelings deep down and not deal with them; to repress them. But, if I always do that, then we’ll never fix things between us, and that’s no good, either.”

    “Why not?” Hannah’s face wasn’t visible, but Tabitha could hear how hard Hannah was pouting in the tone of her voice.

    “Because…” Tabitha’s soft smile fell. “We don’t have all the time in the world. No, in fact—we’re running out of time. He won’t be around forever, and because of that, it’s very important that I grow up and fix things between us. Make peace. Make things right. So that when he’s gone… I won’t regret having wasted so much time we could have spent together.”

    “What do you mean?” Hannah actually twisted away from the bedroom wall so that Tabitha could finally see her face. Hannah had been obviously been crying, but she wasn’t crying anymore now. “Is he… sick?”

    “He has a brain tumor,” Tabitha said. “Or—or he will, soon, I think. It might not be quite big enough to show up on scans yet, as a real tumor. I’m worried about the timing of when I can get him to go in for a scan. Too soon, and he’ll see nothing worth worrying about and not go in again. Too late, and… well.”

    “They can fix that with surgery?” Hannah asked. “Like they did for you.”

    “Maybe,” Tabitha shook her head. “I don’t know. Brain tumors are complicated, and complicated can mean expensive. On our income, he might not even want to… well, he might not want to ‘burden us’ with getting the best care he can. It’s something we’ve fought about before, kind of, and—I guess seeing my own impotence at getting through that thick skull of his has me so frustrated that I just start repressing everything all over again. He’s just so stubborn. He’s so stubborn that I—I—I don’t know what to do, Hannah.”

    “You can borrow money,” Hannah suggested.

    “Some people can do that,” Tabitha sighed. “My father isn’t one of those people. He’s not capable of asking for help, and to a certain extent he’s not capable of accepting too much help, either. He’ll leave it in God’s hands, for his life to be as long as God decides—which is, hah, which is so infuriating because he’s not even that religious. Sorry.”

    “It’s okay,” Hannah said with a frown.

    “Maybe that’s part of how I fix this,” Tabitha said. “Maybe if I can get him going to church, and then get a pastor to tell him he needs to go in for all of the treatment he needs. Maybe I just need to—I don’t know. Apply pressure from a different direction? Instead of running into the same stoic stupid wall over and over again with no result, and feeling like I have to give up.”

    “Yeah,” Hannah agreed. “You should do that.”

    “I guess I will,” Tabitha said. “Thank you, Hannah Banana. Thank you for listening to me vent.”

    “It’s okay,” Hannah said. “Sorry for—for earlier.”

    “It’s okay,” Tabitha smiled. “I really do understand. I love it here with you guys. I love pretending you’re my real family. Just, I also—”

    “We are your family,” Hannah insisted. “Mom said so.”

    “I know,” Tabitha said. “Just. I also can’t ever forget about the family I’ve left behind, and what my absence is doing to them. I’m in a much better place then I was before, mentally. I can do more. I will do more—I’m going to fix everything.”

   * * *

    Tabitha ushered Hannah into the bathroom and they brushed their teeth together, and then she got Hannah changed into pajamas and tucked into bed. Most nights the routine was bath and a bit of TV time and then storybook reading together, but it was already late and both of the girls were in a quiet, somewhat despondent mood. Busywork chores that had filled Tabitha’s schedule before were now a little neglected with her investing so much of her attention towards school, but Tabitha made her rounds tonight through a quiet house tidying things up here and there where she could.

    Her outfit for tomorrow was laid out and ready, and this time she would remember to bring her Gameboy so that she could play a bit of Pokemon with Alicia at lunch. Hannah’s insulated lunchbox was wiped clean, and the empty ziplock bags and crumpled Capri-Sun juice pouch were tossed in the trash. The fabric lunchbox wouldn’t need wiped clean of sticky residue every day if the juice pouch was thrown out at school when Hannah was done with it, but Tabitha honestly didn’t mind that Hannah kept forgetting.

    It gave her something to do, cleaning out the lunchbox at night and preparing it again in the mornings made Tabitha feel useful; like she was earning her keep here. The more she focused on her time at high school and her silly progress towards maybe being popular someday, the less she felt like she actually deserved to be here with the Macintires. She wasn’t putting her all into taking care of the house if she spent most of every day at school.

    “Excuse me,” Tabitha cleared her throat, now knocking this time on Officer Macintire’s door. “Would it be alright if I used the phone to call my dad? I um, I haven’t uh. I’ve been putting off talking to him.”

    “What?” Officer Macintire called back.

    “Um, would it be alright if—”

    “Oh! Yeah, sure—go for it,” Officer Macintire called through the door. “I wasn’t usin’ it—was just watchin’ my show. Go on ahead.”

    “Thank you,” Tabitha said.

    After striding back to the kitchen, she took a moment to balk and fidget and tidy up an appearance that no one would see before finally picking up the cordless phone and punching in the familiar number. Hearing the tone as it tried to connect filled her with anxiety, and then when someone finally answered it, it turned out to be her mother.

    “Hello?”

    “Hi mom, um,” Tabitha said. “It’s Tabitha. I uh, I was hoping to talk to dad.”

    “He just finished that steak,” Mrs. Moore said. “One second. Alan! It’s Tabitha.”

    There was rustling as the phone on the other end was handed over.

    “Tabitha?” Mr. Moore asked. “It’s great to hear from you—thank you guys for dinner, that was somethin’ else. Been a long time since I had a steak like that. Years!”

    “Hey dad,” Tabitha said into the handset phone. “You can um. You can fix a toilet, right?”

    “Probably, yeah,” Mr. Moore answered. “Sure. If you guys are havin’ some problems I can take a look, see what I can do.”

    “Well. No, the Macintires aren’t,” Tabitha said. “Springton High is. In the girls’ locker room—we have three toilets, but only one of them’s working. One won’t flush, the other I think she said has a broken bowl. And then also—some of the showers themselves aren’t running, they’re just like, capped off with PVC caps.”

    “Ah,” Mr. Moore paused. “Well, honestly can’t help you, there. All the school grounds stuff has to be done by their own district maintenance people, that’s totally outta my jurisdiction. You’d have to kick word up the ladder to them about dealin’ with all that.”

    “What if, for whatever reason—district maintenance is incompetent, incapable, or for some reason recalcitrant to solve these issues?” Tabitha asked. “From what the coach said, these are issues that have been persistent for years. She has been trying to raise money independently to find someone to help fix things—which is why. I don’t know. I thought of you, I thought maybe you would know something.”

    “Honey, I honestly don’t think I’m even allowed to take a look,” Mr. Moore admitted. “If somethin’ were to go wrong, liability—”

    “Then,” Tabitha cut her father off. “You could run me through the basics sometime, show me how to fix them? Then, I could I guess, sneak in and vandalize them back into working order. Without permission. Right? Hypothetically speaking.”

    “Haaaahh,” Mr. Moore blew out a long breath. “Well. For gettin’ one to flush again, maybe? Sure. That ain’t too hard to figure out, most times. Could have a go with a toilet tank kit and probably get it working. Cracked bowl, though? Nothin’ you can do there, you’d have to swap in a whole new toilet. Two hundred, maybe three hundred bucks, right there.”

    “Okay, so we can maybe get one toilet fixed,” Tabitha adjusted her expectations. “Having two out of three toilets would still be a huge improvement over just having one working one. What about shower heads? Would I need to—what? Get the water shut off, remove the PVC caps and install shower head fixtures?”

    “I’m not sure without takin’ a look at what’s goin’ on there,” Mr. Moore admitted. “Depends on where the problem was, and what went wrong.”

    “Okay,” Tabitha said. “How about—we don’t have hot water. At the locker rooms, it’s only lukewarm. Is there anything we can do about that?”

    “Hmm,” Mr. Moore paused and considered it. “Is there vents on up through there? Like for, uh, well for heat, for air, all that.”   

    “Um?” Tabitha thought about it. “No, no air or heat or anything. Coach Baylor’s classroom is back in there, and she has to have a little electric space heater.”

    “Ah,” Mr. Moore said. “Your locker rooms, are they in the main, central school building? Or thereabouts?”

    “No,” Tabitha explained. “They’re both kind of tucked in under the grandstands. The ones by track and field, the area with all the bleachers.”

    “Then, my best guess—and this is just me spitballin,’” Mr. Moore warned. “You’re probably way off and removed from the central school buildings where all their HVAC is run through. Your school’d have a whole boiler room for all that, but maybe they don’t pipe that all the way out to the grandstands. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t? Mighta just did the easier thing an’ just set up a little electric hot water heater tank up in there. If they did, s’not gonna make a huge difference, not goin’ out to two sets of showers and sinks and all that for two locker rooms.”

    “Well, no sinks,” Tabitha explained with a frown. “...Maybe some sinks? There’s restrooms in the same building, actually. I have no idea yet if their sinks have actual hot water. I’ll check.”

    “If it’s just fixin’ a couple toilets an’ showerheads, just a call into whoever’s doin’ the maintenance there will take care of it,” Mr. Moore said. “All of that but swappin’ out the commode with the broken bowl’d be pretty cheap and easy fixes, I imagine. Like I said, whole new toilet’d run a couple hundred bucks.”

    “For whatever reason, these are longstanding problems,” Tabitha said, giving him a shrug he wouldn’t be able to see. “I don’t know. I’m just trying to understand what’s going on. You said a ‘toilet tank kit,’ how much do those cost?”

    As someone from the future she’d bought them before and had a rough idea of how much they cost, but then also—this wasn’t entirely about fixing a toilet, it was about finding a means to reconnect with her father over something. Also... she remembered fiddling with the tank kit for a half hour and then giving up and calling a plumber to deal with it after not figuring things out.

    “If you know what way it’s broken back in there, you can buy just the parts you need to replace and it’ll probably be just a buck or two,” Mr. Moore explained. “Super cheap, yeah. A whole kit is most all the parts that go back there in the tank. I dunno, fifteen, twenty bucks? If you ask around, someone might have a kit they bought and used some parts from, that’s still just tucked away under a sink somewhere with all the rest of the parts you need for your tank.”

    “I’ll, um, I’ll look into it further,” Tabitha promised. “And, showerheads would be cheap? From what I saw, something went wrong, and two of the heads are just stopped up with PVC caps.”

    “Can’t rightly say, to be honest,” Mr. Moore said. “I’d have to know what happened. Mayhap somethin’ somewhere was leaking or losin’ pressure and made a mess of things—I dunno. It doesn’t sound like anything your district maintenance would have too much trouble sorting out.”

    “Okay. I’ll learn more and get back to you,” Tabitha promised. “And, um. I’m sorry for. For everything, for well. Avoiding you. I told you I needed time to uh, to process everything, and instead I—I guess I’ve been trying to ignore everything, to not deal with it. When I do need to actually work on processing everything, and talk things through with you, and yeah. So. Sorry. Sorry for avoiding you.”

    “Nothing you ever gotta worry about,” Mr. Moore assured her. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did avoid me—not after the whole thing with Lisa. I should have listened to you in the first place, should have trusted you knew what was what. You’re way smarter’n me, I know that by now. I guess—I guess I just want to think of it like you’re my little girl, even when you’re just ‘bout already all grown up already.”

    “I am grown up already,” Tabitha took a deep breath. “But, also in some ways I never grew up. I’ve been acting childish. I uh, I didn’t handle Lisa or talk things through with you in a mature way like I should have. I lost my temper.”

    “No, hon, you were in the right,” Mr. Moore said. “You knew she was into heroin—if I’d been able to stop and see that, I would’ve lost my cool, too. You were in the right. I love you, honey—and I’m so proud of you.”

    “I love you too,” Tabitha said, feeling a surge of relief for reasons she couldn’t even pinpoint right now. “I’ll uh. I’ll talk to you again soon. Maybe start spending weekends over there again, we’ll figure something out. Love you. Bye.”

( Previous, 59 pt 1 | RE: Trailer Trash | Next, 59 pt 3 )

/// Actually not gonna stick you guys on an awful cliff this time, this is a pretty generous stopping point. Gonna switch over to write on my other fic for a few sections, and then return to RE:TT towards the end of the month.