RE: Trailer Trash 8 pt 4 (Patreon)

   “Aiden. You put that on your plate, now you better eat it. No child o’ mine’s gonna be wastin’ food on Thanksgivin’—you better eat it, or so help me God,” Aunt Lisa threatened, pointing a finger across the table right in her son’s face. “That goes for all of you’ns. If them plates ain’t clean, none of y’all are gettin’ any dessert. You hear me?”

   He DIDN’T put the ham on his plate, you did, Tabitha seethed. My dad asked if they wanted to try any ham and they each POLITELY refused and I was so proud of their table manners! So, what do you do? You yell at them, insist they’re insulting Grandma Laurie who made it for them, and slapped a cut of ham on each of their plates. With your filthy fucking FINGERS, when there’s a pair of tongs right there in the dish with the cuts of ham!

   “There’s dessert?” Aiden dared to raise his head.

   “No, there’s no dessert—it’s a figure of speech Aiden, don’t be a smartass,” Aunt Lisa growled. “Jesus H. Christ, y’all act like fuckin’ animals. And they wonder why I didn’t want y’all around, it’s been nothin’ but sass and backtalkin’ me since the minute I got here.”

   There was a clatter of silverware against a dish as Tabitha rose up out of her seat in a blind, sickening rage, and only Grandma Laurie’s hand on her shoulder stopped her. Glaring pure venom at Aunt Lisa, Tabitha slowly—reluctantly—eased back down into her seat. Her temper seemed to be on a hair-trigger now, and although she didn’t know what she would actually do if she dived over and tackled Aunt Lisa, she knew it wouldn’t be good.

   “Lisa—please,” Grandma Laurie tried to mediate. “It’s Thanksgiving. Let’s just try to—”

   “No, nuh-uh,” Lisa forked another helping of scalloped potatoes into her mouth and then used the fork to gesture with. “I ain’t puttin’ up with any shit. You’ve been mollycoddlin’ these boys an’ been soft on ‘em, but all that shit ends right here, right now. You hear me, boys?”

   What a joke—they haven’t done anything at all worth scolding them for, Tabitha felt nauseous simply sitting at the same table as her Aunt. You’re going WAY out of your way in an attempt to assert dominance. Trying to posture your way back into a family hierarchy you have NO fucking place in.

   Tabitha could only look around the table in disbelief, because it appeared to be working. Her father looked uncomfortable and wore a slight frown as he chewed his food, but didn’t seem like he was planning on speaking up. Mrs. Moore almost seemed to be glowering but rarely looked up from her plate and seemed to retreat back into the background once any conversation with Lisa started, because of the social anxieties she still seemed crippled with. Grandma Laurie seemed to think it wasn’t her place to intervene between the mother and her children and was simply putting up with it.

   But—I CAN’T put up with it, Tabitha felt sick, her appetite was gone, and she glared down at her dish and idly rearranged food she no longer intended to eat with her fork. Seeing each of the boys—MY boys— just taking the abuse, like beaten dogs—I can’t. I can’t. I’m going to speak up. I’m going to cause a fit. And, and, if no one else takes my side? Then—I, I don’t know. But, I can’t keep putting up with this. If she says ONE more thing to them—

   “Nicholas,” Aunt Lisa snapped. “Use yer goddamn napkin, you’ve got food on your fuckin’—”

   “Aunt Lisa, stop,” Tabitha shot out of her seat. “What is wrong with you?”

   “You sit yer ass down and shut your mouth,” Lisa’s voice rose. “Don’t you fuckin’ tell me how to raise my goddamn kids—”

   “Lisa, please—” Mr. Moore put his fork down onto his plate with a clenk.

   “You’re not their mother!” Tabitha stammered, feeling her throat constrict and fighting back tears of panic—she was NOT adept at these kind of verbal confrontations. “You walked out on them. You walked out on them. You walked out and abandoned them, and th-that means you forfeit any say—”

   “I did what I hadta do, and now I’m back, right here where I belong, because I’m a great fucking momma! I’m the best goddamn momma in the world, you hear me, and what do you know about being a mother? Huh? You sit yer scrawny ass down! You don’t know shit ‘bout what I’ve had to do, or where I been, an’ it’s none o’ your business no matter where I been in the first place!”

   “Mom—” Joshua tried to speak up.

   “Where, doing what?!” Tabitha demanded. “You didn’t even—”

   “Alan—I swear to God, you better put her in her place ‘fore I do it for you,” Aunt Lisa warned, slapping a hand down on the table loudly enough to make Joshua flinch. “I swear to God I will. Don’t think I won’t.”

   “Mom—” Joshua tugged at Aunt Lisa’s arm.

   “Get offa me, you little turd!” Aunt Lisa backhanded him across the cheek with enough force to rock the young boy back in his chair.

   Tabitha was so stunned she didn’t realize she’d risen back up to her feet again until she heard her chair tip back and totter down to the ground behind her. Watching her hands grab out at the back of her mother’s chair, and then her father’s shoulder made her see that she was racing around the table. She was in motion, but she didn’t even know what she was doing—either making sure Joshua was okay, or tackling his mother to the fucking ground and beating her to a goddamn pulp. She didn’t know what she was doing. Rather than thinking or deliberating or planning, Tabitha felt like a puppet that had been yanked up and into jerky, violent motions by strings of white-hot rage, because her emotions had completely taken control.

   “Ya don’t go all hangin’ on people like yer some kinda fuckin’ animal—”

   Aunt Lisa was all but snarling into the face of her wet-eyed son when Tabitha stole him away, taking her small cousin awkwardly with her cast and her good hand and lifting him out of his seat into an awkward embrace. It hurt, Joshua was heavy—at eight years old he weighed maybe sixty pounds—but Tabitha’s muscles were screaming out in pain to deaf ears as she cradled the boy’s face against her and hauled him away. She was running away with him—she didn’t know where to, and in a blur of motion further distorted by her own tears, Tabitha discovered she’d wound up back in Grandma Laurie’s bedroom.

   “I’m okay,” Joshua protested, trying to struggle free and down to his feet. “I’m—”

   Fumbling with the doorknob quite a bit, as she was not willing to let Joshua out of her arms for even an instant, Tabitha finally managed to move the door and then shoulder it closed behind them. She locked it. Then, she carried Joshua over to the edge of the bed and sat.

   “I’m okay,” Joshua repeated. “It’s—don’t cry. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

   “It is NOT okay,” Tabitha managed out before she felt her throat closing up.

   “It—it didn’t hurt,” Joshua insisted. “I’m okay. It didn’t even hurt.”

   Tabitha couldn’t argue with him, because anything she would have said was choked out with sobs. She was in no shape to have attempted lifting him and she’d strained what felt like everything in her back, but the nauseating pit of anger and hatred in her stomach overwhelmed anything and everything else she might have felt. She pulled Joshua close and hugged him tight as she cried, and outside the room the voices of Aunt Lisa and her parents arguing back and forth out in the dining room continued to rise.

*     *     *

   Forty minutes passed before her father realized he was going to have to unlock the bedroom door from the other side with a screwdriver, and Tabitha watched the knob finally twist open with detached interest. She felt completely drained. She’d cried and cried and cried, and despite whatever tough little Joshua might tell his brothers later, she knew he’d cried, too. Most of the heated emotions that had strangled out all rational thought finally did drop away, but as they receded her mind felt cold, bitter, and hateful.

   Her eyes felt swollen and puffy, her throat felt raw and sore, her entire body ached, and Tabitha simply stared at Mr. Moore as he entered Grandma Laurie’s bedroom and sat down beside them.

   “You okay, Josh?” He asked, tousling the boy’s hair.

   “I’m okay,” Joshua nodded, glancing at Tabitha. “It’s—I’m okay.”

   “Why don’t you go on out there in the living room and watch the TV with your brothers,” Mr. Moore suggested.

   Joshua slid off the edge of the bed, but looked first to Tabitha for permission to leave. She opened her mouth and then closed it again, not knowing what to say and finally simply giving him a nod. When her cousin left, giving her one last lingering look, the room seemed to close in on Tabitha in a crushing way, and she had to hunch up her shoulders and retreat into herself just to fight it back. She was exhausted.

   “Tabby honey…” Mr. Moore cleared his throat. “I don’t know what got into your Aunt Lisa tonight. We’ve talked an’ talked with her, an’ she’s out on the porch. Coolin’ her head a bit. I… know you and your Aunt Lisa don’t quite really get along, but no matter what—she is family.”

   “Oh, she is?” Tabitha stared ahead at the door, refusing to face him. ‘Cooling her head a bit?’ Please. She’s probably out there lounging on the porch swing, smoking a cigarette and feeling QUITE pleased with herself. If she feels anything at all.

   “She is, sweetie,” Mr. Moore said in a firm voice. “She’s your Aunt.”

   “Family—by marriage,” Tabitha pointed out. “So, if an awful or really untrustworthy person marries into the family, they’re still family? We just have to, to stiffen our chin and put up with them no matter what? Ignore their mistakes, no matter what? Forgive and forget? Give them money, support and enable them to continue being awful people who don’t ever have to face the consequences of their mistakes? Because they’re family?”

   “Now Sweetie, your Aunt Lisa isn’t awful or untrus—”

   “Dad, she abandoned her children,” Tabitha said. “She left them. No notice, no heads-up, no contact information—she was just gone. Gone. That’s not okay. That’s not okay. That’s not something family would do. She’s not family. I mean, the minute Uncle Danny gets locked up, she just disappears from their life? That’s—”

   “Tabitha, this whole thing has been hard on your Aunt Lisa,” Mr. Moore rebutted. “You know she was having trouble finding work where—”

   “She came back for the money,” Tabitha gave her father a helpless shrug. “Not for family. She’s not family, Dad, she just isn’t. I don’t care whatever fucking sob story she’s sold you, or what excuses you make for her. If you want to ask me if I’m okay with her borrowing money from the settlements—I’m not. Period. End of story.”

   “If this is about your—your I don’t know, this phase you’re going through—”

   “Dad.”

   “—that gives you a problem with the way she talks or her being a more down-to-earth kind of person—”

   “Dad, she struck her child, right in front of us. She’s not down-to-earth. She’s fucking trash. She’s a rat who abandoned ship at the first sign of stormy weather here. She’s a parasite, who only slunk back here for the money. She’s a terrible fucking mother, and she’s a drug addict. A junkie. She’s doing drugs.”

   “Honey,” Mr. Moore let out another slow sigh as he paused to gather his thoughts. “Your Aunt Lisa... isn’t doing drugs, you can’t say things like that. Just because you think she—”

   “There’s heroin in her purse,” Tabitha shrugged, satisfied at least that he didn’t dare to refute her other points. “She won’t let it out of her sight. There’s drug-use puncture marks at the vein on the inside of her arm. They teach us to watch out for these things in school—that’s what the whole D.A.R.E. program is all about, Dad.”

   “Your Aunt Lisa wouldn’t do heroin, Tabby,” Mr. Moore shook his head in exasperation. “Tabitha… you know she’s smarter than that.”

   “Check her purse,” Tabitha insisted, crossing her arms. “Leave some cash laying about, see if it disappears. Again—check her purse. Ask her if she’s been in our medicine cabinet—you know, I had three of those strong codeine tablets left over in that little orange prescription bottle. Where’d that little pill bottle go, Dad? Why did she come to us, instead of here, stopping by to check on the boys first? Her own children? She could have walked over here any time today, it’s just a few blocks away.”

   “Tabitha, stop,” Mr. Moore shook his head. “It’s more’n a few blocks, and you know she don’t have a vehicle to get around no more. The—”

   “Sorry, no,” Tabitha rejected his excuse. “Grandma Laurie and the boys aren’t that far away. If I can walk over there to visit them, so can she.”

   “Your Aunt Lisa isn’t you, Honey,” Mr. Moore argued. “She knew we could drive her over there, and, it’s not a problem for us to give her a hand. She’s family, Tabby. You don’t just—”

   “‘Family’ isn’t some magical free pass, Dad,” Tabitha held her ground. “I’m sorry, Dad, it’s just not. You’re not going to change my mind on this, and, apparently, I’m not going to get through to you. I’m done talking about it, because I’m done with Aunt Lisa. I’m sorry for all the swearing. I—I want to go home, now.”

   *    *    *

   “I’m so sorry about all this,” Grandma Laurie fretted, hovering over Tabitha and helping straighten the hoodie Tabitha had donned. “I don’t know what’s gotten into your Aunt Lisa’s head, acting that way. I’ll make sure to keep a close eye on her.”

   “No, she’s not staying here with the boys,” Tabitha stated with finality. “She’s coming back to the trailer park with us. I’m going to take care of everything.”

   “Tabby, honey…” Grandma Laurie paused.

   “I just,” Tabitha’s expression was one of resignation. “I hope you won’t think less of me for what I have to do.”

   “Well, of course I won’t,” Grandma Laurie gave Tabitha’s shoulder a squeeze. “But—well, what are you going to do?”

   “I love you, Grandma Laurie,” Tabitha stepped in to wrap her arms around the old woman. “I love you, and I love the boys—and I’m going to protect my family.”

   “I love you too, sweetheart,” Grandma Laurie sighed. “Please don’t make that sound so ominous, though. Promise me you won’t go an’ do anything dramatic, okay? Whatever all how you must think of her now, Lisa is still their mother, and with some time things’ll settle back down with everyone to how they used to be. You’ll see.”

   “No,” Tabitha shook her head. “No, she isn’t, and no—they won’t.”

/// 8 pt 5 will be posted up tonight, or... well, gimme a couple hours. Going to go through and edit updates to the previous sections throughout this afternoon, bits got moved around and rearranged (one of Tabitha's moments of introspection was THIRTEEN paragraphs long) and other sections got a lot added to them.

A lot of this was in rewrite hell, as I had a more violent confrontation that didn't mesh up well because then it felt like the parents and grandmother were underreacting. Maybe to some this section as is still feels like they are, I'm sure everyone's mileage will vary based on their own experiences.

Also took a fair few days off, been feeling very emotionally wrung out by mentally reliving a lot of the experiences that I express here in this chapter. In good news though, the two white cats have been adopted, and their mother is healed up from her surgery and back to being an outside stray that I put out food for but don't take care of in an intensive personal capacity anymore. The three remaining kittens and their mother are here with me for the rest of this month, then those kittens are going to a home and their mother is going back outside.