RE: Trailer Trash 50 pt G (Patreon)

/// Wait where's part F? I'm... yes, rewriting it again. So, this G section here skips entirely past the boys getting their gameboys which yes I know is the high point everyone wanted to see. It was okay, but it was not good enough. Wanted to get F redone and finished today, but then got sidetracked in a huge way by Tenne in the early morning as we try to alter her last two orders, YeMcBear in the mid morning as we work on her new Chloe stuff, and then Basem this afternoon had a big problem with his first sketch or... some miscommunication of some kind that needed worked out.

////Altogether this Christmas chap is growing dangerously close to 18k words (which means I'll probably need to split it into two chapters), just there doesn't seem to be a handy point to do that. Unless maybe I squish the early section bits (the continued drive-thru scene and then the Elena with her mom scene) backwards and just make them part of ch 49? Idk. Super burnt out by everything today

“Man,” Joshua muttered, wholly entranced by the Gameboy Color in his hands. “I bet every Christmas woulda been this good if mom wasn’t spending all the money on drugs.”

What followed was a moment of stunned, aghast silence as everyone turned to stare at him.

“Joshua!” Grandma Laurie exclaimed.

“Joshua—I don’t ever wanna hear you talk about your own mother that way,” Mr. Moore’s voice rose in volume until it sounded threatening.

“Honey—” Mrs. Moore attempted to interject. “I’m sure he—”

“She’s your own mother!” Mr. Moore exploded. “Things’re bad enough like they are, we don’t need you goin’ ‘round repeatin’ whatever malarkey nonsense you’ve heard other people say.”

“Alan—” Mrs. Moore tried again, but her husband pressed on heedless of interruption.

“They don’t know your momma, they don’t know this family, and honest to God, they don’t even know what they’re talking about,” Mr. Moore said. “They think everyone an’ anyone who happens to live in a trailer court must all just be lowlifes and junkies, they have absolutely no Christian considera—”

“Dad—could I speak to you privately for a moment?” Tabitha asked, feeling her body still as simmering anger rose up within her. “Please?”

“Privately?” Mr. Moore said, raising his eyebrows at her apparent challenge. “Why? Why privately, honey? There somethin’ you’re too ashamed to say here in front of the boys?”

“Ashamed? No,” Tabitha hugged her arms across herself tightly for protection as the situation seemed to spiral completely out of her control. “I have—I have nothing to be ashamed of! I was hoping to. To be able to reason with you, without some kind of… big, confrontational argument—something that might undermine your authority as a parent.”

“Tabitha,” Mr. Moore chuckled ruefully, shaking his head. “I am a parent, I’m the adult here, and there ain’t nothin’ in the world’s gonna take that away or ‘undermine it’ or make that any different. I just am a parent—I do have the authority and say so.”

Oh, really? Then—why have I gone to live with another family?

Tabitha opened her mouth to say just that, but barely—just barely—managed to restrain herself, snapping her lips closed and biting them into a bitter line. Those were words that, once spoken, she was not going to be able to take back. She was tempted to voice out those thoughts, anyways—because they were the truth. No, maybe she wasn’t so tempted because the words were the truth. She wanted to say it because she was furious, and she knew those words would hurt him.

“Oh. Okay,” Tabitha finally said.

“I’m a parent,” Mr. Moore continued, shaking his head. “Your Grandma Laurie’s a parent. Danny and Lisa—they’re parents, it means they deserve to be treated with some respect, no matter what. No matter what kind of random trouble comes our way, it’s important for us to stick together. To support one another. We’re family, for Christ’s sakes!”

Anguish and embarrassment were roiling in tandem just beneath Tabitha’s skin, rebuttals to each of his statements whipped across her mind too fast to grasp onto, and she had no earthly idea what expression she was making anymore, so—she left. Tabitha walked past the sofa where Nicholas and Samuel were peeking up from behind their Gameboy Colors, grabbed her coat, and walked out the door. She closed the door carefully behind her, mentally reeling.

The cold stung her face, but she didn’t feel tears. The dreary deadness of winter outside was dismal, but she wasn’t even seeing it. Still too flustered to properly put on her coat, Tabitha instead hugged it tight against herself as she paced over to the edge of the porch with no real destination in mind.

Just walk away. Yeah. Just walk away. Yeah. Walking away here is maybe the most mature thing I’ve done in my whole life, Tabitha wanted to decide. Or, maybe it’s stupid? I don’t know, I really, honestly don’t know. Maybe sparing him a few cruel words was the real cruelty, when he really, REALLY needs to fucking hear them. No, I’m being mature. I’M GROWN THE FUCK UP.

She knew she was too close to the issue to pull it apart and analyze what her best course of action would have been. Just like she was familiar enough with herself to know attempting analysis—if you could even call it that, she would just be running the situation over and over again in her head, wheels spinning in place and getting nowhere—was going to happen regardless.

I should have said it, maybe, Tabitha wanted to cry, but nothing was properly coming out. She turned the other way, anxiously searching down the empty street with no clue as to what she was looking for.

I should have said it, but not—but not in that way, not right then in that moment, not out of HATE. Not out of spite. Not just to hurt him. That would have been… terrible. I don’t think I would have ever been okay with that or been able to live with that. So. Walking away, just fucking—walking away, that was the smart thing to do. Right? He wasn’t going to actually LISTEN to what I was saying anyways, so I, the fucking adult in this situation, just, I just. Disengaged. I disengaged. That was the mature thing to do there. It’s stupid to try arguing with someone when you know they’re not even listening. Right? If—

The door opened, and Tabitha braced herself as her mother clomped out onto the porch, still struggling her way into a puffy parka.

“Well don’t look at me, I’m on your side!” Mrs. Moore huffed at Tabitha. “He’s a goddamned fool.”

The woman fumbled trying to slam the door shut behind her and eventually got her arm the rest of the way through the sleeve and pushed it closed. The fact that Tabitha’s mother was willing to stomp out and join her in the cold was incredibly touching, and the defensive facade Tabitha had attempted to muster fell away. She tried to give her mom a smile and a laugh, but what came out was instead a choked hiccup intake of breath that sounded more like a sob.

“You’re okay, you’re okay—he’s just, Tabitha hon, he’s an idiot,” Mrs. Moore hurried over and wrapped her daughter in a quick hug. “Let’s get you into your coat, alright? Get you into your coat. It’s freezing out here!”

So, Tabitha’s stoic expression crumbled. Those very welcome tears finally arrived, Tabitha broke down crying, and she allowed herself to feel intensely vulnerable as her increasingly flustered mother tried to dress her in the jacket. As childish as it sounded, Tabitha was just tired of thinking things through and being mature, and in that moment she wished she really had gone and simply went off on her stupid, bull-headed father—just thrown a total tantrum. It was exhausting trying to be the level-headed one all the time, because then where was she to vent out all of her feelings?

Once properly situated into her coat, Tabitha clung to the warmth of her mother against the frigid Christmas air, feeling wretched but at least not feeling alone.

*     *     *

“Boys—why don’t you take your game boys and play in your room for a bit, alright?” Grandma Laurie ordered in a stern tone.

She wasn’t angry at them, but she was indeed feeling mighty cross, and the four boys could tell. They jumped up and were practically elbowing each other out of the way in a scramble for the hallway to escape. The strange chiptune video game music blared to life for a few seconds as one of them accidentally thumbed a little volume wheel, and with a hush of exchanged whispers and hisses at each other they closed the bedroom door behind them.

“Alan,” Grandma Laurie put her fingertips to her temples in consternation. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Mom…” Mr. Moore shook his head. “C’mon, I just knew we were gonna wind up fightin’. Just knew right from the get go she was gonna be lookin’ for anyway and anywhat here she could poke in and challenge my—”

“Alan,” Grandma Laurie reprimanded. “She just wanted to speak with you about it. Can she not just speak with you privately?! What’s the matter with that?”

“No, she wasn’t,” Mr. Moore shook his head. “She wasn’t wantin’ to speak with me off on our own—not really. She was wanting to be able to get me aside so she could, you know, twist all the words around and get me confused about what I’m talking about, when I know I’m not confused about what I’m talking about. You know how smart she is, I’m sure you’ve seen how clever she is with, with putting her words around and rearranging whatever topic it is so that she always seems to come out right ‘bout anything and everything.”

“Because it’s just completely impossible that she is right, is that it?” Grandma Laurie put both of her hands on the kitchen counter. “There’s just no way that you’re wrong, and she’s right?”

“I’m her father,” Mr. Moore said. “She needs to respect that, an’ she needs to respect that her uncle Danny and aunt Lisa—they’re parents, too. Speakin’ the way she does about them, it’s unheard of.”

“Alan, if you want to push her away, just keep doin’ what you’re doin’,” Grandma Laurie gave him a contemplative look. “Hell, it’s working. I sure hope that’s what you want, because it’s working.”

“Oh, c’mon—she lost her temper and stormed off, you saw it,” Mr. Moore gestured towards the door. “She could’ve spoke her piece about whatever’n it was with smart nonsense she was gonna try to, to corner me with, but she didn’t—because it was gonna have to be be all of us out here hearin’ it.”

“Is that what that looked like to you?” Grandma Laurie shook her head. “‘Cause to me, it looked like she’s starting to give up on you.”

“Give up on me?” Mr. Moore asked. “Mom—c’mon now, she’s fourteen years old. I know what’s going on. She’s at that age, she’s gonna throw a fit sometimes and fuss about this or that. She doesn’t—”

“Alan. Listen to me. She’s starting to give up on you.”

*     *     *

“Way to go, turds for brains,” Aiden muttered under his breath.

“Shut up,” Joshua fumed at him. “Dickwad.”

Long past the intro cinematics and start of the game, Joshua was using the D-pad to navigate his little sprite character around exploring Pallet town and pressing the A button on everything he could find. Sometimes his efforts returned a dialogue prompt describing something, sometimes it did nothing. There was a little pixel representation of a personal computer in the player’s room, and going through it had rewarded him with a Potion that could apparently be used to heal his Bulbasaur.

The video game graphics of course were unimpressive compared to anything on their dad’s Nintendo 64, but this was miniaturized into an entire game console and display that fit in his hands. One that was his, completely his to own, one he didn’t have to share with anyone else. A little world all to himself he could drop down into and pretend in, a simple premise of pet monsters and a call to adventure that filled him with endless fascination and excitement.

“You shut up,” Aiden called. “Ignoramus. Hope you get in trouble. Hope they take away your Gameboy.”

“I didn’t even say anything wrong,” Joshua argued. “So what if I said stuff about mom? It was all the truth anyways. And—Tabitha’s the one that gave us these Gameboys, you ungrateful philistine!”

“Yeah, right,” Aiden rolled his eyes. “Retard. She’s barely even older than we are, and she doesn’t even have a job. So what if ‘she gave them to us,’ her parents were the ones that actually paid for them. Duh.”

“So, what?” Joshua growled. “She still was the one who gave them to us, she at least picked them out. Without her we’d’ve probably all gotten socks and sweaters from them for Christmas. So, still counts, fart fetus.”

“It doesn’t even really count, puke-stain-paramecium brain-dick-membrane.”

“Uncultured swine.”

“You’re such a disease.”

“Your mom’s a disease.”

“Your mom’s a disease, you diaper cheese.”

“Guys, shut up,” Nicholas murmured. “Play your stupid games already.”

“He started it.”

“Joshua’s the one who went and made everyone start fighting.”

“So, what? They were basically already fighting anyways.”

“Hope they take your Gameboy away.”

“Hope they take your Gameboy away.”

“Guys, shut up.”

Samuel was barely even visible from his next up on the top bunk bed, but he simply dialed the volume of his Pokemon Red up the whole way, drowning out the hushed back-and-forth argument between his brothers in battle music. A few moments later, Nicholas followed suit and the Pokecenter theme resounded from the opposite top bunk. Not ones to be left out, Joshua and Aiden made one last face at each other and cranked theirs up as well, adding two discordant plays of the Pallet town theme music to the noise in their room.

“Whatever,” Joshua scowled. “S’not my fault mom does drugs.”