This Is Where We Are (Re: Happily Ever Elsinore)

"I'm proud to be trailer trash!" exclaimed the Tall Blond in the boots. "No, no," said Somebody Else's Mother, "it's not 'trailer trash'. It's 'trailer troops'!" She meant it as a joke... sort of. "My dream house is a double-wide on about 4 acres of land so's I can have my animals and not see my neighbors!" the Blond went on. "Kids used to chase me home from school and call me trailer trash but I don't care! The mobile home's paid for! So ha!"

I stood there on the new faux-wood floor and stared into the cold pellet fireplace. Pieces of animals clung to the walls in testament that men with guns can kill creatures without guns. "Really?" I wondered, "Is that really her dream? Or is it bravado watered down with misplaced pride? Or, worse, is it all she dares to dream, convinced after years of disappointment that it's all she could ever deserve?"

The Sweetest Child now ran in. She flung her arms around me and I hugged her tightly wishing I could take her away forever. It had just been discovered that her father was sexually abusing her during her weekends with him. At least, that's what her mother, the Tall Blond said. Unfortunately the Tall Blond was a compulsive liar and it was always hard to tell what was really going on. She had a good heart, but a poor mind, and if the state knew just how poor the Sweetest Child would no doubt be on her way to foster care. It's hard to choose between so many evils. When the Tall Blond first made accusations against the father, the state's form of "mediation" had been to say that the Sweetest Child should be sent back to the father's home for the weekend to, I kid you not, "see if it happens again". I wanted to cry as I held her, but the anger that ignited in my chest dried the tears before they could make their way out. And so I stood there, holding the Sweetest Child, trying to douse the fire with the mantra that "vengeance belongs to god, he will repay."

The Sweetest Child released me and ran to the New Baby squirming on the couch. The Family Friend, never to be found far from the couch, was doing that thing where she pretended to be minding the New Baby, but wasn't actually doing anything to prevent it from crying, flying, or dying. "Don't touch her!!" screeched the Tall Blond as the Sweetest Child attempted to lift her sister from the couch. The Family Friend didn't say anything. She never said anything.

I stood there as the conversation moved around me. I would look at my shoes, I would glance out the door, I would search for ways to relate. I, too, was "trailer trash", although no one had ever dared to call me that, much less chase me home from school. I had never shacked up with a man who tried to strangle me before my child's eyes, and then later attacked the child in unimaginable ways as a form of hurting me once I was beyond his reach.

"Come see the doll collection!" exclaimed the Mother and Somebody Else's Mother. I followed dutifully into the "office", a room with a computer against one wall and floor-to-ceiling shelves heaped high with all sorts of dolls on the other. The Mother had been collecting them all her life. Barbies, baby dolls, miniature victorian dolls, anything with a plastic face in a ruffled dress. I thought about how I had owned only two dolls in my entire life. One was a Korean silk doll brought back during the war by my grandfather, the other a baby doll that I was drawn to after just barely being too old for dolls anymore. I couldn't make sense of the heaps of painted cheeks and glass eyes. I walked out of the room wondering if any of them had names. Or if they all had names. I shook my head in bewilderment.

The Slow Cowboy hung around awkwardly in the corner. He had asked me out on a date once. It was my mother's fault. She would make me dance with him at the congregation dances. Of course I had to ask him, since he was so shy, and it was always rather painful as he was a terrible dancer. But no one else would dance with him besides his mother, so I had to do it. Why me? I guess because I didn't really mind, although I was afraid he would take it into his head to ask me out, which is exactly what happened. I had to turn him down, which apparently was a soul-crushing experience for him, and my mother has felt bad ever since. He also has a good heart, but his mind lags behind his body in development, and he'll never be fully capable of taking care of himself. At least not in this system. However, at this moment I loved him because he was sitting with the Sweetest Child in his lap, and I knew she was completely safe with him. His innocence made him almost beautiful, and I knew his mind worked well enough that if her disgusting father showed up anytime he wouldn't hesitate to fetch the rifle.

The Tall Blond had never stopped talking, and I had never started listening. I stared up into the glass eyes of a disembodied elk hovering above my head. Another doll without a name. I stared at him, begging him to help me make sense of good people in a world that was too bad and too much for them to handle. People who were beaten down to a point where their only recourse was to take pride in the insults that had cut them, and to embrace the stigmas that haunted them. Because these people were, in their own way, happy. And I, standing in the midst of it but never really touching it, was not.

So who's stupid now?