RE: Trailer Trash 8: 8 pt 1 (Patreon)

/// Updated 9/05/2021 because this section got fleshed out a lot more.

   “Sweetie, you’re growin’ up to bein’ just the prettiest li’l thang!” Aunt Lisa praised, reaching over with a visibly sweaty hand to pinch at Tabitha’s cheek. “Yer at ‘bout that age—you tell yer Aunt Lissie ‘bout all them boys yer seein’!”

   “No time to talk about boys,” Tabitha leaned back from her Aunt’s grasp, struggling to keep her composure. “We’d fail the Bechdel test.”

   It was the same joke she’d managed back when first meeting Mrs. Williams, delivered with even less feeling this time. It honestly rankled that the immediate first question some women had for her was whether she was in a relationship, or chasing after a boy, or had herself set on one. That was a joke, because it simply wasn’t how Tabitha defined herself or her life.

   “Hah! That’s tha Kentucky public school system for ya, ahyup, nothin’ but test test test,” Lisa guffawed, turning her look of skepticism from Tabitha towards Mrs. Moore. “So, no boys been comin’ round at all? Not a single one?!”

   “She’s... a little young for that still, don’t you think?” Mrs. Moore frowned. “She just started high school this year, and between what happened with—”

   “Hell, I got mah cherry popped my first year o’ high school,” Lisa boasted. “Was datin’ one of the Seniors, mah Freshman year! Kenny Micheals, he got married an’ lives over by Elk Creek, now. Back then, we—”

   “I-I believe that’s my cue to retire for the night,” Tabitha rose from her spot on the living room sofa, still clutching the Flounder pillow against her chest. “Goodnight Mother. Goodnight Father. Goodnight… Aunt Lisa.”

   “Ahyup, beddy-by time for Tabby, you go on and get!” Aunt Lisa cackled at Tabitha’s manner of speech. “Retoir for the noight, hah! Listen to her. What a hoot! Nightie-night, girl!”

   Another cold chill crept up Tabitha’s back as she stepped slowly back down the hallway to her bedroom, being extra careful not to stomp. She wanted to stomp, she wanted to throw a fit—she was so livid about this whole unexpected mess that was dumping itself in their lap that her blood was racing adrenaline throughout her body in a fight or flight response. Lisa’s careless laughter and exaggerated Kentucky drawl continued on behind her, and every enunciated syllable just kept getting under her skin in a terrible way.

   Closing her bedroom door behind her only slightly muffled the woman’s voice, because the wall paneling of their mobile home was paper-thin fiberboard. Trying hard to tune out the half-audible sound of her speaking until it was just loathsome trashy noise, Tabitha nudged aside the crumpled flannel of her turned-back bedcovers so that she could sit upon the edge and regard herself in the mirror.

   Okay. Okay. Deep breath, calm way down, Tabitha locked eyes with her reflection and tried to focus on nothing else. Okay. Okay. OKAY.

   Calm didn’t come quickly, but it did eventually come to her, and she hugged Flounder and plucked absently at the edge of her cast while she considered what to do with the situation. Tabitha had never had a good impression of Uncle Danny or Aunt Lisa. Was that fair, though? Memories of her own mother from her first lifetime were uneasy at best, and rife with an entire heap of complicated, conflicting feelings otherwise. Initial perception of Elena had been so rotten that a middle-school phantom of the girl had shown up in her subconscious to bully her during one of those fever nightmares. The four cousins had once upon a time been annoying hooligans she didn’t care for at all.

   Okay—some of the anger at Lisa IS warranted, Tabitha blew out a slow breath. Some of this is overreaction. My knowledge and experience, my ‘software’ is… arguably a little more advanced, but the hardware it’s installed on right now is vintage THIRTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL, and emotions are dialed up to eleven. Even more than that, I’m feeling frustrated and helpless about this thing with Lisa is because I’m completely sinking into the ROLE of a thirteen year old girl. Somewhat. Classic Stanford prison experiment, I’ve been psychologically conforming to my expected social role here in nineteen ninety-eight.

   That’s honestly when I’m happiest, Tabitha thought, glancing across the many get-well cards across her dresser. When I can just be a normal teenage daughter, when things can just be simple and I can just have the loving family I always wanted. When I can just be the person I always wished I could have been. Or work my way towards that, at least.

   Her eyes continued to wander. A pair of the Reese’s peanut butter cups wrapped in golden foil that the boys had gifted her from the Halloween haul was the paperweight upon her school withdrawal papers and the homeschooling information printouts Mrs. Cribb had sent them. The rest of that small mountain of Reese’s was hidden in the freezer, where the chocolate wouldn’t tempt the Moore women with it’s seductive wiles. Otherwise, her tiny bedroom was still as sparsely decorated as it had been back during Halloween, when the girls had had that sleep over. Her room reflected the limbo of her state of being, because it wasn’t the place of a budding young girl, cluttered with her hopes and dreams for the future, and it also wasn’t the living space of an old woman, full of fond memories and knick-nacks from days gone by.

   Tabitha’s identity problems were beginning to reach a sense of actual crisis.

   Thirteen was supposed to be a time of metamorphosis, but everything for her was completely backwards, a psychological reversal of concepts. Her future adulthood was in the past, now, and the childhood she was revisiting was nothing like she remembered—it was almost all treading entirely new ground. Even despite her mind weathering through all of this reasonably well, Tabitha felt she was sometimes emotionally regressing in a serious way. All the intelligence in the world wouldn’t help her if the way she felt about things completely overwhelmed every rational decision.

   As a teenager here, I’m sullen and frustrated because I don’t have the agency to DO anything about Lisa. Because, I’m supposed to abide, to treat her like family, when she’s actually this white trash junkie, when she really makes me super uncomfortable, and yeah, I just don’t WANT to ever treat her like family. As this once-grown-up old lady from the future, I’m maybe mostly upset because... I HAVE to do something about this. I’m going to HAVE to get involved, I’m going to HAVE to be in some confrontation, I’m going to HAVE to raise a fuss, and I hate it. I hate it I hate it I hate it, I wish she’d just go away. I wish she’d just go back away to wherever she was, and stay out of my life. Out of all of our lives.

   Staring again at the bedraggled and distraught teen reflecting back at her in the mirror, Tabitha let out an aggravated huff and threw Flounder against the far wall. Her actions looked just as silly and immature as they felt, but she needed to start venting some things out at times, or she really was going to explode.

   That, and also… I’m upset because she showed up out of nowhere. Blindsided me. Despite how I’m supposed to know basically what events happen, and generally when. Or, at least know things in a vague way. Unwelcome BUTTERFLY EFFECT surprises that aren’t part of my future knowledge at this point start to make me feel real... extremely vulnerable.  On edge. Especially after—yeah, after all the nice ‘surprises’ so far. I’m less and less okay with these kind of surprises each time, BECAUSE IT ALWAYS SUCKS, and, naturally, it’s going to happen more and more often because of the little changes spreading outward and changing everything. Pretty soon, there won’t be ANY comfort to be had from future knowledge, and… who even am I at THAT point? I’m not from the future anymore, then. I’m just a crazy person, with completely irrelevant knowledge from some... hypothetical divergent timeline that no longer has any bearing on the one we’re in here and now. I’m just an actual fucking thirteen-year-old again, but with added crazy. Basically—bottom line—I’m crazy. I’m crazy. GREAT.

   Physically, she wasn’t faring much better than she was mentally. Her body had still been undergoing puberty when it was suddenly subjected to the extreme flux of weight loss and the repeated shocks to her system—head trauma from being pushed off a trampoline in the first place, the wrist fracture from being shoved off the curb at school, then renewed head trauma from being attacked at the Halloween party more recently. Not for the first time, she wondered if all of her future knowledge maybe really WAS some sort of hyperactive hallucination brought on by some tissue or nerve damage to her brain.

   What a grand delusion this would all be… but once you start doubting, it never really stops, does it?

   Tabitha turned her head in the mirror so that she could see her stitches. They looked fine, they hadn’t been inflamed or irritated or swollen or anything, and the shaved patch there on the side was beginning to grow back in as a downy soft fuzz of red hair. She was still very, very pale. With a dramatic sigh, Tabitha reached up, managed to catch the lightswitch with the bit of finger her cast exposed, and turned off the lights. The darkness gave her senses nothing to focus in on but the sound of Aunt Lisa still gabbing away out in the living room, and it was hard not to get upset all over again.

   So, what do I DO about this? I’m not a teenager, exactly, Tabitha eased herself back down onto her pillow and began resituating her covers overtop her. And I’m not an old lady anymore, either. Right now I’m just—I don’t know what I am. It’s something to figure out as I go, right? I’m still changing. Elena’s changed a ton. Mom’s completely different to who she was, or how she was supposed to be, or whatever. I’ll give Aunt Lisa a chance to change. I’ll try. Cut her just enough slack for her to either pull herself up—or hang herself with it. That’s the mature thing to do, here, right?

*     *     *

   “So, I was all, Debra,” Lisa laughed. “S’like I been done told you—you can’t never let someone disrespect you like that. Definitely not’n front of yer kids!”

   To Tabitha’s annoyance and disbelief, she blinked open bleary eyes the next morning to the continued grating sound of Aunt Lisa’s voice. Their trailer’s furnace was blowing hot air in through all the vents at full blast, and the normally cozy morning blankets now felt absolutely stifling. It was hard not to grimace at the sheer waste of running the temperature so high—in late November, wearing a sweatshirt and thermal pajamas around the house was still comfy, and it kept their bill way down.

   Surely… surely they weren’t up discussing things all night? Tabitha squeezed her eyes shut again and pressed her face back into her pillow for a moment. Do drug addicts sleep more than normal, or less than normal? Google won’t be here to tell me for years and years, yet.

   Tabitha had never expected Lisa to be an early riser, but the acrid smell of instant coffee became apparent as she finally kicked back her too-warm covers. The wrist inside her cast was balmy with sweat already, and despite her midnight resolution to give the woman a chance to redeem herself, Tabitha felt her determination drop a little each time she heard her Aunt open that mouth of hers to say something.

   “Don’t matter if it was jus’ bullshittin’ over beer or jus’ makin’ fun or nothin’! So I says, somebody treats you like that, Debra? You get them right by the balls an’ make sure they ain’t liable to ever jus’ run their mouth off on ya ever again. S’way you gotta do it—I ain’t playin’ no games.”

   Letting out her most dramatic teenage sigh, Tabitha rolled out of bed and wrenched open the door to her room so that she could pad down the hallway in her now too-warm wool socks.

   “Why is the thermostat so high?” Tabitha asked, immediately twisting the dial from where it read eighty degrees all the way down to sixty. Eighty degrees? Are you fucking kidding me?

   “S’colder’n a witch’s titty out there, that’s why!” Lisa guffawed. “It’s the dead o’ November, little girl.”

   The peroxide-blonde delinquent mother of four was already sitting across the table from her father, while Mrs. Moore was nowhere to be found, apparently still sound asleep back on the other side of the trailer where the master bedroom was. Lisa had slopped instant coffee into one of the nice teacups Tabitha had set aside for ice cream in the cabinet, and Tabitha decided she wasn’t going to let it get to her—after all, Lisa couldn’t have known any better. No, you know what? It does still bother me.

   “Y’all know I prayed for this, right, Alan? I prayed an’ prayed—an’ I just knew HE would answer mah prayers,” Aunt Lisa gushed. “Yer Tabby baby is a miracle, you know that?”

   “...She is a blessing,” Mr. Moore agreed, frowning over his newspaper.

   “She’s an honest to God miracle, and the money—the money from those settlements? Alan, she’s saved this family. She’s like—she’s like our own li’l red-headed guardian angel. Isn’t that right, Honey? Hah!”

   A certain kind of morbid curiosity kept Tabitha fixated on the woman as her Aunt Lisa applied mascara and ‘made herself up’ for the day. The woman didn’t bring the applicator up to her own eyes, instead carefully turning over each plastic false eyelash in her hands and plucking at it with the black bristles of a little mascara wand. The strange preening motions were grotesque, because Lisa’s fingers and thumbs now sported the curved hot pink of two-inch long acrylic fingernails which made her digits seem sinister, spidery, and menacing.

   Beneath all the beauty product she plasters all over herself and these feminine odds and ends she glues on—would any of us even recognize her? Tabitha wondered in a bleary daze as she pulled out one of the chairs so that she could sit with them at the dining room table. Does anyone even know what Lisa actually looks like? Who IS Lisa, really?

   “You like mah look?” Aunt Lisa crooned with a self-indulgent giggle. “Now, I weren’t no movie star like yer momma, but oh you know yer Aunt Lisa still knows how ta turn heads and drop jaws!”

   “It’s… sure something,” Tabitha was trying not to stare, but it was difficult to look away. Maybe there ISN’T anyone beneath it all.

   The bleached and frazzled bottle-blonde, the plastered-on foundation, the garish red lipstick. It was difficult to imagine what the woman was going to such exaggerated lengths to hide, because each treatment seemed so much worse than whatever flaws they might have concealed. The longer Tabitha spent observing Aunt Lisa, in fact, the less she seemed like a real person. It was as though the woman strived to express a stereotype or a caricature. If she was acting, Tabitha felt sure Mrs. Moore would call it bad acting. But—she didn’t seem to be acting.

   The writer in me wants to say that everyone possesses SOME nuance, some… hidden depth of character. The realist in me suggests that she’s exactly what she presents herself to be. I already know I’m biased against her. Every word out of her mouth makes me want to condemn her more and more. What am I even looking for? How would I even go about giving her a chance to change?

   “Aunt Lisa,” Tabitha blurted out before she even really knew what she was asking. “Why… why did you come back?”

   “Why’d I come back?” Aunt Lisa snorted, cocking an eyebrow. “Well ‘cause I don’t gotta work at the Wild Wings in Shelbyville no more, ain’t that right?”

   “You mean isn’t that, and—is that right?” Tabitha asked. “Why is that? Why is it that you don’t have to work at the Wild Wings anymore?”

   “‘Cause now we got all that money, Sugar,” Lisa explained slowly to Tabitha, as though she were speaking to a much younger child. “Our money problems are over, ain’t a one of us gotta work no more. Isn’t that right, Al?”

   “Oh?” Tabitha’s eyebrows went up. “Dad—you’re quitting your job?”

   “Hah, o’course he is,” Lisa snorted. “Why would he—”

   “No, no, I’m not quitting my job,” Mr. Moore assured his daughter, seemingly startled to have been pulled back into the conversation. “Not no way, no how. Not with a little one on the—”

   “Yer NOT?” Aunt Lisa was the very picture of incredulity. “I mean—wow. I would. I did! Hah! You sure must love yer job, Al. Workin’ when ya don’t have to? Not me, no siree. That’s crazy talk.”

   “I don’t... think I understand,” Tabitha hinted, attempting to convey a clear it’s you that doesn’t understand. “Why wouldn’t you have to work, Aunt Lisa? The lawsuit and the settlement money doesn’t have anything to do with you, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be enou—”

   “Of course it has to do with me, I’m yer Aunt!” Lisa chortled, giving Tabitha a dismissive smirk. “Listen to you tryin’ to be a selfish li’l shyster! You do know that greed is one o’ the mortal sins, don’thca? That’s in the Bible. Tabby, honey... yer still a little girl, you don’t have no place havin’ that much money fer yerself—an’ what would ya even do with it? Buy dollies and dollhouses? Hah! Tabby sweetie, that money’s all goin’ to the family, so we can best decide how to raise you up right. You think raisin’ up a kid is cheap?! I’ve got four of ‘em!”

   That Aunt Lisa had the gall to assert herself as a parenting figure—after walking out on her own four children for months on end without a word to anyone—had Tabitha seeing red. She inhaled deeply as the rage filled her, and was forced to grit her teeth to prevent herself from lashing out thoughtlessly. Your own kids. Your own fucking kids don’t even know that you’re back, do they? Now? I DON’T WANT THEM TO. I really wanted to try to give you a chance—but fuck it, I can’t. I just can’t. I just want you gone.

   “Don’t get all huffy with me, girl,” Aunt Lisa rolled her eyes at Tabitha’s glare. “Jesus H. Christ Alan, look at this attitude on her! Y’all need to get a handle on that big ol’ head o’ hers. Yeah right, like anyone was gonna give all that money to a li’l girl barely inta her pushup bra. Hah!”

   “Forgive me, I’ve indeed lost my composure,” Tabitha rose from her seat and gave her father a meaningful look. He should know by now how she was feeling when she chose her words so carefully. “Please, excuse me.”

   “We’ll... talk about it when—” Mr. Moore began to promise, but he was cut off by Aunt Lisa’s boisterous laughter in response to Tabitha’s apparent prim and proper dialect.

   Now not wanting to talk to anyone at all, Tabitha stalked on down the hallway towards the bathroom so that she could brush her teeth.

   Okay. Calm down again, calm down again. Why is it so hard for me to calm down? Tabitha took care not to slam the bathroom door. I still have all the advantages, here, right? I have all kinds of future knowledge, I just need to… to calm down, to go through and remember anything I can that might be useful with this.

   It was easier said than done.

   She swiped her toothbrush out of the holder, glared at the dab of toothpaste she applied atop the bristles, and then bared her teeth in a snarl towards the mirror so that she could angrily brush her teeth. With each passing month it became more difficult for her to detach herself from the situations and manage that numb robotic act where with her eloquent manner of speech she could pretend she was more of an observer than a participant in this second life.

   Do I have, what, latent anger management issues I never discovered? Tabitha paused for a moment to regard her foaming-at-the-mouth reflection. Just never even found out if I had a temper or not last time, because I always kept my head down and shied away from those situations? Maybe?

   Her psychological issues were particularly hard to self-diagnose, and she wasn’t sure she trusted herself to sort out relevant factors from misleading ones. She knew why Aunt Lisa got her so riled up; the woman was one hundred percent pure, undiluted trailer trash, soon-to-be or already a heroin junkie, and uncomfortably close to worming her way back into the group of people she cared a lot about.

   At least, I care a lot about them THIS time, Tabitha glowered as she viciously scrubbed her teeth. Probably why I never got angry at much of anything in my last life—I wasn’t very close to anyone. To me, that whole side of the family was just petty criminals. Drug addicts, and their drug addict and dropout kids.

   Not relatives she wanted to associate with, but ones that certainly lingered on in her mind all throughout her life. Because, while she always personally felt like trailer trash, at least she had other people in her life to prop up as examples of worse.

   That’s what they were to me, I think, Tabitha spat into the sink. Uncle Danny, Aunt Lisa, all of the cousins. They weren’t FAMILY, they were just... some idea for me to cling to. Because, I could look at their lives and then console myself with ‘well I might be trailer trash but at least I’m not THAT bad.’

   It was another tough pill to swallow, but since she’d begun to make progress in bettering herself in this life, it was getting easier to recognize her own shortcomings. As for what she was going to do about it—Tabitha had to start drawing lines. Her four cousins were still young, and swerving their paths onto a better future was entirely possible. Uncle Danny was already in jail, that ship had sailed and there was nothing she could do about it. As for Aunt Lisa…

   If I’m completely honest with myself, I just don’t even WANT to help her, Tabitha made a face as she rinsed her mouth. I can’t stand her, and that’s just a fact. Maybe with some kind of brilliant fourth-dimension chess plan I COULD get her to clean up her act and be a proper mother, and maybe that WOULD be the ideal best outcome for the boys. MY mother seemed just as rotten just a few months ago—and look how far she’s come.

   I just… Tabitha grimaced at her reflection as the weight of difficult choices seemed to press down and smother her once again. I don’t know if I can put in that kind of effort for Lisa. I mean I know I could try—but more and more, I don’t think I will. I’m a good person, or I try to be, but maybe I’m not THAT good of a person. It’s easy for me to be flippant about it, I guess, until I stop and really think about how much NOT helping Lisa might cost the boys. But, then on the other hand… some people can’t be helped, right?

( 35, Moore and Moore problems. | RE: Trailer Trash | Next, 8 pt 2 )

/// Sorry for the delay, went for a full RE:TT reread to get my head back in the game. Also unexpectedly became the father of three kittens that just sort of showed up in my yard.

 Don't know how many parts will make up Chapter 36, I'm kind of writing out the different sections and POVs piecemeal and then wedding them together. I HOPE to have Chapter 36 canvass the entirety of Thanksgiving and touch on a lot of interesting stuff with Tabitha and the cousins.