RE: Trailer Trash 8: 8 pt 3 (Patreon)

   Lisa... you’re dressed like a street walker, for crying out loud! Laurie’s rigid smile felt more strained than ever. It’s Thanksgiving. Is that how you want your kids to see you?

   Laurie sighed, deciding to rest her old bones on the steps while her grandchildren swarmed their mother with tears. She couldn’t say she was thrilled to see Lisa. She’d honestly never been thrilled to see Lisa. Both her sons seemed to turn soft in the head when confronted with a pretty face, Alan completely enamored by their small town starlet-to-be Shannon, and Daniel falling head-over-heels for—well, Lisa was a harlot. To Laurie’s constant consternation, Lisa got pregnant with the first of the boys while still in her teens, and then the girl just kept on getting knocked up, over and over again. Neither Lisa nor Daniel seemed to have the slightest restraint. Neither ever felt inclined to stop and consider the consequences—that each of these children would need raised up and taken care of.

   The sour looks Tabitha and Shannon were wearing told her with certainty that Lisa sure wasn’t going to be staying with them, and that meant Laurie had yet another mouth to feed. As upsetting for the boys as it had been when Lisa took off without a word and disappeared on them... Laurie couldn’t deny that it had been for the best. The woman wasn’t a proper mother, and often it felt like every cross moment she had with the boys led right back to the same problem—their upbringing with Lisa.

   While the four boys had been with Lisa, the woman had made no efforts to keep them out of trouble or teach them right from wrong. She barely paid any attention to them at all, because at her core, Lisa seemed a self-centered woman and everything had to revolve around her. The only times Lisa scolded them at all were when the boys did something that would inconvenience her. Back when Aiden had scraped his knee bloody and was bawling his little heart out, Laurie remembered that Lisa had been annoyed rather than concerned.

   “What the fuck were y’all doin’?! Lisa had snapped. Sammie—why’s yer brother bleedin’? Huh? Why aren’t you watchin’ out for yer brother?!”

    *     *     *

   “Everything looks nice,” Tabitha remarked upon surveying her grandmother’s apartment.

   “Aw, thank you dear,” Grandma Laurie gave her a wry smile and patted the girl’s shoulder as if Tabitha was simply being polite.

   It really did look nice to Tabitha, but with memories of her past life some forty years distant it was hard to put her finger on exactly what had changed. The atmosphere was very different—Grandma Laurie seemed less frazzled than Tabitha remembered, the four boys seemed a tiny bit better behaved. Or, maybe it was just personal bias influencing how she perceived them now that she knew them better?

   The apartment was small but cozy, and had been tidied up prior to their arrival for early Thanksgiving, with four children’s backpacks hung up next to each other on the pegs of coat rack. Rather than toys being strewn about the floor everywhere the carpet was clear and sported the telltale clean lines of having been vacuumed recently. The boys had obviously been put to task with picking up their things, because many of the toys appeared to now be on the bottom shelf of the entertainment center. A lunchbox-sized folding Bruce Manor playset was one one side and all of their action figures were standing in close formation next to it—power rangers, ninja turtles, and the exaggerated plastic musculature of WWF wrestlers all arranged in display as if waiting for a presidential address from the Batcave’s balcony.

   “I’m so glad everyone could make it,” Grandma Laurie stepped in to accept the tupperware dish of scalloped potatoes Mrs. Moore had brought. “Oh, this looks lovely, Shannon.”

   “Tabitha and I made them fresh this afternoon,” Mrs. Moore said. “Well, I mostly followed her directions, she’s still got her arm in that cast. The cheese turned a little darker than—”

   “It looks lovely,” Grandma Laurie repeated, “and it smells delicious. Glad I bought that ham, now! Don’t think baked beans and hot dogs would’ve been enough for everyone.”

   “What, we ain’t havin’ turkey?” Aunt Lisa sounded miffed. “The hell kinda Thanksgivin’ is it without turkey?”

   “Lisa, you know the boys won’t eat turkey,” Grandma Laurie reminded her in a soft voice.

   “Who gives a flying fuck what they wanna eat?” Aunt Lisa scoffed. “They’re six years old, they havta eat whatever’n it is we say they do. An’ if they don’t finish what’s on their plate they can sit there at the table ‘till they finish! I ain’t raisin’ up no picky eaters!”

   You haven’t been RAISING any of them, Tabitha was once again forced to grit her teeth so that she didn’t launch into a furious tirade. None of them are six years old. Sam’s almost ELEVEN years old. Lisa, you’re freeloading food, here. You haven’t provided anyone ANYTHING. You want turkey, why don’t you fucking—

   “Tabitha, boys—why don’t you all go on and play your video game in the other room,” Grandma Laurie proposed.

   From the dirty look the old woman shot Lisa, Tabitha could tell that Grandma Laurie didn’t approve of Lisa’s assertion or the foul language used in expressing it. Both Mr. and Mrs. Moore looked embarrassed to have brought Lisa here, but also— what else could they have done? This was supposed to be a touching reunion for her and the four boys, but Aunt Lisa was already hopping on the sofa and fishing for the remote control. Samuel, Nicholas, Aiden, and Joshua were milling about beside Tabitha, uncharacteristically quiet and subdued.

   “Sure,” Tabitha spoke up, fighting to put on a smile for her cousins. “C’mon, guys. Why don’t you show me your game?”

   The young boys seemed to grasp at someone finally giving them attention like it was their lifeline, and quickly clamored to tug Tabitha on down the hallway towards Grandma’s room where the other TV and their Nintendo 64 was set up. Despite visiting her cousins semi-frequently over the past half-year Tabitha had yet to sit down and actually watch them play video games. Whenever she came over, she was bringing them to the playground to play. At best she’d gone in to check and make sure the game console was turned off before they ran outside with her.

   “The only racing game we have is Ten-Eighty Snowboarding, so if—”

   “All-star Basketball or Goldeneye. I bet Tabby’d be really good at—”

   “We don’t have any girl games, but—”

   “Tabby’s not like like a girl girl, though,” Samuel interjected. “She’d love snowboarding.”

   “No way, we should play wrestling!” Nicholas whined. “NWO-World Tour is—”

   “What do you want to play?” Joshua asked. “We have four controllers, so—oh, look!”

   “Yeah, look,” Aiden chimed in. “Gramma put up your picture.”

   “My picture?” Tabitha asked.

   Turning to see the photographs hanging along the hallway wall, Tabitha discovered that beneath the young glamour shot of her mother was a framed picture of herself clipped out from the newspaper—the somewhat fuzzy shot Alicia had somehow managed to take of her running towards Officer Macintire moments after the shooting. Likewise Tabitha found another picture beside it of a flushed but skinny looking Tabitha about to leap down from the playground equipment in the park while two of the boys were fleeing in the foreground with huge grins.

   That’s me—that’s from THIS timeline, for some reason Tabitha was shocked. That’s the current me. Well, from a few months ago or so maybe, there’s no cast. I look… like a pretty cool little brat. When did she even—does Grandma Laurie own a camera?

   No one in this world knew how important the new memories she was making in this life were to Tabitha, but the fact that some of these moments seemed just as important to Grandma Laurie was touching. In her last time through, Tabitha barely even knew this part of her family at all— Grandma Laurie and the cousins only existed at Thanksgiving and Christmas. She hadn’t valued them, they’d simply been there in the far periphery of her life.

   “C’mon, c’mon,” Joshua had his arm hooked through her elbow and was trying to pull her back towards the bedroom while his brothers were already turning the game system on back there.

   “Coming, sorry,” Tabitha murmured with a wistful smile. “Did I hear you say you had a game about snowboarding?”

   Unlike last lifetime, and even despite the improbable return of their mother, Tabitha was the center of their attention. They weren’t willing to let her fade quietly into the background sitting on the other side of the bedspread, they sat her down on the edge right in front and pushed a Nintendo 64 controller into her hands as the CRT TV slowly fuzzed to life.

   “What the…?” Tabitha turned the plastic controller over in her hands in bemusement, having a rare moment where she felt completely like an old lady again.

   Am I supposed to bop it or twist it? Tabitha joked to herself. There’s three handles here, and I’ve only got two hands. There’s a joystick here where I can’t reach it, and buttons and triggers spread all over the place, so how are you supposed to even—

   “You hold it like this,” Samuel instructed, correcting her hold on the gray controller. “Ignore this whole side. Except for this button, you need this one.”

   “Ah, I see,” Tabitha nodded, feeling like a pro gamer already. “When you put it like that— this must be so that left-handed people can use it the other way around?”

   “Left-handed people?” Aiden looked confused.

   “This way’s right, and this way’s left,” Joshua demonstrated proudly, turning in place to face the other way and pointing the wrong direction each time. “No wait, this way’s left, and this way’s right. Left is west and right is east. Right?”

   “Left-handed people are born using the wrong hand for everything,” Samuel explained to his youngest brother. “It’s like a disability, or being handicapped sorta. You can get a handicapped parking tag for it when you grow up, one of the kids in my class has it.”

   Their childish take on everything was refreshing—in the pre-internet era, conjecture and misinformation was situation normal and the entire world around them was decorated with tall tales they’d heard from seemingly reliable older kids. She was still fish-out-of-water enough herself that the first association she made with left and right was democrats and republicans—which may as well not even exist to elementary schoolers—and it helped the last of Tabitha’s anger at their mother drain away.

   Their mother, who’d rather sit out there watching Jerry Springer and Judge Judy than spend time with her own kids. Her own children, who she hasn’t seen in months and each have a billion things to tell her and show her and go on about. They’re growing up fast, and she’s missing it— she doesn’t even care that she’s missing it. All four of them are just DESPERATE for a mother figure, and Grandma Laurie and I can only do so much.

   The boys were louder than ever as they talked over each other attempting to give Tabitha advice as she guided a blocky polygon snowboarder down a snowy half-pipe on the screen. It was fun despite the pixel antialiasing and janky graphics seeming prehistoric to her, and mostly because of how enthusiastic the boys were to teach her how to play. Samuel was crouched on his knees on the bed behind her, looking over her shoulder and occasionally pointing out which button was which on the controller. Nicholas turned into a chatty backseat driver criticizing her every move, and Joshua and Aiden stood on either side of television gesturing wildly and trying to show her what cool moves she could do.

   I need to talk to Alicia about games, or maybe even Casey, Tabitha decided, the boys all jumping and cheering as she steered her snowboarder up one side of the curved slope and then mashed buttons until some kind of trick was performed. It’s—wow, that was kinda neat—um, Christmas is coming up, and I want to get the boys each something special.

   I think Casey said the Gameboy Color was coming out soon—there’s no way we can afford four of THEM, but surely that means the price of the original, regular Gameboy has gone down. Right? They could each have one of those, and… play Pokemon against each other, or, or… something. I do know that Pokemon gets to be really big. You can’t put a price tag on memories at this age, on this sheer childlike wonder they have for new things, this excitement. It won’t be like this for them forever.

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/// May yet still wind up trimming off that random floating Grandma Laurie POV, it doesn't really fit. Most of this is slice of life fluff expressing the contrast from her past lifetime and setting things up for a big nasty confrontation with Lisa. Currently dealing with an IRL situation that has plenty of parallels to Lisa and the cousins, oof.