“I eat people!” she screamed. “I’ll kill you and eat you. Momma will cut off your balls, and I’ll put them on my Lucky Charms and eat them for breakfast.”
The light came on. Hilda was standing in the doorway, still wearing what she’d had on when Polly had gone to bed, but all wrinkled, like she’d been sleeping in her clothes.
“Momma,” Polly whispered. Hilda never let her boyfriends mess with Polly.
“Bastard!” Hilda yelled. “You fucking bastard!”
“Momma,” Polly cried. Scrambling to her feet, she launched herself at her mother and wrapped her skinny arms around Hilda’s waist.
“Cunt,” her mother shrieked. “You fucking little cunt.” She slapped Polly so hard she saw red things in her eyes.
That was the night Polly realized that what she had taken for caring in Hilda wasn’t so much looking after her daughter as having jealous rages.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Polly hit her forehead against the cold aluminum of the trailer door driving the memory out. She was fifteen, not nine-there had to be a statute of limitations on bad memories.
“Nobody’s fucking home. Beat it!” was shouted from inside.
Sighing, she turned her back on the racket, put her geometry book on the peeling paint of the step so she wouldn’t get her good school skirt dirty, and sat, shoulders against the scarred and dented door. Through the thin aluminum, she listened to the tide of battle ebbing and flowing.