The Trailer Park

Wind whipped through the waves of moon-lit wheat, lashing at heels of the fiercely running woman like cracks of a dry whip.Thickened blood bubbled in her throat, gurgling upwards, exploding ebulliently amongst choking coughs of scarlet mucous. Spatter stained the wheat with each stride, swiftindigo shadows danced eerily against the moonlight, crunching, snapping underfoot; a split branch, crushed bone, warm, wet blood. A wind chime’s bells played a frantic song somewhere in the distance, tree branches shook angrily, losing some of their leaves to the wind.She didn’t stop running. She couldn’t. She knew he was behind her and that he wouldn’t give up. Then her hair was snagged from behind, yanking her entire body to a halt, and causing her to fall to the ground. The dust flared up into her face and caused her to cough asthmatically. Then she saw him. He was standing above her, aiming his arm at her head. Bang.

***

Tap taptaptap. Rosie reached into the back seat of the car to remove a colorful rope and bell toy from her parakeet’s cage; the rhythmic tap had overwhelmed the silence for too long.No protest from Luis, nothing more than a small squawk; he never showed interest inthe toy she bought for him from a street vendor outside of their building. His neon green reflection consumed most of his time, as he chirped into his mirror.She threw it into one of the cardboard boxes stacked behind her and resumed her position: arms crossed, shoulder and head leaned against the car door. Her long, dark brown curls fluttered in the warm dusk wafts of summer air that gusted in from the open window. Now that she had removed the toy, the only other noise was the ruddy hum of the Honda’s engine.

No acknowledgement from her mom for removing the irritation. She merely adjusted her hand positioning on the wheel and resumed her dazed stare into the sun-bleached pavement.It wasn’t sounds that bothered her.Two weeks agoshe was fighting for her life in a brawlwith her boyfriend of about a month, Armando,which resulted in her hospitalization and his arrest. The police report said he smashed her head into the wall, but Rosie was pretty sure it was the window bar before he tried to take it off and throw her out. She was certain because she had to clean up the blood and small clots of tissue that were crusted into the iron metal. He claimed she was cheating on him with a man who gave her a ride home from work, and that he was going to kill her, but failed to ever see the driver of the black sedan from his 7th floor view in Rosie’s mom’s room. The “man” was a woman. Anyways, Gladys was in the hospital for a week, the longest time so far. But at least she didn’t lose any teeth. Rosie thought she looked like one of those dead bodies in the movies; she could barely recognize her.

Tapping bothered Rosie. She was being taken away from the only place she ever called home. Rosie stared blankly out the window at the passing dry fields that began to blur into a soft, tan sea of feathery waves. They reminded her of home. They were the only thing that reminded her of home. The more wheat she passed, the more she longed to turn back. She’d take the chaos over the calm waves of wheat any day. She was used to it, she was beginning to like it, need it.They passed the Virgingia state line.

“We’re in Virginia.” Gladys said, as if it wasn’t obvious enough.

***

“We’ve received word that your boyfriend is threatening to have you killed,” the police officer tapped a ballpoint pen on his cluttered desk. His course, blondish hair was forcedly parted on the side, giving him the exotic, Hispanic look of an Alex Rodriguez.

Gladys didn’t flinch. She let out a brief sigh. “Well, what are our options?”

Options? Rosie thought. Was that all there was to it? No fear, no connection, no affection? But then she remembered her mother was used to this. Countless abusive boyfriends, hospital visits during the day, at night, vicious pounding at night coming from the wall separating Rosie from her mother’s moans. She wasn’t good at choosing mates, but at least she knew how to use a condom; Rosie was her only child.

“We’re worried we’re not gonna be able to catch these threats until it’s too late. We’re worried for your safety ma’am.” A-Rod Said.

“So what chutryina say?” Rosie blurted, unable to suppress her angst and uncertainty with where this was going.

“We want to get you guys out of New York City and into a safe environment with domestic abuse protection services”

Rosie looked at Gladys for support but her face was expressionless. She was convinced. Rosie could tell that she had finally grown tired of the chaos but she had to try anyways. “Ma, we ain’t leaving the city!” Rosie turned back to the cop. “Can’t we just move to anothaborough?” She wasn’t leaving the city she was born in, had lived in all her life, the only place she knew.

***

Dust. Dry clouds of thick powder filled the air as the old Honda drove down a bumpy dirt road through a path of trees. They had exited off of the two-lane “highway” at Sugar Hill and were now headed deeper and deeper into the rural trees and fields.

“Sugar Hill?!” her friend Carlos laughed. Where the hell is that?” Rosie remembered telling some of her friends she was moving while they sat on some benches outside of her building at dusk. “I know, it’s some BS, but I have no choice,” she said as the street lights flickered on.

“You gonna come back with a country ass accent yo,” Monica laughed. She threw her fake braids over her shoulder. “If you...You better come back. You can’t miss senior year.”

Rosie didn’t know what to expect of her new residence, she refused to call it home, but she didn’t expect much. She knew the police would hide them in what they thought was inconspicuous, a secluded area, but she also thought that’s exactly what Armando and his gang would expect. If they really wanted to hide them, they should’ve chosen some suburban neighborhood. Upscale. Rich.

The tree path ended and the Honda came into a clearance filled with dull mobile homes shrouded in dust;A dirty, white vinyl, wood paneling, humid, congestion of fiberglass. Every car looked broken down, rustcovering their hoods, long grass sprouting up around the off-brand tires. A trailer park. Rosie’s heart dropped. She may have come from a low-income neighborhood in the Bronx, but she knew that she fit in there. Puerto Ricans lived in the Bronx, not in trailer parks. To her, the trailer park was the epitomic stereotype of the hillbilly.

“Hell no,” she said shaking her head.“Ma, I’m not stayin here. Fa’get it”

Gladys kept driving.

A few white men wearing faded “wife-beater” shirts loitered in a group by a once red pick-up truck, smoking cigarettes and washing them down with swigs of Budweiser’s, adding more bulge to their already swelling guts. They lowered their necks and peered into the car, using their blackened soot-covered hands to shield the sun from their eyes. Women stood on their small, wooden porches; some had fold-out chairs, holding babies at their waists, scolding other rowdy children, children running up and down the stairs, leaping off. They too peered at the car, fanning their sun-tanned faces with newspapers, lifting their greased hair from sticking to their necks, talking to other women, pointing. The older women didn’t venture outside. They peered from behind their curtains. Behind one set of dark drapes peered a pale-faced male figure. He just stared, interested, wide-eyed. And Rosie stared back, perplexed.

***

“This place gives me the creeps ma.” Rosie sat her suitcase on the browned, linoleum kitchen floor. The entire living space was dark and damp, from thebrown wood cabinets, yellowed countertop, and single window above the sink. The size of the place wasn’t bad, it compared significantly to their two bedroom apartment in the city. It was furnished with an old, wooden table and chairs, a musty grey couch set and a few lamps.

“You don’t care that we’re living in a dump? You okay with this?”

“Listen, shut the fuck up sometimes Rosie. I’m done wit’cha complaining, like forreal.” Gladys fumed.

“This is bullshit,” Rosie grabbed her bag and Luis’s cage and stormed down the narrow, wood-paneled hallway. She opened the door to the farthest room from the back to reveal another dark room, equipped with heavy velvet drapes, a mattress, and a wooden dresser. She set Luis down on the dresser and walked around the room inspecting the dust and ancient furnishings. Peeking under a corner of the curtain she was mildly surprisedby the sight of a man approaching the trailer. A local cop. He was there to check on them upon arrival to Sugar Hill. Big deal. She looked around at the rest of her view; kids playing, cars, men spitting chewing tobacco, the women, and suddenly the direct eye-contact ofthe pale-faced man peering from his window. She jumped back and let out a shocked scream.

“Rosie!” Gladys yelled from the living room.

Rosie stumbled nervously into the living room.

“This is o’fissa Raymond,” Gladys fidgeted with her hair. She smiled at him. “He’s hea to protect us, wheneva we need to call him.” She touched his arm.

***

The police supplied Gladys with a job at a local toothpaste packaging plant. She went to work immediately. She came home late. Rosie found things to do. She taught Luis how to say “Asshole” and “I love you,” cleaned her room from top to bottom, and watched judge shows on the few TV channels they had. She rarely wandered outside except to take out the trash or leave the trailer park with Gladys. But on one extremely boring Thursday, Rosie ventured out into the heat of the day to “take out the trash.” She really wanted to explore the foreign and uncharted territory she had been watching from the safe distance of her bedroom window. The heavy humidity hit her entire body, like opening an oven door, upon leaving the dark damp coolness of the house. She wandered out into the dry heat of the afternoon, past two trailer homes, to the centrally-located dumpster center. The thick heat mixed with the smell of hot rotting food was unbearable as she opened the side latch of the large dumpster. As she spun around to head back to her trailer she almost ran into a man also throwing trash away.

“Sorry!” she said, quickly moving past the man, too afraid to make eye contact with the unknown. She was outside of her safe-zone and getting back was a priority. The figure said nothing. She rushed to her house and slammed the door, locking the two locks behind her. Filled with renewed curiosity, she peered out the living room window only to see the man lifting the dumpster lid and lobbing a trash bag into it. She watched him as he closed the lid and began to walk in the opposite direction. She wanted to see his face. Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks, as if he just remembered something he wanted to do, and slowly lookedover his shoulder to look at where Rosie had gone. He just stood there for what seemed to Rosie to be the longest time. She closed the curtains from the eerie discomfort, but remembered something familiar about the man; his pale face was immediately recognizable as the pale-faced, peering man. She looked out the window again, but he was gone.

***

That night, Gladys didn’t come home. She didn’t call either, which didn’t bother Rosie because she knew where her mom was. Gladys and the local cop had been “going out” every night for the past week they’d been living there. Rosie didn’t exactly feel comfortable with being alone, but it was nothing new. She had been left alone for days at a time, four at the most, when they lived in New York.

Gladys didn’t come home the next night. Or the next. Rosie actually began to worry, it was Sunday afternoon. This wasn’t New York, she didn’t know many people, the cop had to work. What could she have been busy doing for three days? Rosie decided to call the only person she knew from this town, the cop. Gladys had his number written down next to the old-fashioned phone in the living room.

“Have you seen Gladys?” she said immediately.

“Who is this? Oh, it must be Rosie. I actually haven’t seen your mother since Friday morning when she left my apartment. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, neva-mind. I know where she is.” She had no idea where her mother was. She didn’t want this cop to be all in her business either; she hated the police already for sending her to this forsaken wasteland and she definitely hated this Officer Raymond for causing her mom to be out for so many days. So she lied.

The day dragged on. Sheer boredom struck Rosie like never before and she began to grow restless with worry and anger. She needed some fresh air so she decided to wander out into the trailer park again, this time avoiding the dumpster. She wandered around the mysteriously quiet mobile home park, creeping around homes, making sure to stay quiet and not be seen.A spy.The sun was beginning to set, perfect for camouflage.After sneaking around for some time, she noticed a glint of light reflecting from the empty driveway of the trailer she was scaling. Approaching the object cautiously, she crouched down to pick it out of the dirt and noticed it was a golden necklace. It was Gladys’s.

A wave of terror ran through Rosie’s body as she wiped the shiny surface free of dust, revealing the name Gladys in gold letters; Armando bought it for her when they first started dating. She looked up at the house whose driveway this belonged to and recognized the heavy drapes. She looked in the direction where she knew her house was and saw the direct line of sight to her bedroom window. This was the house of the pale-faced man. The pieces began to come together and she dreaded what she was thinking. Gladys was in there.

“Hell no,” she told her conscious as it told her to go inside. But it was the only way. Adrenalin pumping through her veins like Armando’s when he occasionally shot up,she cautiously approached the faded black door of the pale-faced man and knocked quietly, nervously awaiting a response. But he never came to the door. Rosie noticed there was no car in the driveway and so she tried the door handle. It was open. She hesitated before her conscious forced her to slowly open the door to find her mother. It was almost instinctual.

A dark room revealed itself as the door slowly creaked open and the rancid iron smell of blood filled her nostrils. Allowing her eyes to adjust to the dark she saw a dark figure lying on the kitchen floor. It was Gladys, a pool of blood spilled from her head onto the linoleum. Rosie stood there for a moment, paralyzed by fear and shock, until she snapped out of her daze and let out a bone-chilling scream.

“Ma!” Rosie rushed to her motionless mother’s side. She wasn’t sure if she was dead or alive. She rolled her over to see her face bloody and bruised and began to sob loudly from the ghastly sight. Then Glady’s chest jumped and she began to cough recklessly, spouting blood onto the floor beside her.

“Ma? What happened?” Rosie screamed.

Gladys tried to mouth some words but couldn’t speak.

“What ma, I can’t hear you!”

“Ar-man-do,” Gladys stuttered in short, raspy syllables.

Then, Rosie felt a heavy blow to the back of her head with a hard object. Her vision went black and she drifted off into a dizzy slumber with the sight of the pale-faced man standing above her.