Chapter 4

The timing on Mom’s running-off could not have been more perfect ... and I say that with the greatest amount of sarcasm.

It was March of ninth grade year and I was fifteen ... just starting to grow out of the awkward phase. A girl really needs her Mom especially at that time. I know I needed mine, even though she spent the majority of her time either at work at The Golden Griddle or hanging out at One Eyed Jack’s ... the local dive bar.

What happened in Spencer’s game room back in December remained a secret. I had no one who I really trusted enough to tell. I had some girls I hung around with at school and around the trailer park but they all had big mouths and loved to gossip so I always had to watch what I said around them or it would be front-page News.

March came in like the proverbial lion with harsh, cold winds that could cut right through you. It rained so much that the ground became a wet sponge and would swallow my feet if I happened to stray off the side walk.

One thing that didn’t come in that month was my period ... it hadn’t come since that night back in December.

Deep down inside I knew the truth but some part of me kept holding on to the belief that my period would come any time ... I was just irregular. But I had never been irregular before.

I mean WHO gets knocked-up the very first time they have sex?? Does that even happen? What are the chances?

But to be perfectly honest about it considering the amount of semen I was pumped full of that night on the 18th of December by three different males ... it would be a miracle if I HADN’T gotten pregnant.

I wasn’t feeling nauseous or throwing up or anything so I took that as a good sign that I probably wasn’t pregnant.

But my boobs felt weird ... super tender and swelled.

And I was developing a little pooch on my lower belly that wasn’t there before. It was nothing that was noticeable to anyone, else but I noticed it. But, then again, I had been eating a lot of junk food lately so that could have been it.

I wondered what I was going to do if I WERE pregnant?

I didn’t want a baby.

I definitely couldn’t take care of a baby.

Mom and Larry would come completely unglued if they found out.

I started to freak-out every time I thought about it so I just put it out of my mind.

I did not know FOR SURE that I was pregnant. So I wasn’t going to worry about it until it was confirmed.

When Mom took off and left us I wasn’t all that surprised. She was never around much and I had already taken-on doing the majority of the cooking and cleaning around the trailer.

Truth be told, Mom never should have been a mom to begin with. It didn’t suit her.

She got pregnant by accident and her strict Pentecostal religious family guilted her into having and keeping me.

So, basically, I was a punishment she had to endure for having sex on her own terms and not that of her family and the strict, oppressive church they belonged to.

I was the albatross around her neck.

I know she loved me in her own way but she just didn’t have it in her to make the kind of personal sacrifices that being a mother required.

I can’t say that I totally blamed her for taking off. Taking care of a family just wasn’t her style, but at least she gave it a shot.

That cold March morning Larry was sitting at the kitchen table when I got up to go to school. He had the oven door open to take the chill off ... a cup of coffee and a folded sheet of blue-lined notebook paper sat in front of him.

Larry looked oddly sober and more adult that I was used to. I got a twinge in my gut that something bad had happened. Like a cold chill across my arms I got the feeling that nothing was ever going to be quite the same again.

Larry read me the letter that Mom had written before she took off. It said she wasn’t happy and we would be better off without her.

After he finished reading the letter to me, Larry pulled his battered Zippo out of the front pocket of his jeans, flipped the wheel with his thumb and held the flame to the edge of the white paper. We both watched the paper blacken and disappear into the flame. He walked over to the sink and dropped the burning paper into it. Within seconds only ashes were left.

Well that was that.

After that I was the wife around the house. I already did the cooking and cleaning but now I had the additional responsibility of tending to Larry’s voracious sexual appetite.

After that I was the one who had to take care of Stubby.

I got to know Stubby very well that very first night after Mom left.

It was a typical week night ... Larry and I were in front of the TV. This time there was no Jennifer Anniston but zombies shambling about and eating people’s faces.

Larry was massaging the bulge in his grey, cum-stained sweat pants that he’d been wearing for over a week as he sucked on a can of Natural Light. Stubby was awake and hungry, as usual.

I had washed the dinner dishes and cleaned-up the kitchen. I had already done my homework during study period at school. I was hoping the rest of the evening could be my chill time since my ass was dragging. Going to school and being the cook and the maid around the trailer was exhausting.

But little did I know that I was about to get an additional job duty starting that very night.

I was thinking that Larry would just pull Stubby out and jerk him off like he usually did ... making sure that I watched every stroke of his fist and every spurt of his semen when he came.