Photo by Kyle Johnson on Unsplash
The nondescript little trailer park where she grew up is lonely and abandoned now. One or two hardy tenants may still exist at the far end, where the more livable trailer homes still lurk in the twilight, but down at the end where her memories begin, there’s no sign of life. These tin can homes have had their day and now sit, derelict, near the edge of a small ravine that terrified her as a child when she went to toss the family garbage over the cliff like some sort of rural version of human sacrifice.
There used to be two more trailers next to the one where she lived, but one’s moved out and away long ago, leaving only one empty companion in the yard where she learned how to ride her bike, where her family had a pet goat until her dad realized that the goat was killing the yard by not only eating the grass, but the roots as well, where her childhood pet German Shepard that she called her “Nanny” lies , waiting for the days when she and her girl can play again.
She hopes Nanny still has the orange ball that she sent across the Rainbow Bridge with her.
Her childhood home has roof damage, relicts from the fierce storms that plague the region from time to time-the window to her old room, her prized bay window that always made her feel like a princess in a castle, has a crack in it still. At least whoever lived there last put actual curtains up and not crack house bed sheets. She can still remember sitting in that window and working on coloring pictures for her kindergarten class, and attempting to write her first poetry as song lyrics, which looking back made no damn sense at all, but she was a kid, and she had big dreams, and everyone must start somewhere right?
The tree is still there-the one near the back steps where in grade school she tried to determine the age of the tree by counting the rings in the wood, not even noticing that she was counting the rings form one of the branches and not the main truck.
My God, after everything, that tree is still there.
In the back of the house the extension that her father built is still hanging in there-hanging being the operative word as it looks as though the back end is sagging. That room, put onto to the trailer after her little sister made her appearance, as her room was too small for both girls-plus her parents wanted each girl to have her own space.
And she loved them for that. Oh, for so much more, but especially for that.
Again, she turns, looking past the falling down shack of a mobile home that clutters up what she still (once in a blue moon) thinks of as her family’s yard into the little swampy area that lies next to the trailer park. Somewhere in the depths of this boggy area sit bits of fishing tackle that her father sent overboard when he flipped his boat over in it one Saturday afternoon during a fishing expedition. He had no problem swimming to shore, but the rod and reel and his bait and tackle box went down. Today its much too shallow to fish in, dried up and more mudhole than anything else.
No steps by the front door of her old house. Partly to keep squatters out, she supposes, or the original ones got too rickety and the last tenant took their replacements with them and no one’s lived there since. Steps that she flew backwards off one day as she was taking out the garbage and the wind caught the door as she opened it, sending her little body flying flat on her back onto a discarded mattress her parents had ditched the day before.
Thank God or she would have gotten hurt and not just startled and given a lifetime fear of falling from steps.
The silence is oppressing.
And depressing in a way.
Trailer homes aren’t meant to last forever, she knows this, but somehow, she wishes that this one could have-that it could still ring with laughter and happiness, and yes, tears too. Emotions are part of the story of life, and the first eleven years of her life and emotions are part of the soul of this old wreck. It traveled to this place with her parents and shared the stories of several families before it gave up the proverbial ghost, and she wishes she knew who those other families were so she could share her memories and weave the thread of her story with theirs so that the memories that this rusty pale green doublewide trailer fostered could go on, even if the trailer itself is a goner and set for a trip to the scrap yard any day now.
Say goodbye, she thinks, and walk away. It’s the only thing you can do.
But God does it hurt.
Amanda L. Pugh is an adjunct professor at Jackson State Community College in Jackson TN. She’s been writing for years - it’s one her favorite things to do besides drink coffee and teach. Her work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Spilled Ink (the literary journal of her workplace), Down in the Dirt, Tuck Magazine, Potato Soup Journal, and several Z Publishing anthologies.
