After a solid five minutes of this, I tried the door. It wasn’t locked, and with more than a little trepidation, I opened it.

The inside of the trailer was even smaller than it appeared outside, and I could make out most of the inside of the place with just a glance.

My mother, rail thin and haggard, sat slumped on a sofa that looked like it had been through hell. Knowing her, and remembering my childhood, it probably had. The woman was a bundle of apathetic chaos.

She was aimed at a TV that was running an episode of some reality show, but I didn’t think she was actually watching it. She was zoning out, and even at the entrance of a daughter she hadn’t seen in years, her gaze barely shifted, and her face didn’t so much as twitch.

The bedroom didn’t have its own wall to separate it from the living quarters, and so I saw some man’s feet sticking out of the bottom of the bed across the room. I hadn’t expected anything different. Even ravaged by her addiction, I could see the beauty in my mother’s face. That, paired with the fact that she wasn’t at all picky, meant that she’d never had a second’s trouble finding a man.

Keeping one around for long, well now, that was another story.

“Hi,” I said to her quietly, mindful of the strange man just a few feet away.

“Hey,” she said tonelessly. Nothing else.

I wasn’t certain it had ever been said aloud, but I’d always had the acute sense that my sister and I had been nothing but a burden to my mother. I was grown now and hadn’t seen her in years, and still, I saw the same look in her eyes that I always had.

I wasn’t wanted here.

I never had been.

I grabbed a short stool near the door, carrying it with me to sit down eye level to her. I made sure not to block her view of the TV. I wasn’t here to rile her.

“The man and woman that came to see you a few years ago, Jerry and Bev,” I began, having rehearsed the words like a nervous child, “they are very good people. They’ve been wonderful to me. They’re very dependable employers and close friends of mine. They take care of me, provide a good home for me.”

There was no change in her expression, no recognition in her eyes that I’d said anything that should affect her.

“I’m doing well. I’m a full-time student, and I work part-time during the semester.”

Nothing.

“I’m still taking dance classes. I don’t have a lot of time for dancing, with school and work, but I haven’t given up. When things calm down, I fully plan to pursue that.”

“Do you have any cash?” she asked, as though it was the most reasonable question in the world, and I hadn’t been talking about something entirely different.

I swallowed, stung when I shouldn’t have been, further disillusioned when I had no right to it.

“There’s a man asleep in the other room. If I don’t pay him what I owe him, he’s going to hurt me.”

“Should I call the police?”

“That won’t help me. It’s…complicated. Do you have any cash?”

Even when she talked about him hurting her, there was no expression on her face. She’d been dead inside for a very long time.

I pulled out my wallet, fishing out what little cash I had. I knew I wasn’t really helping her, but being an enabler was deeply ingrained in me, thanks to her, and the thought of the creep in the bedroom hurting her was something I’d prevent, if I could.

I handed her forty dollars, and she took it without a qualm.

“That all you have?” she asked blankly. She was a shell of a person. A zombie.

I nodded. “I don’t keep much cash on me. It’s not convenient.”

“What about a debit card? I won’t take much, and I’ll send it back to you.”

My mouth hardened. I’d heard that before. “I’m not comfortable with that.”

Finally, that got a reaction from her, even if only a slight one. Her face formed into a ghost of a sneer. “I’m just trying to survive here, same as you, same as anyone.”

I didn’t think she was the same as me. I knew that her demons had won a long time ago. I still planned to put up a hell of a fight with mine.

“I’m working my way through school, and I don’t have any more money to spare. That’s how I survive.”

“You got my looks, but that’s it. Where you got that attitude of yours, I’ll never know. Dahlia didn’t get our looks, but at least when I talk to her, I know I’m talking to my daughter.”

I latched onto that. It was the entire reason I’d come. Whatever digs she’d been trying to get in, I ignored completely. “Have you talked to Dahlia? Has she come to see you?”

Her sneer was back. “Saw her a few months ago. That one doesn’t think she’s too good for her mother.”

I processed that.

I’d begun to look for my sister about a month prior. Just telling Jerry about my search had unearthed some clues. Unbeknownst to me, he’d found my mother years ago, at the beginning of my employment, and paid her a visit. I’d been very young, and he’d just wanted to be sure that my mother was okay with her daughter, who was barely out of high school, working as a live-in nanny. He had found what I found today, a woman that cared about nothing.

The casual observer might have mistaken it all for apathy, but I was not the casual observer. I’d been watching this indifference all my life, and it was a step beyond even that.

Any soul she’d had she’d lost before I had memories.

It had been a last resort, but having her address was a lead I couldn’t ignore.

“Do you have her address or even her phone number? I’d like to find her. She and I have been out of touch for a while.”

“She told me all about what happened with you and that old man. I doubt she’ll want to talk to you.”

My spine stiffened, and it took every ounce of my will not to visibly flinch.

Those memories had been buried in some dark corner of my mind, but just the knowledge that my mother knew what had happened felt as though they’d been unearthed afresh. I felt exposed and filthy in a way I hadn’t experienced in years.

“I’d like to at least try,” I explained to her calmly. “It’s been years, and she is my sister.”

“You’re no different than me. What you did with that old man proves that. You can look at me like I’m the dirt beneath your feet all you want, but we’re the same. Living wretched lives and getting by however we can.”

“You missed your calling,” I shot back, falling back on sarcasm, as usual, to get by, “you should have been a poet.” I wanted to rail at her, the one who’d abandoned us to the mercy of twisted strangers, but I dug deep and managed to stop with that one barb.

“I don’t have her number, don’t know where she lives. She’s the one visits me, from time to time.”

“How often?”

“How should I know? Do I look like I keep a calendar? Whenever she feels like it, I guess.”

“Does she live in town, or does she drive in from somewhere else?”

“You sure you don’t have any more cash?”

“Are you saying you’ll have answers for me if I bring you more money?”

She shrugged and said something noncommittal, but I suddenly wasn’t concentrating on her, my focus shifting to the man stirring on the bed.

“I should be going,” I began, standing up to leave.

A shiver of fear went through my body when the large man sat up, his black glare going immediately to me. He was older, with salt and pepper hair and an intimidatingly large frame.

I needed to get out of there. One glance and I knew that I did not want to be at this man’s mercy.

I took a few steps back, reaching into my purse, trying clumsily to find the note I’d painstakingly written out for my sister.

The man was across the room, in my face before I could find the piece of paper. He snatched my purse out of my hands. He had my wallet in his hands before I could blink, rifling through it as though he had every right. He shoved it back in the bag, glaring at me. His black eyes lacked any sign of humanity.

I backed away two more steps. He followed, the look on his face as menacing as any I’d seen.

“This your girl, bitch?” he growled at my mother over his shoulder. “It must be your girl. She looks just like you. Girl, you know your bitch of a mom owes me five grand?”

I shook my head, trembling in fear, because for every step I took back, he took two, crowding me against the door.

He thrust my purse back at me, speaking in a low, harsh voice. “What were you digging for in that bag?”

I shook my head, too frightened to process the question quickly.

“Answer me!” He shouted, one beefy hand gripping my chin.

“N-n a note. It was just a note.”

He dug in the purse, pulling out my letter to my sister and shaking it in my face. “This? This what you come for?”

I nodded, then whimpered as he crumpled the paper in his fist, pried my mouth open roughly, and shoved it between my teeth.

“Get the fuck out of here! You come back when you have this bitch’s money, you understand?”

I nodded, but I had no intention of ever coming back.

He let me go.

I fumbled with the knob, but he was on me, catching my shoulders in his hands with a death grip that made my eyes sting in pain.

He snarled, shaking me hard enough to make my teeth rattle.

He let go of my shoulders, but only to grip the thin shoulders of my tank top, ripping it open with one violent movement.

I stopped breathing; I was so shocked and terrified. My mind couldn’t comprehend how fast the situation had escalated, how fast I’d lost all control of it.

“Please don’t,” I tried to say around the crumpled paper in my mouth.

He paid no mind, moving his big body hard into mine, capturing my thighs between his own. “Keep in mind, bitch, you take more’n two days to get me my money, you’re gonna pay me back the interest in snatch, and I ain’t gonna make it nice for you. We clear?”

I nodded, just struggling to breathe.

He wasn’t finished, palming one of my breasts, kneading at it roughly. “You don’t come back, I’m coming for you, you understand?”

He let me loose, smiling as he handed me my purse and backed away. His smile alone was enough to give me nightmares.

“Go on now, little girl. I’ll be seeing you soon.”

I ran out of there, not trusting for a second that he was really letting me go.

I was a good five minute drive away before I pulled over, coughing out the paper in my mouth, taking deep gasping breaths in relief. I was shaking, but I didn’t cry, though it was an effort.

I held my shirt together as I got out of the car, moving to the trunk. I grabbed my entire overnight bag, dragging it into the car with me. Luckily, I had a change of clothes, since I’d planned to stay over at Tristan’s apartment for the weekend. But it wouldn’t do to show up with a torn shirt. That would surely raise questions that I had no intention of answering.

I changed my shirt, stuffing the ruined one into my bag.