“The Farmers don’t take charity,” her mother would say when she was sober enough to be embarrassed that someone else wanted to do for her daughter what she could not.
That was a lot of malarkey.
They’d been on welfare off and on since the third-or maybe the fourth-stepfather had gone north to Chicago, where he was going to make a killing in the oil fields and then send for them.
Truckloads of malarkey.
Polly’s mom had waited by the phone until Polly told her there weren’t any oil fields in Chicago.
A fist or a foot or a head slammed into the door. Polly pounded back angrily with the flat of her hand.
“Would you pass out so I can go to the bathroom!” she yelled.
Ma Danko, the old colored woman who lived two trailers down, looked up from the laundry basket she cradled in her stick-thin arms.
“Why don’t you come on home with me and have some cookies?” Ma said.
“I better not, but thanks,” Polly replied. “You know how it is.”
“I do. But you come on anyway if it starts raining.”
“I will.”
But she wouldn’t. Of all charity, Polly’s mom hated charity from Negroes the worst. “You just remember you’re white,” her mother would say. “Niggers got no business feeling sorry for a white girl.”
A scudding wind picked up leaves and litter and threw them at Polly in cold mockery. “It’s getting downright chilly,” Ma said. “It’s gonna be a bitter rain. Cookies is still warm from the oven.”
“It won’t be long now,” Polly assured her. The banging inside the trailer was growing sluggish. Nodding, Ma Danko walked on.
Polly pulled up the backside of her full skirt and pinched it around her shoulders to keep warm. Ten minutes passed, fifteen. Finally the noise stopped. She stood and smoothed her skirt back into place. Turning the knob slowly so it wouldn’t make noise, she opened the door a couple of inches and peeked in.
Her mom was on the couch crying. Tom, the most recent stepfather, wasn’t anywhere in the kitchen-cum-living-room. American Bandstand was on the TV. Girls in fringed dresses were twisting in spotlights.
Polly slipped in and closed the door. The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes. A Miller’s can lay on its side weeping beer onto the linoleum, but the lamps were still upright and none of the dishes looked broken.
All’s well that ends well, Polly thought. It was the title of a play they were reading in sophomore English. She set the geometry book on the kitchen counter and went to the couch to see if her mother was bleeding.
“What’re you lookin’ at,” Hilda Farmer snapped.
“Nothing,” Polly said. No blood, no swelling: Tom hadn’t hit her. Tom wasn’t so bad. He yelled a lot but he kept his hands to himself and never hit unless Hilda stayed in his face too long. Two of Hilda’s front teeth were missing, but that wasn’t Tom’s fault. It was nobody’s fault. They’d just rotted and the dentist had to pull them. The bridge with the false teeth was on the counter near the toaster. When Hilda started into fighting mode, she always took them out so they wouldn’t get broken.
“What’re you doin’ home?” Hilda demanded, slurring her words.
Drunker than a skunk. Hilda didn’t slur until she’d gone through at least a couple of six-packs.
“School’s out. It’s nearly four.”
“Big deal high school girl,” Hilda sneered. “You think you’re so damned smart.”
Polly’s mother never made it to high school. At thirteen, she’d gotten knocked up. When she was on a toot, she’d tell this to whoever would listen, as if Polly had intentionally interfered with the higher education of Miss Hilda Farmer by intruding in a womb that did not want her.
“So damn smart.”
“That’s right, Momma,” Polly said.
“None of your lip.”
Hilda forgot she was crying. Reaching out blindly, she felt around until her hand closed on a beer can on the end table.
Drinking deeply, she stared at the television. “They think that’s dancing,” she said sullenly. “Wiggling their behinds and shaking their topsides. When I was young we danced.”
When I was young.
Hilda was twenty-eight. When she was Polly’s age she’d had a two-year-old daughter.
“Miss High and Mighty Sophomore, just you wait,” Hilda said, never taking her eyes from the television. “One day it’ll be you sitting here, and some snot-nosed kid looking down on you, and there ain’t one thing you can do about it, not one damn thing. No high school dip-low-maaah is going to get you there.” She pointed at the black-and-white figures frugging on the screen. TV-land was akin to heaven in Hilda’s mind.
“Dancing!” she snarled. “What a load of crap.”
Polly left her to her beer and bellyaching and went to her room. It was so small, if she lay crosswise on the bed, she could put the soles of her feet on one wall and the palms of her hands on the other.
She hung her school clothes carefully in the closet, then pulled on her dungarees and an old sweater left behind by the truck driver her mom had taken up with before Tom. Sitting on the edge of the unmade bed, she stared at the wall between her room and the master bedroom. The wood was so thin she could hear Tom snoring. If she squinted she could imagine the wall sucking and puffing out.
“One day it’ll be you… ”
The wall sucked in.
“… a snot-nosed kid looking down… ”
The wall puffed out.
Polly rose, slid open the pocket door, and stepped into the narrow hallway. The door to the master bedroom was open. Flat on his back, spread-eagle on the mess of sheets and blankets, Tom snored, his whole throat collapsing between breaths. His pants were unbuttoned; he’d gotten them half off before he’d passed out.
Polly looked over her shoulder. Hilda was still absorbed in abusing Dick Clark. She tiptoed into the bedroom, though, given Tom’s condition, she could probably have roared in on a Harley and he wouldn’t have stirred.
Slipping her hand under his half-exposed buttock, she massaged gently until his wallet poked out of the pocket, then lifted it with the dexterity of long practice.
“Baby,” Tom muttered, and a fist hit her smack in the eye. Blinded and shocked, Polly fell back. He hadn’t struck out at her. He’d been reaching for Hilda in some drunken place they were together. The eye watered copiously. She’d get a shiner out of this for sure. After all the times she’d made up stupid stories at school to explain away bruises, this time the story was so stupid it was true. With the back of her hand, she smeared the tears away and opened his wallet. Twelve bucks. She took all but one. She also took the condom he carried.
Maybe he’d think he spent the eleven dollars on a whore.
Nobody’d bother to use a condom with Hilda. She’d had female troubles. No more kids.
Dropping the wallet on the floor where it might have fallen by accident, Polly stuffed the cash into the pocket of her jeans.