Ray Garton: Trailer Park Noir

“Kendra, those shorts you’re wearing today are too short,” Anna said. “You’ve outgrown them. Change them.”

“But they’re shorts - how can they be too short?”

Anna sighed heavily. “Honey, we need to talk about sex.”

Kendra put a hand over her mouth and giggled.

“What’s funny?”

“It just sounds funny hearing you say it.”

Anna smiled. “Does it? Well, I’m trying to be serious.”

“I already know where babies come from, if that’s what you mean.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“I wanted to know, so I did what I do whenever I want to know something. I looked it up on the Internet.”

A cold explosion of fear in Anna’s chest made her gasp. Her mind flashed harshly on the kind of smut she imagined Kendra seeing on her monitor. “On the internet ? What have you been looking at on the Internet? Where did you find out where babies come from?”

“From my online encyclopedia. I ask it lots of questions, and it always tells me about things.”

Anna realized how tense she’d become and allowed herself to relax, at least a little. “An online encyclopedia,” she said with a relieved smile. “I knew there was a reason I got you online.”

“Can we go up on the roof and watch the sunset tonight?” Kendra said.

Anna smiled wearily. She envied the way Kendra could blithely hop from one topic to the next. Anna wished she could do that, just drop things from her mind and move on to something else, something pleasant. She could skirt past the worries that ate at her, the fears that dogged her and made sleep slow to come at night as she lay in bed staring into the dark, wondering if she’d be able to pay the next batch of bills, or worst of all, the rent.

“Sure we can, if you’d like,” Anna said. “Is dinner good?”

“Fish sticks are always good.”

They ate in silence, as the radio on the counter played soft rock. Kendra liked the music – it was soothing, relaxing. It made her feel good. But she also liked rap – because it was naughty.

Kendra Marie Dunfy was a girl with a desperate hunger to be naughty.

There was a little girl who lived in unit sixteen. She was seven years old and her name was Valerie, but everyone called her Val. Val was spoiled rotten and allowed to run rampant. No one in the park liked her. Kendra was the only one in the park who would talk to her. Val had said something once that had struck Kendra. She’d said, “It’s fun to be naughty.”

Kendra’s life was an endless bland existence filled with unicorn stationary and puppy posters. One time when she and her mother had gone shopping in the Mt. Shasta Mall in Redding, Kendra had wandered into Hot Topic and had found some stationary she really wanted. It was all black, with silver and white cobwebs in the margins, and it came with a pen that wrote in silver ink. But Mommy said no. “I don’t think that’s a very good look for you, honey,” she’d said. “But we couldn’t afford it, anyway. I just can’t afford to get you fancy stationary. We don’t have the money.”

But Kendra thought it was a good look for her – she was drawn to those dark things. For example, she had a stack of old R.L. Stine horror stories she was making her way through, and she’d even read some horror novels meant for adults. They’d been scary, and they’d bothered Kendra, but she’d enjoyed that, thought it was fun. Mommy did not approve of such literature, although she let some of it slide, saying, “I’m just glad you’re reading.”

There’d been a girl last school year who was always getting into trouble. Monica Hartwell – she always dressed in black and her long, full hair was dyed black, and she was always getting detention for one thing or another. Kendra had sat down with her at lunch one day – Monica had always sat alone at a corner table in the cafeteria. Kendra had introduced herself and said she liked the way Monica’s hair looked, and the way she was dressed. They became friends, sort of. Monica did not seem to be the type of person to cultivate a real friendship. But they had lunch almost every day for the rest of the time that Monica was there. Monica had told Kendra about herself – just a tiny bit at a time – and Kendra realized she wasn’t weird at all. She was just like everybody else, who simply dealt with things in a way that was slightly different from most. Monica had given her a lot of great books to read – horror novels, dark fantasies. Some of them had been hard for Kendra to read, but she’d diligently made her way through all of them. There were a couple she didn’t quite understand, but most of them had been so scary, so disturbing – and so much fun! Monica had let her keep the books, but she had to hide them from Mommy, who wouldn’t have liked them. She’d read them in bed, under the covers, by the light of a flashlight in her dark bedroom, which had made them even scarier.

Monica wasn’t there the whole year. Her family moved away in March. Kendra missed her. There’d been no one else around like Monica, no one she could talk to with such ease, no one with whom she could truly relax and be herself. But something very useful had come from their friendship – Kendra now knew she was capable of starting a friendship. That was important to her.

She’d learned from Monica the same thing little Val had shouted: It’s fun to be naughty . She’d done things with her friend that were definitely naughty, things she’d never thought about doing with a girl before, things she’d never thought of girls doing together. Fun things, things that felt awfully good.

“You ever done any of these things with a boy?” Monica had asked.

“No.”

“You will. Someday.”

Someday , Kendra thought.

She thought of her new next-door neighbor, Mr. Reznick – Marc. He was so handsome, so rugged-looking, like maybe he belonged on a horse. Kendra wondered what it would be like to do some of those things with him.

Yes, she wanted to do something naughty . The only problem was, she was never left alone. If only she could talk Mommy into leaving her alone for a change instead of taking her over to Aunt Rose’s.

Kendra knew there was liquor in the cupboard over the kitchen counter. Maybe she could have a drink. She thought about that a while. What if Mommy found out? What if she smelled it on her breath later? Or what if Kendra got drunk and Mommy came home and found her that way? Mommy would never let her stay by herself again, that was for sure.

Kendra could not allow that to happen.

She considered finding a pack of Mommy’s cigarettes and having a smoke.

Kendra sighed. Her life was so bland, there weren’t even any proper opportunities for her to be naughty.

It was like an itch – a naughty itch that she couldn’t scratch. On one hand, she got frustrated with Mommy, but on the other, she did not want to disappoint her or make her angry. Kendra loved her, and she knew Mommy loved her, too.

But there it was, anyway, that smirking, leering need inside her, that needling itch to do something naughty, anything at all, something with some risk to it, something exciting. That was what she enjoyed the most – the excitement. She liked video games because they were exciting, and some of them were even naughty – you could get points for killing police officers, or even innocent bystanders! Kendra enjoyed adrenaline, and the satisfying feeling of getting away with something.

Last year, Kendra and Monica had gone on a lot of shoplifting trips. They’d left school at the end of the day in Monica’s car and gone to a string of convenience stores around Redding. At each stop, one would talk to the cashier while the other lifted something. They took turns. They got a lot of magazines, paperback books, candy, and beer, or other malt beverages. There was always the chance of being caught at any moment, and Kendra had felt swollen and giddy with simultaneous fear and delight. It was an intoxicating concoction of excitement that made Kendra feel like she was really doing something, like she was living .