Page 8 of Brazen Being It

CAMBRIA

Not a girl, barely a woman … and barely hanging on

Eighteen yearsold and stuck in a life that smells like stale cigarettes, cheap liquor, and motel bleach. The sun beats down on the cracked asphalt parking lot as I crouch near the vending machines outside our room, scrounging coins from under the rusted metal lip and on the concrete below. Thirty-seven cents. That brings my grand total to four dollars and sixteen cents—still not enough for another night, but maybe enough for gas station dinner if I skip lunch again.

Momma’s been inside all morning, curled under a stained blanket, rolling in and out of sleep. She gets like this when she hasn’t had her fix—bones aching, skin crawling, voice slurred and distant. Last night she promised she’d be okay.

She didn’t come back until dawn, barefoot and shaking, clothes torn at the seam, face bruised. I didn’t ask what happened. I already knew. She collapsed on the bed and hasn’t moved since.

I hate this place. This dusty town with its broken sidewalks and flickering motel signs. I hate the looks the gas station clerk gives me when I walk across the street in my baggy jeans and oversized hoodie. Like I’m one bad decision away from becoming my mother.

Maybe I am.

Maybe this is all life has to offer me.

Maybe this is my own personal purgatory.

I pocket the change and head back inside, blinking against the dimness of the room. The air conditioner wheezes from the window, doing more rattling than cooling. The room smells like sweat and sadness. Momma’s curled in a ball, lips dry, mumbling something incoherent under her breath.

I kneel beside her. “You need water, Ma.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t want it. Just need Frankie. He’ll come. He always does.”

Frankie.

What a fucking joke! She thinks he’s her savior.

He’s the devil walking.

Her pimp. Her nightmare. The man who made her this way.

“He ain’t coming,” I whisper.

But I know better. He always comes. No matter how much I wish he wouldn’t come back, I never have that luck. No matter how much I pray for his overdose, it doesn’t come.

I sit back on my legs, wiping my palms on my jeans. There’s a rip in the knee that wasn’t there yesterday. I found them in the dumpster, took them back and washed them in the hotel laundry room. They don’t fit quite right, but I didn’t spend money on them. I picked because they didn’t have holes like a lot of jeans come with already. Probably got this one from crouching behind the motel dumpster, digging for discarded bottles to cash in. I used to dream about leaving.

About college.

Modeling maybe.

Singing on a stage in Nashville.

Momma always tells me I have a pretty face and a sweet voice. She tells me to get us out of here. I used to think I could do it. Make something of my life and hers too.

But dreams don’t last long when hunger lives in my stomach and bruises live on my mother’s skin and sometimes my own. Any dream of having a life out of Collins, Arkansas crashed around me two years ago.

I go to the mini fridge—empty, no surprise there. I grab the half loaf of bread we swiped from the convenience store dumpster and tear off a piece. No butter, no jam. Just dry bread and water from the tap. Gourmet.

I hear a knock on the door and freeze.

My heart jumps into my throat.

Another knock. Slower. Heavier.

I grab the baseball bat I keep next to the dresser and tiptoe to the door. “Who is it?”

No answer.

---