“Way more than a decade, and the first friend I made was Matilda. She helped me to see that what I was doing was an obsession. I had to be far enough away from the addiction that it couldn’t call me back into it. That’s where you are, Carla. There is enough distance between you and your poker tables, and from what Scarlett tells me, you are so broke right now, you can’t even think about going back to that lifestyle. Youdon’t have to decide today, but there will come a time when you have to give some serious thought to what is most important to you. Until then, just think of this place as a dose of medicine.”
“What if I don’t want to be cured?”
“Then you won’t be, and when you have enough money, you can move on,” Ada Lou answered. “Before you drive away, be sure to enjoy the time you have here.”
I shook my head. “Where’s the joy in this place?”
“All around you. You won’t find any better friends than Rosie and Scarlett, and there’s always folks coming and going in the Tumbleweed, so it’s never boring. All that can bring happiness, but that will be your decision to make ... and yours alone. Now, it’s getting up toward my nap time. So put your jacket on, and I’ll take you home.”
I had not had ahomein more years than Ada Lou had lived in her tiny RV. Could she be right about me making real friends in this place? And if I did, would it be more painful to leave them or to give up the excitement of the next card game?
I slipped my arms back into my hoodie and followed her out to her vehicle. “Have you been back to Virginia?”
“Nope, and don’t intend to ever go back. Peace is a hard commodity to come by, and I’m afraid if I ever visit my daughter’s grave again, I will fall into the same obsession I had before,” she said as she slid in behind the steering wheel. “I have made friends with the other folks that live out here, as well as some in Dell City. I have my daily brunch with Rosie and Scarlett, and my good friend Nancy, who lives in the last trailer in the row, and I play board games a few times a week. The next time I see Robin, it will be on the other side.”
The thought of seeing my mother again put tears in my eyes and fear into my heart. She hated gambling, and I didn’t want her to be disappointed in me.
Chapter Five
After we closed on Sunday afternoon, I tried to take a nap. I closed my eyes and curled up on one side. The tinkling of the wind chimes hanging to the left of the front door, a chirping cricket that had managed to find a corner under the trailer, and my own breathing blended into one loud noise that wouldn’t let me sleep. I slammed a pillow over my head, leaving only my nose and chin out from under it. That didn’t work. I tried playing blackjack in my head. That didn’t work, either. Finally, I got up and wandered over to the living area and turned on the television.
A Charlie Brown Christmaswas playing. I sure didn’t want to watch that, but there was something about that silly tree that reminded me of my mother’s laughter. She used to say that we had a family stick instead of a family tree when I asked her why we didn’t have a big Christmas gathering like Frank did.
“I’m sorry, kiddo,” she’d said. “I always wanted to have one holiday with lots of kids gathered around a huge tree on Christmas morning, too, but we are doomed. We both come from a long line of only children going back for centuries.”
“What do you mean, ‘doomed’?” I’d asked her.
She’d wiped her hands on a tea towel and hugged me. “Doomedis when you don’t get brothers and sisters. I’m hoping that when you grow up, you break the record and have a dozen kids.”
So far, she had not gotten her wish, but I did the DNA thing a few years ago just to see if she was right. I have never even gotten a report about a tenth cousin who has been dead for decades.
Because I’d always asked for a tree, Frank set one up in each of our hotel rooms during the month of December. They had usually only been a foot tall and had come with a few tiny little bulbs glued to it. He’d told me that the big tree in the lobby had been decorated just for me. I believed him for years.
Evidently, it was commercial time, because the next three channels I surfed through were all advertising either wine, beer, or liquor. A visual of my mother with a drink in her hand after one of Frank’s horrible family reunions appeared as clear as if it were real. Mama and I had dreaded those events that happened four times a year—Easter, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve. He loved all his loud relatives, and the liquor and beer had flowed freely when they were all together. Mama and I had tolerated them—barely. I did not want to be related to any of those people.
Independence Day was the worst holiday. I still shiver to this day when I think of Frank’s Aunt Minnie. She would always be the first to greet us. She would bury my face in her big boobs so tightly, and when I finally wiggled free, she would bend down and kiss me on the cheek. Her mustache was like being scraped by a porcupine. Before I could get to my hiding place, one of the many drunk great-uncles would hug me and fog up my eyeballs with his breath. Had Mama lived and I had gotten married and had kids by now, I would have refused to take them to those gatherings.
I remember hiding behind a big oak tree every time the event was held outside. Two big roots that ran on top of the ground made a lovely little nest for me. The Christmas party was held at Aunt Minnie’s big old two-story house, and after dinner I escaped to the attic. That place was like going on a treasure hunt for a kid. In both of my hiding places, I usually sat alone and practiced shuffling my old maid cards like Frankdid with his lucky deck every night. If I’d had relatives my age, I might have been a different person—but then, probably not.
Frank would always come home drunk after spending time with his relatives, and Mama always had a migraine that put her to bed for at least two days. When I fussed about not wanting to go, she would tell me that she’d promised Frank she would become part of his family, and he vowed that he would never forsake us, and that he would not gamble again. He’d kept both promises: He didn’t put me in a foster home, and he didn’t gamble until she passed away.
Those big family occasions were in Kentucky. The summer before my sixteenth birthday, we made the trip from West Virginia, where I had won a lot of money in an illegal game. Frank spent so much on fireworks and booze that he was the big man on campus that year. Aunt Minnie’s mustache was still as prickly as it had always been, but I was tall enough that I didn’t get smothered by her big boobs. I just wanted the day to be over, but the universe had other plans. On our way out of town, Frank and I went into a café for breakfast. He met Paula, the owner, and decided that since we were flush, we would stay in Kentucky for a while longer. He married the woman a month later in a fancy ceremony at Aunt Minnie’s house.
“Go live a normal life. Make friends,” he’d said the day after he and Paula got married at the Harlan County Courthouse in Kentucky. That fall, he enrolled me in Harlan County High School. “Go Black Bears.”
“What about our next poker game?” I’d asked Frank when we left the courthouse.
“There will benomore gambling,” Paula had said. “Frank loves me enough that he promised he would give up poker.”
Yeah, right! He promised Mama the same thing, and look what happened.
All I had known for almost eight years was going from one place to the next, studying in whatever hotel or motel room Frank had left me in until he bought me a phony ID. Then I was able to go to the pokergames with him, and often won more money than he did. Friends were not part of the equation.
Until I came to the Tumbleweed.
I’d been at this place for four days and now had $503 and some change in my lockbox. I had been excited to see Scarlett and Rosalie leave that afternoon so that I could have some alone time in the trailer, but now I wished they were still there.
“Here I am without Rosalie singing hymns under her breath or Scarlett watching television,” I whispered and closed my eyes, shutting off the visions, “and I miss them.”
