Page 1 of Mine To Possess

1

AMELIA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj4OgWq5OmE

-White trash beautiful-

Ican’t keep my heart from sinking when I see the sign loom up ahead of me.

WELCOME

to

Sunny Vale.

I’m sure when it was put up in the late eighties, the painting of the sun was a bright, happy yellow. Now, it’s faded to a dirty off-white. The ‘L’ from ‘WELCOME’ is missing and the whole board is filled with tiny holes where kids have used it for target practice with their BB guns.

Maybe, back then when the sign went up, Sunny Vale was a welcoming place, the name sure suggests it was. Now it’s the exact opposite of that. It’s dreary, depressing and wholly unwelcoming.

I sigh as I pass beneath it and step into the trailer park. The trailers are all as old and dilapidated as the sign. The front windows of one of them is boarded up. Another is slowly, sadly sinking into the ground as if in shame. But my mom likes to pretend we are lucky we live here.

“Good afternoon, Amelia,” a voice calls from the step of one of the trailers.

“Hi, Mrs. Mason,” I call back, giving the woman a half-hearted wave.

She stands in the doorway to her trailer, a mostly smoked cigarette dangling precariously from her lips. She’s at least sixty, and from what I can gather she’s lived here since the park opened its doors. I kinda feel bad for her. What sort of mistakes does a person need to make to end up living here all their life?

Maybe she’s like my mom…

Unlucky in love and life.

You’d think by husband number four my mother would have understood alcoholics don’t make good husband material. But no. She chose Dan. Another mean spirited, aggressive, alcoholic tyrant on the wrong side of two hundred pounds.

Even thinking about him makes me slow my steps towards his trailer.

His trailer is his pride and joy, which I really think says everything a person needs to know about him. He’s not trying to better himself and get out of this shit hole. To him, living in the Sunny Vale trailer park is living the dream life.

I still remember the day Mom announced we’d be moving here.

At the time we were living in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment and she was working two jobs just to keep us in that. By then I’d already met the cleaned-up, sober version of Dan once or twice. He seemed like an ok guy, so when she said we’d be moving into his place, which had three bedrooms, one of which, I was informed, would be mine, I was ecstatic.

My very own room!

God, the dreams I built up in my head. And then she brought me here and all my dreams faded away like the painted sun on that damned sign.

In one day, I went from being Amelia from the ghetto (the charming name the kids in my school came up with to differentiate me from the other kid called Amelia) to Amelia the trailer trash girl.

But they couldn’t stop me from loving school, and I longed for a chance at college, but no college for me, of course. When I hit sixteen, Mom asked me to quit school and contribute towards the household expenses.

Which was fair enough. I understood, Mom needed me out working because Dan couldn’t work due to his ‘disability’. Plus, I hated seeing my mother’s tired face when she walked through the door after a long shift. I was glad to be able to help her.

I managed to find a job in a small clothing store, but it irked me no end that we were both working hard to keep Dan tanked up every night. I kept my mouth shut, but once, when I was giving over almost all my wages to Mom while Dan was passed out on the couch, I couldn’t help remarking that his only disability was the one he found every night in the bottom of a whisky bottle.

For my trouble, I got a sharp backhanded slap from my mother and a reminder we were living inhishome. That kind of closed that discussion.

Life went on, but my job only lasted until two months ago when Dan came into the store in a drunken stupor and demanded the owner give me a pay rise. He caused such an embarrassing scene Mr. Jones told me not to bother coming back.

I’m job hunting right now, but it’s hard when the only employer I’ve ever had is unwilling to give me a reference and I have no real educational qualifications. Dan sure has a lot to answer for.