Dorothy

She had been wanted. 
Pressed against the cinderblock wall behind the garage where he fixed her Daddy’s truck. 

He had a smile watching her through the plate glass window, his worn soles heating on the Missouri gravel. Her skinny hips playfully swinging as she poured weak coffee and laughed with customers in the short block café. Today’s tips would be good. Might go buy that pretty blouse with the yellow and orange flowers before heading home. She had offered to take the old Ford 150 into town that morning, saving a trip for another when there were crops to tend.

They married when her apron strings began to pull taut on her uniform.  Smear of pink dimestore lipstick on her teeth when she said ‘I do.’

After family shared cake and tossed the rice, he helped her into the truck to begin their miles toward a job in California. People talking said the military always needed aeroplanes. His fingers held talent. Good with any engine, they said. 

The wedding night had been spent in separate beds. His with a whore. Hers sweating beneath a thin motel sheet, praying for stillness to come from the shallow bath of saltwater and hydrogen peroxide she had packed.

Rose was born in Long Beach. Wanda in the desert. Junior's newborn heart never beat inside the hospital on Olympic, just blocks away from the bar where she tended to threadbare seated regulars. All seeking shelter from the unforgiving L.A. sun or anything else that might cause them harm. Barbara Ann had been a happy surprise. Honey colored bouncing curls made her mama smile and hum while hanging diapers on the line in the small apartment courtyard. Beach Boys on the transistor radio, playing the tune for which her youngest was named. Light moments and music long gone. 

Thirty-eight years of blame and neglect, endured in stale shadowed air. Dorothy sits at the chipped floor-display green dinette he brought home before his final time leaving. Rolling cigarettes because the night is long and she’s no longer eats.