Page 1 of Dirty Little Secrets

I was thirteen the first time I walked past the caged rooms. Fifteen when I stopped pretending, I didn’t know what went on inside. They called it a clubhouse, but it felt like a trap.

The air reeked of tobacco, sex, whiskey and the kind of secrets that ruin girls like me. I didn’t walk in by choice. Not when your own mother brings you in because you were a mistake. An accident. A product of a night she can’t remember.

She’s an alcoholic. And when she drank, she forgot who she was or remembered all too well.

For a while, I searched the eyes of every man who stared at me, hoping to see some flicker of resemblance.

Hoping to find the man who fathered me. But eventually, I stopped looking.

Stopped caring. Because they all look at me the same way.

Like I was another version of her. A House Mouse destined to become another woman to pass around.

That’s what the kids at school said in my junior year when no one asked me to homecoming. When I confronted my mom after school one day, she didn’t lie. She didn’t even flinch.

I was sixteen. The Acre Estates Trailer Park sign hung crooked, swaying in the breeze like it was too tired to care.

Each trailer sat on concrete block; grass burnt dry beneath them.

Beer bottles and garbage spilled from overflowing bins, the air sour with the stench of septic tanks reminding me of rotten eggs.

Our trailer sat behind a rusted chain-link fence. The yellow siding was faded and peeling. I walked up the gravel path, sidestepping the rusted yellow Ford Mercury with its drooping headliner like a curtain in the rear window.

I didn’t need a key to the door. I knew when I tried to the handle, it was never locked. By four in the afternoon, my mother was usually too drunk to remember how.

The smell of rot and stale booze hit me before I even step inside.

The trailer groans as I open the door. Inside, a man I recognize from the clubhouse zips up his jeans.

His motorcycle cut is slung over the couch armrest. My mother sits on the edge of the couch, wiping her mouth.

Her brown hair tangled, her eyes glassy as she grabs the bottle of beside her and takes a swig.

Her gaze meets mine. “Where ya been?”

“School.”

She huffs, dragging a cigarette from the ashtray. “Don’t know why you waste your time with that nonsense. Look around darlin’, we ain’t got money for college. Don’t care how smart you think you are.”

Anger flares in my chest. “Is that why everyone at school makes fun of me? Because I’m supposed to end up like you?”

She takes a drag, smoke curls around her face. “Baby, you already are like me. It’s just a matter of time before they put you to good use.”

The words slice through me. She means the motorcycle club. She wouldn’t. I already clean up after those bastards after their drugged induced orgies after school or when I have to wait until she’s done in the back room.

“I’ll see you around, Susan,” the man mutters, grabs his cut and the door slams behind him.

“Now look what ya did.”

I raise a brow. “What did I do?”

“You pissed him off.”

He got what he came for, but I didn’t say it.

The neighbors all knew how she got. Especially when she switched from Gin to Vodka and felt ashamed by the latest man, she let use her body for a bottle or pills.

The one thing she hates to be called was a prostitute but everyone knew what people called women when they sold their body for sex and got something in return.

As if on cue, she tosses the empty bottle into an overflowing trash bin and grabs a new one. She twists off the cap and stares at me. “You want some? I can make you a screwdriver.”

A screwdriver meant three fingers of vodka, no orange juice, and maybe a single ice cube if there was any.

“Sure.” Saying no was like talking back to a drill sergeant.

“That’s my girl,” she slurs, stumbling to the kitchen. Yellow Formica cabinets peeled at the corners. The side of the refrigerator with faded orange spots of grease. She finds a red plastic cup on the counter, doesn’t even check if it’s clean, and pours.

“No ice,” she mutters, handing it to me. “Tastes better this way.”

I take the cup and pretend to sip, ignoring the black flecks floating in the liquid.

“Good girl,” she praises, stumbling, collapsing back onto the stained green sofa, bottle clutched in one hand.

I follow her into the dim living room. The last rays of daylight filters through grimy windows.

I used to think she was cool for letting me drink alcohol in sixth grade.

Now I knew better. She didn’t do it to bond.

She did it because she didn’t want to drink alone.

After a while, the silence thickens. She watches me as I fake another sip, her own gulps loud and desperate as she takes a pull of the bottle.

Dinner was never coming. She already sold our food stamps for booze by the seventh of every month.

The fridge was empty. Always was. I was lucky for the free lunch at school.

Missing a day meant I didn’t eat. Asking her for food was like asking a lion for a steak.

“So,” she says breaking the silence, “what’s this I hear about you applying to college? How you gonna pay for it?”

My counselor at school called her about it because my GPA was high and I scored well on the SAT. I was surprised she remembered. “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”

She leans back, takes a swig. “The boys at the clubhouse could find you work.”

I freeze. A little voice in the back of my ear knows what kind of work but the little girl in denial needs to hear it. “What kind of work?”

Her drunk gleam, glassy and detached. “You’re a smart girl.” Then her head lolls to the side. “I’ll get my cut, of course.”

That was why she didn’t want me going off to college. She was offering me up. Not asking. She was telling me I’d start earning for her habit. And for a split second, I considered it.

Not because I wanted to.

Because I was desperate to get out. A degree was my ticket but without money, I couldn’t attend.

The school I planned on going to was above the threshold for the Pell Grant.

I needed a job. If I was living with her and working at a gas station or a Walmart, she would bleed me out with her habit and I wouldn’t have enough to cover books and tuition.

If it was a job at the club, that was different because I’m sure I could work something out with the President’s son, Brent.

We went to the same school. I knew he liked me even if I hated his friends and what he was into.

There were plenty of times I turned him down but that didn’t stop him.

He wanted something from and I wanted a way out of this hell.

But I knew the price. And I wasn’t sure I could afford what it would cost me.