Winner of the Writers’ Inc. Writers of the Year short story competition 2003. Published in Il Duco (Blue Nose Press, 2003)

The last time I saw my mother she was screaming at me with her face really up close. All I could think was that she looked just like an orange, with her skin all tanned and full of pores.

Jimmy went to collect my things and since not long after that I’ve been living here in “Sharonville”. Well, that’s what Jimmy said we should call this place when it became a regular town. When he first came here he used to talk about “Sharonville University” and the local basketball team, “The Sharonville Shooters”. I think he did it to make me smile.

Jimmy should never have been here in the first place. I bought this piece of land off the state for a dollar. I had it on the condition that I make something of it in the next seven years, so I rented a trailer and I hope to build a big house some day. Jimmy‘s parents went crazy about him coming here to be with me – his father smashed Jimmy‘s guitar he was so mad. His mother and father didn‘t get along too well – Jimmy was the glue of that family.

I got a job down the road at the gas station store where all the buses stop on the way to the Grand Canyon. The owner has a deal with the drivers. It‘s not so bad as all the people I see are on their vacations. Sometimes I look up from the cash register and all I see is like this tropical jungle – all sorts of shirts! Sometimes they say “Hi Sharon” and I get surprised – I forget I‘m wearing my name plate with “SHARON, HERE TO HELP” on it. I wrap up all their calendars and Indian dream catcher things and they all drive away safe from their nightmares, I guess.

When I get back to the trailer at nights it‘s as hot as hell. Sometimes I go over to see Louanne. Her husband, Luther, is real handy and he built a place there for them. This road where we live looks so funny and pale in the desert – it‘s like God dropped a giant picnic fork. There’s not too many of us living out here.

I got real friendly with Louanne after Jimmy left. I didn‘t believe it at all, Jimmy knocking on the door saying he had come to get his clothes and me standing there in my T shirt in the light, rubbing at my eyes like I’d cut an onion. What was it? Seven o‘clock in the morning?

But then I saw Louanne standing there. I saw Louanne‘s curly hair which she hates and which I think is pretty. It was burning away beautifully, bronze and gold. Then I knew it was true.

The day before that Jimmy had gone to stay with his parents. On the way he had gone over to the place where Louanne works and told her he was ending it with me. He wanted her there, he said, when he broke it to me, in case I did something stupid. Louanne just laughed and told him things would fix themselves up between us before the day was out. But Jimmy turned all serious and made her swear to be there – he’d call by when he got back first thing in the morning.

I guess the truth was like a long truck coming closer to me down the highway. I should have seen it before it knocked me down. We had been fighting for a while. We‘d been like corn popping BANG BANG inside the trailer. I asked Louanne if she ever heard us bawling, but she would never say so. I guess now that I was so damn angry over my mother drinking all those years and me having to take all of it that I needed to holler. Once I was able to get up off the dirt and dust my dress down I could see the slogan on the side of that big truck and start to figure things out.

I suppose I really didn‘t know much back then. My grandmother loved me. She used to sit with me those long nights waiting for my mother to come collect me. I remember my little kiss like a butterfly on the glass when I looked out for her. I am an only child, a mistake, my father’s revenge, as my mother reminded me in between the good times when she was funny and kind and called me her “angel”. I didn’t know what to think about me.

But when my grandmother‘s thick arms surrounded me I felt safe. Pressed up to her bosom was like being on a big marshmallow chair. Whatever way I was, I fitted.

I saw this program on TV over at Louanne‘s house not long ago. It was all about these big blue lady lobsters who fight for a place to sit in the sand in the Atlantic. There was this one who whacked at another one with this chunky cutlery of hers and settled down like she was in a lounge bar with cocktails on the table.

I said to Louanne, laughing: “I wish I was like those gals!” and she said: “You are, honey!”

And, you know, I suppose she‘s right. I guess I can fight my corner, though I don‘t want to hurt anybody. And I have my own special sea of sand.

When I lie alone at night in bed, I stretch my legs out at angles where Jimmy might have been and I think of those crustacean girlies so far away doing the same thing down in the dark water. I usually fall into my dreams thinking about them and the mountains nearby watching over me like lots of grandmothers.