Dead Echo

  Part of the reason Patsy had been born on the floor was because there was no car, or medical insurance. The other reason being that both women were shit drunk, ashtrays overflowing while Led Zeppelin spun on the turntable. Christmas had seemed as far away as the moon, and with both of them disowned by their equally fucked-up parents, it was just another night in the trailer park. Then Jean’s water broke and things changed. Up until that point she’d tried to pretend everything was under control; afterward, she could no longer. She was nineteen, living with her sister in a run-down trailer, selling weed and acid (sometimes her ass before the pregnancy) to remain fixed in place. Things were not good. She managed to call 911 in those first terrible minutes and the ambulance eventually came and took her away. She stayed at the hospital long enough to secure a birth certificate and a hefty bill she had no intent, or means, of paying.

  And then…

  things went back to normal. Relatively speaking. Two weeks after having the child a guy named Douglas Spangler broke into the trailer and held the two girls (Patsy was in a crib in the next room) at gun point while a nameless buddy of his rifled their rooms in search of dope. They didn’t find enough and things turned nasty. For the next forty minutes both of the girls were raped and sodomized. Afterward nothing was ever reported. Three weeks later Pauline was arrested for burglarizing a liquor store. While she was locked up the narcotics police raided the trailer and busted Jean too.

  From then on Patsy went to live with her grandmother, a fifty-five year old wretch of damp clothes and cigarette breath who lived across town on a state pension as modest as a Baptist on Sunday morning.