Henry's Sisters (12 page)

I laughed. Janie gasped, then snickered and covered her mouth. Cecilia hid a smile.

‘I’m surprised you didn’t. You surgeons think you’re God and can do anything.’

‘Not God, ma’am, but we are the ones with the sharp knives. It kind of makes us like the boss. You know.
The boss
. You’re out cold, I’m wielding a weapon. You’re totally at my mercy.’ He grinned again. ‘So, I take it you are feeling better than yesterday?’

‘Yesterday I felt like my lungs had been sliced open. Today I feel like my heart has been stabbed. Which is worse, doctor?’ She eyed him up and down.

‘Sliced and diced!’ the doctor said cheerily. ‘But I personally think you look terrific, Mrs Bommarito. I wish all my patients came out of their operations as well as you.’

Momma’s chin lifted and a weak ‘Is that so?’ dropped from those red-lipsticked lips.

‘Most assuredly!’ Dr Janns went on. ‘Your colouring is rosier than it was yesterday, your vitals are vital! You don’t seem tired. You’re rockin’, Mrs Bommarito. Rockin’. Fantastic and beautiful, if I can say so.’

My mouth fell open. I couldn’t believe it. Momma tried to hide her smile. ‘I’m a strong woman.’

‘Yep, you are,’ the doctor agreed. ‘Strong as an ox, as soft and gentle as a lamb, as flamboyant as a peacock, as cuddly as a kitten.’

I sucked in my breath, waiting for the snip snip from Momma.

She glanced out the window. ‘Perhaps you did a
fairly
good job on my heart, I’m not sure. I can’t tell yet. I’ll let you know. If you didn’t, you’ll be sure to hear from me.’

The doctor was still smiling. ‘It would be a pleasure to hear from you at any time, Mrs Bommarito. Any day, all day.’

‘All right, then I’ll tell you your hair is unbrushed. Untidy.’

‘Momma, please—’ Cecilia started.

I sat back in my chair and pulled on a braid.

‘Oh maaaan,’ the doctor pretended to whine. ‘You don’t like my hair? Yesterday you didn’t like my tie.’

‘I don’t like your tie today, either. It makes me dizzy.’ She huffed. ‘Do you want to make your patients dizzy, young man? Do you?’

I sighed. Janie whimpered. Cecilia shushed her.

The doctor was buzzed and checked the number on his beeper. ‘Mrs Bommarito,’ he said, leaning over her, ‘I think you’re going to be one of my favourite patients ever.’

At those truly shocking words, that momma of mine did something surprising. She took that doctor’s hand in hers and patted it. ‘Have a good day, Dr Janns,’ she told him. ‘I’ll see you this afternoon, as usual. Do not be late. Tardiness is not acceptable.’

He grasped her hand in his. ‘I wouldn’t miss it.’

The doctor grinned at us and left.

‘These doctors are incompetent,’ she said as he left, the scowl back in place. ‘Completely, utterly incompetent.’

Two days later, Janie and I locked up the bakery and drove to Cecilia’s. We were going to melt some of Parker’s tools down with a blowtorch as a sisterly bonding activity.

We drove up the hill towards Cecilia’s house in my Porsche, which we’d snagged after a visit to Momma. I have spent a fair amount of time trying to decide if I like my motorcycle or my Porsche better. I cannot decide.

As we were getting out a brand-new red Corvette roared up the drive.

‘Speak of the King of the Devils,’ I said. ‘Our blowtorch sisterly meltdown will have to wait.’

‘I see he’s brought his motorised pitchfork,’ Janie drawled. ‘Already I feel bleakness swirling through my gentle karma.’

The man driving the Corvette, Parker, Cecilia’s soon to be dung-faced ex, if this infernal divorce would ever end, was a prime example of an MMMMM. Translation: Major Male Menopause Moment Man.

‘Good thing the girls aren’t here,’ I said. ‘He’s come to harangue Cecilia. Bully her up. She says he does this in the hopes that she’ll get so battered down, she’ll give in.’ I laughed. ‘As if our Cecilia would ever get battered down.’

‘Ladies!’ Parker spread his arms out wide, as if he thought we would race to him for a hug.

I spread my arms out wide, too. ‘Adulterer! Slime-Man! Mould and scum!’

Janie spread her arms out. ‘If it isn’t the devil! Where’s your pitchfork? Come on, now, show me that pitchfork!’

Parker dropped his arms, the sleazy smile disappearing.

‘Forgive us for not jumping into your arms,’ I said. ‘We’ve restrained ourselves with great effort.’

‘Hello, vermin,’ Janie said. ‘Did I tell you that my hatred for you makes me a better crime writer? I think of you when I’m killing someone.’

He cringed, paled a bit, then got his footing back. ‘How are your one-night stands going, Isabelle?’

‘They’re going well, thank you. Plenty of them.’ My skin crawled as Parker took me in from head to foot. He is a shortish sort of man with vampire-like teeth.

Cecilia married him because he was the first guy who expressed serious interest in her. She was bowled off her feet, her usually smart brain going to mush in a hand basket because her self-esteem at that time was about as low as a beetle’s groin. He gave her attention, and she licked it up. Grateful.

Sad.

‘Janie,’ Parker said. ‘How’s the houseboat? Able to leave it without counting all the cracks in the sidewalk, I see. Maybe you’ll be able to go to the store by yourself soon.’

I wandered over to his car and took out my lipstick. I twisted it upward, then jammed the entire thing into the sheepskin liner on the driver’s side, smearing it as I went.

‘What the—’ Parker ran over to me, flushed and furious. He dipped his head in the car. ‘Isabelle, you’re gonna pay for that!’

‘I sure will, snake oil man. I have some Monopoly money in the house. How about pink?’

He spat out a bad word that started with a
b
, but I have been called worse. I threw my lipstick at his lips. I noticed that his bottom was bigger than last time. ‘I notice your bottom is bigger than last time!’

‘By the way, Parker,’ Janie said, hand to cheek, ‘what’s your middle name? I’m trying to name the gambler in my next book who has no morals, cheats anyone he can get his hands on, and ends up in a grave alive. He suffocates slowly. What is it again? Deadbeat? Hairy Chest Man Loser? Gopher Face? I can’t remember. Help me out, Isabelle.’

‘I think his middle name is: I Come In My Hand A Lot,’ I said. It’s good to be helpful.

‘You are so smart, Is,’ Janie gushed. ‘I knew I could rely on you. For a second I thought it might be Masturbating Monster, but no. You’ve got it.’

Parker used that
b
word again. Pluralised.

We laughed, both of us. As if that word would throw us one whit.

As soon as he was in the house I accidentally let the air out of a tyre.

I was told later by Cecilia that Parker had got stuck on a back country road with Constance and they’d had to hike back. Five miles.

‘Parker said you have to pay Constance for her heels,’ Cecilia had said. ‘They’re designer. Six hundred dollars.’

We had laughed so hard at the thought of me paying Constance back we had to cross our legs.

‘Isabelle, forgive me,’ Janie said, touching my arm. ‘But I think that Parker’s car is in need of literary help.’ She took out her black permanent marker and wrote, ‘
Tengo un pequeño pene
’ (I have a small penis).

Four times.

The trunk, side doors, and hood.

There was that number four again!

We Bommarito girls are masters at vengeance.

‘I’ll settle this divorce, Parker, but first I need you to drive up your attorneys’ fees higher,’ Cecilia said, smirking.

Me and Janie sat on either side of Cecilia at the kitchen table. We sisters were all eating lemon cake and drinking tea.

We had offered Parker nothing.

Well, that wasn’t true.

Janie had placed a dead piece of asparagus in front of him on a newspaper. ‘
Bon appétit
, perverted porn man.’

‘The three musketeers.’ Parker sneered. ‘The three sickos, more like it.’

‘I’m not sick,’ Janie said. ‘One. Two. Three. Four. You. Are. A. Dick. One. Two. Three. Four. You. Have. Walnuts. For. Balls.’

‘I’m not sick, either,’ I said, surprise in my voice at his misconception. ‘Healthy as a horse. How are you feeling, though, Parker? Any new website adventures for unhappy but married people? How’s the porn going? What, exactly, does a gigantic fake boob feel like anyhow? I’ve always wondered.’

He got all red and flustered and angry and gross and pointed at Cecilia.

‘You tell your sister to settle this thing on the double. I am not – you hear this, Cecilia – I am not going to spend any more of my life battling this out. I am not giving you a cent. Just because no one’s ever gonna be dumb enough to marry this fat bitch again, I’m not takin’ the heat.’

Dear us.

Janie had a knife in her hand
from her purse
lickety-split, and I had both of my hands around Parker’s chicken neck and jammed him against the kitchen counters.

We have to work so hard, we Bommarito sisters.

Together we marched a struggling, swearing Parker to the porch and shoved him up against the rail and made him bend far, far, far back and Cecilia shoved his legs over. He’s a little guy, so it wasn’t hard.

He took off, and we laughed when we heard his howl upon entering his midlife crisis car. He obviously could read a little Spanish.

I glanced out the window of the bakery before I closed up around nine o’clock the next night and caught the eye of an older gentleman across the street under a street light. He was tall with white hair.

Our eyes held for a second. I thought I saw him smile.

The phone rang and I turned to grab it.

When I turned back, he was gone.

Amelia Earhart stood to attention on our front porch, her legs wide. ‘I am here to inform you that I have been named the Queen of the Air for my outstanding flying contributions to America!’

Velvet swung on the porch swing, her hands busy crocheting. ‘She’s been a peach today! A southern Carolina peach!’

‘Hello, Amelia! Congratulations.’

‘I am flying to Honolulu shortly, and I can take you with me! You have to fill out this form first, though. It asks your name, address, hair colour, Yosemite, waffles, if you own flight goggles and diapers. Are there any flatulence problems? How is your bottom?’

She handed me a piece of pink paper with a smiley face in the centre of it.

‘I’ll fill it out immediately, Mrs Earhart.’

‘You do that. I’ll have my assistant get back to you.’

Henry came out, smiling at me. ‘Hi, Isabelle! You pretty!’ he shouted, waving his hand. He was in a flight outfit that Momma had bought for him so he could play aeroplane with Grandma.

He snapped his goggles over his face. ‘Ready for takeoff!’ he shouted. He pulled a pink baseball hat over his brown curls.

‘Ready for takeoff!’ Grandma shouted. They both leapt off the front steps and onto the grass. Grandma crouched in front of Henry. They both bopped up and down while making engine noises, then Grandma started running and Henry followed. Both spread their arms way out like wings as they sped across the grass.

It was likely, I thought, as I watched their flying manoeuvres, that I would get dementia. Momma, too.

I laughed. Who knew. Maybe Momma would believe she was Mary Poppins and start carrying an umbrella.

Nah. It was more likely Momma would morph into Attila the Hun. Or Dracula.

Henry and Grandma skipped under the willow trees.

Heck, if dementia transformed me into someone with purpose and happiness like Grandma, I wouldn’t complain.

Not at all.

But I would want a co-pilot exactly like Henry.

‘Cupcakes,’ I said.

‘Cupcakes?’ Janie and Cecilia said.

‘Yep. The cupcakes will be Bommarito’s Bakery’s signature treat,’ I told them.

It was six o’clock in the morning on a Sunday and we were having a Bommarito Sisters Meeting.

‘We already make cupcakes,’ Cecilia said, taking another gulp of coffee and a doughnut hole.

‘I don’t mean your regular, run-of-the-mill cupcakes,’ I said. ‘They’ll be different. They’ll be huge. Like small cakes, only we’ll call them cupcakes.’

Cecilia and Janie blinked at me.

‘We’ll decorate them so the tops will be 3-D-like. I’m thinking mermaids and monsters, lizards and spiders, ghosts and vampires. Creatively decorated, huge cupcakes. Special. Yummy. Bommarito’s Heavenly Cupcakes.’

I waited. Cecilia and Janie stared at me.

I opened my eyes up wide, spread my hands. ‘Hello? Are we still here together on planet Earth or has a dwarf alien slipped inside your mouths and tied your tongue to your teeth?’

More silence.

Finally, Janie said, ‘I’m thinking of all the ways I could ice big cupcakes. We could pile on chocolate shavings like a chocolate sculpture or alternate meringue and strawberry filling in a swirl.’

Cecilia said, her voice misty, ‘We could do tiny scenes on the cupcakes. Like two girls in a garden. Or a forest scene with a raccoon staring at a fish in the pond.’

We sat in our own cupcake heaven for a second.

‘Cheers,’ I said to my sisters.

‘Cheers! To Bommarito’s Heavenly Cupcakes!’ Cecilia said.

‘One, two, three, four,’ Janie said. ‘I’m not out the door.’

I rolled my eyes.

We all raised our coffee mugs and clinked them together. Cecilia’s broke, coffee spilling onto the table.

So typical for the Bommarito girls.

To launch our cupcakes, we bought an ad in the local paper with photos of five of our different types of decorated cupcakes.

At three o’clock on Thursday, the time when we said we’d be selling those cupcakes, a line snaked out the door.

We ran out in fifteen minutes.

People were not happy.

‘I waited for an hour for the cupcake with the giant squirrel.’

‘I told my daughter I’d get her the cupcake with the octopus on it and the blue candy bubbles…’

‘It’s my parents’ anniversary, those cupcakes with motorcycles are perfect because they ride bikes…’

‘My garden club is meeting tonight and I need those cupcakes with the smiling flowers…’

‘Come on. Make some more. Please?’

We shut the bakery at six o’clock. For the next week our working hours expanded once again. We were working sixteen-hour days and flopping into bed, exhausted.

I knew we couldn’t go on like this for long, but I had goals. I had plans. We’d work to make Momma some money, hire people who knew how to bake and manage a bakery, and I would move back to Portland, and my life, but not my photography because I’d had to give that up, and I’d check out of this town and back into reality.

That’s what I would do.

And maybe, for once, Momma would appreciate what we’d done.

I laughed.

Nah. Ain’t happenin’.

Bao continued to come in. Each day he smiled at me, shuffled over to the counter, and ordered. I think he was the most gentle man I’d ever encountered.

On Friday I served him and he sat down and set up his chess set. I brought him a free cookie. He smiled. ‘Thank you, Isabelle. You kind woman.’

Janie and I were baking and I was serving customers. The phone was ringing and we were trying to take orders. A shipment of pans had not been delivered, we were trying to unload food that had recently arrived, we had cakes and cupcakes on order that we had to bake, and we were wiped out.

I watched Bao playing chess by himself for a second, pushing my braids out of my sweaty face. Now there would be nothing to indicate my next decision was going to be a good one. The man limped, moved slow, and only one hand worked well. I went by gut instinct, the same gut instinct I’d used when deciding not to stay at a certain hotel in Baghdad that was obliterated two nights later.

‘Bao,’ I said to him. ‘Think you’d be any good at icing cupcakes and cakes?’

Bao was a gift.

Janie had taken a few seconds to show him how to ice a couple of cakes and cupcakes, and he’d gone to work. First he was simply doing the background icing job. By the end of the second day he graduated to full cake decorating.

He was brilliant. He wielded those icing tubes like a professional artist.

A few days later I showed him how to make lemon and pumpkin breads and the recipe we followed for our cinnamon rolls and tiramisu. No problem.

No problem with the tarts, either.

He did all his bakery work perfectly, with such care.

At the end of the first day, we’d hugged him. He hugged us back, his eyes teary.

I handed him an employment application.

He bowed.

‘No, I work here for you, when you need Bao. As favour. A gift.’

‘Thank you, Bao. I appreciate that, but no can do. Your first day was today and we’ll pay you for it. Fill out the forms. We’re all Americans. We like forms. You’ll come in tomorrow? And the next day? Forever and ever?’

Bao smiled and it transformed his face.

‘Please, Bao,’ Janie begged. ‘We need help.’

He raised his eyebrows and said quietly, almost to himself, ‘I have job. First time long time. I have job.’ He grinned again and his face lit up. ‘I have job. I be here tomorrow. Early.’

In the midst of waiting for another batch of giant cupcakes to bake, I got a break. I decided I should take a lookie at the books. Get the numbers on how Momma was doing.

It didn’t take long to read it. I sat down heavily.

I tapped my fingers. Leant back in a chair. Steepled my hands. It was worse than I thought. Momma had undoubtedly used some of the money she received from the settlement to reopen the bakery. But she couldn’t bake. She was impatient and bored with the whole process. The bakery had worked because of us three, not her.

Reopening the bakery was a nice pipe dream of hers. She said she’d done it because the people of Trillium River loved her baked goods and insisted on it. My guess was that she was worried she would need more money for Grandma down the road if she was unable to care for her – and possibly long-term care for herself if she inherited the same disease.

Nice dream, nice thought, but here was the reality: the income from Momma’s bakery would not have supported a family of squirrels.

In fact, it would not have supported even one squirrel on a lifetime fast.

She was broke.

I may have mentioned that we are no strangers, as a family, to being broke.

It’s how we lived our whole life after our dad left.

During one winter, when Momma was stripping, and she fell into yet another black, sticky morass of depression, we hit a new level of despair. Her depression lasted two months. She lost her job and would not get out of bed, her hair eventually sticking to her head like glue.

We baked and baked, as we’d done for years by then, using our dad’s cookbooks, his recipe changes noted and followed in the margins.

I could almost feel my dad as I sifted, chopped, melted, iced, and stirred, could hear him directing me, encouraging me to make it perfect. ‘Life isn’t perfect, girls, but everything you bake in a kitchen can be. It’s a moment of order and edible art in a life of disorder and chaos.’

We made layered lemon cakes, peppermint bars, pumpkin cheesecakes, you name it, as our dad taught us, but it wasn’t enough to pay the bills.

We were evicted for the fifth time on a rainy day. Our new home was our car. It was an old Ford, a long black-green car. All our belongings went in the trunk with room to spare.

‘We’re going to get a trailer,’ Momma told us one evening, her voice wobbling, as we ate popcorn for dinner in the backseat behind a hardware store.

A trailer didn’t sound too bad. Maybe there would be a bathroom in it. We were cleaning up at gas stations in the morning before school, but it’s hard to wash your hair in a gas station sink. Our clothes were getting dirtier and we had no dimes for the Laundromat.

Janie had lost a shoe so was wearing mismatched ones. Henry was fussing, throwing temper tantrums, and occasionally wetting his pants.

Janie’s migraines kicked up, Cecilia’s rashes flared up, and Henry’s general health problems ballooned up.

‘We need a trailer for the winter,’ Momma told us. ‘It’s going to be cold. We’ll put it out in the woods and pretend we’re a pioneer family without the oxen. It’ll be fun.’

‘That not fun,’ Henry said. ‘Woods dark. Scary.’

I held his hand.

‘Ghosts in wood. Scary ghosts,’ he said.

We drove way out into the thickest of woods the night Momma went to get us our trailer. It grew darker and darker, as if we were spiralling into a melting black crayon, the trees a tangled, gnarly mass, the moon disappearing, too scared to stay with us. The road disintegrated into gravel, then dirt, becoming bumpier as we rode.

Momma was scared down to her fingernails. I could tell by the way she gripped the steering wheel, her lips tight, but I could also feel her near-paralytic fear swirling around us.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked, fear making my body tingle.

‘We’re going to the home of a
man I know from work, now be quiet.’ She exhaled, inhaled, exhaled.
‘That’s all you need to know.’

Henry whimpered, ‘What wrong Momma what wrong? I scared.’

Janie started to count and Cecilia gurgled down a pop we’d stolen from the five-and-dime that night. We had been reduced to stealing food from the supermarkets. The stealing made Janie cry and hyperventilate, so Cecilia and I did it. We only cried and hyperventilated on the inside.

‘Nothing’s wrong, Henry,’ she snapped.

‘When are we going back to the hardware store to sleep?’ Janie whimpered.

‘Hush up, quit asking questions,’ Momma said, her fear slinking around that black car like oil, slick and greasy. She pulled around a corner, our tyres skidding, and stopped about twenty feet away from a run-down shack.

A man immediately appeared on the porch. I could see him under the yellowy porch light. He was short and squat and had a few hairs pulled over a bald spot. His facial features seemed to be all mashed together. He was smiling a sick, manipulative smile and I felt,
I felt
, his depravity.

‘You kids stay here. Do not come in that house, do you understand?’ Momma’s voice pitched up and down. ‘I’m going to talk to this man about his trailer. Do you understand?
Do not move
.’

‘Who that?’ Henry asked after Momma got out of the car, her walk unbalanced.

‘We don’t know,’ Janie whimpered, clicking her tongue.

Henry pulled a blanket over his head and his stuffed dragon to his chest. He later vomited on them.

The man slyly grinned at Momma as she tottered up on her heels. I saw him brush her arm with his hand. She pulled her arm away and glared. The door shut behind them.

We waited and waited out in the wickedness of that inky, sinister night, the crickets making the only noise. To this day, I cannot bear to hear crickets.

Finally, I got so scared for Momma I could hardly breathe and got out of the car. So did Cecilia. We both climbed the porch steps, trembling. I held Cecilia’s hand. I could feel her terror in my whole body, like she was in me. The second we got to that rickety porch and had our hands up to knock on the door, Momma darted out, straightening her dress.

Her expression changed from sheer self-hating despair to boiling anger. ‘I told you two to stay in the car! Did you not hear your momma? Are you deaf? Get in the car this minute!’

‘Well now, hold on, River darlin’,’ the wrinkled man said from behind her. ‘I didn’t know you brought your girls, didn’t know you had your fillies with you.’

He reached out and stroked my cheek. Momma moved so fast, I didn’t even see it coming. She whacked that man’s arm with both her fists so hard he said, ‘Fuck.’

‘Get your hands off my girls.’ She stood in front of us and pushed us towards the car. ‘Go girls, now. Run.’

We wanted to run. I knew Cecilia wanted to run, because I could feel how she was having trouble breathing, but neither one of us moved. We were not going to leave Momma with this sweaty guy with a hard, bowling ball stomach and smashed-up face. No way.

In the yellowy light I noticed a bruise across Momma’s cheek. She had high, swooping cheekbones and the bruise was red and purple, swollen. A little blood was caked in the corner of her mouth.

‘Now that was fun, River. Howdy doody fun. You come on back whenever you want and we’ll bargain again.’ The man laughed. He smelt like smoke and sweat and pure evil. ‘I didn’t know you liked it rough. You’re a wild horse, woman.’

I heard Cecilia growl like an animal before she rushed him. I followed her and we had him on the ground, pummelling him with our fists, our anger our back-up. He swore and Momma tried to yank us off him.

He was quick, he was violent, and he punched Cecilia in the face, her head flinging back like a beach ball, then punched me. My blood spilt onto my shirt, my back smashing into the rail of the deck.

I heard a high-pitched squeal right before Henry jumped from the rail and landed smack on that guy’s back, pulling his hair with both hands and screaming. ‘You no hurt sisters! You no hurt Momma! No hurt Momma!’

Henry wrapped his legs around that dirty creep, then got off two slugs before the man shoved him off, Henry’s head hitting the deck with a thud.

Janie appeared from out of nowhere wielding part of a tree branch and she cracked him in the face. He stumbled back woozily, then charged her. She clipped him again in the chin and that stopped him, but only for a second. He grunted and flung her off the deck stairs where she landed right on her back.

Momma was kicking him, pounding him on the chest, and I stood up woozily, grabbed a chair, and swung it at his back, feeling truly murderous, but seconds later dizziness hit me like a Mack truck. I heard him laugh after he socked me in the gut, and soon the deck was gone and all I could see was black.

When I woke up, Momma was carrying me off the porch, yelling, ‘Get the fuck away from us, Reg,’ and Janie was dragging a bleeding Cecilia. Henry was hysterical and screaming, ‘You no hurt Momma! I hate you! You no hurt Momma!’ and holding his head.

‘Shut up, retard!’ He laughed at Henry. ‘Nice tits!’ he yelled after Cecilia. ‘River, honey, you bring the whole family back next time and, hell, I’ll give ya two trailers. We’ll buck together!’ He wiped at the blood on his face with his sleeve. ‘But not the retard. Leave the retard at home.’

‘I not retard,’ Henry said. ‘You retard. You fat retard. You fat and ugly retard. No hurt Momma! No hurt sisters! You retard!’ He picked up a handful of gravel and threw it at him.

I still wanted to kill ‘Reg’ and was coherent enough to drop to my knees and grab a rock to hurl at his head. He was glaring at Henry so it smacked him in the eye. I pelted another one at him and it hit its mark, too.

He swore again, picked the rock back up, and sent it flying in my direction. He missed by about four feet.

‘Fucker!’ Cecilia said. ‘Fat fucker!’

‘Now that’s ripe, missy,’ he yelled back. ‘Coming from a pig. A pig with big tits!’

‘You retard!’ Henry yelled, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Janie hobbled back to him, and I followed her, my vision blurry, even though Momma was shrieking at us to get in the car this ‘damn minute’ and dragging a struggling Henry.

‘You are an old, dirty, ugly man and you will always be an old, dirty, ugly man,’ she said, her voice rough. ‘But we won’t be.’ She tilted her chin up. ‘We’re poor now, but we won’t always be. We’re going to be somebody. We’re not going to live in a shack with one yellow light in the woods. You will always be a loser who took advantage of a poor mom and beat up her kids. You’re a loser. You lost. I hope you die a painful death with lots of blood and your guts burst and I hope it takes you a long time to die.’