Chapter Twenty-Six

Surely Dreams Have Endings Don’t They?

I slept that night with dreams of Maw-Maw in my head. She was crocheting an infinite scarf in space and telling me of lies, deceptions and filling my head with new words.

Prevaricate –to avoid telling the truth by not directly answering the question. I had done this many times that night and I felt guilty about it. I wanted to be honest, but I was afraid my honesty might hurt them.

Dream-space Maw-Maw told me in a sweet voice, “Honey that is your crutch. You have told yourself that honesty hurts others more than lies. You simply don’t want to tell the truth because you are a lying little bitch.”

Lalochezia – the emotional relief from using abusive or vulgar language. I shouted a steady stream of “Cunt, shit, fart, faggot, retard, turd, cock, sperm-lips, Doo-doo, tits, piss-flaps, nigger-nigger! NIGGER!” into a special black hole full of stars with exultant joy in my dream.

Dream-space Maw-Maw floated before me – her jowls gleaming with celestial energy and saliva, “You are a dirty little girl who has never given herself permission to be dirty. You have been told all your life that to say retard or nigger is not proper – it is not right. You must own who YOU are – your own truth.”

Hiraeth –A welsh term that has no direct English translation. It means a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return. A home which maybe never was. The nostalgia, the grief, the yearning for the lost places of your past!

My dream spiraled out of the context of infinite space and time into Cherry Lawn Estates. The idealized suburb of my dreams was something out of the sanitized Brady Bunch and Leave it to Beaver television shows. The roads were all cul-de-sacs filled with happy kids playing with their big shaggy dogs on skateboards. Well-dressed men in suits with briefcases stepped out of their white two-story houses and kissed their stay-at-home wives goodbye before heading to the office.

I don’t remember Cherry Lawn being so perfect – so 1950s I Love Lucy – but my dream world was not quite so perfect when I was in it.

I was tall and blonde and a cheerleader. I had been popular; but in my dream something had changed and now I was walking through my high-school with my hands cuffed behind my back and wearing a skimpy cheerleader uniform with nothing on underneath.

I was being escorted through the halls by a heavy-set kid – one I kind of recognized from school but never talked too. He insisted I curtsy and thank each person as they laughed at me and called me slut. They were smiling and laughing at my misfortune in slow motion.

In the dream I was transported to a fenced-in back yard. I was completely naked, standing next to a woman who was tan and had a body like my Aunt. She had a much prettier face – reminded me of Jenifer Aniston. She looked at me with soft eyes and told me “to hang in there – keep a stiff upper lip.”

Who was this lady and why did she seem so familiar? I had seen her somewhere before – but I could not recall where. It felt like Déjà vu, except this was the first time I was seeing these events. The dream lasted months and yet no time at all – things happened to us in a blur.

Was this dream actually Hiraeth? The longing to return to a time of nostalgia? To my old home with my real father and mother – my little brother. I wanted to have warm cocoa on rainy Sundays and watch old Jerry Lewis movies with my mother and to bring home straight A’s. How did this other life get tangled up in my dream?

I awoke from this nightmare wondering if it had been a premonition – or had any meaning. Had it been a nightmare? I was wet and my nipples were as aroused as they had ever been. I ached to masturbate and give myself pleasure as a form of relief – of release. I wanted to go back to sleep and finish the dream – surely dreams have endings don’t they?

I hastily scratched down the outline of the dream so that I would not forget it. I tried to make sense of what I had learned – but had I learned anything?

I didn’t have time to think about it too deeply. I awoke groggily from my mattress. Ted was yelling for us to get up and that we were late. “What time is it?” I had no watch or clock – but I thought I had more time to sleep.

I was usually chipper and ready to go in the mornings, but right now I felt exhausted. I wanted a shower and to clean myself up – I could smell the musky smell of my wet pussy and it was embarrassing. There was no mistaking that funky odor.

O.J. was sipping coffee and sitting at our breakfast table. “I thought we had more time?” I asked.

He grinned and popped me on the ass crisply with a newspaper, “I thought we had more time, SIR!”

O.J. warned me that I was starting to get on “Buckman Time” – it was a general term meaning we were frequently late or an hour behind when we say we would get there.

“That cracker means colored people time!” Nelly Jr. popped his head up from the floor of our trailer. Was no one ever going to come for this boy?

He ignored Nelly Jr. and told me to eat a light breakfast and get ready. He had laid out my bikini for me to wear and I thanked him.

I made some toast with the fresh bread from the night before. “I talked to your mother this morning,” he said.

“Yes Sir,” I was waiting for the bread to pop, “That was weird last night.”

“She didn’t say it to you last night,” he informed me, “but she is very proud of you trying to contribute and behave yourself here. She thinks you are setting a good example for your little brother.”

“A good example?” I turned to O.J. and ran my hand down across my nude body. “How so?”

“You are doing whatever it takes to make the best of a crappy situation. You know what they say about life giving you lemons?” O.J. told me.

“Stick em in your shirt and make pointy boobies!” Savannah was freshly out of the shower with a towel around her – scrunching her nose and joking.

“Something like that,” O.J. turned with the rest of us to watch Ted and Crystal emerge from their bedroom arguing.

“That was just for last night,” I gathered from Crystal’s protests – Ted wanted to keep the rules from the night before.

“Odd-Jobs tell her what we discussed,” Ted didn’t want to tangle with Crystal once her mind was made up and was handing off to O.J. to do the heavy lifting in the discussion.

“Yesterday you didn’t make jack shit,” O.J. explained.

“We’ll make jack shit all over himself today,” Crystal promised. “We just had an off-day. We’ll bring the fucking A-game. I don’t want Ted down there pissing everyone off.”

I eaves-dropped on the conversation like everyone else in the room while standing up and eating my breakfast. O.J. explained that there would be a new story-line to introduce.

Savannah and I were exactly as we were before – two little snotty bitches in trouble.

Conner and Lloyd were going to work at the pool all day. Lloyd was also in trouble for sneaking out and was going to work in a pair of construction boots and underwear. He would be told to wash cars whenever female customers pop by.

My Aunt was still the ‘boss’ so to speak. She had mismanaged the family funds and wasted everything we made the past two days and now Ted was going to teach her a lesson.

She was not to be on the same footing as us. O.J. used this as a selling point – as if to give her more confidence that at least she was above us in the hierarchy. It served to remind me that I was ranked lowest of the low in the order of things though.

Ted was to point out that she couldn’t discipline us and had mismanaged the funds and help sell the idea that we are not learning our lessons from Crystal.

My Aunt’s concerns stemmed mostly from the fact Ted was extremely lazy and would quickly drift off-point. “He can’t keep his shit straight,” and she thought he’d also try to come up with a dozen ‘get rich quick’ schemes that he’d want to try to sell to people once this started.

O.J. and Ted assured her that they were just enhancing the bit. “The people have already seen the three of you out there. I could probably try to talk Tawny and April into this if you would prefer?”

My Aunt knew O.J. probably wasn’t bluffing when he offered this lucrative car-washing gig to her biggest rivals. She wasn’t going to let him do that.

“I think it is more that you don’t want me down there while you are trying to suck all those dicks for money? You are afraid I’ll scare off all the big dick millionaires?” Ted struck Crystal’s nerve with this comment.

“I haven’t even had time to suck a cock down there, Ted!” Crystal didn’t implicitly deny she wouldn’t suck a stranger’s dick - just reiterated how busy it is down there. “I don’t know where you get that there are big dick millionaires down there anyway?”

“My Uncle?” Ted was talking about Junior.

“Oh Jesus, he has a hard on for Ellen – not me!” I was surprised Crystal was so overt about Junior’s attraction to me. I was also kind of flattered she thought he liked me – even if he was more than twice my age.

“You are just chicken to let me try and run shit,” Ted snorted. “Because in my magnificence – I’ll do it better than you.”

“I ain’t chicken,” Crystal insisted, but didn’t have a good reason why she wasn’t.

“Then what is it?” he asked her to explain. “I just want to help you girls make money.”

“You might scare off more business than you bring in, Ted! Sitting there with your fucking arms folded like the alpha dog trying to intimidate the men. This is an all-girl show,” Crystal explained.

“Hey, Ma’am!” Lloyd was eating a pop-tart and answered with his mouth full of strawberry icing and jam.

“You are eye-candy too, I guess,” Crystal smiled at her son apologetically for excluding him. That satisfied her son, who hadn’t taken real offense in the first place.

“Oh Feud is on!” Maw-Maw told Lloyd to come change the channel on the TV. It was ever-present and always on in the living room; so much that I rarely noticed it now. In my old house we seldom watched TV and never left it on when no one was watching it.

“Which of the seven dwarf’s best describes your wife in bed?” the well-dressed host of the game show asked the contestants.

“Angry!” Ted shouted at the TV. At first I thought it was just an insult; but then I heard him mumble this observation under his breath, “She is a woman – she doesn’t know what she wants, but she gets mad when she doesn’t get it.”

I wondered if there might be some truth to that conclusion.

“I tell you what. This is a trial run. Junior wants his nephew to get out of the trailer and assert himself. This was his idea. We try it today and if you make less than 800 bucks, then you don’t have to pay me my cut and we never try it again.”

“How about if we make less than two hundred, then I get to whip Ted’s ass down at the pool for cheating on ME?” Crystal counter-offered.

“Now baby,” Ted smiled at my Aunt and took her in his arms to hug her naked body to him, “You know I could never do better than this fine-ass pussy of yours.” He groped my Aunt and kissed her.

“Gross!” Savannah snorted into the Gogurt tube she was eating. “You two can’t play stink-finger down at the pool all day!”

“Wanna smell it?” Ted extended his finger to his step-daughter with an edge of playful sarcasm and told her it smelled just like tuna.

She turned away from his finger and stuck up his nose.

“You’ll smell it when we get down to the pool!” he insisted.

“Well,” Savannah informed him, “we aren’t down at the pool now, are we Sir?”

It seemed that despite my aunt and cousin’s protests and concerns, this matter had been decided. “You can’t be lazy and run off staring at other girls if you come down there,” Crystal added another condition.

We got dressed in our suits and hopped on the back of the cart the way we had the day before. We had been given time to sleep in, but it was just about 10 am. Crystal sat down taking her place next to Odd-Jobs and our stuff took up most of the backseat with Conner.

“Where the fuck do I sit?” Ted was the last one to the cart. He stood right next to Savannah’s ass and stared at it popping out of that teensy-weensy bikini.

“Hang off the back,” Crystal challenged his authority right off the bat and remained seated.

“Don’t start challenging my authority now, woman...” Ted got riled up.

“This is just a little money making game,” Crystal warned Ted in a serious voice. “Last night was a little game too. We let you play the big man last night in front of my sister, but I still run shit – so you need to remember that if you want your dick sucked tonight.“

He prompted her to scoot over so he could sit next to her and my aunt begrudgingly acquiesced some space for Ted to plop down on the cart.

He was quiet for a long while – we all were.

As if by magic, Boogie’s van pulled up behind us once we left Glory Hill and followed us all the way to the pool area.

“Flash that motherfucker,” Ted ordered us.

“You can go suck my fuck,” Savannah challenged right back.

“How does one suck a fuck?” Conner asked to no one in particular.

Odd-Jobs slammed the breaks on his cart causing us to lurch forward and almost fall off the back. Boogie stopped as well.

“Yesterday,” he turned around to Savannah and waited to let the gravity of his words sink in, “we did it your mother’s way – we did it your way. All three of you barely made enough money to pay me back. You want to make as much money as you can out there today?”

“Yes Sir,” Savannah answered when it was clear he was waiting for her answer – she looked at him apologetically.

“You are going to maximize your time. You are going to have to play dirty to win big. You had a great first day, but you can make even more money than that. I think you lost focus yesterday- today between your mother and Ted – that is not going to happen. Is that understood?” Odd-Jobs clarified his position.

“Yes Sir,” her baby blue eyes fluttered like an angels.

“Save that sweet little miss strawberry shortcakes act for the pool.” He wasn’t buying her angelic ‘who me? What did I do wrong?’ defense. “You don’t have to respect Ted. You just have to PRETEND to respect him.”

He made sure we understood that today was going to be hard – harder than the last two combined. He had several suggestions and ideas he was going to introduce, and we were to just roll with it and keep our eyes on the cash we would be making this summer.

Savannah poked me in the ribs playfully while we rode the rest of the way to the pool. I poked her back and we teased Lloyd the same way. Savannah whispered to me, “You think we are fucking crazy don’t you?”

“Why?” I whispered back.

She looked at me like I was the most obtuse person in the world. “Oh,” realizing what she meant, “You mean for shaking your nearly bare-asses in public for money while convincing men we are brats, which we actually are – so they will pay money to spank them?” I joked.

“No,” I was surprised when Savannah told me that wasn’t it. “I am sure where you come from there are people who do slip-and-falls at grocery stores and pretend to dart in front of cars for insurance,” Savannah made it sound like those frauds were for ‘rich’ people.

“Here in the Buckman ain’t nobody got insurance,” she shook her head. “If your fool ass falls over in the store –everybody just laughs until you get up or you keep laying there,” she whispered and I nodded in agreement.

“Yes, we are running a sexy-con game – I meant that probably seems crazy to you because you never had to do it. Your parents had nice jobs and a good education and everything was handed to you,” I started to feel like she was insulting me.

“I can’t help how I was born, Savannah,” I started to explain in whisper, but she cut me off.

“I know you can’t,” Savannah made it sound like she was agreeing how I was born was some disadvantage to me. “Just with my mom and Ted – you see how they fight and tease each other and then make-up.”

I poked her playfully and smilingly asked, “Like you and your brother?”

“Gross!” Savannah narrowed her eyes at me with scorn, “We don’t fuck!”

I wanted to explain that I knew they didn’t, but that I meant she teased her brother and then made up with him; but she kept whispering and didn’t let me explain.

“Just, well...,” Savannah was thinking of the right words to say. “Like last night when you got on the floor next to me. I didn’t think you had enough sense to play along. I figured you would say ‘Oh no! My precious butt! No one can ever look at it!’” her imitation of my voice as high-pitched and whiney was anything but flattering.

I wanted to protest and explain that I was willingly sticking my ass out right now off the back of a golf-cart, while boys threw rocks at us and an old hippie in a van followed us slowly shouting obscenities at us – I was clearly not as uptight as she made me sound.

“I may have misjudged you.” She looked at me rather seriously and whispered, “I might be reading too much into things but I felt like you got on the floor next to me, when you didn’t have to, in order to answer the questions you thought I didn’t have an answer for?”

I was smiling big – I thought I was the only one who read too much into things.

Then she punched me in the arm hard and said, “Don’t get all homo on me,” before ending our little heart-to-heart abruptly as we pulled up to the pool.

Ted started shouting orders to the boys to get lawn chairs and tables moved around and setting up for washing cars. We didn’t have anyone waiting as we had the day before to get their cars washed, but there were over a dozen people at the pool getting sun.

“I am highly disappointed in your efforts here, but I WILL make it work,” Ted assured us all.

O.J. went over the rules with us one more time again and this time several signs were hand-written and planted around the entrance to the Buckman and near the sidewalk in front of the pool area.

‘Car-Wash –get my girls to give you a hand-wash today! - SEE TED!’

‘Help me Discipline my unruly teenagers! Under New Management Today – TED!”

‘Prices: 10 dollar hand wash, 20 dollar full wax and 50 dollars Premium service. Tips gladly accepted – See TED!’

‘Mother can’t handle them – girls’ and there was a drawing that looked like two boobs ‘willing to work to get us out of debt’

‘will wash cars for beer’ – Ted thought up this sign on his own.

‘we can’t make electric, water, rent, trailer going to be repossed- help!’

There were a number of spelling errors in the signs – which made them seem authentic on some level.

Then there was a series of them that Ted insisted on.

‘Make my niece show you what she does at home with the garden hose for five dollars’

‘Teenagers don’t know how to apply sunscreen properly! They waste it! Show them how to do it with a capful of lotion! - 5 bucks’

At first it seemed a lot like it had the two days prior. It was a nice warm morning and the birds were flying overhead and singing. I wondered if they worried about things the way humans do – money, mating, where their next meal would come from.

The birds were just playing in the air-currents and circling us. They turned into a formation and slowly came into strafe the pool area – dropping tiny droplets of white bird shit like rain on the pool area.

Almost everyone got hit – Crystal got a white pile right in her fluffy-reddish brown hair. She was pissed, “I always hated the Flock of Fucking Seagulls!”

Ted didn’t get hit at all. “Bird’s don’t like me,” he declared with a happy-smile about his luck.

“Must be girl birds,” Crystal teased him as she headed for the bathroom to wash the bird doo-doo out of her hair.

“Oh hold on,” Ted held up his hand. “You three will ask me permission to go to the bathroom, and the rule is you will be escorted by a customer to make sure you don’t dawdle. You can go one at a time – we need coverage out here.”

“Ted,” Crystal shook her head no, “there can only be one boss out here and I am already it,” she butted heads with him again. “That rule is ridiculous – no one wants to watch us wash bird shit out of our hair.”

“I do,” a voice came from behind us that I instantly recognized as Boogie the van-driver. “I am your biggest fan!” he shouted enthusiastically as he came towards us. “That’s free right?” he wanted to know if Ted would charge him to watch us.

“Gas, grass, or ass,” Ted chortled like he was now King of all that he surveyed because someone asked him if they could have something – and he was in a position to grant it or deny it.

“I’ve got gas,” Boogie ripped a fart and laughed. “I don’t have a lot of money, but I’ve got some scratchers,” he held out some instant-win lottery tickets.

“Fucking Duck-millionaires?” Ted scoffed at the two tickets. There was a design of yellow ducks on them.

“How about you scratch those off,” Crystal was more welcoming to Boogie, “and if you win big, then come back and talk to us, shug?”

“How about I give them to you, and the girls just do splits and a few hand-stands for me, and you scratch them off? Take a chance!”

“How about you scratch my nuts,” Ted scratched his own crotch and shook his head no at Boogie. “You are always trying to get something for nothing,” Ted was giving advice to someone that he could have probably applied to his own life.

“I just want to see the girls do the splits and maybe one cartwheel?” Boogie said as he was shooed away by Ted.

Savannah took pity on him as he was walking away and called for him to look over his shoulder at us. She waved at him and winked while spreading both legs apart and slowly going down to a split.

He blew her a kiss and thanked her.

I wasn’t sure why this was erotic or interesting to him. I get that he probably liked to see girls contort and expose themselves – but why cartwheels? I was puzzling about men, and their hard to understand kinks, while Ted chided Savannah for ‘just giving it away’.

“Fuck you Ted,” Savannah shot back at him. “We don’t really have to listen to you,” she was testing him – to see if he would stand up to her, “Ellen and I don’t have to play along. We can do what we want!”

Ted put his hands on his hips and considered her for a moment. “You think you are so special because you have a magnificent little butthole and tight little pussy and two tits,” he pushed his man-boobs together to mock her. “You can just spread wide and get paid,” he held his hands up dramatically and waved his fingers while shouting in a feminine voice, “Pay me, oh pay me! Come on you big dick millionaires! Finger my butthole!”

“Stop,” Savannah was laughing at his joking around – she poked him in the shoulder. She was giggling and repeating magnificent butthole while holding her sides. I have to admit with her laughing – I found myself caught up in it as well.

“Please big dick millionaire!” Ted started gallivanting around the pool and making a scene as he mimicked Savannah, “I was born with a little gash between my legs – so my farts don’t stink!” he pushed his ass out, put his hand over his mouth like the Coppertone girl in those old 1960’s suntan lotion advertisements and ripped a fart, “Ooh Naughty? Who wants to smell that for a dollar?”

He stuck a water noodle between his legs and pulled it back and forth, “This feels like a pecker Mr. Big Dick Millionaire, Puh-leez!” and I have to admit – Ted had a natural slapstick about him. I don’t think he intended to be so funny, but he was hamming it up for the crowd and us and it was helping to make things not seem so grim.

Crystal was the only one who wasn’t laughing. She was ignoring his little show and for that – he took one of our buckets of soapy water and overturned it on her.

“God-damn it you motherfucker,” Crystal shouted in anguish, “My hair is going to frizz all over the place.”

He imitated her word for word and strangely – My aunt cracked up laughing as well.

He was right in the middle of his goofing around and getting us laughing when we heard a harrumph – someone was clearing their throat – and it brought everyone to a sudden stop.