She said my mother had gotten a better name, as well as the good looks. She really thought she deserved everything she got. I couldn’t deny that it seemed Aunt Wanda got the short end of the stick a lot in her life, but sometimes that’s all you could expect when you were raised by trash.
We weren’t good people. We never wanted to be. And even if we knew how, it just wasn’t instilled in our bloodline.
We came from a long line of degenerates, from people that knew how to scrape by and hit the road when life got tough. We didn’t wait around and try to fix things. We ran. If you were different, you could last; if you weren’t, then well, the hell with you.
If we hated you there was going to be hell to pay. That’s the reason I was with Wanda. She hated my mother with every fiber of her being. She would have hated me, too, but I’d been too much of a help in doing my mother in. Aunt Wanda said sooner or later she’d hate me just as much.
“You’re too pretty. You need more than looks to get by. But if you have looks, use it to your advantage. You’re going to break a lot of hearts. Hell, you’ll want to, and if they don’t let you, then you break their face,” she said.
Aunt Wanda was a looker in her day—I was sure of it. I’d seen photographs. She had brilliant blue eyes and the best hair a girl could have wanted back in her time.
She was born on the edge of the sixties where love, sex, and drugs all mixed into a twisted game of life for everyone.
My mother came along three years after Aunt Wanda and, according to her, she took the spotlight for some reason. From the start, Aunt Wanda hated her.
It became her goal in life to make my mother hurt.
It’s been twelve years since Wanda took me from my mother’s house. That night my mother was banging some guy in her bedroom…I could hear their screams of pleasure coming through my bedroom wall. I didn’t know much about sex, but I could tell she liked every minute of it. I’d have put on headphones if I’d had any, but I didn’t. So I just hummed along to a song I’d heard on the way to school one day.
My mother cared about two things: money and sex. And she learned at a very young age that you could get one with the other. So she used it to her advantage--she had a lot of sex to get money. Some called it prostitution, but she called it being clever with her female parts.
Wanda had showed up at our house one day threatening to burn it down. I convinced her to give up on that idea and she settled on taking me with her instead. She said eventually my mother would see that I was worth something—like making her pockets fatter. This was her chance to stick it to her good.
I left with Wanda. It was better than nothing. I was pretty sure we were close to eviction. I hated the thought of moving out of the only real home I’d known. It wasn’t about love or sadness, because I didn’t much care for my mother. She never gave me a reason to care, so I figured it served her right.
Aunt Wanda slammed the old beat-up Toyota into park, and it whined like a beaten animal as it came to a shaky stop. She smashed her cigarette out in the ashtray—her red nails were worn and dirty.
“We’ll stay at Jon’s for the night and leave in the morning,” she said. This was our routine when we were running low on cash. We went to one of the many guys she knew and found a way to get what we needed.
Getting what we needed meant a couple of things. Sometimes Wanda needed to steal. Sometimes the men were so deplorable, all it took was something sexual. Other times it was so incredibly bad I knew we were going to hell. Those were the moments I couldn’t stomach.
Aunt Wanda was a master at mind games. To her, it was an art. Cheating was her best quality. Anything she wanted was possible. It was hard to deny that she was right when she was doing so much wrong all the time.
A thick fog crawled all around us. We were somewhere in Georgia from what I could remember of the long drive. After a while, I crawled into the backseat, tuning out the old car’s moans and groans, and fell asleep.
Wanda slammed the door shut. She looked up at the old house and its one lonesome light that lit up the old window. She pulled her hair down, shaking it out. Her auburn cloak of hair still had life as it fell around her shoulders, spilling onto her weathered tan. Her fingers crawled to her shirt, pulling at the buttons, until she was happy with the amount of cleavage showing.
“Okay, grab just the one suitcase,” she said in a hurry. She made her way through the long grass to the front door. I did as I was asked, letting the suitcase drop at my side, and slammed the trunk shut.
I was hot. All I wanted was a shower. As I headed up to the house, Aunt Wanda let out a laugh when some man opened the door, a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. He beckoned her in, shutting the door without giving me a glance. This wasn’t unusual. It was a fend-for-yourself kind of arrangement—something I’d grown used to.
I gave a quick knock before going through the door into the smoke-filled home. The sound of classic rock filled the rooms, and several men sat on old furniture, beer cans scattered on the coffee table, along with overflowing ashtrays.
I dropped the suitcase next to the door. I was never all that timid, but the first few minutes when I was trying to adapt to another new environment made me nervous.
I stayed close to the door, doing my best to avoid looking at the men watching Cops on TV. I counted the exits carefully, trying to be discreet as I took in every detail of the house. I never knew what might happen next and my only way to stay ahead of things was to take it all in and be prepared.
“Kendall!” Aunt Wanda yelled.
I followed her voice to the kitchen. She was sitting at the kitchen table killing off a tallboy. The man who opened the door stared at me. I immediately found the back door, one lock and a chain.
“This is your niece? The one you were telling me about?” he asked, tossing a card down on the table. His eyes went to my chest. I shrank back. I knew what kind of man he was.
“She’s barely twenty, you sick bastard. Kendall, Jon says you can shower and sleep. We’re going to take off,” she told me.
I nodded, knowing that meant one of two things. Either Aunt Wanda was planning on getting trashed and stealing Jon’s money, or she was planning on sleeping with him and then stealing his money.
I sized him up. He wasn’t much to look at. Not that tall and not that slim.
He ran his hand across his stubble, watching Wanda leave the room. The stubble growth showed me he hadn’t cared to shave in probably a week or so. I watched his eyes dash from one part of my body to another—a normal thing creepy older men did. It was their way to get a quick fantasy under their belt when they weren’t allowed to have the real thing. I knew what was on his mind. It was the same thing on all their minds.
“There’s a towel in the closet for when you take that shower. You can sleep in my bed while were out. It’s the last door on the left.” He nodded toward the hallway.
I didn’t reply. The less I said the better the odds he would stay away from me.
“Jon, let’s go, the bars will be closed in less than an hour.
She grabbed me by the arm, pulling me aside for our usual conversation. “There are three of them in the living room. Keep on your toes. It would do you good if you checked for the ’usual.’” She pretended to fix my hair so Jon didn’t grow suspicious.
Jon forcefully grabbed her backside as they took off out the front door, leaving me to fend for myself.
The ‘usual’ was cash or anything that could provide us with cash and, of course, cigarettes.
I headed down the hallway with my suitcase, looking back to make sure no one was watching me. I set my suitcase at the first door, slipping inside. The room was so cluttered I could barely get in. I took a quick glance around, looking for the typical hiding spots. I pulled a shoebox off the top shelf of the closet, but there was nothing in it but rolled-up porn and a box of condoms. I put it back and got on my tiptoes, retrieving a photo album. The first page displayed a couple photos of a little boy with blond hair and blue eyes. He smiled so naturally at the camera. From the looks of the picture, it was a birthday party. I shrugged away the jealousy and moved on to the back of the album, finding three, one-hundred dollar bills. In a flash, I folded them in half and put them in my pocket.