Loretta Likes Scabs

Flea bites are a doddle. That’s how Loretta Lynn sees it. A few little scabs are worth the joy she gets from the circus. She lets them feed on her twice a day, every day, arms, legs, torso. She encourages them to mate and lay eggs. More performers. A bigger act. She has enough blood to feed them all if they can get her out of there one day. And when she picks the scabs, she feels a sort of relief she can’t describe.

Gerald has refused to rehearse since the rebellion. Tomorrow is school, and Loretta doesn’t look forward to that. She can’t touch herself in class, and the bathrooms aren’t really great for that sort of thing. Sometimes she goes to the nurse’s office and lies on the cot to get her fill. It’s not easy having needs like this.

Fact: If Loretta Lynn doesn’t orgasm at least four times per day, then she will probably die.

Her flea circus is locked up in its lunch box. The speaker Loretta got for her birthday—the Bluetooth kind—is still turned on and from the bed Loretta can see the blue light. Rather than get up and turn it off, she reaches for her knockoff iPod and finds her favorite song. It’s the closing song for the act, and she hopes that inside the lunch box the performers are rehearsing just by hearing the bass line. Reggae is Loretta’s thing. Her parents—clearly country and western fans—are not fans of reggae, which makes Loretta happier to play it. They don’t know about the circus. They have scabs, too, but Loretta pretends she has nothing to do with it. They never look inside her lunch box. They’ve never asked.

They blame the RV camp for having bugs. The landlord comes to fumigate once a month. This is why Loretta takes her lunch box to school every day. Just in case.