THROUGHOUT THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1985, I STAYED with Grandpa in Reed’s Trailer Park, and Patricia stayed with Sarah Moses. Grandpa didn’t care what I did, so I basically ran wild all hours of the day or night, going to school if I wanted and staying home and roaming the neighborhood if I didn’t. That had been a running theme of Mama’s letters while in prison: “I heard that you weren’t going to school.” She wasn’t really worried about me so much, but for some reason, Mama thought it made her look bad in prison if I didn’t attend school. So while Mama was in prison, I received numerous requests from teachers and guidance counselors for a family meeting. I’d have Sarah Moses sign the requests, or I’d sign them myself and return them, declining the meeting request.
One woman, Debbie Dillinger, who lived just beyond Reed’s Trailer Park, noticed that I was a lost soul and made a special effort to keep me from self-destructing. Debbie and her husband, Terry, were both especially nice to me, watching out for me. They had a daughter named Dana and a son with a disability, Dusty, who wore metal braces on his legs, impeding his ability to run or to even walk well. Other kids ignored Dusty or didn’t want to play with him because of his disability, but I knew what it felt like to be ostracized; so not surprisingly, Dusty and I became best friends. We played together in his yard almost every day. Debbie fed me as though I were one of her own kids. She often allowed me to take a bath or a shower in her house. Maybe it was in self-defense on the Dillingers’ part, trying to fend off my body odors, but the bath sure felt refreshing to me, especially since I was living in Grandpa’s pigsty. On many occasions the Dillingers permitted me to stay overnight with their family in their simple but clean home.
ONCE MAMA WAS FINISHED RUNNING AROUND ALL OVER town, she finally came home and blazed a trail from one side of Reed’s Trailer Park to the other. She even called Debbie Dillinger out in the yard and threatened her for no reason at all. She wanted to beat her up. “Do you think you’re the mother of my kid?” Mama shrieked at Debbie, shaking her fist in Debbie’s face.
Terry heard the commotion outside and came out of the house. Quickly sizing up the situation, he stepped between Mama and Debbie and said, “You’re not going to hit my wife. Go on; get out of here.”
Mama slunk away. “Come on, Jimmy. Get on home.” Mama was acting nothing like the scared woman on the other end of the telephone line when those other prisoners were demanding her to get off the phone. Now she wanted to show how tough she was. I’ve since learned that showing off is a common trait of many ex-convicts after they have been released from prison. They want to let everyone know, “I just got out of prison.” It’s a type of intimidation game.
“I’m sorry, Dusty,” I called back to my friend, as Mama steered me away from the Dillingers’ yard. “Sorry, Mrs. Dillinger,” I said softly so Mama wouldn’t hear me.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I waved at Dusty.
IT WAS ABOUT THIS TIME THAT I MET MY FIRST TRUE LOVE. Her name was Sparkles, and she was my absolute best friend in the world. With her sparkling brown eyes and her short legs and her tongue constantly hanging out, she was quite a sight. Her white curls were matted and looked like a saddle. Her fur was full of fleas, but I didn’t care. I loved my dog, Sparkles, more than anything in the world.
Sparkles slept under Grandpa’s trailer. When I went outside, she quickly surfaced and greeted me with her tail wagging. Sparkles and I went everywhere together—to the swimming hole, to Dusty’s house, to Ingles grocery store. Sparkles and I were inseparable.
Sparkles had pups while Mama was in prison, so I had to work extra hard to earn enough money to support Mama’s habits and still have enough money to feed Sparkles and her pups. Only two of the pups survived, but Sparkles was a great mother to them.
Like me, Sparkles had the run of the neighborhood, so it wasn’t unusual for her to wander off for a few hours at a time. One morning I saw Sparkles walking away from the trailer, and she looked worn out, her body tired, her head hanging down. I didn’t think much of it at the time and felt sure Sparkles would return soon to feed her pups.
But by midday there was no sign of Sparkles, and the pups were crying, obviously hungry. I tried to feed them some canned dog food, but they wouldn’t eat it. They wanted their mother. I could relate to that.
Later that afternoon a friend of mine, Randy Miller, walked down to Grandpa’s trailer. Most people avoided Grandpa’s trailer, so immediately my sensors were up.
“I saw Sparkles lying by the road,” Randy told me, “and she wasn’t moving.”
“What? No!” I ran all the way up the long dirt road to the main highway, and there I saw her. Just as Randy had said, Sparkles was lying on the side of the road—and she wasn’t moving.
I ran to her as fast as I could and knelt down beside her, holding her in my arms. Her curly fur was bloody, and she wasn’t breathing. The love of my life was dead.
I tenderly picked up Sparkles and carried her in my arms, back down that long dirt road, crying all the way to Grandpa’s trailer. With tears streaming down my face, I buried her in the front yard. My heart broke in a million pieces that day. I missed Sparkles terribly, but at least we still had two of her pups.
A short time later Mama returned and decided that we were moving to a new location, Sante Trailer Park. A family friend, JR Wilson, had an old red pickup truck and was helping us move. As I prepared to load Sparkles’s pups onto the truck, Mama stopped me.
“They don’t allow animals there,” she said. “We’ll have to take the pups to the pound.” That news broke the remaining pieces of my heart. JR took the pups to the Matthews Animal Shelter near Gastonia, and a few days later he brought me a clipping he had cut out of the Gastonia Gazette.
It was a black-and-white photo of Sparkles’s pups! They each wore a collar with a numbered tag. Below their photo was information in case someone wanted to adopt them.
I guess I should have been happy that the pups were going to get new homes. But I wasn’t. Staring at that photo and knowing that Sparkles was dead and her pups were up for adoption devastated me, crushing a part of me that’s never healed. I know it sounds exaggerated, but that was the worst heartbreak I had known up to that point in my first twelve years of life. A piece of me died.
Today weeds have overgrown the area where twenty-five or more trailers once stood in Reed’s Trailer Park. But you can still find a few bent rusty nails in the side of a tree, where the two-by-four ladder led to my tree house. More importantly to me, that tree marks the spot where Sparkles is buried and where I wrote my first poem—a poem about a mother and her child being separated.
Of course my writing as a twelve-year-old was elementary by today’s standards, but to me, writing the poem expressed my innermost thoughts. Part of the poem reads:
I wish I was like a flower,
Who was loved by a bee.
I wish I had a family
I wish I was like a whole
And wish I was like a well.
I feel like in this place
That I’m locked up in a jail.
I have feelings like everyone else does
I was loved at one time
I know I really was.
I love someone
And they love me true
And if you love me,
I will love you too.