Mountain Breezes
I took the road out of town past Millie’s Beauty Shop and the burned-out remains of a barbecue joint, then poor farms and ranch-style houses with two or three cars in the yard or a pickup next to an old boat on a trailer. I saw the Mountain Breezes Trailer Park sign and turned near the main entrance, marked by wagon wheels, as Trina had directed. Just a few hundred yards off the highway the road changed to dirt. I rolled up my windows against the red clay dust that rose in clouds. I noticed clotheslines covered with work clothes, diapers, shirts, and dresses catching the dust.
The remote road was lined with scruffy pines. Wild flowers grew out of the ditches and ruts. Goldenrod. Aster. Touch-me-nots. But Mountain Breezes overlooked the dump. I could smell the garbage even with my windows up. Flies lit on my car as I slowed down to check my directions. Most of the trailers rested on concrete blocks unanchored against tornadoes. Several people in town had told me the same story about a trailer carried off in a storm that left behind it the complete, unmarred border of blooming yellow daffodils that had surrounded it.
The Kitchens trailer was easy to find. I recognized the yard by the rope swing hanging from the oak tree and the flower bed bordering the front porch, just as Trina had described it. The neatness of the yard, from the woodpile to the carefully tended flowers and rows of vegetables, showed a pride untouched by hardship. I sat in my car a few minutes, considering how to introduce myself if Trina were not home, and I had to talk to her parents, who might not even know she was pregnant.
“Have you lost your way, ma’am?” A woman in her mid-thirties walked toward me. She was plump and wore a blue, checked shirtwaist dress. Her dark hair curled around her face. As she came nearer, her face looked so weathered I decided she was much older than I’d initially guessed. “You need directions?” She was polite, but clearly concerned by the presence of a stranger.
“No, ma’am, I’m not lost.” I smiled as I approached her. “My name is Laura Bauer. Is Trina around?” It felt odd not explaining why I was there, but I thought I should say as little as possible.
“She’s inside.” She pointed to a straw-bottomed rocker on the porch. “Have a seat please, ma’am. I’ll call her.” She asked anxiously, “She’s not in some kind of trouble, is she? I’m her mama.”
That would depend on your definition of trouble, I thought, trying to keep my expression inscrutable. “No ma’am. I’d just like to talk to her for a minute.”
She stood firm, waiting for me to offer more.
“It’s private, Mrs. Kitchens. I’d rather you let Trina answer your questions.”
She stuck her head in the door and called out sharply, “Trina, you get out here right now. There’s a lady here to see you. Now wake up!”
Trina came out rubbing her eyes. Her hair was tousled. I kept my voice down and turned my back to Mrs. Kitchens. “I’m sorry, but I made a mistake yesterday,” I whispered. “Since you’re not eighteen or married, one of your parents has to sign the application so you can join the Project.”
“But Bill signed. We’re gettin’ married soon as he gets his divorce. We’re close as you can get to being married.”
“Close ain’t nearly good enough,” Mrs. Kitchens insisted, determined to join our conversation. “He’s no closer to marrying you than he is to marrying me.”
“Mama, you don’t understand about me and Bill,” Trina protested. “He loves me.”
“You got no business fooling around with a married man. He belongs with Candy and those kids.”
“But he don’t love her anymore. He wants to marry me as soon as he’s free. You don’t believe it, but it’s true.”
“He won’t ever marry you.” In her agitation, Mrs. Kitchens stepped between me and Trina. “What kind of father would he make anyway, if he’s gonna leave the four kids he’s already got? And one of them not even a year old.”
“The kids don’t have nothin’ to do with it.” Trina began to whine like a child, her bottom lip trembling. “He never loved her. He loves me.”
“If he loves you so much why didn’t he keep you from getting pregnant?”
“Mama!” Trina’s face turned red and tears came to her eyes.
“If you’re embarrassed, you’ve got cause to be. Now get back in the house so I can talk to this lady.”
“She didn’t come to talk to you. It’s my baby. It’s got nothin’ to do with you.”
“You’re gonna bring a baby into this house and that has nothin’ to do with me? You think you’re all grown up, but me and your daddy’ll have to figure a way to get you out of this mess.”
“Me and Bill will take care of our baby. I won’t need no help from you.” Trina wiped away her tears, trying hard to sound defiant. “It’s not a mess. Bill loves me. And how come you’re so upset about it?” Her eyes turned accusatory. “You were pregnant when Daddy married you.”
“You spiteful little slut.” Mrs. Kitchens slapped Trina hard enough to leave a mark on the girl’s face. “You wait ’til your daddy gets home. You’re not too old for a lickin’.”
Mrs. Kitchens had spoken harshly, though her face was sad rather than angry as Trina ran sobbing into the trailer. We stood outside in a tense silence I didn’t know how to break. Mrs. Kitchens picked dead leaves off a large basket of purple hearts that hung from the porch railing.
“Let me take a look at those papers you need me to sign,” she finally said.
I showed her the application Trina had filled out and the packet describing all the services. She studied it all carefully, tracing the words with her finger.
“She’d get to have the baby in one of those high-risk hospitals? With the incubators and monitors and all that stuff? And there’s no charge?” She looked skeptical and apprehensive. “I’d do anything in the world for that girl, but we don’t have the money for things like that. I sure never had it with none of mine.”
She turned the papers over and over. “Well, I guess she better get in the Project and stay in it. ’Cause he’s sure not gonna help her, and there’s not much we can do.” She turned toward the door. “That’s still my little girl in there. I know she was talking ugly before, but she didn’t really mean it.” Her voice grew friendlier. “Come sit back down, Miz Bauer.” She indicated the porch swing. “Make yourself to home.” She picked up a bowl of green beans. “You don’t mind if I finish snapping these, do you?”
“Please go right ahead. Don’t mind me.”
“They came right out of that garden,” she said. “I can make anything grow—tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, all kinds of greens. I have to, to feed this family.” She looked out across the yard. “’Course most of it’s gone by now. But it was beautiful earlier in the summer.”
“The flowers are still lovely,” I said, admiring the brilliant red geraniums and thinking how seldom my family managed to grow any vegetables to maturity. Worms destroyed our squash vines, and squirrels took a bite out of every tomato. Nothing ever ripened, almost as if it didn’t have to since it was just our hobby, not food we depended on for our supper. “You sure must work hard at it.”
She smiled with satisfaction. “I won’t tell you I don’t. But I get a lot of help. The whole family worked that garden. Fact is, that’s how I first figured something was goin’ on with Trina. She kept carrying on about how workin’ in the sun made her feel woozy. When it never bothered her before.”
“So you guessed she was pregnant?”
“’Specially since I felt the same way with each of mine. Only I couldn’t figure out how it happened to Trina. Shy as she is, she never even dated. She wouldn’t go to the school dances. It didn’t seem natural for a girl her age not to go with boys.” She set down the bowl of snapped beans.
“It must have flattered her to have a grown man interested in her.”
“Trina thinks he means it when he says he loves her.” She sighed deeply. “When he don’t even take care of his own family. Only works regular half the time. Construction work when he can get it. And odd jobs.” She shook her head regretfully. “He’s closer to my age than hers. We grew up together, and he’s always been no ’count. I should have known not to let her spend so much time around him.”
“You knew she was seeing him?” I couldn’t believe any mother would knowingly let her fourteen-year-old daughter spend time with a grown man. A married one at that.
“Of course I knew,” she said crossly, her tone showing she didn’t appreciate my question and doubted my ability to understand anything. “Trina started baby-sitting for them when she was twelve. You know how young girls want to make a little pocket money.
“And Candy needed somebody to mind the kids so she could take in sewing. They needed the money bad. So did we after Trina’s daddy cut his hand at Barnwell Poultry gutting chickens. He was real good at it before his accident. Then they cut him down to two days a week ’cause they said he was too slow. So there wasn’t money for lots of things we needed. I was real glad when Candy asked Trina.”
“You think it started when Trina was twelve?” I tried to be straightforward without revealing my horror at what she might answer.
“No. It couldn’t have happened ’til Candy took sick after her last baby. They were both so sickly she was always running back to the hospital.” A look of remorse came over her. “Maybe I should have known better, but the Good Lord knows I didn’t see anything wrong with Trina staying the night. She’d already been sitting for them so long. And the days Bill had to leave real early for his construction job, we had no way to carry Trina over there. So that’s how it started.” She looked in at Trina, who was stretched out on the couch watching television. “They might have did it like a man and a woman, but she’s still a little girl.”
She leaned forward confidentially. “I finally got it out of her. I sat her down and made her tell me what was going on.” She shook her head. “Poor child. She didn’t have a chance. He come after her when she was asleep.”
Statutory rape, I was thinking. Maybe even worse if he forced a fourteen-year-old girl with his own little children in the same room.
“She was so sleepy she probably didn’t know where she was. Bet she dreamed she was back home. Being the oldest, she’s used to somebody getting scared and crawling into her bed at night. By the time she woke up and realized what was happening, he was holding and kissing her.” She blushed slightly. “Miz Bauer, I know you got to tell these girls to say ‘no,’ and I’m not trying to make no excuses for Trina. But when a man good looking as Bill Matthews crawls into a girl’s bed and looks at her with those pretty blue eyes and starts to stroking her, there’s no way she’s gonna say ‘no.’”
“Does Candy know?”
“I hated to hurt her. ’Cause Candy’s sweet as she can be. But I figured she should know he was doin’ her that way. Besides Lonnie was wantin’ to shoot Bill. He did rough him up some. Told him never to come anywhere near our daughter again.”
“But Mr. Matthews brought her to our office.”
“I can’t watch her every second,” she said defensively. “Do you know anything about teenagers?”
I didn’t answer, not wanting to admit most of my knowledge was recent and firsthand and hoping my blue suit made me appear older.
“I didn’t think so,” she said critically. “You don’t look much older than one yourself. But I’m not trying to give you a hard time. Let me finish looking at those papers.” She picked up the pen but then set it down again. “There’s one thing I still don’t get.” She pointed to the small print. “This part about y’all followin’ the baby the first year of his life. We’ll be giving this one up for adoption.” She looked out at the children playing on the woodpile. “We got enough kids around here already, and Trina’s not ready to be a mother.” Her face was determined. “It’ll be hard at first, but she’ll get over it.”
“No, I won’t!” Trina came bursting out of the trailer. She had heard us over the television and had come outside to defend her rights. “It’s my baby. You can’t take it, Mama. I’ll run away when it’s time to have my baby. You’ll never see me again.”
“Baby, you don’t know what you’re saying.” Mrs. Kitchens pulled the sobbing girl into her arms and cradled her head against her chest. “You’re not running anywhere. I’m on your side. I’m trying to help you. ’Cause you don’t know a thing about men and how they’ll do you.”
“I know Bill. He’s going to marry me.” She turned to me. “You heard him.”
Mrs. Kitchens wiped Trina’s eyes with her apron. “Calm down, baby. Don’t make such a fuss in front of company. Besides,” she said authoritatively, “all that crying takes air away from the baby.” She stroked Trina’s hair back from her forehead and made a place for her in the swing. Trina leaned against her and closed her eyes.
“Mama, I am going to get married. Bill’s going to leave her.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” She kissed Trina’s cheek. “I know it’s hard to believe he could give you a baby and then forget all about you. But men do it all the time.” Her face was resolute. “So me and your daddy have to do what’s best for you.”
Trina jumped up and ran to me for protection. “Miz Bauer, you can’t let her take my baby away. You’ll help me, won’t you?”
“She can’t go against your own mother.” Mrs. Kitchens stepped between us. “You’re not even fifteen. I’ll decide what’s best for you. Not Miz Bauer.” She looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Nothing personal. But I know what’s best for my child.” She turned to Trina. “Now you just go back inside and cool off. I got to talk to Miz Bauer. There’ll be plenty of time for talking later.” She pushed her firmly toward the door.
“I don’t care if you beat me ’til I can’t sit down,” Trina screamed from the safety of inside. “I’ll never give up my baby.”
“I’ve never beaten her.” Mrs. Kitchens began to cry. “Lord knows, maybe I should have and none of this would’ve happened. But I never harmed that child. You got to believe me, Miz Bauer.”
“She just wants my baby so she can sell it to one of those ladies that can’t have a baby,” Trina accused her, standing just inside the doorway. “She wants the money. That’s all she cares about.”
“That’s plain foolishness. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mrs. Kitchens said angrily, clearly insulted by her daughter’s accusations. But her irritation quickly subsided, and her voice turned fierce with love. “Your life was gonna be different. You were going to finish high school and have the church wedding I never did and live in a real house. Not some old trailer. You’re still gonna have that. Do you hear me?” She stepped quickly toward Trina, hugged her tightly, and began to cry, still clinging to her daughter.
“Mama, it don’t matter about the trailer. That’s what you and daddy got. I wouldn’t want to marry anybody better than Daddy. Aren’t you two happy?”
“Don’t talk to me about happiness,” Mrs. Kitchens said wearily. “You get what you get. No point fussing about it. Rich people are the only ones that can change their luck.”
“That’s not true,” Trina insisted, looking for my validation. “Tell her it’s not true, Miz Bauer. I am gonna be happy with Bill. Just me and him and our baby. ’Cause he can’t talk to Candy anymore. Ever since her last baby come along, it’s been over between them. That’s how come he turned to me.” Her eyes smiled. “He said I’m his happiness.” She sighed. “And least ’til our baby’s born, I guess he’ll be all of mine.”