Sitcoms and Mullets
We arrive in Palmetto and my mom drives through a fence
My mother has picked me up from the airport to take us to our new, temporary, home in Palmetto, after the hurricane had wreaked havoc in the trailer park.
We pulled into the Miami suburb of Palmetto in a grumbling car with missing windows — a long gash running down the crimson paint like a scar across a redneck’s face.
We would soon realize how well we blended in with the scenery.
One story tenements lined the sides of the cracked asphalt of the street.
A crowd of guys were outside the doors of the convenience store that sat in front of our car.
This would prove to be an ordeal for my brother, in his role as a consumer.
When he walked up to the store for the first time, one of the members of the group shouted out.
“What’s up faggot-ass white boy?”
Then another would join in.
“Look that mofucka’s hair! Lookin like Farrah Fawcett.”
(My brother had feathered hair in the front — my mother’s instruction)
They would all start in.
“Yo, Farrah, get me a Slurpee!”
My brother never went to the store again.
As we rolled onto the gravel lot of the small complex, I realized this was more of a four-room motel than a rental unit.
My uncle lived in the unit on the far left.
My mother, to the right of him.
Directly beside my mother’s unit was ‘Sex-offender Rodney’.
Finally, Kelly and Scooter, the high school sweethearts — with a new baby — resided on the end unit.
The tight- knit neighborhood was ripe for a popular sitcom.
If by ‘popular’ you meant ‘known by the authorities’, and by ‘sitcom’ you meant ‘scene from a mental hospital’.
The new neighbors began to take notice of our audibly dying means of transportation.
The car — an emblem of our socioeconomic status — combined the front end of a two-door car with the rear of a pickup truck.
It was a mullet in automobile form.
The car puttered in front of our tiny home like a burping shotgun — loud — continuous.
It lifted up and down, as if it were actually coughing up the globs of black smoke that were seeping out from under the hood.
We jerked once again and sputtered to a halt.
My mother did not move. Instead, she looked over at me and spoke with a worried tone.
“Sometimes it turns back on. It bumped into that fence after work last night.”
I began to notice rotted, canary-yellow plywood shards of wood scattered in a heap next to an unpaved parking lot.
The wood sat crunched onto itself —like a broken popsicle stick, the splintered fibers damp from the humidity.
I started to mutter annoyances under my sarcastic, nine-year- old breath.
(I had just spent time with my father, and his smugness, specifically towards my mother, was fresh on my lips).
“That’s real normal, Mom.”
Suddenly I became nervous. I realized my father was not around to agree with me anymore.
I was home. And I was on my own. I panicked.
How did she drive through a fence? Why? Is even the car trying to escape?
We idled in silence — save the occasional wheeze from under the hood.
I actually thought I heard the car ‘sigh’.
In fact, every time this sad car had reached its parking spot, I imagined it prayed someone would steal its tires.
But even it knew that my mother would have found a way to rig it with lawnmower wheels.
The sighs would go unanswered…the car was trapped here like the rest of us.
To be Continued with a Creepy Inventor:
“Doorbells and Puzzle Basements”
Start from the Beginning of the Race!
