The summer of my ninth birthday, my family and I packed up overalls and swimming suits and stuffed our three bodies into a station wagon.The windows in the rear were stuck halfway, and though we had several maps flooding the glove compartment, my mother only drove to Lake Ontario.During hot summers there, the sun baked my flesh and my time would be spent on the bank of that lake barefoot with the legs of my corduroy pants pulled up to my knees as I playfully attempted to capture tadpoles with plastic Dixie cups.That year, my hair was a short brown bob like a boy and being that my mother named me Robin, most people confused my small frame for that of a little boy’s body.Hundreds of people were always there, there in that park surviving only by trash.It was the simplest act to stare upon the adults as they grilled their hamburgers or hotdogs over flames.The women in their sundresses, hung over swimming suits, ripped the lids off of plastic containers of coleslaw and baked beans.Every inch of these lots were covered by men who would avoid wearing shirts, some with their bare chests sprouting thick patches of hair, and how I am haunted by the image of their heavy, sweaty bellies extending from their torso.  They’d scratch and yank every crevice of their body, then take large gulps of warm beer, sometimes crushing the empty cans below their bare feet.Tabasco spit cups were dealt all across the bare backyards, but this was their vacation.

Few children wore shoes and those that didn’t were forced to run barefoot like miniature monsters.Wherever I explored, a distant echo of screaming adults pierced my ears and the air smelt so crispy all the time.

“Robin!Robin Faith!” My mother, her brittle dyed blonde hair stuck in all directions like rattler tails, but she kept a burnt smile on her face, the one she had worn since I was a baby. My sister June and I would whisper behind her, wonder at scream as if it was a profession.  No sense in this, no sense in that, she seemed to believe she had good judgment in everything.With a hand firmly pressed against her hip and her legs akimbo, she yelled at me like that.

Like a statue, her bare foot was pressed into the white rocks that paved the driveway, “We’ll need worms.Fetch ‘em for us, for tonight.”

“But can’t June just go?” I asked as I tugged the loose fabric at the seams of my dress, making sure not to stare too deeply into her eyes.

“Your sister don’t have nothing to do with you.Use the change in your pocket,” she shooed her hands at me, “So senseless, that girl.”

I turned and left her, taking sprints on the gravel, my tiny feet already covered in soot and grass.I slowed when I reached mulch surrounded by chopped wood.Red ants and snakes were there, in that depth of the campground.

I was told by my mother when we first arrived that the gentleman working in the bait shop had been inching his way closer to a deathbed and went by Chester.His crooked shack weighed heavily on one side and was covered with green vines like a spider’s web, while wedged between two oak trees.It had a painted sign reading “BAIT” in dark red letters and a few feet in front of that cabin, I stooped my shoulders and lifted my eyes to the sign.I did not like that color, that deep mixture of blood I had only seen in pictures.I raised my short legs to the tallest step, with a skip of the first two while a grip on the decaying plank of wood used as a hand rail barely attached to a stable wall.As I pushed open the swinging door, a bell rang overhead.

“Well, well, well.Look-it here, I got a customer,” he stopped, “How young too!”

I reached in my pocket and laid two nickels on a glass counter twice as tall as me, “may I have enough fish-bait for tonight?  It’s for my mother, she’s Patty.”

“And your mother’s daughter is called…?”

“She named me Robin.”

“Little Robin, you know what I got?It’s a tootsie roll,” he grazed his hand in the air at the glass counter in front of him, the sleeve of his shirt flapped like a magician, “Just one,” he paused, “and just for you,” and he put his hand on my head and streamed his grimy fingers through my hair, “These worms you’re asking for are back here, come on.”

I followed Chester.He knelt before me and grinned, his teeth decayed with age and were stained with Tabasco spit and saliva.His eyes were clear and brown, almost invisible compared to that foul smile.His clammy hands felt like sandpaper as he put his thick hand on my shoulder and drew circles in the air with his index finger, “Pull ‘em down,” he tugged at the seams of my dress.

Do you like it?

He asked over and over and over.

“It’s alright little Robin,” then he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a tootsie roll.He pinched small pieces of lint from his palm and tossed the dust on the floor.I closed my fingers on the small piece.

“Now you just remember who gave this to you, you hear?”

The next day I hid inside our trailer, seated at a white plastic dining table.I had been drawing pictures of my mother stirring a pot of chili in the kitchen when she darted her head at me, then paused when she noticed the crayon between my fingers, “Daughter, now go see Chester, you know I won’t let some person take a photo, let alone draw a picture,” she held a cigarette between her lips and snatched the paper from beneath my elbow, “This isn’t good at all, just trash,” she grabbed my sleeve, “Bring back crickets, go on girl.”

My sister, June, sat outside humming and rocking on a truck tire.Her shoes were dangling in the air and the white heel was stained with dark brownish-red splotches.

“How’d you get red on your shoes?” I asked.

“Just stepped on a lizard’s head,” she pulled her foot closer to her face and scrubbed at the mark, “It was an accident.  I just buried it, you have to see.”

“Does she know? You’ve got to tell her.  You know she’ll want to know why you’ve got blood on your shoes.She’ll want to know what you’ve been stepping on,” I pushed my hand through my short hair, “You should tell her.”

“Nah,” June shook her head still scrubbing the bottom of her shoe, “Let’s get out of here. Dirt’ll cover it up,” she sat up and ironed her flower dress with her palms, “She doesn’t have to know all the time, Robin.”

I put my hand on her shoulder, “She asked me to get fish-bait from Chester’s shop.We can go there if you want.”

“Hmmm,” June twisted one blonde curl through her index finger, “We can do that.”

We walked the distance, June led while holding a long wooden stick like a cane.  When we stood at the front of Chester’s shack, I took her hand into my grip.  June shook it once, but I clasped tighter.  Then the bell rang over our heads and June looked at the ceiling for the sound.

“Little Robin,” Chester smiled, “Who’s this here?This can’t be Shirley Temple!”

June had never seen him, so she glared while her nostrils flared.He looked like he’d aged ten years, with further decayed sun-poisoned flesh, especially around his mouth, and disheveled gray hair.  His yellow smile, stared at us, making the memory of his eyes dimmer.

I struggled once again to place change on that glass counter as I chewed my bottom lip.My nose was positioned at the ground, but my eyes stuck on his protruding belly, “Need crickets this time,” I lifted my eyebrows at him.

He turned his head to the side slowly and eyed our dresses curiously.My dress was once June’s belonging.It was solid pink with flowers freckled throughout, and it, more than anything, contradicted my short hair.  The straps of my dress wrapped delicately around my thin shoulders. Chester studied my bony pale ankles, how they stuck out rather roughly, my hazel eyes and brown hair, a color brown that looked nothing like my sister.  He must have seen some jealousy swallowing me as I have always felt like another outcast.

“Girls, how do you feel about tootsie rolls?”

June leaned a leg closer to the door barely hung on its hinges.Her nostrils flared again at him, and then she cocked her head at me, her eyes like saucers.

“Come back in here,” he delved his attention to me once again as I backed towards the door near June, “I think they’re delicious, tootsie rolls.  Must be one of the best candies God ever invented.  Wouldn’t you think so, huh?  Little Robin, at least I know you like them.  Come sit in this chair with me,” he reached over the glass counter and put both his hands under my arms, “Such short, short legs you got there.”

June just stared at the two of us.I wanted to scream at June, for why would she do nothing?Why can no one rescue those who shine the least?

“Why don’t you come over here?” Chester addressed my sister.

June yelled quickly and folded her arms across her chest, “No.”

Chester looked back at me with his smile and he held me there, his old arms somehow strong.

As June and I walked towards home, she said, “Where is it that he gave you?”

I flooded my pocket with my fingers and pulled out the wrapped piece.

“That doesn’t look right, Robin,” she pinched it from my palm, “What could it be?” The tip of her tongue shot out from her teeth and her eyes squinted as she ripped open the tootsie roll.

“AH” We shouted at the ground, our hands covered our eyes.

“June, what are those?”

“I don’t–must be maggots I’d think.Like worms, but they grow with trash, rotten things you know,” she scratched her head and kicked dirt over the candy wrapper, “Robin, you’ve gotta to tell her.”

I shook my head.

“Well then you should’ve just said no.”

I scratched at an ant sore on my ankle while I glared at the spot where dirt laid over the candy wrapper, still slightly visible.

“Do you want me to tell her?”

I shook my head.

“I’ll tell her,” June said.

I sat at a picnic table next to a barbeque grill as June squeezed my shoulder and sprinted toward our trailer.A few moments later, my mother emerged and cocked her head at me, her eyes filled with red.I trailed softly behind her; she fumbled with a beer can and pack of cigarettes.We could only hear a breeze bellow villainously and a short crackle from distant bonfires.Once we sat inside, my mother patted on the couch cushion and pushed me to take a seat.She sat across from me with her elbows pressured on the tip of her knees and with one of her hands cupping her chin.She said, “Robin, I need you to understand something right now.  Nothing can be done.  Chester’s been on the park for years now, they aren’t gonna get rid of him like this, like they should.  I talked to them on the phone here,” she pointed to the beige phone bolted to the wall, “They don’t believe you, they aren’t even taking June’s honest word.  You need to understand how we can’t talk about this anymore, Robin, you listening?”

“I’m listening.”

“No one can know,” and with that, she stood over me and covered the roof of my head with her hand, “Nobody wants to know, Robin, no one at all.”

My sister June told me that Mother’s casket was called an Orthodox Pine Raise Flat, an ugly wooden box that any burly man could have assembled in thirty minutes, but it was the only one June could afford without turning the electricity off.

I hear nothing but my steps crushing yellowish-red leaves.It tears and rips like the sound of toffee candy wrappers.The wind rushes to me and these fallen leaves hastily lash at my thighs, but I keep my hand steady and walk slightly past my mother’s grave, my back turned away from her tombstone and from a glance, I read,

This stone was erected in memory of
Patricia Lutz Pigg
Loving Mother who died in the 66th year of her age

“I know you must expect me to say, to say something about you, but I,” I feel like my back is resting against a tree as I roll my tongue from my mother’s grave.“You had me young and damn young enough to be able to teach me about life not handing over compliments.How could you be so satisfied with it all? How is it that things seemed so simple for you?  You could be so mean, Patty.You could be so mean, so heartless.”

I imagine her asleep centered in the living room in front of our television in a blue recliner that was speckled with dark coffee stains.Her bare feet are still propped up while she held the filter of a cigarette lingering between her fingers and a mound of ash collected below her like an ant pile.

“’Nobody wants to know.’  I’ll be damned if you can’t remember it still, you hear me Patty?”

“I don’t think your mother would want to hear that coming out of her daughter.”

I turn around and see some man standing next to my mother’s grave, his hand resting on the corner and his eyes pointing towards the ground to which I could not see his face, “especially considering she doesn’t have a lot to listen to right now.”

His chest is bare, covered only by blue overhauls stained with dirt.His rotund stomach jiggles as he sticks a shovel into the mound of grass next to his foot.I can smell liquor and he belches but takes the time to remove one of his gloves to wipe the glittering saliva from the corner of his mouth, “Now I don’t mean to frighten you, I see you’ve been here awhile walking back and forth between stones, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t need help or something.  Something I could help you with.”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

He starts to caress the top of the gravestone with his glove, “Most people bring a friend or a family member to their Mama’s grave, what about you?”

“My sister has already been here,” I let out a sigh, “I didn’t make it here on the right day, I guess.”

“She wouldn’t come again with you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Now I don’t mean to pester, lady, but there’s no one to talk to here but skeletons and squirrels, they still don’t talk much though.  I’m getting the impression that you girls may have been in a quarrel with your mother.”

“We never really fought.”

“Never?”

“She’s my mother,” I bring an open hand towards the stone, “She’s Patty.”

“Patty, eh?What did Patricia Lutz Pigg name her daughter?” He smiles and removes his cap.I see his burnt flesh.He has scars all over his face reaching from his upper lip to his brow.Red and white groves are carved throughout his skin like spiral art and his eyebrows seem to have been drawn into place with a permanent marker, “Lady, you hear?” and he smiles wider, his teeth caked with saliva and black rotten spots.

“I’m sorry?”

He lifts his nose to the sky, “In my younger days, ladies like you never stared at me so hard.I worked as a firefighter and it only takes one to burn a little skin, a little deeper.”

“I’m sorry,” I lift my eyes to the sky, “I’m not so good, uh, with people.”

“Worse things can happen,” he sucks his teeth and turns his head to the right as far as he can like an owl.He puts his thick hat upon his bare scalp and pulls the shovel from the ground, spitting in its place, “But what you choose to remember to forget, can’t hurt you anymore.Your Mama probably wants you to know that, whether or not she thought it herself.”

I look across the graveyard and all the stones look like multiplication tables.Some of the gravestones are surrounded by metal gates while other plots have stones resembling baby teeth.With no fresh flowers on any of the graves, I notice those that are fake and red.

“I’ll let you be alone,” he levels the shovel over his shoulder and places a hat upon his head once more, covering his scars, “Try a bit of forgiving, as hard as that is, it’s still a better feeling than bitterness,” and with that, he walks away.

Looking at my mother’s grave, I wipe the sweat from my brow with the sleeve of my coat and scratch the layer of tears that seal my cheek like wax paper.∗