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nickname, even a stupid one. I saw it on his driver’s license, which was expired and full of lies. Like his height being six-four when it’s maybe six-one. And his weight being two hundred when it’s at least two-eighty. In the picture he was wearing a huge red beard. By the time Mom brought him home, he’d shaved off the chin hairs and the mustache and left humongous sideburns that stick out, really stupid.
    He wears the same thing every day: greasy jeans, smelly black Harley T-shirts, and boots. Trying to make like he’s a Hell’s Angel or some big outlaw biker, but he has no gang and his chopper is a rusty hunk of junk, usually broken. All he does is fool with it alongside the trailer, get blasted, watch talk shows, and eat, eat, eat.
    And spend the AFDC and the disability checks. The AFDC’s are basically mine. Aid to families with
dependent children.
My money.
    At least I’m not dependent anymore.
     
    Mom changed when I turned around five. She was never educated, but she used to be happier. More interested in how she looked, using a hot comb and makeup and wearing different outfits. Now it’s all T-shirts and shorts, and even though she’s not really fat, she kind of droops and her skin’s pale and rough.
    She used to work the Sunnyside weeks and only drink and toke on weekends. I don’t want to blame her—she’s had a hard life. Started picking in the fields when she was fourteen; had me when she was sixteen. Now she’s twenty-eight and some of her teeth are gone, because she has no money to take care of them.
    She never had much schooling, because her parents picked fruit, too, traveling up and down with the crops, and they were alcoholic and didn’t believe in education. She can barely read and write and she doesn’t use good grammar, but I never said anything to her about that; it really didn’t bother me.
    She had me nine months after her parents died in a car crash. Her dad was drunk, coming back to Watson from seeing a movie in Bolsa Chica, and he drove off Route 5 straight into a power pole.
    Mom and I passed by the exact spot lots of times on the bus. Every time we did, she’d say, “There it is, that damn pole,” and start rubbing her eyes.
    She didn’t die, because she was out partying with some grove workers instead of being with her parents at the movies.
    She used to tell me the whole story, over and over, especially when she was drunk or stoned. Then she started adding stuff to it: The party was at some fancy restaurant, with big shots from the farm workers’ union. Then it turned from a party into a date, her and some rich union guy, and she was all dressed up, “looking hot.” Then she really got going, saying the rich guy was handsome and smart, a lawyer who was a genius.
    One night she got totally blasted and made this big confession: The rich guy was supposed to be my father.
    Her version of Cinderella, only she never got to live in the palace.
    Having a rich, smart, handsome father would be a cool thing, but I know it’s bull. If he had money, why wouldn’t she go after it?
    When she got that way, she sometimes pulled out old pictures of herself, showing me when she was slender and pretty and had thick, dark hair that hung down past her waist.
    She has no pictures of the amazing rich guy. Big surprise.
    When she told Moron the story, he said, “Cut that bullshit, Sharla. You fucked a million assholes, can’t remember nonea them.”
    Mom didn’t answer and Moron’s face got dark and he looked over at me and for a minute I thought he was going to come after me, too. Instead, he just laughed and said, “How you ever gonna know which gleam in the eye produced this little piecea shit?”
    Mom smiled and twisted her hair. “I just know, Buell. A woman
knows.
”
    That’s when he backhanded her. She fell back against the fridge, and her head snapped back like it was going to come off.
    I was sitting at the table, eating the little he’d left me of a jumbo can of Hormel