HAVE UGLY
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The trailer park. That damn trailer park. The smell of cigarette smoke and spilled beer. The edge of town; rusted playground, torn American flags, sirens that came but didn’t stay, neighbors minding their own business, streetlights flickering like they were thinking about giving up. Everyone knew everyone, but no one interfered.
Mother left in the middle of the night — and never came back.
Money that was supposed to buy groceries was spent on bar taps. Quickly learning how to measure hunger — how long you could ignore it before your hands started shaking, how much water you could drink to make it stop hurting. Being nothing but sharp elbows and hollow cheeks.
The trailer itself felt smaller to her than it did to her brother. He saw it as something to defend. She just wanted to survive.
Learning early that her body wasn’t hers in the same way boys’ bodies are. Even if her father never crossed certain lines, the threat lived in the air. The way his gaze lingered as she got older. The way he’d comment on her “growing up” even when she clearly wasn’t.
Attached to her brother like gravity. He was warmth in winter. He was the only thing in that house that didn’t feel like it might turn. And then came the arrest. By the time protective services stepped in, she was pale, underweight, and eerily composed. Answering questions politely. Didn’t cry in front of them. Didn’t beg to stay. Didn’t beg to leave. But when they drove her away, she kept her eyes on the trailer until it disappeared.
Not seeing or hearing from her brother for years.
Being thrown into foster care. Feeding her properly, taking her to doctors, buying her clothes that fit her, celebrating her birthday. Not knowing how to accept any of it.
At 13, being underweight, delayed in puberty due to chronic malnutrition, polite to the point of eerie and being emotionally distant. The doctors always saying she just needed time. But trauma doesn’t disappear because the house is safe.
Eating slowly, hiding food for later — just in case, flinching at loud noises, sleeping with the lights on.
She was 16 when her body changed. Breasts, curves — puberty. Her body feeling foreign to her, like it didn’t belong to her. Also being 16 when she reconnected with her brother. And at 19, she chose him — completely. Silas once nearly having killed a man back at the trailer park, in an attempt to protect his sister. It was an unspoken rule between them to never speak of it again. Yet his girlfriend figures out years later — and threatens to go to the police, not being able to pretend it never happened. She overheard it all through the thin walls — and realized her brother would once again being taken away from her. So next morning when he left for work, she knocked on the bathroom door. Steam clouded mirror, the girlfriend barely having time to look confused as she was shoved back into the tub. Water surging over porcelain as she forced her under, hand firm in her hair. Holding her there long enough for the threat to dissolve into pure panic. When she pulled her up, coughing and shaking, she leaned close and said quietly: ‘’If you ever try to ruin him, I won’t stop next time’’. The girlfriend left town within a week. Silas never knew why.
Working as a barista in a small café downtown, serving the same people every day, building up her daily life on the same routines. Living with her brother, the two of them run their small apartment like a fortress of routines: she cooks, organizes, plans; he fixes, lifts, protects. People find it unusual — a 24-year-old woman living with her 27-year-old brother — but to them it’s normal. Being steady to his unpredictability, though they fight over the one thing she can’t seem to let go: their father. Even now, sneaking over when she knows he’s out. Cleaning every corner of the old, rusty trailer and leaving a cash behind — a quiet act of loyalty. One day finding the medical bills and diagnosis letter: cancer. Not telling anyone, not even her brother.
Still keeping in touch with her foster parents; visiting on birthdays and staying the weekend over when she’s in the area. Not calling them mom or dad, but trusting them and letting herself be cared for in ways she never could before.
Loyalty runs in the veins, but so does jealousy. Not being obsessive or possessive, just insecure.
