WHEN THINGS GO SOUTH

Chapter 1 - Little Pink Houses

"It's just as easy to marry a rich man as it is a poor one, Riley Blair," Momma announces in her slow southern drawl with an emphasis on the 'e' in easy.

I roll my eyes, grab a snack off the kitchen table and head straight to my bedroom. Plopping down on my white iron bed draped with an old pink quilt, I pinch off tiny bites of my Whatchamacallit candy bar.

"What does she know about marrying a rich man?" I mutter. She had never married one, even after seven tries.

I throw the wrapper in my pink wire trash basket as I hear Momma call out, "Don't be ruining your dinner with candy bars, Riley Blair!" Momma's idea of a home-cooked meal is a bowl of macaroni and tomatoes and a can of biscuits cooked at three-hundred and fifty degrees for fifteen minutes. How could that be, I had often wondered. Momma was a southern woman, raised by a southern woman, whose southern cooking would have made Julia Child's best entrée taste like a can of Vienna sausage—which by the way, I was no stranger to, given the weekend visitations at my Daddy's house.

My Daddy was now a single man after four failed marriages since Momma.

Broken marriages with broken homes were just as common to me as the sun setting and rising. I may have gotten used to it, but I sure didn't like it.

Momma was constantly packing me, her, and my older brother Lyle up and moving. We would move from house to trailer, trailer to apartment, then back to trailer. Me and Lyle used to daydream that when we grew up, we'd buy a huge farm and build little pink houses everywhere for single mommas, so their kids would always have a stable home.

Lyle and I would go to Daddy's every other weekend since I was six and he was nine, except for a few times we refused to go when Daddy had a girlfriend that was the epitome of Lady Tremaine from Cinderella. 

It was a couple of years of much tattling on her for things like hiding the food when my brother and I came for the weekend, or jerking the covers off the bed when we would make it and tell us to make it again, like we were soldiers in the barracks at Fort Knox.

But finally came the day of what I like to call The Great Reveal of April 15th, 1980. The day Daddy finally saw the light.

We were at an Easter egg hunt on the beautiful green hillside in the backyard of our church. Daddy was watching from afar, standing at the back corner of the fellowship hall with his Bee Gee's hair, his polyester pants, and matching button-up, which most of the time was buttoned down to reveal his gold chain necklace. I had found the golden egg, and when I excitedly announced this to Daddy's girlfriend she immediately took it from my basket and put it in her daughter's basket. Big, huge mistake. Unknowing to her, Daddy saw it all.

The next thing I remember is Daddy hastily walking up and grabbing my small hand while giving her a cussing that would make a sailor blush, then peeling out of the parking lot in our two-toned red and white Monte Carlo.

I remember just keeping my head down, staring at the floorboard, tears flowing as I nervously twisted the edges of my buttercup yellow pinafore dress, exclaiming through snot and tears, "I been trying to tell you!" Daddy kicked her out the next day.

Momma calls again: "Dinner is ready, Riley Blair!"

A second later, the kitchen telephone rings. Momma answers and holds the phone away from her ear, it's my aunt Sandra Jean on the other end exclaiming loudly that my boyfriend Nick is at the local Minit-Mart drunk off his butt. "Maggie, it's Sandra Jean!" She announces while snapping her chewing gum between her teeth. "We have stopped by the gas station and found Riley Blair's boyfriend sitting in his car drunk off his ass. Do you want us to bring him there? Because good heavens, this boy don't need to be behind the wheel!" She wants to bring him here to our house and call his mother. Momma reluctantly agrees.