Dorothy

She had been wanted. Not too hard, not too fast — pressed against the cinderblock wall behind the garage where he had fixed her Daddy’s truck. 

His face smiled the first time he saw her through the plate glass window, worn soles heating as he walked along Missouri gravel. Her skinny hips playfully swinging as she poured weak coffee and laughed with customers in the short block café. Today’s tips would be good, she thought. Might go buy that pretty blouse at Miss Mary’s, the one with yellow and orange flowers before heading home. She’d offered to drive the fading Ford 150 into town, saving a trip for another when there were crops to tend.

They married when the apron strings began to pull taut around her uniform.  Smear of pink dimestore lipstick on her teeth when she said ‘I do.’ After family shared cake and tossed the rice, he helped her into their carriage to begin the miles toward California. People talking said the military always needed aeroplanes. His fingers held talent. Good with any engine, they said. 

They spent their wedding night in separate beds. His with a whore. Hers sweating beneath a thin motel sheet, praying for stillness to come from a shallow bath of salt and hydrogen peroxide she’d packed.

Rose was born in Long Beach. Wanda in the desert. Junior's heart never beat inside the hospital delivery room on Olympic Blvd, a few blocks from the bar where she tended to threadbare seated regulars. Each man seeking shelter from an unforgiving L.A. sun or anything else that might cause them harm. Barbara Ann had been a blessing. Mornings spent together in the small apartment courtyard hanging diapers, babygirl’s honey colored curls bounced to her mama humming the tune for which she was named. Music and lighter moments long gone. 

Years of his blame and neglect, endured through stale shadowed air. Dorothy sits at the chipped green dinette set he’d bought for her before his last time leaving. Rolling cigarettes with a rhythm to fill the long hollowed night.