Death Valley by Eden Francis Compton

Author:Eden Francis Compton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Level 4 Press, Inc.
Published: 2023-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

16

It was just a matter of days before Trina started to remind Marcus of their mother. Whatever else their mother had been, she was a woman who liked things done around the house in the proper way. Fred could go off on a drunken tear and handcuff Marcus to the boiler in the basement, but by God, she’d still fold T-shirts just so and stack them neatly in drawers; she’d still hand wash and towel dry dishes after each and every meal; she’d still wash sheets every Saturday and press her husband’s shirts every Sunday.

Trina was the same, only bossier. The day after the brothers had moved her in, Trina came back from the Goodwill with two used laundry hampers. While the brothers watched, she taped a handwritten label on each hamper—one “dark,” the other “light”—and picked up all the dirty undershorts, pants, socks, shirts, and bath towels scattered around the apartment.

“That’s where dirty clothes go,” Trina announced. “I’ll wash it all. That can be my job ‘cause I don’t want you guys ruining my delicates, or throwing dark shit in with my whites. But don’t leave shit all over the apartment. Okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mac said.

Trina shot him a look. “Are you being sarcastic with me?”

“No, ma’am, just following orders.”

“Good.”

Trina placed a small bowl on the dresser. “That’s for loose quarters, to pay for the washer and dryer. You empty your pockets into that every day, and I’ll always have quarters on hand when I get a chance to wash clothes.”

She looked at them expectantly.

“Oh, you mean now.” Marcus fished the change out of his pants pockets, sifted out the quarters, and dropped them into the bowl. Mac did the same.

“We got us a live one,” Mac whispered to Marcus, but loud enough for Trina to hear.

“You don’t know what you got,” Trina teased back. Then she tidied up the kitchen, made the bed, dusted the furniture, wrote up a shopping list for the grocery store, and handed it to Mac.

“Let’s go,” she said, turning toward the door as she spoke.

“Let’s not,” Mac said.

Trina stopped in her tracks and turned back toward Mac.

“Excuse me?” she said.

Mac looked up from the shopping list in his hand and cleared his throat.

“You do what you want,” Mac said, “but I can get ninety percent of the stuff on this list for free. So, I’m not going to the supermarket and wasting my money on shit I don’t need to spend money on.”

Trina stood with her hand still on the doorknob, staring at Mac in disbelief.

“It’s groceries,” she said. “Bread, milk, butter, sandwich meats, cereal. It’s basic stuff. You can’t get it for free.”

“I can,” Mac countered.

Trina came back into the room. She stood before Mac with her purse slung across her shoulder, her arms folded across her chest.

“What are you doing?” she scoffed. “Taking handouts from food banks?”

“Sometimes,” Mac said, without an ounce of shame.

Trina’s eyes widened and a skeptical grin crossed her face as she turned to Marcus.

“Is he serious?” she asked. “You guys are pulling my leg, right?”

“’Fraid not,” Marcus said.

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