Mother's Day by Dennis McDougal

Author:Dennis McDougal
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504011006
Publisher: Open Road Distribution

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Theresa did not want to go on welfare. When she was growing up back in Rio Linda, her parents labeled those who lived off the state “bloodsuckers,” and Theresa had always shared their contempt. It was a level to which she tried mightily never to stoop.

But with the approach of the 1980s, she had exhausted all of her other sources of revenue. Her hip and back still bothered her and convalescent homes balked at hiring her for fear she might be looking for workers’ compensation or permanent disability instead of a forty-hour-a-week job. She was not the kind of prospect most other employers were looking to hire either. She had put on even more weight, the beginnings of jowls sagged from her rounded face, and her flirting glances no longer reeled in even a one-night stand at the bars. Long-range prospects were out of the question. Men as a source of revenue were history.

Her other schemes to raise cash likewise came to nought. Once, before they were divorced, she had hopes of opening a child-care center in Rio Linda with the help of Chester Harris. She dropped that plan when she found that Chester had his own hopes: indoctrinating preschoolers into his lurid voodoo practices. At least, that’s what Theresa told her children.

After reestablishing relations with her sister, Rosemary, the two of them chatted a few times about buying a ranch together somewhere away from the city and turning it into a rehab center for young drug and alcohol offenders. But that plan was doomed, too. Theresa wound up borrowing some cash from Rosemary after Joey’s funeral and found herself unable to pay the money back, so she began ducking her sister the way she avoided other creditors.

Her economic status sank so low that she became dependent on the meager earnings of her own kids: William’s paper route, Howard’s clandestine sales of substances that Theresa would just as soon know nothing about. Her children had even begun lying about their ages so that they could get hired at fast-food restaurants and help their mother out with mortgage payments.

One of Theresa’s financial mainstays had always been Social Security. She still collected once a month on Howard and Sheila. It was the regularity and size of those government checks that got Theresa to thinking about Supplemental Security Income. Homeless crazies got SSI. Why not Sheila?

“Sheila wasn’t mentally retarded or anything by any stretch of the meaning, but she did have learning problems. She was manic-depressive,” said Robert. “Personally, I think she didn’t learn because she didn’t want to learn.”

Sheila had dropped out of school in the ninth grade. In her eldest daughter’s vacant stare and perennial sloth, Theresa began to sense a gold mine. She began coaching Sheila on what she was to say and how she was to present herself at the Social Security office. Then she dressed her in rags and told her not to put on makeup, do her hair, or even clean herself for a week.

“Sheila put shit in her hair before she went in for the interview,” said Robert.

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