Between Two Trailers by J. Dana Trent

Author:J. Dana Trent [Trent, J. Dana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2024-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

PART II

Tough times never last, but tough people do!

—Dr. Robert Schuller

| EIGHT |

North Carolina Is My Home

It’s hard to convey the chasm that the Legend day and King’s suicide threat broke open in my life. His schizophrenia, already heightened when we left, was intensified by his incessant drug use. Squeezed as if in a vise, my father’s brain was incapable of making better decisions.

By age six, I already felt disjointed and disassociated, like I didn’t belong to myself or my body. My brain is on fire, I’d tell myself, trying to parse why my mind was frenetic and anxious, like a room of walkie-talkies competing for a blue ribbon in racket-making.

The fallout from King’s actual psychosis—his nervous breakdown, his suicide threats, his porn addiction—ripped through my childhood like a maul that splits dried wood. When he drove me back to North Carolina after Christmas, I was changed. Quiet. Withdrawn. Turned inward.

By New Year’s, I was despondent and sullen, but I didn’t know how to verbalize all the harrowing things that had happened with King over Christmas break. When Dr. Gloria and the Lady saw my newfound meanness and doldrums, they suspected I was going through typical kid tantrums. I didn’t say anything other than to tell Mom I didn’t want to go back to Vermillion County. She was giddy.

I gravitated toward the more “stable” of my parents—like how Grandfather’s Battle of the Bulge grenade left him eight-fingered but alive, I was trying to choose the grenade that would sever one limb instead of all four.

King’s “veeshun” of my Vermillion County inheritance evaporated. Long gone were my (and his) dreams that I’d become his tough Carnival Captivations business partner, growing in acumen with age, perfecting my lookout and drop skills, hustling grown men out of bands of cash. Instead, I made myself as useful as the silverware in the Lady’s trunk. Sturdy. Dependable. Helpful.

I would need to hide those formative Indiana years and their illicit associations. If I became an Indiana denier, I reasoned, my years there could be erased like an expunged record. A fresh start never hurt anyone, I told myself. Toys and memories could be replaced. Many kids did okay without one parent, like living with a solo kidney. If I were to survive the polite southern culture of North Carolina—and my mother’s personality disorders—I needed to regroup.

King’s and the Lady’s diametric parenting styles were confusing, but one parent had now jumped meters ahead toward abuse, and my brain alerted me like I was on a drug drop gone wrong. King’s criminal training, though not safe, had never felt abusive. The destroyed trailer, the paranoia, the neglect, the porn, the mattress sharing, and the suicide threat did.

I was forced to serve the Lady full time and cater to her personality disorders, which, though not healthy, didn’t result in razored ceilings, dark trailers, hunger, and suicide threats that took my child brain to its breaking point. The Lady’s brand of mental illness was more insidious than physically dangerous.

So,

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