Snakeroot

2. Tara Rising

Eventually, Tara stopped crying and got mad.

With Mama gone, there would be no more income. As messed up as Mama usually was, she had always worked. If she lost a job, she had another the same day. She kept food on the table and got things we needed, like shampoo and clothes. There was never anything very nice, but we knew how lucky we were to get anything at all, so we never complained. Now she was gone, and Daddy wasn't going to spare a dime. He never had, and Tara knew it.

Now, to really understand what happens, I'll have to tell you about where we lived. Snakeroot was a small town with a little town square that had a doctor's office, a pharmacy, a grocery store, a laundromat, and a restaurant. The square was the only nice part of Snakeroot, and our place was a boil on the ugly little street where we lived. It was at the very end on a dusty lot behind scraggly shrubs. Once you got past the shells of old cars and the piles of tires, you'd see a rusty old single wide trailer. At first that's all you'd see, because of the angle. But then you'd see the smaller trailer attached to the back right side. It was just bolted on, creating sort of a hallway that connected the two trailers together. They formed a backwards L-shape. Behind them was the camper. It was full of junk, and we weren't supposed to go in there.

We all used to live in the front trailer. Tara, Megan and I shared a room, and when Tommy was born he slept with us. Daddy and Mama shared the other bedroom in the trailer, and granddaddy lived in the one that was connected. There was one tiny bedroom in that trailer, and if you walked through the part where it was connected, that's where you'd end up. The rest was a living room with a broken sofa, a kitchen with appliances that didn't work anymore, and a cramped bathoom with a rusty bathtub and a stained toilet. Granddaddy kept it as clean as he could, but he was old and sick and couldn't do much. He wouldn't let us help him. He mostly just wanted to be left alone to watch TV in bed all day.

We could walk to the town square from our house. That's what Tara did late that day, but she wouldn't let us come with her. I didn't want to stay there alone with Daddy, but she said I had to.

"I need you to be brave for a little while," she said to me as she got ready to leave. "There's something I need to do, and I can't have kids with me while I do it. Stay in this bedroom and don't come out for anything unless you or Megan needs the bathroom. Okay?"

"Okay."

"I mean it, Eliza. Don't come out. Daddy's drunk and he's still pissed off from earlier. You know what that means."

I knew what it meant alright, and I promised her I wouldn't budge until she came back. I watched as she put on a white button-down shirt that used to be Mama's. She put on a string of fake pearls, and she brushed her long thick hair back into a ponytail. Then she left. I wondered what she was going to do.

Tommy slept the whole time she was gone. I read to Megan, hoping it would keep us both calm. I didn't like being at home without Tara. It felt like living in a haunted house with a horrible, angry ghost that didn't want us there. Daddy's presence was frightening, and every time I heard him get off the couch my heart would pound.

Tara came back two hours later. It was nearly all the way dark by then, and she was coated in a fine layer of sweat.

"I have some good news," she said. "I got a job. I'm gonna be a waitress at the restaurant on the square. Miss Janie's gonna pay me under the table. You girls can't tell anyone, okay? She could get in trouble because I'm just fourteen."

"But what about school?" I asked.

"I'll still go to school," she said. "I'm gonna work after I get out of school, and I got a babysitter for Tommy during the day. She's gonna watch you girls after you get out of school until I can come get you. This way nobody ever has to be at home alone with Daddy."

After the two hours I'd just spent, I was so relieved I cried. I couldn't help myself. I jumped into Tara's arms and hugged her, and she hugged me back tighter than ever.

"Thank you," I whispered into her golden hair.

"Everything's gonna be okay," she said, gathering Megan up into our hug. "I promise. I'll never let him hurt you."

Our babysitter's name was Linda. She made it a business to help teenagers who had been kicked out of their parent's houses, or who had run away, and didn't have anywhere else to go. Everyone in town knew of her; her house was where most runaways ended up, and it was always the first place the police checked if any kids went missing. She had a big, old house with five bedrooms and a den, and all of those rooms were full of beds for her "babies", as she called them. She called us her babies too, and on the first day we stayed with her she told us that she loved us.

Linda was tall, like Tara, with long jet-black hair, coppery skin, and dark warm eyes. She was very kind to us, and she made sure the teenagers that lived with her were kind to us as well. She was never drunk or high, and she never yelled at us.

It was September when we started staying with her. Tara told Daddy on Sunday night that she had a babysitter for Tommy, and that he didn't have to worry about anything. I stood there in the living room with her while she told him, even though she didn't want me to.

"She's gonna watch Eliza and Megan after school," she said. "I'll pick them up after work."

"Work? You got a job?" Daddy asked from his place on the couch. He was shirtless and sweating; his jeans were dirty with grease and spilled beer.

"Yeah, at the restaurant in town," said Tara. "This way we won't be in your hair."

"As long as I don't have to deal with any of it," said Daddy, waving at her dismissively. "Keep those brats out from under my feet."

"That's why I'm doing this," she said. "They won't even be here and you don't have to worry."

"Hmmf."

"Daddy...when we are gonna bury Mama?"

"Dunno. Whenever."

"They can't just keep her at the morgue."

"Damn it, what do you want me to do?" Daddy yelled. His booming voice woke Tommy up and scared all of us.

"I was just asking - "

"You were just asking me to spend a thousand bucks on a dead bitch that dropped brats every two years! Go ask your Graddaddy, maybe he won't mind wasting the money! And shut that baby up!"

Tara's face turned red, and I thought for a minute that she would yell back at him. But she didn't. She simply turned around and steered me to our little bedroom and shut the door quietly. Megan was crying silently, trying to shush Tommy. Tara picked him up and held him tight against her body.

"I hate that man," she whispered. "I hate him, I hate him, I hate him."

I hated him too. I wanted to go out there and yell at him myself, but I didn't. I knew he'd been hitting Tara, but Tara was tough. I worried that he would break me somehow, maybe even kill me, if he raised a hand to me.

It all made me very glad to see Monday morning and start something of a new life with Linda.

In the mornings, we all walked to her house on the other side of Snakeroot to drop Tommy off and catch the bus at her house. In the afternoons, Megan and I got off the bus there, and Tara walked to work from the high school. She usually worked until just after seven. Whenever she came to walk us home, she was sweaty and smelled of cooking grease and onions. Sometimes she had a to-go box full of french fries or chicken strips for us to eat; those were the best days.

And that was our life. It was okay, thanks to Tara, even though Mama was gone. Tara was always tired, but she still took care of us the best she could, and I loved her for it. I respected her too, and I was determined to grow up and be as brave and strong as she was.

Then Uncle Henry moved in, and things got bad.