Trigger Warning: This story will be unnerving and upsetting as it deals with a social topic that is taboo and not acknowledged.
I always heard nobody hangs onto Jackson Delaney very long, man so capable and handsome, every lady wants him. But when he crossed my path — single mom with two stairstep girls — we started us a good thing, and he dropped doing the double-take dance whenever we went out.
The girls’ dad ditched me when they were small; said I tricked him about being “safe” the first time. After the second, he wasn’t sticking around. Never his wife, I treaded water with SNAP and Section 8. When they got into kindergarten, I landed a job at the Stop ‘n Shop. Men took me to Bobcat Bite for a beer, sometimes dancing in Whitcomb, if I got a sitter, though every one of them had excuses why they couldn’t stop by and meet my children.
Then when Jackson happened along, only a matter of hours before he asked the names of my daughters, how old were they, if they liked Hubba Bubba chewing gum. He pinch-hit for me when I couldn’t get done with my shift before school let out; took us all to Calypso Market where bands play bluegrass. Saturday afternoons were matinees at the multiplex in Chase Harbor. I finally had us a real family.
Then the summer Pamella was about to start tenth grade, I was hosing mud off the back stoop when Jackson come up behind me and rested his arms about my waist. In his gentle way, he asked could he show my daughter how to please a man; could he give her a proper intro, the kind that would set her up for life.
I went numb like I swallowed a fistful of ice cubes. Tried to keep the hose steady, my finger directing the spray over the nozzle, not letting up. What on God’s earth was he saying? I couldn’t breathe; couldn’t think; couldn’t find my tongue.
He just kept talking. Didn’t want to see some sloppy boy sneak up on my daughter and take what he wanted like what happened to me sophomore year in the Straker barn, he said. Wanted to educate her in men, in how to get what she wanted in return. These days, Jackson said, women needed to have some skills, some “know-how.” Expecting the man to do everything was not in the cards anymore.
My Pammy was still a kid — sulky, goofy, whiny — but her legs were getting long; breasts a C cup already. She giggled herself silly around Jackson, straddling his waist when he was down on the floor, teasing him one minute, pouting the next. Yelling at me. Still, things were so much better between me and my girls since he moved in.
And friends had been telling me soon as their daughters got to high school, they didn’t let up wanting new jeans, new iPods, you-name-it, and I should count on Pammy getting that way, too. She hadn’t yet. Probably because she saw me sweating just to make the rent, but it was coming. That’d been weighing on me: how to get them both through high school without wearing their classmates’ hand-me-downs from St. Luke charity drives, stuck in the muddy pond with the other ain’t-got-its. Wasn’t like Jackson was willing to buy us everything when we asked.
Yet just that week, I’d eavesdropped on a phone call he took out back. That week I learned he was coming into some money from some old uncle’s estate. Enough to buy a house in Hayden Hills. Hell, enough to buy Hayden Hills, and I’m not making that up. I know what I heard.
And the fact of the matter was better Jackson want my own daughter than going after some skinny little vixen bopping into the hardware store he managed. Keep him home with us. Sure, this was awful, but it was downright courteous the way he was asking permission first! A lesser man would just grab. Grab and the devil be damned.
So, I swallowed my jealousy and flooded my hurt in the dirt down the driveway, and with a shift of my hips, told Jackson R. Delaney he better do a good job of it.
Three days later when I got home from work, Pammy come straight into the kitchen and collapsed in my arms. She was stunned and scared. I didn’t know what to say to her, so I said nothing, just smoothed the hair from her face, let her cry it out. Hate to admit it, but I was pissed she was so shook up when I was the one whose planet gone cock-eyed! I was the one lying awake nights, aching like some old boot kicked to the gutter! Girl didn’t know how good she had it.
When Jackson walked in that night, Pammy saw me cozy up to him like always. That was real bad. She run upstairs, and I couldn’t get her back down to the supper table. Not for anything. Didn’t speak one word to me for days! I didn’t know if she thought drafting her into action was my idea, or she was mad I wasn’t mad at Jackson enough to make him stop. Truth be told, I doubt she knew.
Meanwhile, I was blaming myself for what I agreed to. Jackson was spending more time with her than me.
So, things went crazy for a bit. But when he did buy a house in Hayden Hills with the kind of address where the numbers are written out over the door, we moved in with him. Big old closets for each of our wardrobes, a kitchen to make any gourmet chef drool, Jacuzzi tubs. Pamella been driving her own zippy yellow jeep. And just yesterday, Jackson got us airline tickets to Disney World for the Fourth of July.
The way I see it, what we score next is the surname Delaney. Brittany Jane turns fifteen come August. She’ll help us out, too.
Pamella finally understands. This is something we all have to do.
Shoshauna Shy is an editor for 101Words. She was one of the seven finalists for the 2021 Fish Flash Fiction Prize, long and shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Awards in 2022 and 2023, nominated for the Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction awards, and shortlisted for the Flash Fiction Contest Awards conducted by South Shore Review.
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