Shelter from the Storm. (Chapter 2)

On Lot Twelve of Sunrise Trailer Park stood a weathered and faded blue

and white single-wide trailer just on the northeast corner of the lot. Sitting
next to it in the small driveway was a faded red, early 1990s Dodge Intrepid
with its right rear door window missing and in its place was a piece of clear
plastic dropcloth secured to the door by duct tape. The dropcloth billowed
in the late fall breeze. While a few other trailers in the trailer court had also
seen better days the one on Lot Twelve stood out from even other weathered
mobile homes.

 Inside the aged mobile home on Lot Twelve, a rather chubby bleach-blond-
-haired woman of about thirty-six years of age was getting ready to head out
to work.  She wore the yellow scrubs worn by the housekeeping staff of
County General Hospital. Her name tag read:  Reva Hobbs. The woman
then went over to get her purse which stood on the kitchen counter and
when she went over to pick it up, she quickly glanced back as if she felt
she was being watched, then reached down to open the door to the
storage space under the sink, reached in and pulled out a small, silver
flask and put it in her purse.
 In the small living room of the house, two children, a girl and a boy sat on
a substandard tacky couch watching TV from a 1970s vintage Panasonic.
The girl looked around nine years of age and the boy about five.  The girl
had long red hair tied in a ponytail and somewhat large round blue eyes.
She wore a faded tye-dye t-shirt and light blue jeans that were threading
at the bottoms and faded red tennis shoes. The bottoms of the shoes
were worn as smooth as a worn automobile tire.
 The boy was light brown-haired and resembled his mother.  He wore a
light green hooded sweatshirt that had holes in some places his jeans and
shoes also run down as the girl's was.

Reva Hobbs then came into the living room where her children were and
and asked them, "You gonna eat there at the church, right?"
 "Yes, mommy,"  the girl answered, looking up when her mother spoke,
they're having pizza there, we were told."
"Good," Reva said, sounding as if feeding them tonight was an inconvenience,
"because that no good daddy o' yours didn't send no alimony check this month
so food is kinda scarce right now."
 'What about my daddy?"  the boy asked.
"Your daddy's in jail, Alex," his mother answered, somewhat miffed, "You
didn't know that?"
"You didn't tell me that," Alex replied, feeling an uneasy twinge inside of
him at the news.
 "Oh Alex!  Don't gimme that!  I done told you your daddy went to jail for
robbing a convenience store, remember?" Reva turned to the girl, "You
remember me saying that, don't you, Julie?"
"Yes, mommy," Julie replied, hating her mother's grouchiness.
  "Oh why did I have to marry two incompetents," Reva muttered, throwing
her hands up in disgust and anger. She then looked at Julie and then Alex
and remarked brusquely, "Your dad's a deadbeat and your dad's in jail
and thanks to them both we're now in the shape we're in."  The way
Reva was talking to her children, it sounded as if she was blaming them
for their current dilemma.


This concludes Chapter Two.