Mess With Me, Mess With the Whole Trailer Park

Margaret Barnes was a bad-ass. Margaret Barnes was a Navy nurse, a devout catholic, my grandmother… and a certified BAD ASS. In her later years, she didn’t own a car and had strayed away from her two-pack a day Chesterfield days. She drank a cup of buttermilk every day, (for digestion) and made me promise I would never smoke, do drugs or ride motorcycles.

My sister and I stayed with mamaw in the summer months in Pensacola, Florida. She lived in a tiny immaculate two-bedroom rented house on the bad side of town (roach infested, hotter than hell, and a box fan in every window). How could a house so clean have so many roaches?!?! Each day, we changed our sheets, washed and hung them to dry on the line, bathed twice, declared our bodily output levels, and said our morning and evening prayers. In between times, we ran the oyster-shell-lined streets of Cervantes street barefoot and wild, scrawny and brown as beans.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was dirt poor. DIRT poor. We took the bus everywhere, but mostly…we walked. We walked to the store, walked to church, walked to the fabric store to buy calico and notions so she could sew our summer clothes.

At least once a day, we were required to take a break and pray the Rosary. Mamaw would send us up to the Army Navy Surplus on Pace Blvd to get her a forbidden coca-cola. She savored every drop, prodigiously dotting her diabetic ulcers with witch hazel and rocking back and forth in the creaky front porch swing. The Apostle’s Creed….creak. The Lord’s prayer…creak. Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary….creak. I began to think everything important happened on that front porch swing. It had movement. It was going somewhere. It transformed the still, wet Pensacola air and cooled the sandy strands of my golden summer hair. I loved that swing. I loved it because I was on it… with her.

She was a saint… to dogs and children. Whenever we were naughty, she would fetch a switch (which really was just a skimpy old reed from the yard)…and we’d pretend it hurt like hell. She must have known we were faking…surely.

There came a time though, that I looked at my grandmother in a whole new light. As the story goes… someone broke into mamaw’s house once, climbed in through the living room window. She met him at the window with a .22 and explained to him that he was in the wrong house and if he didn’t leave, she’d blow his head off. He didn’t seem to have a problem with the request and they both were satisfied with the outcome. I always thought this was a made-up story…until I found the gun under her mattress.

If mamaw could blow a strangers head off…imagine what she could do to her own kin! She argued with everyone! Waiters, teachers, priests and nuns, sales clerks and bus drivers. She hated doctors and trusted no one. She argued with her two daughters in particular, about their looks, their weight, their health, their husbands, and about her innocent grandchildren and the way in which we were being raised. Nothing was without a fight, even on same-sided disputes. Once my Aunt Diane had a fight with mamaw that lasted two whole months. Mamaw hung up on her and Aunt Diane called back. I counted the rings. One, two…20… 45…49…100… 200…TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR TIMES! Aunt Diane finally hung up. More likely though, the phone line burnt to a crisp. That was when I learned the definition of tenacity and its genetic properties.

Mamaw liked to argue with her sister… Aunt Francis…about everything. Aunt Francis represented all the things that mamaw was afraid of…. she collected cats (live ones) and National Enquirers. Her house was flee-infested, and so we never went in, just stayed on the porch mostly. There was one thing that mamaw did approve of… Aunt Francis had a car! And this meant freedom. So once a week, Aunt Francis would come and pick us up in her air-conditioned Nova and take us for a drive. We would stand at twilight on the Palafox Street Wharf in Pensacola watching the shipping boats come in and eating Church’s Fried Chicken. I would look over the edge of the pier and imagine how deep it was. It was cool there… so very cool in the early hours of evening. And I never, ever wanted to leave that pier. I wanted to stay there forever.

But we did leave. We always did. The summers closed and we had to say goodbye and make our way back to Montgomery. On mamaw’s front porch, with my mother waiting in the car, I clung to her, buckets of tears streaming down onto her apron, breathing her in, the smell of pine sol and bleach and witch hazel….hoping with all of my heart that she would allow me to stay for just one more day. And every now and then, it kind of worked out that way.