So I had to look for another place for us to live, as per the eviction. The search led us to a trailer park across town to another sardine can of a two bedroom trailer. It was a better one, but not by much. This is when we started to get a little better off financially. We even had a color TV and was paying $12 a week to a rent-to-own place for the privilege. We got a better car, but he took that to work, too, so it didn't do me any good. He also ended up totalling it one night on a drunken binge while I was at work at a drive-in store. I'm not sure if that's the same night I realized the cops were on his side and not mine, but at any rate - I remember him coming to my job one graveyard shift, knee walking drunk. He started talking his shit to me for no reason, but the sake of doing it and squealed his tires as he left. I called the cops to report a drunken driver and watched from the store window as the 'good 'ol boys' stopped him, did the requisite field test, and let him go. I also remember the sound that his tires made as he, once again, squealed off into the night. This time, in front of the 'good 'ol boys'. I felt sad, sick, furious, and disappointed all at the same time. The two people a girl would think she could trust aside from her daddy were betraying me right before my eyes. The man who promised to love and cherish me and the 'good 'ol boys' who promised to protect and to serve me.
We lived in the second sardine can for ten months, most of which are also a blur. I know things were just as bad, if not worse than, in the first sardine can. He still went out nights and left us stranded at home. The phone lines were severed again after a fight. I don't remember all the details of the situation or even where my daughter was that night, but I know that I fled to an empty trailer deeper in the park to spend the night on the floor because I dreaded him coming home.
The time spent here stands out the most because two life altering events unfolded within the tin walls of the second sardine can. I married the miserable SOB and I got knocked up courtesy of some faulty birth control. I think it was me that suggested that we get married. At the time, he was in the country illegally from Mexico and that made just living day to day difficult because of all the restrictions against him, and me - by default. I figured the only way he could ever really make a life for any of us was to get his immigration affairs in order and get on the right path. He couldn't do that without getting married so that's why I suggested it. I wasn't thinking about it in terms of love or any of that gushy, mushy, giddy bride bullshit. I was thinking of it more in terms as a career move.
So we wed. At 4:30pm in the local Justice of the Peace office at the county courthouse in an unceremonious ceremony - by the very same person who pronounces people dead after horrific accidents. I didn't see the irony in that until much later, but that's what it was - a horrific accident. We were both clad in dirty work clothes. The groom in paint and plaster splattered jeans and T-shirt and I in scrubs stained with hair dye from the local beauty college I was attending. Without even a ring to exchange, we made our promises to each other. I don't know if he knew he was lying when he agreed to love, honor, and cherish me. It's unfortunate that people can't be held in contempt of court and jailed for breaking such promises. At least I had the decency to cross my fingers behind my back before I agreed. Maybe he did, too.
I got my wedding ring two days later, financed at a jewelry store with his boss' signature. It was another two weeks before it came back from being re-sized to fit my fat finger. That ring was bounced around quite a bit over the years. Off his head. Off his back. Off the wall. Off the floor. I delighted in hurling it against whatever would stay still long enough because it seemed to hurt him. Eventually, it began to give me a rash wherever it touched me and that's when I realized I was allergic to him. I lost the ring. I took it off and laid it down somewhere when it started itching me one day. Too bad that SOB wasn't misplaced as easily as the ring was. I could have, at least, pawned the damned ring.
