White Trash

Yea, that's what I feel like. Sitting here, smoking a bummed cigarette as my house goes up for Sheriff's sale. I grew up in the projects. I was already married (the first time, at 17, to get away from my father)and 4000 miles away (from my father) before my parents bought their first home.

Even as a single mom, I've refused welfare, or Section 8 vouchers, and the like. 10 years ago, on my own, I bought a house, a single dwelling in a middle class neighborhood. For 9 years, I never missed a mortgage payment. Even after 2nd husband and I split, even after my pay was cut the first time. But during that time, having bought it as a fixer-up (and I am girl, that thing with the round metal thing at the end is a hammer, right?) it began falling apart around me. Falling apart more than it was when I first purchased it.

And now, I sit here, smoking (on the patch), while my house is auctioned off, contemplating the last decade of my life.

I am 31 years old, twice divorced, with a 12 year old son. I haven't had sex in 4 years (being of the conservative Christian persuasion), and the only thing I have to show for myself (other than an UNpublished novel which will soon be the next best-seller and my pseudonym will be a household name) is my house. Well, was my house. That too is now gone.

Part of me is absolutely devastated. The other part of me still has hope. After all, I am unofficially engaged (no money for a ring or wedding)to the most wonderful man in the world, who left his steady job and beautiful townhouse and the mountains of Colorado to become homeless with me in the miserable, crime-infested, filth of Philadelphia.

And I must mention that I have an absolutely wonderful son. He's kind and compassionate and caring (despite his argumentative nature and total disregard for both his and anyone else's property. (I've just read in a 'how to prevent trouble in the teen years' book that the later is due to my giving him everything he ever wanted in reverse to my having nothing as a child; so he's spoiled rotten but not a brat. An odd combination. My fiance shakes his head over it, never having seen a really good kid with a great heart who just thinks everything is his and totally replaceable if and when it breaks, because trust me, if my son touches it, it will break. His father bought him a t-shirt that said 'Master of Diaster'. The tailor must have had a nightmare, er, vision of my son which inspired him).

And so, despite that I will be the next JK Rowling when my best-selling novel is finally published and selling off the shelves faster than the publisher can print them and will be living in a luxurious log cabin in Colorado, for now, I sort through Craigslist searching for an apartment that will fit the three of us but that isn't in a ghetto neighborhood. I don't want to rear my son in a neighborhood where he can't have any friends and it isn't safe to walk to the car let alone hang outside and play.

It's at times like these that I feel like white trash. Like all my dreams of rising above my circumstances and my past are nothing more than grandiose fantasies that keep me motivated enough to get out of bed each morning.