Eleven Girls on a Trailer Floor

Courtney Hanson called me on a Sunday night in October, right when I had both hands in the sink scrubbing a cast iron skillet. My hands were wet and greasy, so I tapped the phone onto speaker with my elbow and kept scrubbing.

“Brandi, hi, it’s Courtney. Addison’s mom. Do you have a minute?”

I said I did. I figured she was calling about the party. Addison was turning twelve that Friday, and Kaylee had been talking about it since school started.

“I wanted to call you myself,” Courtney said, “so there’s no hard feelings. We’re keeping Addison’s sleepover really small this year. Just a few girls at the new house.”

I turned the water off. The kitchen went quiet except for the furnace kicking on under the floor.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s fine. Is Kaylee one of the few?”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “It’s not you, Brandi. You’ve always been sweet. It’s just, with you all living out at the court, and the other mothers. You know how it is. You never know.”

You never know.

I stood there with a dish towel in my hand and read the words over in my head like they were printed on the wall. You never know what? Whether my daughter would steal a hairbrush? Whether something from our house would rub off on the carpet?

I could have asked her. I could have told her exactly what I thought of a grown woman who measures a twelve-year-old by the skirting on her mobile home.

Then I saw Kaylee standing in the hallway in her socks.

She had come out for a glass of water. She was holding the empty glass in both hands, and she had heard every word, because I had been fool enough to put Courtney on speaker.

So I said the only thing I could say with my daughter watching me.

“Thank you for telling me, Courtney. I appreciate you calling.”

“Oh, of course,” Courtney said, and she sounded relieved, like I had made it easy for her. “I knew you’d understand.”

I hung up. I set the phone face down on the counter. Kaylee did not cry right then, and she did not yell. She walked back down the hall and closed her bedroom door so softly I barely heard the latch.