Francheska Pugh-Cuadra

Hotter Than the Devil’s Armpits Francheska Pugh-Cuadra • Fiction

Truly Jones so eti es heard her mother’s johns slink around the living room—their footsteps always noticeable when they were high or drunk. She couldn’t tune out the laughter or the grunts, and when it was real bad, she heard a scuffle or a fight. When the noises got loud, she’d clutch her Care Bear and bury herself under the covers. On some nights, her mother wouldn’t come back till the next day—when Truly had gotten off the school bus or after she had scrounged up something to eat for dinner— with a burger and a useless apology. Louisiana was hotter than the devil’s armpits. (Or at least that’s what she heard her mama say.) Truly spent most of her days down by the bayou catching frogs with the rest of the town’s stray kids. She felt the freest when dirt caked her legs and leaves swam in her hair. She often stayed out later than everyone else and caught fish with her bare hands until the hot sun turned into a cool breeze.

Truly hadn’t noticed him before. She knew everyone else in her trailer park, and they all knew her. She watched him arrive with his wife—they were younger than most. He had a scar that ran down the side of his face and shaggy blonde hair. Truly often

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imagined he must have been some sort of spy in a former life. She spent her time crafting large adventures as she sat by a window and learned their routine. In her mind, she saw him jump from airplanes onto soggy moss with an M16 and a bowie knife, eager to protect the delicate damsel with curly blonde hair.

Every night, she snuck out and dug around in their garbage. She got caught after the fifth time. He sat by the backdoor with a flashlight and shone it on her when she took the lid off the first can.

“Where’s your daddy?” the man asked.

“Don’t you know? Daddy’s gone,” Truly said. “Mama says he hitched a ride with some harlot in ’74 and never came back because she bewitched him with her whore ways.”

“Is that right?” he asked. Truly popped her bubble gum. “Your mother talk to you like that a lot?” a woman asked.

Truly hadn’t seen her in the darkness. She was tiny compared to her husband, and wore her hair long in a single brown plait.

Truly shrugged.

The neighbor glanced at his wife, and Truly watched as they silently communicated—a familiarity that she would never have. They seemed to know each other.

“Well, I don’t want to see you eating out my garbage again,” he said, as he slowly stood up. “If’n you’re hungry, my wife will fix you something. She’s Charlie and I’m Hank.”

“Well, I’m hungry a lot,” Truly said. She crossed her arms. “But I know better than to let some weirdo strangers feed me out their house. Mama would have a fit!”

“We ain’t strangers, child,” Charlie said. “We’re your neighbors.”

She spoke with such finality that Truly knew better than to question her.

The next ti e Ma a took off, Truly was twelve. Mama left a note and one hundred dollars—as if that was going to keep

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Truly fed and sheltered. She ate at Hank and Charlie’s, and showered at school. Sometimes Truly would go over to their house and sit with them while they watched the evening news. Hank, a Vietnam veteran, and Charlie, a school teacher, would tell Truly stories of their younger years, when sex and drugs didn’t mean violence, and free love abounded. But when Mama came back a month later—with a husband who stayed outside her bedroom door long after Truly had laid down for bed—she just couldn’t take it anymore. She went straight to Hank.

“Mama has a new man,” she said. Truly sat down in the middle of his living room floor and rested her elbows on her bony knees.

“Yeah, I saw him,” Hank said.“Real handsome-looking fellow, ain’t he?”

Truly blew her bangs out of her eyes. “I don’t like him,” she said.

“We ought to put you to ork,” John said one rare evening when the three were eating supper together.

Truly glanced up from her plate of bland mashed potatoes and various greens. She watched her mother push around a side of peas, her eyes empty and cold. She jerked her head until she was staring right at John.

“Huh?” Mama said, before scooting back from the table and sauntering over to the cabinet where she kept her supplies.

“I think she should start earning her keep,” John said. “Little witch is eating us right out of house and home! Using my water, my electric, wearing your clothes around like she’s better than us!” He leaned back in his chair. “You bleed, Truly?” he asked. “If you bleed then you breed in my house.”

Truly pushed her plate back and rested one hand on the butter knife. Its blade was dull and rusted but she didn’t know what else to do. “This is my home,” Truly said.

“What?” John asked.

She could see the vein in his neck flex the way it did before he hit her mama.

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“I’ve lived here longer than you,” Truly said as she stood up.

“Is that right?” John asked. He sat back and watched her, a smug smile on his face.

“Ain’t that right, Mama?” Truly asked. She kept her eyes on John.

Mama grunted in response. “Mama?” Truly asked again. John lunged forward, scattering plates and bowls of barely edible food. The clang of the porcelain hitting the floor was all she heard as the blood rushed to her ears. She screamed as he dragged her toward him, her elbows hitting the legs of the chairs as he pulled her. He pulled off his belt and hit her. The lashes seared the soft edges of her childish skin.

She grappled with John in a feeble attempt to get control of the belt, but the metal buckle ripped the tender flesh of her hands, and the smell of blood filled the air. Truly searched the worn tile floor for something to grab. She found nothing but the remnants of their meal and stray trash.

“Get the hell off her!” Hank yelled from the doorway.

Truly saw only the brown shade of his boots. John pressed her face against the floor. His large hand covered her mouth and muffled the sounds of her protests. She bit the soft stretch of webbing between his thumb and index finger. John recoiled and dug his knees further into her sides.

“I said get off!” Hank said as he pulled John off of Truly. “What the hell are you doing here?” Mama asked.

But Hank was larger than John, more muscular too, and a lot meaner, and Truly thought they’d come to blows until blood spattered the old white rug, already tinged yellow with coffee and cigarette stains.

“Stop it!” Truly yelled.

The two men kept arguing, with Mama in the back snarling vicious insults at both Hank and Truly, and throwing items around the house like a dysfunctional tornado come to disrupt all of their lives. Truly felt soft hands curl around her shoulders.

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She jumped. Charlie stood in the open doorway, the red of her blouse burning like a flare, and for a small moment Truly felt a bit of hope.

Truly moved behind Charlie, using the woman as a shield. “I know why you want my daughter,” Mama said.

Hank kept his hands wrapped around John’s throat, but everything seemed to quiet down with Charlie’s entrance.

“Mama, please!” Truly shouted.

Her mother was screeching then, words tumbling out faster than Truly could comprehend and out of the corner of her eye she saw Hank punch John one final time. He toppled downward like a giant out of a fairy tale.

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