Etta Bucworth never was one for tact. Since the time I was just an a.m. kindergartener sitting behind my momma’s register in the afternoons, I could tell. About once a month Etta would storm in the Pik-Quick’s giant double-glass doors and sweep up and down the aisles yanking the shelves clean of cookies, dish soap, home permanents - anything her skinny arms could hold - then she’d saunter on up to the checkout and dump the whole load on my momma’s counter.

It never stirred my momma. Gracefully - because that was my momma’s way - momma would pick up each item as if she were picking picking a daisy. She would use only her index finger and thumb, and her wrist, of course, to swivel the price stamp into view. I thought this was an especially good trick because I knew perfectly well there wasn’t a product on a shelf at Pik-Quik of which my momma didn’t know the cost; she just liked mimicking the wrist rotations of the ladies on the television.

All the while, Etta would stare at my momma, stare so hard the thin rows of eyelashes on her top lids would bunch and crinkle together like stalks in a summer drought. But momma never flinched, just continued mouthing the prices as she keyed them in, always sure to stress the second “t” in the number 20, because she thought it low-class to say “Tweney.”

And always, just before momma reached for the last item, Etta would winch up her top lip, lean back so everyone in the whole town could hear, and still eyein’ my momma, screech, “Oh wait, I forgot. I also need a box of bleach . because there’s been a WHORE in my marital bed.”

Sometimes it was bleach, sometimes it was ammonia, sometimes just brand new sheets altogether, but whatever Etta decided she needed, my momma would smile as she invited the bag boy to find it, and smile until he came back and plunked it down at her register. Once Etta finally wheeled her cart out the door, momma would take a deep breath, pull a lipstick from her bosom, and cool as Christ at Friday confession, carefully reapply. Like I said, that was my momma’s way.
This morning though, I’m not so sure even Max Factor’s Flamingo Flame could remind my momma to be gracious and high class. Instead of harassing people for disenfectant at the Pik-Quick, Etta was here on our property, gunning her Chevrolet into our house.

Now, our house is not a house as you would normally expect a house to be, with a porch and a yard and picture windows or other such, as momma calls them, “accoutreh-ments.” Our house is an Air Stream trailer. Rolled up in slick layers of shiny aluminum and without the bothers of porches and picture windows interrupting, it glitters like a silver locket under the north Idaho sun no matter what the season. From as far away as school, if I stand atop the monkey bars, I can see the Air Stream perched on top of its own little hill, a beacon of sorts, sparkling high above all the dingy clusters of houses and yards and fences every one else in town behind.

Today, however, I wasn’t balancing on the monkey bars, staring out at the Air Stream; I was skipping school. On the mornings such as this, when momma works the early shift at the Pik-Quick, I like to stay curled up in bed, eating toast and researching hairdos in Look magazine.

I’m glad to report that at the moment Etta’s car made its first attack, I wasn’t in bed researching hairdos; I was hovering above my underpants on the slope behind the Air Stream. As it is my chore to empty the trailer’s toilet waste bucket when it’s full, when momma isn’t around, I usually relieve myself down the hill a ways so as to keep from filling the waste bucket too fast. I know that’s hardly the way of a lady, but as I see it, it’s still four months before I turn 13, and the waste bucket is heavy now.

It was when I was squatting that I heard the engine turn in from the road. I knew it couldn’t be momma because she never stops home before her early a.m. shift starts, but on the hunch that it might be a truant cop from school, I pushed to finish my business. My intention was to creep back up the hill to the side where the pines are thick enough to hide a person and have a peek, but the whine of tires and the wail of crunching metal that followed prevented casual creeping of any sorts.

I raced up towards the trees, tugging at my underpants and tripping on my bootlaces, to see the fuss. I thrust my face through the branches. What I saw was our trailer, still two quick skips from where I hid, but crumpled now like a piece of tin foil. Just a few feet away from it, Etta’s tail lights, cracked and blinking, swung from the back end of her Chevrolet Impala.

From the looks of things, she didn’t care a hoot. She just fired forward through the mud, cranked the gearshift into reverse, then stomped on her gas pedal and crashed backward into our house. Again and again and again. Above the screams of the aluminum popping and scraping, I could hear Etta howling against the melody of a Tammy Wynette song. I couldn’t tell what song it was, and I didn’t know if she was singing the words or if she was laughing or crying even, but I am certain of one thing: I did hear her repeat the word “whore” at least six times.

I wanted to stop her, truly I did. I wanted to lay down between her tires and our beloved trailer and protect my home like Scarlet O’Hara would have done, but I couldn’t bring myself to budge an inch. So instead I hid in the pines, shivering in my nightgown and boots, watching our Air Stream teeter and shake and Etta’s Impala gunning forward and back in the mud. Only after the Impala whined into neutral and Etta finally lifted her head from the steering wheel did I dare poke my head out from behind the needles.

Our trailer looked like one of those cans of beans you find in the half-price bin - dented, ugly, and best left for the people who can’t afford beans in a good can. I started to move towards it, but before I could take a step, Etta swung the Impala around to face the mess she’d made. She stared for a brief second, smiled like, then cranked up the radio and gave the gas one last blast. This time, the force of her launch was too much.

The trailer toppled right off its cinderblocks and slammed over on its side, laying as helpless in the mud as an overturned Bark Bug in picnic jelly. I gasped. Our front door was now the roof. Our roof was now the side. And under the trailer’s weight, the mud began to suckle and seethe. Then, with a low gurgle, the hill gave way to gravity, and like a stick of butter slipping off a warm plate, our house slid over the lip of the hill and out of sight.

Etta and I both screamed. Me with horror, her with delight. She looked over at me then, surprised, I think, to see me yelping there in the trees. When my screams finally turned into howls, she smacked the side of her car door and scared me silent. Calm as a lost driver asking directions, she turned down her radio, leaned one thin, white arm out the window, and smiled at me.

“You’re supposed to be at school right now, Fizzy,” she said, smoothing a stray yellow bang from where it lay matted against her forehead. “If your momma wasn’t so busy being a whore, maybe you’d know that.” Then she patted her hair, turned Tammy back up, and with that same pasty arm flapping out a rhythm against her dented car door, rolled her steering wheel toward the road and slowly drove away.