PAGE #21

MIPOesias Magazine ~ ISSN 1543-6063 Volume 15 ~ January to March 2004

Upscale In Escondido
by Zan Nordlund

“'Taint no “Oak Hills” in Escondido, Mister Big Shot wit the fancy char..rri..oa..t,” cranked the old man. He spit on the ground. He was missing one full front tooth and half of the other and wearing only a pair of dirty khaki chinos and a white t-shirt. He had a soft pack of Kents rolled up in the left sleeve. I knew they were Kents because I could see the green of the package showing through the worn-out material. From the looks of him I knew they wouldn't last long.

Just then I heard the screen door of the mobile home behind me slam. The unmistakable screech of my ex-step mother sung like a rusty hinge. It stuck to the dewy haze of the late morning sun. She was barefooted and clad only in a shocking pink and aqua gauze skirt and a bright white peasant top. She floated across her front lawn with all the melodrama of a star dancer in a sixth grade production of Swan Lake. Her outfit revealed an amicable amount of cleavage for a woman her age, her beaded earrings dangled below the crest of her shoulders. Her toenails were painted a gaudy bright red. The polish was chipped. Her hair seemed to have been bleached one too many times. It looked as though it might be falling out. She sported a deep tan, unfortunate for the wrinkles around the corners of her eyes and her mouth and those between her breasts. I wondered how she managed to walk wearing three toe rings on one foot.

"It's about TIME," she said, trying desperately to muster all of the phony New England accent she could recall. She'd been in California a long time and it'd taken its toll on her diction.

"Well, I had to stop for gas. And to pee. It's a long drive," I said.

"Yes. Yes. It is. Nice car," she tittered shooting a quick glance toward the wayward neighbor. He now unabashedly sat in a bright blue plastic lawn chair between a pink flamingo and a rainbow colored pinwheel on his front lawn so he could watch the show.

"It's a rental........"

"Shhhh.........Let's go in and get out of the sun, shall we?" she said as she pushed me up a set of rusty metal stairs and into her trailer.

Some things never changed. There she was. Sixty-seven years old and still putting on airs for the neighbors, even if they were old drunks in a broken down trailer park in the poorer section of Escondido. A familiar musty smell filled my nostrils. Every place she's ever lived has smelled this way...........

According to her it was all her fault.

Her children had succeeded in life because of her (she included me in this list of “credits,” although she hadn‘t given birth to me, or even laid eyes upon me more than twice in over three decades.) The fact that she had been a drunk, the fact that she had been neglectful, abusive, the fact that she’d done nothing to contribute to their education, either emotionally or financially, the fact that she had given me away before I'd reached the age of seven never daunted her. She still took credit. She was “Super Mom” and everybody better know it.

It was the hat that I remember the most. The big yellow hat. My grandmother showed up wearing a silky flowed yellow dress with matching gloves and a big yellow hat. I never saw anything like it. I was six at the time. My grandfather was shorter than she was and wearing a dark pair of pants and a plaid sports coat, tame by comparison. He smelled like Old Spice and cigars. I was afraid of them both. I knew they were going to change my life, though nobody ever told me anything.

At the end of the day Betty came walking downstairs with my “Get Smart” suitcase, the one with the full color picture of Maxwell and Agent 99 on its side, packed with all of my worldly belongings in one hand and my teddy bear with the nose chewed off in the other. She handed them to Jack, my grandfather, and that was that. No tearful “good-byes.” No “I’m sorry, but we have tos.” Nothing. Just a “See ‘ya.”

And that was that.

The other children in the family grew up to suffer. They lived through her alcoholism, her drug abuse, her sexual exploration, through her beating them with belts, neglecting them for her own needs, and through her multiple marriages to men younger then they were. They, in turn, had to live through their own multiple marriages, drug and alcohol problems, and difficulty in relating to their own children.

Thirty years later there I was, looking for her address on a well-worn piece of yellow Post-It paper I’d been carrying around in my wallet for two decades. She’d been begging me to come and visit “before it was too late.” It plainly said “Oak Hills.........”

.......The old man said “There tain’t no Oak Hills in Escondido.” I’d followed her directions implicitly and here I was.

“Just like Betty,” I thought as I gazed out of the grimy picture window of her 1972 “Champion Deluxe Special” with original features.

Then I saw the justification for the title she had bestowed upon her property. There, on the very edge of her corner lot, if one leaned slightly to the right, they could see an ever so very brief incline, and atop it rested a small Oak sapling.

Zan Nordlund lives, writes, and teaches in New England where she serves as an adjunct professor in English. She is a member of a writer's consortium with Brown University and contributes to several local newspapers. Works have appeared in The Back Bay Beacon, The Boston Globe, and with TimeLife Publications, as well as with multiple on-line publications, including Retrozine, A Journal of Memories, and Zoetrope Artists Studio.

A Massachusetts native, Zan holds a graduate degree in Special Education from Regent University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication from Emerson College. Her novel "Altered Realty" is currently under contract with Janet Kay and Associates.