Scooby Doo

A six-year-old girl leans out of a trailer door in Sebring, Florida. She’s wearing Scooby Doo panties and eating a Flintstone Push-up; her hair is tangled and her feet are dirty. Some noise from the front yard has torn her away from the T.V.: her Father is killing her dog.

It’s a black and white Border Collie mix named Snapper. The girl’s name is Tina.

Tina notices her father’s truck’s parked half on the lawn and half in the gravel trailer park road. She notices one of her mother’s flip-flops lying in the driveway behind the boat. Her dad is swinging the dog by its tail, whacking Snapper’s head against the gunwale in great sweeping arcs. Tina thinks it sounds just like when she threw a wet towel into the bathtub one time.

Her dad drops the dog and turns toward the house. Tina notices his name stitched in red over the pocket of his work shirt. This morning after firing him, his boss told him to give the shirt back. As he wipes his hands on the white cloth, his name disappears.

Tina suddenly feels fast inside. She looks down and realizes she has peed. Her father walks toward her and Tina turns and walks back into the dark trailer, down the hallway, into her parents’ room, opens the back door and jumps lightly to the grass.

She runs.

She scrambles under a trailer near the lake. She stuffs herself behind the wheels. A baby chameleon jumps up onto the black rubber. Its dry flappy skin changes from traffic light green to dishwater gray.

She waits there.

She waits while father crunches along the gravel road calling her. She waits while she hears sirens, shouting, and a shot. She waits while the sky fills with the whup-whup-whup of helicopters. She waits as the woman living in the trailer above her stops snoring and walks into the kitchen. She waits while the woman lights a smoke, makes coffee, and turns on the T.V. She hears the woman say oh my god when she sees her own trailer on the news. She hears the woman open the screen door almost right over her head and look out at the mayhem near the park entrance.

She waits there.

Long after dark, maybe three a.m., she scuttles out from under the mobile home and walks out of the trailer park. She walks up the road past the bail bond place. When a car comes up the road, Tina hides in the weeds until it’s gone.

She comes to another trailer park. She walks into the tiny driveway of one trailer, makes her way through Fisher Price yard toys into the screened-in porch and knocks softly on the narrow door. Inside, someone whisper-shouts “mon dios”. Tina’s babysitter, Carmen, opens the door.

“Carmelinda? Pape, mira! Mira! Esta Carmelinda—Tinalita!” Strong Cuban hands pull her into the trailer, into a sleep warm bosom. The Cubano’s old dog face looks down into Tina’s and asks “Mammi, what’s wrong?”

Tina doesn’t cry.

Then or ever.