Prologue: Greetings from Little Ovella

Little Ovella's Vacation Bible School portrait (c. Summer 2005)

Chapter One: Little Ovella gets 'tapped

Little Ovella had been acting up all day. According to Buddy, Momma's current live-in love interest, Little Ovella had "...right pissed me off". Buddy was a gap-toothed, beer-guzzling, tobacco-chewing, pot-smoking man-boy who drove a muddy 4x4 monster pick-up that smelled vaguely of blowback and stale Redman, with several questionable plastic bottles of what-looked-like Diet Coke tossed willy-nilly in the cab.

Little Ovella didn't approve of the way most of Momma's boyfriends treated Momma like she smelled funny, but she had to admit that Buddy seemed to really be in love with Momma. Little Ovella thought it was so sweet the way he switched from Marlboro Reds to Salem Lights 100's, Momma's brand, just so's he wouldn't have to go out and buy his own cigarettes. That gave him more time to spend on the sofa, watching the TV and baby-sitting Little Ovella while Momma tried to advance her career down to the SOAK-N-SUDS 24-Hour Coin-Operated Laundromat and Package Store. Momma started working there when Little Ovella was just a lump in her stomach ("I thought you was cancer", Momma always teased Little Ovella after she'd downed a double-shot of Tequila and licked lumpy salt and lime juice off her good thumb). Little Ovella swore that when she was almost old enough to drink, she would try to be more lady-like and lick the salt and lime juice off her pinky.

Little Ovella was not sure what she had done to make Buddy "right pissed off", but she was sure it had something to do with the blood-curdling scream she let out when the little black-boy-who-lived-next-door showed her his thing. It wasn't her fault. She had never seen one before, or if she had, it couldn't have been that big, that thick or that black. Anyhow, she must have interrupted Buddy's 8-hour nap, or a rerun of his favorite show on the HBO, "OZ". Buddy swore that Christopher Meloni had actually once served time, like Buddy his own self, just by the way he pissed into a bucket in his make-believe jail cell. "Ain't no way a man can hit a bucket like that without spilling a drop," Buddy said, "not 'less he's been incar-cim-erated hisself". Little Ovella politely declined to mention the puddle of piss she routinely found next to the toilet after one of Buddy's all-night Budweiser binges. She thought it best to remain impartial in case she ever served on a petit jury charged with convicting jobless stoners of toilet abuse.

The little black-boy-who-lived-next-door had innocently showed Little Ovella his Haitian great- great-grand-momma's thumb, cut off by the Haitian mafia after she was tortured into admitting she plagiarized Harriet Beecher-Stowe's classic "Uncle Toms' Cabin" as a French-language musical called "La Cabine d'Oncle Tom". The musical, an instant success, had taken Haiti by storm during the sugar-cane harvest of 1933 (much like hurricane Ivan). The Haitian mafia (or MA-HAI, their nom-préféré) struck a deal with Ms. Beecher-Stowe that gave them exclusive distribution rights in the Western Antilles in exchange for not using the ancient art of voodoo to turn her into a white woman. MA-HAI lost millions of Gourdes (even at the current exchange rate of 1 Haitian Gourde = $0.0259 U.S. Dollar, that’s a lot of do-re-mi to the average Haitian) when Beecher-Stowe’s estate did not share the royalties it received after her novel was used in a segment of Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s “The King and I” on stage and screen, which was in turn adapted (with a much bigger budget) as "Anna and the King" with Jodie Foster playing the non-singing role of English white girl fucks bald-headed Asian man because he owns Thailand, and because the food is so good! , and Chow Yun-Fat playing the non-singing role of the only Asian actor to penetrate the lesbian Jodie Foster. The little black-boy-who-lived next-door's great-great-grand-momma had committed the ultimate crime of forgetting to pay off the Haitian mafia kingpin, Napoleon "Baby Coq" DuBois. "Baby Coq" had the poor woman tortured until she admitted the truth. So she could never write again, her big, thick, black thumb was snipped off faster than a skin-tab on Merv Griffin's ass. The little-black-boy-next-door’s family saved the thumb in wax paper, and passed it down from generation to generation as a reminder of how much you have to suffer to write a decent musical.

Personally, Little Ovella thought Jodie got gypped when she didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for "Anna and the King". She was of the opinion that the Oscars for "The Accused" and "The Silence of the Lambs" were both sympathy-Oscars for her stellar work in "Bugsy Malone", which excused the Academy from ever acknowledging Jodie again, at least, not until she died or came out of the closet.

The blood-curdling scream woke Buddy from a crazy, mixed-up dream where he was Christopher Meloni's puppet, or bucket, or something with an "et" on the end. Buddy ran to see who was a-screamin', and when he saw Little Ovella, he mustered a monstrous shit-eating grin, even though he didn't eat shit as far as little Ovella was aware, although she had to admit his gums were starting to recede just a little. Buddy bared his gap-teeth and said, “When your Momma gets home, Whirly-Girly,” that's what he called her when she was acting up, “you’re gonna get 'tapped!” and stumbled back into the trailer.

The little black-boy-who-lived-next-door, whose name was Thatcher, quickly rewrapped his great-great-grand-momma’s big, thick, black thumb and took off like the Haitian mafia was after him. Little Ovella was alone now, with time to ponder her predicament.

It’s not that she minded being ‘tapped. In fact, sometimes it was the only way she could get a full night’s sleep, what with Buddy snoring and Momma making air biscuits all night on account of her lactose intolerance and addiction to microwaved Velveeta nachos after she’d downed double-shots of Tequila and then switched to White Russians made with heavy cream.

What bothered Little Ovella the most was knowing that she was being ‘tapped because she had been a bad little girl. She tried, she really tried to be less nerve-wracking for Momma and Buddy, but the pressures of living in the Tremont Mobile Home Park and Auto Court on Highway 12 in Walla Walla, Washington sometimes got to her, and she acted up. Momma and Buddy often gave her Dimetapp, or ‘tapped her, to get her to unwind and go to sleep like a good little girl.

Little Ovella hoped that Dimetapp had been on sale this week at Wal-Mart. Even though the generic cost less, she liked the real McCoy. It made her feel like the richest girls in the world, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, when she took the name brand. Besides, she liked the pretty purple color of the real Dimetapp. The generic was a boring eggshell white, so she always swallowed it quickly. On the rare occasion that Dimetapp was on sale, or Momma had a coupon, she sometimes pretended to swallow the pill in front of Momma and Buddy, but kept it in her mouth and sucked on it until her teeth and gums turned purple. It tasted bitter, but Little Ovella had swallowed a lot of bitter pills in her seven years on this earth.

Momma’s 1982 Chrysler K-Car pulled up in front of the trailer right on schedule, at five minutes past one in the morning. Momma finished up at the SOAK-N-SUDS 24-Hour Coin-Operated Laundromat and Package Store at midnight, but hung around for a few shift drinks afterwards. Momma was proud of her negotiating skills when she got the job. In lieu of a shift differential for working the second shift, she’d talked the owner into giving her all the free drinks she could handle in one hour. She always left promptly at one a.m., making the five-mile drive in exactly five minutes. Little Ovella admired Momma’s punctuality. Since it was almost bedtime anyway, Little Ovella thought it was as good a time as any to take a Dimetapp. She sighed, waved to Momma, and ran inside and prepared to be ‘tapped.

Chapter Two: Sweet dreams are made of this

Little Ovella changed into her favorite pajamas, the ones that Nanny Fleetwood stitched together out of old washcloths in one of her arts and crafts workshops at the old age home in Clayhatchee, Alabama. True, the pajamas were a little scratchy in the crotch, but Nanny Fleetwood had run out of washcloths halfway through the project, and stitched the bottoms from a pile of old dishrags and Brillo Pads she found in the closet of a recently deceased tenant who everybody liked named Juanita Buscachicos, a retired librarian from Sulphur Springs, Dekalb County, which was so far north and east in Alabama that it might as well have been Rhode Island. Although Juanita died peacefully in her sleep, the controversy surrounding her subsequent embalming and funeral was now legendary in Clayhatchee. It turns out that Miss Juanita Buscachicos was actually The Reverend Bobby-Ray “Repent Ye Sinners” Reynolds, a televangelist who disappeared without a trace, but with millions of dollars of donations from his generous disciples. Apparently, the old dishrags and Brillo Pads weren't the only things in the closet. The Reverend Bobby-Ray, who preached death to hypocrites and homosexuals, was a devout cross-dresser who preferred having sex with the male population of the Clayhatchee Rest-Up Retirement Resort, including, but not limited to, the hunky orderlies and muscular high school boys who worked there on summer break, cutting the grass and robbing the old ladies blind, or was it the blind old ladies? No one was more surprised at Juanita’s deception than Old Man Smoot, Clayhatchee’s epileptic undertaker, who undertook undressing Juanita so's he could embalm her. Old Man Smoot took a look-see, scratched his head and then saw Juanita for what she really was. He suffered a grand mal seizure, and died on the spot. Their funerals were held the same day, but at different times so as not to further confuse the bereaved.

Little Ovella liked these pajamas best because they smelled like Nanny Fleetwood, at least the top, anyway - a little sweet, a little sour and a whole lotta musty. She appreciated the fact that Nanny Fleetwood had not only made the pajamas her own self, but also wrapped them in an old, brown paper bag from the Piggly-Wiggly and mailed them at the book rate from the Dale County post office. That meant that these pajamas had traveled clear across the country from Clayhatchee, Alabama to Walla Walla, Washington and saved Nanny Fleetwood a pretty penny in the process. It gave Little Ovella goose pimples to think of all the towns across America these homemade pajamas had seen. She saved the brown paper Piggly-Wiggly bag, storing it in her necessities drawer in case she ever needed a suitcase to run away from the Tremont Mobile Home Park and Auto Court in Walla Walla to a more civilized place like Detroit.

Little Ovella’s grandmother, also known as Nanny Fleetwood or the drunk-bitch-who-lived-over-the-liquor-store, didn’t actually live at the old age home. It was more like she worked there. At the ripe old age of 52, she had worked as the cafeteria lady at the Clayhatchee Rest-Up Retirement Resort for nearly 40 years, serving creamed corn and Johnny-cake to the dead and nearly-dying residents of Dale County. Nanny Fleetwood still lived in the little apartment where she single-handedly raised Momma, a return address she proudly scratched in black magic marker on every little thing she ever sent Little Ovella:

FROM:
Miss Tioga Fleetwood
137 and 1/2 “B” Tugaloo Street, Rear
(Above the Liquor Store)
Cedar Springs, GA 4XXXX

Cedar Springs was a two-hour bus ride from Clayhatchee, but Nanny Fleetwood dutifully made the four-hour round trip six days a week and only complained if the sun was shining, because it hurt her eyes, or if it was raining, because it made the rheumatoid arthritis in her knee-bone scream like an unpaid whore. As a tribute to her long years of service, Nanny Fleetwood was offered a free stay at the Clayhatchee Rest-Up Retirement Resort, but always politely declined, saying she was too independent to take a handout. Little Ovella suspected that the real reason had something to do with county blue laws. Everybody knew that Dale County was dry, and Nanny Fleetwood wasn’t worth a damn at work unless she was nursing a class-A hangover from her nightly case and a half of Ortlieb’s beer.

Thinking about Nanny Fleetwood made Little Ovella feel nostalgic, so she took the Piggly Wiggly bag out of her necessities drawer and sniffed the return address. Even after two years, the smell from the Sharpie magic marker got Little Ovella woozy. She barely got to enjoy the rush, because Buddy suddenly burst into her room with a glass of water and a Dimetapp. Little Ovella was ecstatic that it was not a generic, but kept her mind a blank so Buddy couldn’t read it, even though he couldn’t read the back of a beer can near as she could tell.

“Okay, Whirly-Girly,” said Buddy, “take your pill and get to bed”.

Momma poked her head in the room. “Hey, Little Ovella,” said Momma, “I heard you been actin’ up t’day”.

“Sorry, Momma,” said Little Ovella, thinking how purple her teeth and gums would be in a few minutes. “I tried to be good, but I guess I need to be ‘tapped”.

Momma’s lazy eye tried to focus on Little Ovella, but it only made her look like she was rolling her eyes at Buddy, or searching her memory banks for the final Jeopardy! answer. She stepped into the room, shoved Buddy out of the way and scooped Little Ovella into her arms.

“I sure do love my Little Ovella,” Momma said, belching and then waving away the scent of a McDonald’s Big N Tasty and Burger King onion rings from Little Ovella’s face. She kissed Little Ovella so hard that her gums started to bleed, and she had to put Little Ovella down and run into the bathroom to rinse her mouth out with peppermint schnapps.

Buddy thrust the glass of water at Little Ovella with one hand, and held the Dimetapp in the other. When Little Ovella reached for the pill, Buddy jerked his hand away, asking, “Did you say your prayers?”

Little Ovella wanted to scream, “Yes, I said my prayers, you fucking moron. I prayed that God would take pity on me and send Christopher Meloni here to make you his bitch! I prayed that Momma would come to her senses and realize that the three inches between your legs and the four minutes it takes you to get off, including foreplay and a cigarette break, make you less of a man than Juanita Buscachicos! I prayed that the good people of Walla Walla would make calling little girls “Whirly-Girly” a crime, punishable by public flogging, or public castration, or forced public transportation!”

Little Ovella could have gone on, but she stopped there because she was itching to take the Dimetapp. She looked at Buddy, and simply nodded her head. She thought Buddy looked at her funny, but it was hard to tell because he always looked like that, as if he had just got a whiff of his own self. He gave her the pill, and went to check on Momma.

Little Ovella was in heaven! She didn’t even have to pretend not to swallow the Dimetapp! She sucked on it for at least an hour, finally succumbing to the drowsiness, which was really a side effect, at about three a.m.

Chapter Three: Sentimental Journey, Part 1

Seven year-old Little Ovella Fleetwood was in the throes of a Dimetapp high. Her breathing was shallow, her legs twitched and her drool, a deep, royal purple from sucking the pill before she swallowed it, stained her pillowcase and favorite pajamas. Although she was unaware of it, her eyes were wide open, pupils dilated and oblivious to her immediate surroundings, the Tremont Mobile Home Park and Auto Court, Lot 19, in Walla Walla, Washington.

Floating freely in the continuum between the here and now, the there and then, and the everywhere in between, Little Ovella was not even cognizant of the nocturnal whisperings that signaled the end of the day for her trailer-mates: the click and hiss of Buddy opening another can of Budweiser, the crack of the ice as Momma poured a fresh cocktail, the BEEP of the microwave, which was the Lot 19 version of the dinner bell. Even the odor emanating from the bathroom, which smelled vaguely of the burrito Buddy had for lunch, escaped her attention.

Little Ovella seemed to be traveling backwards through a dense fog, with no destination in sight:

She saw herself at her last birthday party, five years ago, when Momma burned Thatcher, the little black-boy-next-door, nearly setting him on fire as she tried to light the two candles on Little Ovella’s cake with an errant cigarette because she was fresh out of matches. That was the day that Momma first met Buddy, who was delivering a Domino’s pizza to Lot 5. Buddy worked for a living back then, but was just as stupid. He somehow got lost, or maybe couldn’t really read his numbers, and rang Momma’s doorbell instead. Ever the bumbling hero, Buddy managed to save the day on account of he had a large pepperoni pizza and matches, so the party wasn’t a total bust. Momma pressed a cold beer on Thatcher’s burn before guzzling it up, used Buddy’s matches to light the candles and another cigarette, and sang “Happy Birthday” to Little Ovella in her fine contralto, all the while using her good eye to flirt with Buddy. Momma was the queen of multi-tasking before anybody knew what the hell that was. Everybody ate pizza, but Little Ovella threw hers up on the floor in protest because Buddy gave her the creeps and because Domino’s Pizza was owned by a former Catholic altar boy who avenged his implied sexual abuse by roping the whole United States of America into believing that mozzarella cheese, Ragu and cardboard was haute cuisine as long as it was delivered in thirty minutes or less. Despite never attending medical school, Buddy diagnosed Little Ovella’s outburst as acting up, a term that haunted her to this very day. (Even now, in her in-between state of sleep and wakefulness she shuddered.) Buddy moved in that very afternoon, quitting his job at Domino’s via Momma’s cell phone, and started calling her “Whirly-Girly” the next day. It really bugged Little Ovella that their anniversary coincided with her birthday. Jesus Christ on a crutch, a girl only has but one day to call her own, and she sure as shit doesn’t want to share it with her Momma and a man who was quite possibly a paid emissary of the Catholic Church disguised as a white-trash pizza delivery boy. From then on, Little Ovella flatly refused to participate in any birthday parties, her own or anyone else’s, until such time as Momma came to her senses and kicked Buddy to the curb.

Little Ovella’s hiccupped as her trip down memory lane continued:

She saw herself the day she and Momma moved into the Tremont Mobile Home Park and Auto Court, six years ago. For the past six months, Momma was running around with a man she met at the SOAK-N-SUDS who was older than Nanny Fleetwood and filthy rich to boot. His name was Beauregard Shamburger, but everyone called him “The Colonel” on account of his resemblance to the late Colonel Sanders of KFC (we do chicken right) fame. New to town, The Colonel hailed from Texas, which immediately made Little Ovella suspicious, but she couldn’t say anything to Momma because she hadn’t learned to talk yet. She did manage to have a nasty bout of flatulence whenever The Colonel was around in an effort to warn Momma of the dangers of dating a man from the Bush country, but to no avail. Momma just rubbed her gums with Captain Morgan’s Rum and put a pacifier in her mouth. The Colonel was in Walla Walla for some secret business deal that he claimed would make him richer than Croesus. Momma had no idea who that was, and Little Ovella was too busy trying to fart to explain that according to legend, he was the first foreigner to come into contact with the Greeks, and acquired most of his wealth as a direct result of King Midas. Momma was just happy that she had a love interest that bought her drinks over to the cocktail lounge at the Holiday Inn instead of cadging free drinks off of her at the SOAK-N-SUDS, even though The Colonel never touched alcohol his own self. Little Ovella decided to let Momma enjoy herself for once; besides, she loved being alone while Momma and The Colonel went out on the town. Things seemed to be going swell, and Momma thought The Colonel might be planning to “pop the question”; she suggested a home-cooked meal for The Colonel in their little apartment over the SOAK-N-SUDS. Momma spent all day painting her fingers and toes and doing her hair just right. Then she popped a Stouffer’s Grandma’s Chicken and Rice Bake in the microwave and re-applied her makeup, anticipating her new life as the wife of a rich Texas businessman. Momma popped downstairs to the SOAK-N-SUDS to get a bottle of carbonated water, The Colonel’s favorite, when all hell broke loose. The TV in the SOAK-N-SUDS was tuned to the ten o’clock news, and the big story was an all-out search for a Mormon polygamist from Cottonwood Heights, Utah, who abandoned his seven wives and seventeen children. The Citizen’s Crime Commission was offering a $5,000.00 reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction. Momma took one look at the grainy photograph on Channel 63 and marched right across Highway 12 to the Holiday Inn, Room 317. She kicked the door down using a Vegas fan-kick she learned watching old re-runs of Batman, and clobbered The Colonel with a bottle of Perrier as he looked up, guiltily, from a can of Pepsi. Momma had no patience for married men on the prowl or Mormon sinners, and The Colonel was both. She collected the reward money and used a portion of it to buy Lot 19 at the Tremont Mobile Home Park and Auto Court. She felt the apartment above the SOAK-N-SUDS had too many bad memories. Momma used another portion of the reward money to buy new furniture for the trailer and some cute matching outfits for her and Little Ovella. She also managed to start a college fund for Little Ovella with the last $25.00, and got a free blender in the process.

Still dreaming, Little Ovella felt herself being pulled further backwards, but got up to pee first, nearly tripping over Buddy, who had fallen asleep in the hallway.

Chapter Four: Sentimental Journey, Part II

Little Ovella woke up and she was three weeks older. Her body ached. Her tongue was so purple, it looked like somebody had ironed