One night she got totally blasted and made this big confession: The rich guy was supposed to be my father.

Her version of Cinderella, only she never got to live in the palace.

Having a rich, smart, handsome father would be a cool thing, but I know it's bull. If he had money, why wouldn't she go after it?

When she got that way, she sometimes pulled out old pictures of herself, showing me when she was slender and pretty and had thick, dark hair that hung down past her waist.

She has no pictures of the amazing rich guy. Big surprise.

When she told Moron the story, he said, “Cut that bullshit, Sharla. You fucked a million assholes, can't remember nonea them.”

Mom didn't answer and Moron's face got dark and he looked over at me and for a minute I thought he was going to come after me, too. Instead, he just laughed and said, “How you ever gonna know which gleam in the eye produced this little piecea shit?”

Mom smiled and twisted her hair. “I just know, Buell. A woman knows.”

That's when he backhanded her. She fell back against the fridge, and her head snapped back like it was going to come off.

I was sitting at the table, eating the little he'd left me of a jumbo can of Hormel chili, and all of a sudden fear and anger were burning through me and I looked for something to grab, but the knives were across the kitchen, too far away, and his gun was under his bed with him right in the way.

Mom sat up and started crying.

“Cut the bullshit,” he said. “Shut the fuck up.” He raised his hand again. This time I did stand up, and he saw me and his eyes got really small. He turned red as ketchup, started breathing hard, made a move toward me. Maybe Mom was trying to help me or maybe she was just helping herself, but all of a sudden she was in his lap, wrapping her arms around him, saying, “Yeah, you're right, baby, it is bullshit, total bullshit. I don't know jack. Sorry. I'll never lay that bullshit on you again, cowboy.”

He started to shake her off, but changed his mind, said, “You gotta cool it with that bullshit.”

Mom said, “I ain't arguin'. C'mon, baby, let's scoot into town and party.”

He didn't answer. Finally he said, “Fucking A.” Looking over at me, he licked her cheek and slipped his hand under her tank top.

Moving his hand in slow, slow circles.

“Let's party right here, baby,” he said, starting to pull the tank top off of her.

I ran out of the trailer, hearing him laughing, saying, “Looks like the rich guy's kid got all hot.”

He started off with more hand squeezes, tripping me, pinching my arm. When he saw he could get away with that, he started slapping me for stupid reasons, like when I didn't get him a pickled egg fast enough. It made my head buzz and I couldn't hear right for hours.

The worst time of the day was when I came home from school. He'd be outside the trailer working on his bike. “Hey you, rich guy's jizz! Get the fuck over here.”

There was only one door to the trailer and he was in front of it, so I had to do it.

Sometimes he bugged me, sometimes he didn't, and that was almost worse, 'cause I kept waiting for it to happen.

Rich man's kid, fuckin' rug rat snotty-little-asshole think-you're-smartern everyone.

Then he started with the tools. Putting a chisel under my chin, sticking my thumb in a lug wrench and tightening it on the bone, watching my eyes to see what I would do.

I worked hard at not moving my eyes or any other part of me. The wrench felt like when you catch your hand in a drawer, but at least that's over fast- this kept throbbing and throbbing. I could imagine my bones cracking and breaking and never healing again.

Going through life with broken hands and being called Claw Boy.

Next time was a screwdriver. He tickled my ear with it, pretended to jam it in with the heel of his hand, laughing and saying, “Shit, I missed.”

A few days later, his hacksaw blade went up against my neck and I could feel its teeth, like an animal biting me.

After that, I couldn't sleep well, would wake up a bunch of times a night, and in the morning I'd have a sore face from clenching my teeth.

Why didn't I just sneak over to their bed and get his gun and shoot him?

Part of it was being scared he'd wake up, get to the gun first. And even if I did shoot him, who'd believe I had a good reason? I'd end up in jail, ruined forever; even when I got out I'd be an ex-con, with no right to vote.

I started thinking about running away. The thing that decided it for me happened on a Sunday. Sundays were the worst because he sat around all day drinking and smoking weed and popping pills and watching Rambo videos and soon he'd feel like being Rambo.

Mom was in town getting groceries and I was trying to read.

He said, “Get the fuck over here,” and when I did, he laughed and pulled out a pair of wire cutters, then yanked down my jeans and my shorts and put my dick between the blades. The sac, too.

Billy No-Balls.

I almost peed, but forced myself to hold it in because if I wet him I was sure he'd cut it off.

“Rich guy's kid got a little one, don't he?”

I stood there trying not to feel, wishing I could be somewhere else. Lists, lists; nothing was working.

He said, “Snip, snip, go sing in the fuckin' pope's choir.”

He licked his lips. Then he let me go.

Two days later, when they were both at the Sunnyside, I went through the trailer looking for money. All I found at first was eighty cents in change under the couch cushions, and I was getting discouraged and wondering if I could leave without money. Then I came across the Bathroom Miracle- some money Mom had been hiding in a Tampax box under the sink. I guess she never really trusted Moron, figured he wouldn't look there. Maybe she felt trapped, too, wanted to get out one day. If I messed up her plans, I'm sorry, but she still has the AFDC and it was my balls between the blades of that cutter and if I stayed longer he would've killed me. Which would make her feel terrible and probably get her in trouble for child neglect or something.

So by leaving I was doing her a favor.

The money in the Tampax box came out to $126.

I wrapped it in two Ziploc bags, put them in a paper bag tied with four rubber bands, and stuffed it all in my shorts. I couldn't take books or too many clothes, so I just put my most comfortable stuff in another paper bag, buckled my Casio on my arm, and walked out into the night.

There are no street lamps in the trailer park, just lights from inside the trailers, and at that hour most people were in bed, so it was nice and dark. It's not really a park, just a dirt field next to a grove of old twisted orange trees cut low by the wind that don't fruit anymore and one long, curvy, open road that leads to the highway.

I walked the highway all night, staying on the grass, far as I could from the road so cars and trucks couldn't see me. It was mostly trucks, big ones, and they just zoomed by, creating their own storms. I must have walked twelve miles, because the sign at Bolsa Chica said it's that far to Watson. But my feet weren't hurting that bad and I felt free.

The station was closed because the first bus to L.A. was at 6 A.M. I waited around till some old Mexican went behind the counter, and he took forty of my Tampax dollars without even looking up. I bought a sweet roll and milk at the station and a Mad magazine from the news rack, was first on the bus, sitting in the last row.

Everyone else was Mexican, mostly workers and a few women, one of them pregnant and moving around in her seat a lot. The bus was old and hot but pretty clean.

The driver was an old white guy with a crushed face and a hat too big for him. He chewed gum and spit out the window; started off slowly, but once he got going, we were rolling along and some of the Mexicans took out food.