#280 Mojave Rats- Kirsten Valdez Quade
In a trailer near the salt flats of the Mojave, Monica and
her two daughters, Cordelia and Beatrice are freezing cold. The heater of their
trailer has broke and Eliot, who can fix it, is gone until nightfall. They live
in the trailer while Elliot gathers rock samples to finish his PhD in geology.
Monica does not like living in a trailer park:
“Monica couldn’t help imagining sordid stories for them:
mental illness, violent crime, shattering personal tragedy. The place caught
people like trash in a wire fence, damaged, discarded people…Mojave
rats…denizens of the dust.”
Despite knowing that they are educated people,
with value and worth, she can’t help judging the rest of the park’s denizens
harshly. “He could have been anything: a child molester, gambling addict,
harmless kook. Why not a NASA engineer?”
“Monica wasn’t proud of her pretensions. But it was so easy
to feel disdain for these people, so vital she not be mistaken for one of
them.”
In the cold, Monica struggles with her past marriage and the
daughter she had with her previous husband. She resents her presence, and then
hates herself for feeling anything but love for Cordelia…then blames Cordelia
for feeling guilty.
“Cordelia would forever feel on the outside, Monica saw, and
Monica herself had put her there, because a person couldn’t live with that kind
of reproach. It would only get harder between them…Cordelia’s judgments would
become more pointed.”
Jeez, that’s a lot to put on a kid that’s been through a
divorce and dragged out to live in the salt flats to live in a cold temporary
trailer.
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