“Shit, Crow. That’s rad. Like, GI Jane rad. Your head’s not as lumpy as I thought it would be. You are totally gonna need some big honkin’ earrings to rock that shit proper though.” Char laughs.

I cry.

Headlights come ripping up the driveway. Too fast and too careless to be Mama. A battered old Monte Carlo sputters up alongside the trailer. This time it actually is Peg, ranting and raving the second she hoists her corpulence out of the groaning car seat.

“What in the name of Mother Mary, meek and mild, do youse think you’re doin’? Your little bonfire is sending smoke all up the road. Them woods are as dry as an old nun’s gusset! There’s a fire ban on from Lands and Forests. Yas don’t even have a bucket of water! And are those your mother’s papers? She’ll have your head on a platter!”

She stops ranting when she notices my head.

“What? Doncha like it?” I say, wiping away any trace of tears, sweet sarcasm tinging my words.

“If I can’t say anything nice, I shouldn’t say nothin’ at all.”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

“Fine. You wanna know what I think? You look like a skinhead. Or a cancer patient.”

In the flickering shadows and light, out of the corner of my eye, I see Char tugging on her ear lobes with wide cupped hands and mouthing the words, Earrings. Big honkin’ earrings.

I direct my full attention to Peg.

“Well,” I say, “they have to stick needles into my brain to see if it’s actually cancer or just tumours in the worst possible locations.”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. Anything for the attention, I guess,” she says, her buggy eyes lurching back in a dismissive roll.

“Right. I came back to this shithole island with a head full of tumours just so you and all your nosy friends could spoil me with all your lavish attention,” I spit.

A baby begins to holler over the monitor.

“Charlotte, go get the baby and get in the car. You, missy. Get a bucket and put out that fire before I call the cops.”

Before my fury-forged, wine-sharpened tongue can tear a fleshy strip off Peggy, Mama’s car comes clattering up the driveway. Char comes out of the house carrying a car seat, with her son nestled quietly into the zebra sling. Peg cocks an eyebrow at me, challenging me to say more. I shut up, just for spite.

Char obediently gets in the passenger side of the Monte Carlo. Peg strides over to Mama as she hauls her tired bones out of her own car, says she will come pick up the Mustang in the morning.

Mama comes to me, the deep, exhausted folds in her face uncomfortably emphasized by the bonfire’s undulating flickers of shadows and light. She stares at me for a moment. Does the same eyebrow cock as Peg’s, challenging me to say something.

“Ma, I just —”

“Go get a bucket of water and put that fire out. And while you’re in there, put the tea on.”