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A Good Catch By Cathy James Her mother tried to convince her they were right for one another.  Him, with his paid for truck, his second shift job, and his big screen TV. “That assault and battery charge was bogus.  You know it.  If that fellow hadn’t busted him first with a bottle, he wouldn’t never have gone after him with that tire iron.  I think he’s a good man.” Vanessa stood a few yards from her mother, wilted and stunned.  Neither spoke for a moment.  She knew her mother was convinced of her words.  Drawing in a mouthful of air, she could see herself swallowing her mother up in the wavering heat. To add another tempting layer of icing, her mother said, “You know, I don’t think I ever seen him spit in public.  He must have had a good mama.” Facing the front porch, Vanessa stood in the yard with her eyes closed to the sun.  It had sunk halfway behind the black glistening roof tiles above, its upper rim spilling over the roof line leaving a shiny lava glow.  She felt its tentacles on the insides of her eyelids as she stretched her head back.  The heat was stifling and it made her choke.  What could be more dismal than her prospect of a lifetime blocked in years, months, weeks, days, nights, oh God, nights with that man?  Even his scent was the oil, heat, and exhaust smell of unnatural outside places.  Not grass or dirt, but tar, gravel, gasoline, tobacco, and cheap food scents that clung to his clothes. Her mother leaned on the porch railing and stubbed her cigarette out on the post.  “Now Vanessa, don’t be turning your back on a good catch. Next year they say his company’ll be offering dental, too.   You could get your teeth fixed.” “Mama,” was all she could say.  Her defeated face was lost on the woman who viewed herself as a broker for her daughter’s future. “He took us all the way to Red Lobster on your birthday.” She wanted to tell her mother why.  She wanted to tell her how he squeezed her leg under the table while she ate a plate of fried shrimp and crab claws, and how he badgered her until she gave him a blowjob in his trailer that night. “I’m a whore for a combo platter,” she said, under her breath.  She turned and looked for a path to walk.  There was no road out, only a dirt trail that led by a grouping of brambles thick with briars and spent blackberry blossoms.  She walked and she did not stop.

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