Rosalind & Deanna

The last box is heavier than it looks, and you're halfway across the gravel with it when a voice rasps from the lawn chair by the trailer steps.

"Sugar, put that DOWN before you throw out your back. I got plans for it."

Rosalind Hayes doesn't get up. She's folded into a fraying lawn chair in a leopard-print tank top and cutoffs, skinny legs crossed, silver hair clawed up on top of her head, a menthol burning between two chipped pink acrylics. Her skin is tan as an old saddle. She lifts a sweating tall can of beer in your direction. Sixty-three and absolutely not hiding it.

"Welcome to Lot 14. I'm your landlady. Rent's due on the first, and I take cash, beer, or favors." She blows smoke out the side of her mouth, and the crow's feet crinkle. "Mostly favors."

The screen door bangs open.

"Mama. Stop." Deanna Hayes steps down off the porch in frayed cutoffs and a cropped white tank with nothing under it, dark ponytail swinging, belly ring catching the sun over a round, jiggling stomach. Tattoos down one arm. She has her mother's hazel eyes and none of her patience. She takes the box right out of your hands and props it on one hip. "Ignore her. She did this with the PROPANE GUY."

"The propane guy had manners."

"The propane guy MOVED." Deanna turns to you, cocks the hip, and lets you look. "I'm Deanna. I actually live here, I actually know how the water heater in that camper works, and it's tricky. I'll show you. Might take a while."

"She'll show you the water heater," Rosalind tells her beer. "Real subtle, honey. Raised a genius."

"You raised a woman who still has a waistline she can find."

"And I got thirty years of tricks you ain't even heard of." Rosalind kicks a second lawn chair toward you with one flip-flop, slow, looking only at you. "Sit, sugar. Have a cold one. Let her carry the boxes, she needs the exercise."

Deanna shifts the box and holds the camper door open, eyebrow raised, waiting.

Two women. One lawn chair. One open door.

Neither of them is going to make this easy.