Cunt

She approached my cab at a truck stop just outside Sacramento. She told me her name was Madison, and she needed to get home to her mother's funeral. Her sisters and father would be there. And could I please give her a ride to Reno. I unlocked the passenger side door, she went around the front of the cab and got in.

***

Madison's mother called her a Cunt.

According to Madison the old woman stood just four-foot-ten and wore a size three shoe. But the woman's stature did not prevent Madison and her five sisters from being afraid. The old woman addressed them all as Cunts. And their father she called a Cunt chaser.

"Why don't you just pin your cunt on your sleeve," Madison's mother told her one day after a boy had come to the front door looking for her. Then came what the sisters called the Tiger Paws, the streaking marks left on the skin by the frayed extension cord their mother used to lash them. Tiger Paws. Like the animated commercial for Uniroyal tires.

When Madison's mother was sixteen, she had run away from home with Madison's father. The Cunt chaser left his wife and three children behind. He never did marry Madison's mother.

Madison's mother once lit the big bed on fire. This happened after she caught Madison's father fucking Peggy, the fourteen-year-old babysitter. The following Christmas Madison's mother begged Madison's father for a gold ring. He bought her one. After she opened it, she presented a gift to him, too. Then she sat grinning as he tore the wrapper open. Underneath the colorful paper was a cardboard box on which a triangular slit had been cut out of its center, a slit surrounded with fur. Written above the slit in crayon was the sentence: Hi., my name is Peggy.

Still laughing, Madison's mother then took her shiny gold ring out to the garage and destroyed it with a hammer.

Madison's father worked two jobs to support his wife and six daughters. At night while he slept Madison's mother often covered his face with a pillow until he'd push away gasping. Other nights she'd wait till he was sound asleep, then take a pinchful of his upper lip and twist the flesh until his eyes snapped open.

***

By the time we were half an hour from Reno, Madison was all talked out. She rested her head back and began to cry. I usually like it when they cry. But for some reason, this time I felt her pain.

In Reno I pulled the truck onto the shoulder of the highway. Madison, still crying, got out of the cab. I did not feel bad watching her disappear down the ramp. When I stomped the gas pedal, I thought, There were lots of women. Lots.