My name is Caroline Trent-Hudson. I am fifteen years old, born on June 3rd, 1999.  I have long light brown hair and I’m 5’4”. I weigh 137 pounds. I’m an only child and am much neglected. I live with my mother, Elaine Trent, in South Dakota, the state with the highest seriousness of depression. My father’s name is Ronald Hudson. I moved here when I was seven. My parents got divorced right before that. I used to live in Hawaii. My dad owns a few resorts there; a chain of resorts, really.
My mom always told me that they met at one of his resorts. She always said that he saved her from a shark in the water. He heroically pulled her up and carried her to safety. My dad said that she was in the pool and her top fell off. She held herself and tried to run away from everyone, but bumped into my dad. He grabbed her top for her and then he took off his shirt and put it on her. He brought her up to her room and helped her into her top. My dad is slick. He said that after that they made love.
My mom would yell at my dad for saying that. They would always fight day and night, and then end up “sleeping” together. When my dad went to work, my mom would take me out “shopping”. We’d go out to clubs and my mom would dress like a stripper and wait by corners for cars to pull up. When someone picked her up, she’d look back at me and say, “Don’t worry, Caroline! You stay right there with Auntie Hilde and I’ll be right back!” Hilde wasn’t my aunt. She was dressed just like mom. They would take turns on the corner.
When mom came back, her hair would be tousled and her clothes the same. Once I asked her where she goes. She said, “Well you see, Caroline. The men mommy goes with pay her to sleep with them.” I replied with, “They pay you to nap with them?”
She said, “Yes. Now don’t tell daddy. Okay Caroline?” “Okay.” I said blindly. I never knew that my mom was a prostitute. I remember that about five months after that I told my dad that my mother had ‘slept’ with men. “And they pay her too”, I had said. I also told him that she waits on the corner with Hilde in little skirts and shirts and waits for cars to pull up. I told him that she leaves me with Hilde every time she gets picked up, too.
I didn’t understand what I had done at the time. After that, my mom started drinking. She and my dad would fight constantly.  My dad never lied to anyone. Not even my mother. She hurt him bad.
After they fought, he would come into my room and tell me, “It’s not your fault, Caroline. I’m sorry that you have a mother like that. I’m so sorry, Caroline. I love you Caroline.” Then, he’d fall asleep with me; one arm curled around me and tears streaming down his face.
Something snapped in my dad one day. He didn’t talk to me as much as he used to. He and I drifted apart slowly. I was losing my father. One day, I came home from school to my mother and father screaming at one another. I just looked at them crying. They both turned to me. My mother said, “Caroline, go to your room. Your father and I need to talk.” I looked at my father, who couldn’t even look at me. Something quiet came out of me.
“No.” I said, tears strolling down my cheeks. “I don’t have to listen to you…” My father looked at me, amazed. I had never talked back to anybody, especially my parents. “What did you say?” My mother asked. Her eyes were puffy and red, and they were staring into my soul.
“I said I don’t have to listen to you!” Something must’ve snapped in me too. I finally understood what was going on. “You’re a liar, and my teacher told me not to listen to liars! You’re a meanie and you don’t love me, and you don’t love daddy, and you don’t just sleep with those men, and Hilde isn’t my aunt, and you won’t tell daddy about your baby, and you’re a big fat liar!!”
My father’s face quickly turned to my mother. She looked at me with her mouth wide open. She quickly covered it with her hands. My father went over to me and grabbed my shoulders tight. “Caroline,” He said. “What did you just say…a-about mommy’s baby?” I looked into his eyes. They were so wounded. “I-I…” That’s all I could get out of my mouth. “What did you say!?” He screamed, shaking me. My mother went to go pull my dad off me, but he turned and slapped her across her face.
We all sat there, stunned. Even my father couldn’t believe what he had just done. He stared at his hand then at my mom. She stood there. Her face was bright red except for her cheek, which was a darker red. My dad quickly grabbed his car keys off the counter, picked me up, and ran out of the house with me.
We drove as far as we could, and I was so happy to be away from my mother. However, when my dad and I reached the airport, there were cops everywhere. They took me away from my dad and gave me back to my mother, who had all of our stuff packed and was ready to leave. She took more than half of my dad’s money and we were headed off to South Dakota.
The flight to South Dakota wasn’t very fun for me. My mother was thrilled to get me back from my father, but she wasn’t too happy about what had just happened. I knew what had just happened. I helped my father escape a horrible life of lies and misery. I’m happy that he had escaped that. He hasn’t really been the same ever since he had gotten arrested. My mom filed against him with sexual assault. She had told the police that he had hit her and tried to force her to have sex with him. They believed her.
My dad had told the police that he did hit her, but he never tried to force himself onto her. He also told them how she cheated on him multiple times. He told them how she was a prostitute. He told them that she brought me to “work” with her every day. He told them that he didn’t know until the day he hit her. They asked him how he ended up with me in his car. He told them that he was trying to protect me from my mother.
They said that they had believed him. They lied. He was put into jail for about 3 years. I guess they found drugs in his office, too. My mom must’ve sold him out since she did the drugs with him.
I find it extremely sad that there are actually children out in the world that have to experience things like this at such an early age. We should be able to enjoy our childhood while we can. We never know when our life is going to end, or even how it’s going to end. We all know that there’s life out there, and it’s spreading like a wildfire. It lights up the world with its flames. Some things burn brighter than others. Some things burn longer, while others burn for very short amounts of time.
When we reached South Dakota, we were greeted by my grandmother, Nan (short for Nanfred), who really isn’t a good person.  She’s a smoker and a drunk, which really isn’t hard to tell. She’s got a body like a twig and the breath of an Irish man. She dresses in raggedy clothing all the time; most of her shirts are stained with alcohol. The only clean clothes she owns are her party clothes and her formal attire. Her hair is always nappy and curled. It’s kind of dirty blonde, but I think that the brownish stuff in her hair is just some kind of effect from smoking. Her skin is always pale, too. She only went out at night for parties and such. She never really went out in the day unless she needed groceries.
I was so depressed when we moved in with Nan in her trailer. When I started going to school, people would call me trailer trash. I wasn’t a popular kid, as you can tell. Every day I would come home to my mom and Nan either passed out in Nan’s room, or they’d both be drunk fighting outside. It was mostly the first one.
I’d sit down and do my homework at the table and ignore them until one of them would come by me and stare. I knew better than to ask them why they were staring. One time, my mom came over and sat down next to me. She was smoking. I remember how hard she was looking at the page of math that was in front of me. She looked at me and then back at the paper. Then, she pointed at the problem that I was on.
“W-what’s that one?” She asked, slowly swaying. “It says five plus thirteen, mom.” I replied. I was so surprised she was interested in what I was doing. “No.” She said. That hit me hard. I felt as though I had done something wrong. I stopped for a moment, bracing myself for a hard hit in the face, or a burn from the cigarette in her hand.
“I meant, what is the answer? Do you know, Caroline?” She asked. This was a test. I wasn’t going to pass. I knew I wasn’t. I looked at the problem a little while longer. I held up my fingers for help. My mother watched me count my fingers one by one, adding them in my head. I looked up at her, and then said, “The answer is eighteen. Five plus thirteen is eighteen, mom.”
She looked into my eyes. “How smart you are, Caroline. Are you sure that’s the answer?” She cocked her head and continued to stare at me. “It’s simple. You take five, and then count thirteen more on your fingers.” I pulled up my hands and showed her, picking up my fingers after counting off each number. She started crying. “What’s wrong, mom?” I asked.
She said, “My Caroline, you’re so smart. You might just be even smarter than me.” After that she got up, smiling. Then, she stumbled away.