Madame Crapoud, One Horrible Landlady: Part, The First

She was born dirt poor in the trailer court situated right outside the Lernerville Speedway. Like her mother before her, she eventually trolled the place when she was in her teens, found and was latched on to by an older man who made her pregnant, old, and used up before she was twenty. He left her and the boys in the trailer next to her mom. Having no means and no education, she became a barmaid close to home which allowed her to stay near the thrill of the track and in constant motion surveying the men who might be of some use to her.  Her mother had christened her Antoinette Victoria remembering a beautiful queen of France and frothy pink dresses and glittering sitting rooms from a history class movie she saw in the forties. The Victoria name was placed like a good luck charm on the child with the hope that she would be victorious.  Instead, she was just Vickie--too embarrassed to use the Antoinette name and not wanting to be called Tony--like a boy. Her mother died her dark brown hair platinum when she was 12 because in a drunken weekend she wanted the little girl to "look like an angel" at Christmas time. It was the last time Vickie looked like an angel or acted like one. When she floated into her classroom with the shimmering blond hair, her classmates gasped and not in a good way. Mrs. Thomas, her sixth grade teacher, tried to ignore it, tried to buffer the little girl from the teasing. Finally, she had to issue an edict condemning any comment upon it. Vickie was in the cloak room, removing her winter snow pants, her heavy quilted jacket, and boots. She heard the edict. She realized that no one thought she looked like an angel. She caught sight of herself in the cloak room mirror. Her hair was damaged by the harsh bleach job and like straw. Her clothes looked even more poor, dirty, and used. She smelled like the trailer--and only just recently discovered this when Bobby Miller, the cutest boy in the room walked up behind her and hissed in her ear--you look like a whore and you smell like burning cigarettes. He gave her a shove and moved on. She wasn't altogether sure what a whore was, but she was about to find out throughout the rest of that school year.

Haggard, fat, bleach blond, and possessing a smokers hack--is where the love of her life found her.