How Lurlene Learned to Love Herself

Or, A Story About Clones and Trailer Parks

A little free fiction. Originally published in Stupefying Stories.

Lurlene had almost thrown it out when she hauled Buddy’s things to the curb after their last big fight and came closer yet when he called a year later to ask her to take him back and, by the way, bail him out of jail. 

The Super Dupe-R had been on the market for barely three months before the world’s governments had raced in with their lobbyists and laws. Buddy had found one, still in the box, during a demolition job when times were good and hauled it home. Lurlene might have been able to sell it years ago and buy her mother some of the pricey pain pills that were the only thing that gave her any peace at the end, but fear kept her from putting it on Craigslist. Possession of forbidden tech was a felony, and, although she’d cleaned up her act quite a bit since her bad old days, Lurlene couldn’t afford another one of those.

Now she stood over it and picked packing peanuts off the cheap, white plastic. It was a dead end, just like her. Lurlene's father left when she was a baby, and, even though Lurlene had come home to take care of her, her mother had died cursing her failure to measure up. She’d wasted far too much time on Buddy, who proved himself to be a first-class peckerwood. She was unloved, maybe even unlovable, and she’d had enough. Lurlene connected the Super Duper to her kitchen tap and poured the sacks of pre-mixed nutrients into the dispenser. She ran a sterile cotton swab around the inside of her mouth, dropped the swab into the analyzer, and pushed the big, red button.

A week later the “done” bell sounded. Lurlene opened the hatch gingerly, half expecting to see one of the abominations the preachers had predicted -- two heads, maybe a tail and horns, heart pumping arrhythmically outside of its body. Instead, the little girl inside was pink and perfect, biologically five-years-old with a preloaded, state-approved education.

The girl blinked as her eyes tested the light for the first time. “Are you my mommy?” Her accent was American standard, just like the actors on the soaps Lurlene watched every day. 

“I’m your mama,” Lurlene said. “And you’re my little girl.” 

The girls’s head had been pumped full of oxytocin to enhance the likelihood of a solid bond. She beamed like sunlight. “What are you going to call me, Mama?”

“Delia. That was my grandma’s name. Delia Lambeaux.”

Little Delia held her arms out. “Pick me up.”

Lurlene wrapped the girl in a warm, dry towel and they rocked in her mother’s chair until it was time to make lunch. She dressed Delia in hand-me-downs and made them each a fried bologna sandwich. 

“This is good, Mama!” Delia said. 

Lurlene smiled. “I made it just like my mama used to. She taught me everything I know about …” She thought for a moment. “About everything, I guess.”

Delia took a nap after lunch, waking in time to watch the soaps. Lurlene did her best to explain who all the characters were, and who loved whom and who hated what. The next morning, she made liver mush and grits, and they walked hand in hand to the trailer-park swimming pool. 

“I love it, Mama!” Delia splashed in the pool for hours, blow-up water wings forcing her into an awkward dog paddle.

Who is she?” a neighbor said, her soft arms rippling like vanilla pudding as she fanned herself with a magazine.

“My cousin’s daughter,” Lurlene said. “Daddy’s side. You never met her. She’s from up north.”

The neighbor nodded sagely. “She favors him.”

Lurlene and Delia stopped for a Moon Pie and an RC Cola on the way home, took a nap together, and spent the afternoon watching the soaps.

The machine’s instructions had warned that Delia’s growth hormones would take a while to stabilize, so Lurlene took it in stride when the girl was ready for her tenth birthday party a week later. Lurlene made the cake herself, and they ate half of it while sitting on the trailer’s small porch and watching insects fry on the zapper. 

“Where’s my daddy?” Delia said. 

Lurlene had avoided the word “clone” around the girl. “He died before you were born, baby girl.” She fought back tears so real she almost believed them. “He would have loved you so much.”

Delia’s bottom lip stuck out. “Why don’t we have any pictures?”

“Looking at them made me sad, so I burned them all up.” A character on their favorite soap had done something similar the week before, so the answer made sense, dramatically speaking.

“Did you love him?”

Lurlene pulled the girl into her arms and breathed in the clean smell of her hair. “Not as much as I love you.”

The next day they went to the pool to cool off. “Who is she?” said the soft-armed neighbor

“Another cousin,” Lurlene said. “T'other one's older sister.”

“Alike as two peas,” the neighbor said. The women around her nodded.

That weekend, Delia snuck out. Her body was fifteen, her features hinting at the good-looking woman she might grow into. Lurlene found her necking with a neighbor boy in a tree house. They had their hands up each other’s shirts and blinked wide-eyed and wild at the sudden illumination Lurlene cast into their secret space. The next night, Lurlene fired up her stun gun to rescue Delia from Woody Wilson, a middle-aged n’er-do-well who was plying the girl with booze and cigarettes. Lurlene left Woody unconscious, britches around his ankles, and took her daughter home to mend. She spent the night covering the girl’s forehead with cold washcloths and holding her hair back while she emptied her stomach in the trailer’s tiny bathroom.

“I love you, Mama,” Delia said, finally sober and pain-free enough to sleep.

Lurlene sat up all night to keep her nightmares away.

The next week, Delia ran away with an older boy. He had a car and rolled packs of cigarettes into his T-shirt sleeves. Delia was biologically seventeen years old and had “Wild Thing” tattooed on the back of her neck. They stole all the money Lurlene had in the trailer and left a cloud of dust in their wake. Lurlene was dry-eyed as she watched them drive away. She’d left home about the same age, about the same way. She cleaned the trailer from top to bottom, pushed the self-destruct button on the Super Dupe-R, and hauled the ashes to the curb. She watched the soaps alone and cried. The next day she got a postcard from Las Vegas.

Delia came back two weeks later. She was tall, skinny, twenty-something, and chain-smoking. Her halter top and cut-off shorts revealed several more visits to the tattoo parlor. “He left me,” she said. “Said I was getting too old for him.”

“They do that.” Lurlene grimaced. “You want something to eat?”

Delia turned and beckoned to the car parked on the roadway. The passenger door creaked open. “Come meet your grandma!”

Tears stacked up in Lurlene’s eyes as she watched the little girl skip across the hard, red dirt. The girl stopped about halfway and put her finger in her ear. 

“She’s come over shy,” Delia said. She patted her leg. “Get on over here!”

The little girl walked the rest of the way, giving Lurlene a good look at her. She was skinny, her hair needed a wash, and her elbows and knees were scabby and bruised. 

“She likes to run,” Delia said. “And I can’t keep her out of trees.”

“Come here and give me a hug.” Lurlene held her arms out. “I’m your grandma.”

The girl stopped just out of range. “You look like my mommy,” she said.

With little more than ten biological years separating them, Lurlene supposed she did. “Your mama was my little girl,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Ashley.” The girl kicked at a rock. “I’m five years old.”

Lurlene pulled her eyes off the little girl and found Delia’s face. “She’s beautiful.”

Delia nodded. “Lucky she don’t take after her daddy.  Guess I don’t, either.”

“You know about that.”

Delia scratched the faded needle scars inside her elbow. “Weren’t hard to figure out.”

“I always wanted a little girl, but I couldn’t have one.”

Delia lit another cigarette. “Doctor says my growth hormones have settled down. I'll age normal from here on out.” She nodded at the girl. “Hers are stable, too.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

 “I’m here now. Don’t much matter how it happened.” She took a long drag of the cigarette and ground it out under her flip-flop. “Need you to watch her a while. I got into college upstate, and she needs to go to school. Make friends.”

A normal life. “I can do that.”

Delia dropped to her knees in front of her daughter and pulled her into a rough hug. “You stay with your grandma.”

“How long?” the girl said.

Delia wiped at her eyes with the palms of her hands. “Until I get back. I'll come visit.” She stood up. “You mind her, hear? Be a good girl.”

The girl nodded. 

Lurlene bent to take her granddaughter’s hand and with the other she took Delia’s. “I love both of you,” she said. “I’m proud of you, too.”

“I love you, too, Mama,” Delia said. “I’m sorry I left the way I did.”

“It don’t matter. Just make it count for something. Don’t be like me.”

Lurlene and the little girl watched Delia drive away. This time there were no clouds of dust.

“You hungry?” Lurlene said. 

The girl nodded.

“Let’s go inside and I’ll make you something. We can put the TV on. My soaps are about due.”

The little girl took her hand and followed her into the trailer. “Do you have any books?”

The soaps had never been much comfort anyway. Watching people whose lives were better and brighter than hers. “No, but there’s a library in town. Let’s eat then you and me will go see.”