Confessions of an Ex- Hollywood Starlet

Chapter Two

Most of my memories as a child are clouded with the smell of whiskey and bug spray, the sound of my mother crying, the brightness of stage lights, the feel of the itchy costume material against my sensitive skin, and the weight of a pointless shiny crown on my big raven curls.

I was a regular in many of the pageants in Texas, my mother putting me through so many probably so she could focus a little less on her life so she could make mine miserable. My mother, Caren Mackenzie Campfield, was the first person to pick up the bottle, and the last to put it down. She had been that way since she was thirteen. Which is more than likely how she got knocked up by a twenty year old at fifteen and got stuck with him. She drank even when she was pregnant with me, which is how i ended up being born three months early.

But i could stand my mother. The worse she ever did was smack me around a little bit when i told her (frequently) that i wanted to quit those stupid pageants; of course she never listened and it was obvious by the tons of crowns cluttering the halls and my bedroom.In fact, i should have been flattered. She loved me in her own way, i was her pride and joy and she wanted to rub it in the face of every other pageant mom in the area.

My father,Joe Matthew Campfield, on the other hand, irked me even as a toddler. If i were to go back and re live every moment of those awful years i spent with him, i would have shot him before my mom did. One reason being he cursed my with a boy's name, Tyler-Joe Campfield, simply because he had wanted a boy. He hit me like a boy too. And he hit my mother like a man. That drunk moron couldn't hold down a job, cheated on my mother, and stole most of the pageant money i worked so hard for. Me and my mother spent too many nights sitting in the dark on our crappy furniture, nothing to eat, and fending off the over-grown cockroaches and rats in our crumbling double wide trailer because he lost all of our money in poker or spent it on alcohol.

But my mother, she was a clever drunk. She hid some of my money away in a bank account Joe didn't know about. In all of my years in pageants we had managed to put $10,000 in that bank account. Until that fateful morning.

I had just turned six and that cold February morning had seeped into the thin walls and gave everything a nice cold skin, I loved it; having spent too many summer days outside doing whatever stupid sport thing Joe wanted to do. 

I was used to being the first one awake and i loved it; it allowed me to spend at least twenty minutes in quiet solitude, letting me prep for a day full of yelling. I walked down the long narrow hallway, holding back a squeal when i felt either a very small mouse of a very big roach scurry across my foot. I padded across the kitchen in my purple printed pajamas and climbed onto the counter to get my favorite cereal and a bowl. I got the suspicious smelling milk and sat down at our wobbly kitchen table.

Right then my mother walked in, abnormally early for her. She gave my favorite sweet sober smile and patted my matted morning hair.  Right then there was a slam against the front door and my idiot father stumbled through the living room.

"CAREN!!" He yelled, holding himself up by the wall and walking to the kitchen. Me and my mother exchanged puzzled looks and i hunkered down further in my chair; thinking i was going to witness another one of their fights. I should have ran in my room when i could.

"Why didn't you tell me we had another bank account!?" He slurred angrily, pointing a finger at my mother, who just stood there speechless in her bathrobe. "I get a call asking me if i wanted to update it! Do you know how much stuff we could have gotten with that money?!"

"Nothing Joe! You would have blown it all losing poker and getting whiskey!" She erupted, I put my hands over my ears, but it didn't block out the noise. He walked unsteadily up to her and back handed her pale face, knocking her down.

"You know what? If you're going to lie to me, then i don't need you woman." My mother was steadly backing up against the wall and didn't anticipate his next action. He braided his beefy fingers in my tangled hair and jerked me out of my seat. I screamed, trying to pull his hand away with both of mine as he pulled me backwards against him. "I can just take Tyler and leave you're sorry ass without a roof over your head."

I looked at my mother, begging with my eyes for her to do something before he took me with him. She did something alright. Me and the lard holding my by the roots were both caught off guard when she reached up and grabbed the shot gun off the wall. I was instantly frozen to the spot, but my father was cocky.

"Get away from my baby you bastard!" She yelled, cocking the gun and aiming it at him.

He snorted and began walking backwards toward the living room with me, "Woman, you and i both know you won't do anything with that gun. Let's go Tyler."

"I said no!" He should have listened to her. A shot loud enough to make my ears bleed rang out as, beside me, he fell to the floor, blood adding another stain on his grimy white wife beater. I looked down at him.

His soulless brown eyes stared wide and unseeing ahead as his mouth gaped open. My face was frozen in a mask of shock and my crystal blue eyes were wide open as i looked up at my mother.