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Copper popshot6/29/2023 ![]() ![]() I picture myself in the front car of the roller coaster, arms up, eyes wide with joy. I crack open the Bible, pull out the Sunshine Palisades tri-fold, and stare at the pictures. And chances are the chocolates in the plastic eggs will turn to dust when their shells are cracked open. The games are rigged so that you can never grab a $100 bill in Tycoon Typhoon, or pull out a stuffed mongoose with the Claw of Chance. Kotov’s foyer is a gauntlet of temptation: swirling lights, smoky two-way mirrors, coin-operated games. Fourteen is old enough to know that you can’t save money for Sunshine Palisades when you’re spending every red penny in the foyer of Kotov’s. There should be a commandment that says ‘Thou shall not abandon thy wife and child.’ ![]() I refuse to read it even though ‘Honor thy father and thy mother’ is one of the commandments. Mom’s read the thing twice and has placed it in the bathroom with high hopes that Jersey and I will start reading it. The Bible’s cover is furred with fungus, its pages falling out like feathers as if it were a living, breathing thing. I keep the tri-fold between a picture of Moses and a list of Ten Commandments in the back of Mom’s Bible. Jersey says Sunshine Palisades sounds like a place where children are turned into donkeys and forced to work in meatpacking plants.Ĭarameled meatballs and geriatric cage fights are just some of the attractions touted in the Sunshine Palisades tri-fold. I’m saving my money for bus fare to an amusement park called Sunshine Palisades. The leg was all Jersey had left of her father she didn’t want to, but she took the money. Not Royce the father, but Royce the prosthetic leg. Later she refused to look at us, pulling a curtain of black hair across her face with bruised and bloodied hands.Īfter buying groceries, Mom handed us the leftover money we made from Royce. ![]() We then spent two panicked days licking our wounds in the empty tool shed while Jersey ripped through the house like a mongoose on speed: smashing windows, punching mirrors, drilling holes the in drywall with a curtain rod. She held Jersey’s bucking torso while I pried the leg from her panicked grip. The leg now hangs above compression socks, enema bulbs, and breast pumps in the medical supply aisle at Kotov’s Pawn. Not her leg, but the prosthetic with a steel pylon tibia and detachable foam foot that once belonged to her father, Royce. We needed groceries, so we pawned my sister’s leg. ![]()
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