I. THE PRINCESS AND THE PEE My plan is to get outa here before the Social Service finds us. Like my Momma used to say, once the Government gets into your panties, you are going to get f----d for sure. Right now, me and my daughter are living in a 1963 white hardtop Buick Electra in the piney woods of South Jersey. My daughter, Dell, is four and three-quarters. (DelRio was my Momma’s name, Mae Estrella DelRio. Which was my name too until I got married. I was Juanna Mae DelRio before I became Juanna Lottery…and yeah, I’ve heard all the stupid won-a-lottery jokes.) Dell will be five on August 15^th which makes her school age in September, which is why Miss Pendelton is on us like a hound on hare—

—all because I made a big mistake when my husband Cal lit out on us. I should never have gone to the Welfare Office. Miss Pendleton pretended to be helpful, but it didn’t take long to figure out that she’d take Dell away from me in a heartbeat if she knew where we’re living. But she don’t yet. And if I hadn’t lied about being twenty-one, she’d probably take me, too. I’m eighteen almost nineteen in a couple of weeks, July 4^th. Since Miss Pendleton doesn’t know I was born in Louisiana, I figured she wouldn’t be able to check my birth certificate. I suppose she means well, but she don’t know anything about anything that matters.

Thank goodness Dell’s smart for her age and calculates exactly what she can or can’t say to strangers who get too nosy. And she has a way of making her brown eyes wide and innocent behind her purple-framed glasses (they only have one arm, so they sit a little crooked) and sashays her vanilla blonde hair. She lisps a little, which makes people smile and pat her on the head. But I tell her she can’t get by on looks and lisps forever. She has to learn to be self-reliant in this doggy dog world, that’s for damn sure. The problem is nobody ever leaves you alone. And that goes double for the Welfare.

So we’re hiding. To get to where we stay at night, you’d have to drive off a two-lane tar road, past the Lawson family cemetery where you can barely read the headstones from the 1800s and they don’t mow the grass anymore, past miles of scrub pine no higher than a go-cart, and then way up the fire trail to a little clearing. The ground is sandy, covered with pine needles, and there’s no really tall trees so we can see if anyone might be coming…but no one does. We’re tucked in safe and sound.

It’s no big deal living in a car. Lots of folks do it back home where I’m from.

Strummin’ the Banjo Moon relates—in her own words—the obstacle-filled journey of an Hispanic-American girl, Juanna Mae DelRio, from age 18 to 47. It is a picaresque journey, told in three episodes. The reader first meets Juanna in 1981 when she and her four-year old daughter are living in her car in the woods, abandoned by her husband and bereft of a home. As she ages, her character, her perceptions, and her language matures, although she is driven throughout her life to find “home.” Banjo Moon, cont’d

As of 1/09, manuscript is completed and I am seeking an agent of publisher for this novel.