For twelve years, the whole school called her "Trash Girl" because her mother collected cans for a living — until graduation night, when she said one sentence into the microphone and four hundred people rose to their feet in tears.

So she started driving the alleys behind restaurants and bars before dawn, when the trash was still fresh and the other collectors were asleep.

Bottles.

Cans.

Flattened cardboard.

Old newspapers tied with twine.

In California, every bottle and can carries a deposit, five cents or ten, and a redemption center will weigh your haul and hand you a slip.

On a good day, she made forty dollars.

On a bad day, she made nineteen, and we ate rice.

My whole childhood smelled like her work.

Sour beer.

Sticky soda.

Wet cardboard and diesel and sun-warmed plastic.

I knew that smell was on my clothes.

I knew it before I knew how to be ashamed of it, and then, in first grade, a girl named Kendall leaned across the lunch table and said it out loud.

"You smell like the dump."

That was the day I got my name.

By third grade, it was written on the underside of my desk.