Bastard out of Carolina (34 page)

Daddy Glen showed up at the diner to try to talk to Mama, but she balled up her apron and hid in the washroom until the manager made him leave. She came home to sit on the couch, smoke a pack of cigarettes, and stare into space. When Reese tried to talk to her, she made us both go to bed early. The next morning, when Mama went over and applied for a job at JC Stevens, all I could think about were the times she had told us how much she hated the mills. When Reese and I got out of school, we found a note from Mama on the dish drain that said she’d be working until seven-thirty and to open a can of pork and beans for dinner. Reese ate hers spread between two layers of bread and refused to speak to me. I went down behind the Fish Market where big salt-stained flats were stacked in piles and empty washtubs lay tilted so they could drain and air out. I sat on an overturned washtub between the leaning piles of flats and cried into my elbow so that no one could hear me.

“It’ll be all right,” Mama kept telling Reese and me, but she didn’t explain how. When Reese cried and said she wanted to go home, Mama held her and promised to let her stay with Patsy Ruth this summer. I sat at the table and watched them across the room, remembering the last time Mama had run away from Daddy Glen. It had only been a few days. This was now over a week. How much longer would she last? Another week? A month? I dug my nails into the soft skin inside my elbows and rocked a little on the chair. I wouldn’t cry, not where Mama could see me. I wouldn’t cry.

For Reese the whole thing had been an adventure until Mama refused to let her go over to sign her name on Uncle Wade’s cast. Three days after the funeral Uncle Wade had shot himself in his right foot, and was stuck home limping around with his leg in a big cast the boys had plastered all over with oil and gas decals from the service station. We’d heard all about it from Little Earle at school, but Mama ignored Reese’s begging and brought home a couple of paint-by-number sets for us instead.

“I don’t want you going nowhere that I can’t come keep an eye on you,” she told Reese. When Aunt Raylene came over, Mama didn’t even invite her inside, just spoke through the door.

“Let us be, Raylene. Just let me be for a while. I need some time to think.”

“Anney, you can’t hide away like you some criminal.” Aunt Raylene sounded impatient. “You an’t the one done nothing wrong. You an’t the one at fault.”

“I don’t care who’s at fault,” Mama yelled. “I just need to be left alone!”

Aunt Raylene called Mama’s name softly twice more but finally went slowly down the stairs and drove away.

We all shared one big bed, but most nights Mama would fall asleep on the couch, one arm thrown over her face so it covered her eyes. That night Mama lay on the couch, and cried so quietly I could just barely hear her through the closed door. I curled up on the far side of the bed and listened to the small sounds of her weeping until I fell asleep and dreamed that the walls of the apartment fell away and you could see all the way out to the house where Daddy Glen was sitting up staring through the open windows waiting for us to come back. When I woke up in the early dawn, I went to make sure Mama was all right..I tried to be quiet, but she was awake, lying there looking up at the dirty gray ceiling.

“Bone,” she whispered. “It’s too early. What are you doing up?”

I hesitated. I wanted her arms around me but I stood there rigidly, mouth shut tight, eyes dry.

“Oh, Bone,” Mama sighed. She sat up and pulled me down beside her so that my head was on her shoulder. I began to shake with hard, mean sobs, a strange kind of crying without tears. Mama’s hand moved automatically, stroking my head as if I were a wounded dog. I knew from the way she was touching me that if I had not come to her, pushed myself on her, she would never have taken me into her arms. I shuddered under that unfeeling palm, slapped her hand away, and ran for the bedroom. I crawled in beside Reese and pulled the pillow over my head. Reese woke up complaining, and when Mama came in I just scrunched down tighter, refusing to answer when she called my name.

“Bone, don’t do this,” she said, her voice angry and impatient. I burrowed deeper into the sheets. After a little while Mama said, “That’s enough,” and took Reese away. My head pounded with heat.

 

Lying alone on the big bed, I thought about Daddy Glen and the way he would come up behind me and gather me up in his arms to pull me close to his body. Remembering, I locked my hands between my legs and tightened every muscle in my body. When I was as hard and rigid as I could make myself, I tried to remember how it had started. What was it I had done? Why had he always hated me? Maybe I was a bad girl, evil, nasty, willful, stupid, ugly-everything he said. Maybe I was, but it didn’t matter. I hated him, and these days I even hated Reese and Mama. I was a bowl of hatred, boiling black and thick behind my eyes.

I had been so proud of not crying that last time, so sure it was important. Why had it mattered? Whether I screamed or fought or held still, nothing changed. I curled up tighter still and thought about that, the way he beat me, the way I felt jammed against him and struggling, the smell of him and the feel of his sex against my belly. He had been pinning me against his thigh when he beat me. Had he come? Had he been beating me until he came in his trousers? The thought made me gag. I pushed my wrists harder and harder against my own sex until I was hurting myself. I could remember his smell, the sound of his breath above me, the hot sweat falling off his face onto my skin, the way he had grunted and shaken me. No, it did not matter whether I had screamed or not. It had all been the way he wanted it. It had nothing to do with me or anything I had done. It was an animal thing, just him using me. I rolled over and bit the pillow. I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river.

After a while I cried myself back to sleep. I dreamed I was a baby again, five or younger, leaning against Mama’s hip, her hands on my shoulders. She was talking, her voice above me like a whisper between stars. Everything was dim and safe. Everything was warm and quiet. She held me and I felt loved. She held me and I knew who I was. When I put my hand down between my legs, it was not a sin. It was like her murmur, like music, like a prayer in the dark. It was meant to be, and it was a good thing. I woke up with my face wet from tears I did not know I had cried, my hands still holding on between my legs.

“Mama,” I whispered, but she had gone to work. I was alone in the quiet bedroom. It had been a long time since I had woken up like this, with that sweet good feeling between my legs, almost hurting me, but comforting too.

I brought my hands up and looked at them, spread the fingers and looked at the light reflected through the dingy shades. I rolled over and slowly loosened the muscles of my back and legs, keeping my hands in front of my face. The light shifted as the shades swung in the breeze. I thought about fire, purifying, raging, sweeping through Greenville and clearing the earth. I dropped my hands and closed my eyes.

“Fire,” I whispered. “Burn it all.” I rolled over, putting both my hands under me. I clamped my teeth and rocked, seeing the blaze in my head, haystacks burning and nowhere to run, people falling behind and the flames coming on, my own body pinned down and the fire roaring closer.

“Yes,” I said. Yes. I rocked and rocked, and orgasmed on my hand to the dream of fire.

 

When I woke up it was afternoon, and the apartment was still and warm. I got up carefully. There was cold coffee on the stove, and biscuits in a towel-wrapped dish. I drank some coffee and chewed on a biscuit with a slice of cheese. A note in Mama’s handwriting was on the table. “Don’t go anywhere,” it read. “I’ll be home by dark and we’ll talk.”

My throat closed up. I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t know what I would say. I dressed myself quickly in jeans and a warm cotton shirt. When I left, I locked the door behind me. Once I was on the street, I thought about Reese coming home to an empty apartment and calling Mama at work. They’d be upset. Angrily I started walking. I didn’t care anymore who got mad at me, what happened. Maybe I’d get killed out on the highway.

 

It had been Fay, Nevil’s wife, who had driven Daddy Glen to the hospital after getting him up off the lawn and on his feet again. “He an’t gonna die,” she had said. “But a doctor should look at him. That cut over his eye might need a stitch or two.”

Aunt Carr and Benny went with them. “You should always give a man a chance,” she said before she got in the car. Earlier, she’d been the one who tried to stop the beating and gotten slapped for her trouble.

“My wife’s getting ready to drive, an’t she, and in my car.” Nevil’s voice was laconic and soft. “She wouldn’t be if I wasn’t giving that son of a bitch a chance.” He was drinking black coffee out of a soup bowl, his knuckles all bloody and swollen, like Earle’s and Beau’s. Beau had managed to get kicked in the mouth and had lost a tooth. He was collapsed in a chair threatening to knock all Glen’s teeth out as soon as he could stand to punch him again.

Through it all, Daddy Glen said nothing. His face was blood-streaked and bruised, and he could barely stand, but he didn’t make a sound when Benny helped him into the car. He just put one hand over his eyes and lay back against the seat. Aunt Carr brought his coat. “You should be ashamed,” she hissed at Earle as she went through Aunt Ruth’s living room.

“Well, I’m not.” Earle had a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and was passing it over to Beau between sips. “I’m not ashamed of beating that asshole. I’m not ashamed of sitting here drinking. I’m not ashamed of a damn thing.” He sat at the table with Beau and Nevil, all of them sweaty and bruised, drunk and indignant. None of them looked at me when I came through with Mama and Raylene, though Earle stumbled up and put his arms around first Mama then me. He smelled like blood, a copper-and-iron tang on top of the whiskey. I pushed at him, trying to get free, but he seemed not to notice, letting me go only when Mama pulled me out of his embrace.

“We’re going,” she told him.

Raylene and Nevil followed us out to the Pontiac, Raylene repeating, “You should come to my place,” and Mama never stopping to acknowledge the suggestion. It was dark and cold, and Reese was shivering.

Aunt Alma brought out a couple of blankets. “We should talk,” she said. “You’re gonna need some help, Anney, and you shouldn’t go back to that house alone.” Nevil nodded.

Raylene said, “Anney, just listen to us.” But Mama wrapped one blanket around Reese and handed the other to me. She kept putting one hand up, palm out, when either of her sisters got too close. “No,” she said once. “Don’t stop me. I know what I’ve got to do.”

We’d slept the night in the car while Mama rummaged through our house, packing up the things she wanted and storing them in the trunk. She put boxes behind the front seat and piled sheets and quilts on them to make the backseat one big bed. Before dawn, she drove us down to the train station lot and parked the car under one of the big arc lights. She slept in the front seat, with pillows and blankets around her. When daylight came, she took us to a diner downtown and left us to eat our breakfast while she went to rent the apartment she had already picked out from the ads in the paper. She had been moving so fast, so steadily, it was impossible to talk to her, to ask her what was happening. But I could not have asked anyway. I knew.

 

It took me most of the day to walk to Aunt Raylene’s. I walked with the same pace, the same deliberate energy, I had seen in Mama since.Aunt Ruth’s funeral. I sang to myself as I walked, sometimes out loud. Ruth Brown’s “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean.” Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight.” Out at the intersection of White Horse Road and the Eustis Highway, I even started on Elvis Presley. Singing kept me from crying. Singing kept me walking. The spirit of meanness that had come up in me broke out in song and movement. I felt hateful but strong, mean but powerful.

Aunt Raylene didn’t seem that surprised to see me when I walked up her front steps. She was on the side porch, where she had set out flats to start seedlings. Her hands were covered in dirt, her hair tied back with a scarf, and she had a streak on one cheek. “Bone,” she said briefly, and went on mixing black dirt and potash. “An’t seen you in a while.”

I wiped my face. Sweat was running down my neck. My feet hurt. I dropped onto a stool. “Get yourself a glass of something out of the kitchen,” Aunt Raylene said, but I didn’t move. After a while the dry tight feeling in my throat eased. I watched her spread the dirt out in her flats and layer fertilizer in each. She mixed again and again, turning the dirt over and not looking up at me.

“Spring’s coming,” she said finally.

I nodded.

“Your uncle Earle’s staying here now.” She wiped her hands on a rag and took a cigarette out of her overalls, leaned back against the table of flats, and lit it. “He took a room downtown with that little girl he brought to the funeral, but that looks like one of his shorter romances, ’cause she’s still downtown. Man’s living out of two suitcases and sleeping on the couch. Won’t move into my spare room, keeps saying he an’t gonna be here that long.

I loosened my jacket. When I spoke my voice was as flat and careless as hers. “Mama always said Earle lived from woman to woman. Told Daddy Glen that Earle had become a cradle robber, that there was nothing solid left in his life but whiskey and family.” I paused, surprised to hear myself mention Daddy Glen. It felt suddenly hot on the porch.

“Well, I told him he should get himself a widow next time, some fat old girl to iron his shirts and wash his back. But Earle likes them young, likes them openmouthed and gawky. He’s like all men, I suppose, loves a grateful woman, specially one that he don’t have to do nothing to impress. And the girls he finds—my Lord, it about hurts my heart, these little strays he brings around. All Earle has to do is speak gently to them and they fall all over him. They’re just like fruit in the sun, heavy and ripe for someone to pick.”