Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [1]
Portions of this book first appeared in the author’s collection of short stories, Trash.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK-MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Allison, Dorothy.
Bastard out of Carolina / Dorothy Allison. p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-00717-4
I. Title.
PS3551.L453B37 1993
813’.54—dc20 92-32330 CIP
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For Mama
Ruth Gibson Allison
1935-1990
People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead.
—JAMES BALDWIN
1
I’ve been called Bone all my life, but my name’s Ruth Anne. I was named for and by my oldest aunt-Aunt Ruth. My mama didn’t have much to say about it, since strictly speaking, she wasn’t there. Mama and a carful of my aunts and uncles had been going out to the airport to meet one of the cousins who was on his way back from playing soldier. Aunt Alma, Aunt Ruth, and her husband, Travis, were squeezed into the front, and Mama was stretched out in back, sound asleep. Mama hadn’t adjusted to pregnant life very happily, and by the time she was eight months gone, she had a lot of trouble sleeping. She said that when she lay on her back it felt like I was crushing her, when she lay on her side it felt like I was climbing up her backbone, and there was no rest on her stomach at all. Her only comfort was the backseat of Uncle Travis’s Chevy, which was jacked up so high that it easily cradled little kids or pregnant women.
Moments after lying back into that seat, Mama had fallen into her first deep sleep in eight months. She slept so hard, even the accident didn’t wake her up.
My aunt Alma insists to this day that what happened was in no way Uncle Travis’s fault, but I know that the first time I ever saw Uncle Travis sober was when I was seventeen and they had just removed half his stomach along with his liver. I cannot imagine that he hadn’t been drinking. There’s no question in my mind but that they had all been drinking, except Mama, who never could drink, and certainly not when she was pregnant.
No, Mama was just asleep and everyone else was drunk. And what they did was plow headlong into a slow-moving car. The front of Uncle Travis’s Chevy accordioned; the back flew up; the aunts and Uncle Travis were squeezed so tight they just bounced a little; and Mama, still asleep with her hands curled under her chin, flew right over their heads, through the windshield, and over the car they hit. Going through the glass, she cut the top of her head, and when she hit the ground she bruised her backside, but other than that she wasn’t hurt at all. Of course, she didn’t wake up for three days, not till after Granny and Aunt Ruth had signed all the papers and picked out my name.
I am Ruth for my aunt Ruth, and Anne