Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [10]
“Ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly! You so ugly you almost pretty!”
Earle squealed and jumped and laughed full out. “Ug-ly,” he parroted them. “Uggg-lly!” His face was bright and smiling, and his hands flew up and down like bumblebees, fast and wild up near his ears.
“Ugly. Ugly. Ugly.”
“You are just the ugliest thing!” Granny rocked forward and caught her hands under Little Earle’s arms, swinging him up off his feet and directly before her face. “You dimple-belly,” she called him, “you little dimple-butt.” She pressed her mouth against his midriff and blew fiercely so that her lips vibrated against Little Earle’s navel—a bubble-bubble roar that made him shriek and bounce and giggle a high-pitched wail of hysterical laughter. He drew his knees up and cupped his little hands around his sex, which only made Temple and Patsy Ruth laugh louder. Granny swung him back and forth a few times and then dropped him down on his feet. He took off immediately for the shelter of his older brother’s armpit.
“Dimple-butt,” Grey snorted, but pulled his little brother in tight to his side. “An’t so ugly maybe.” He rubbed his knuckles across Little Earle’s nearly bald head and sang out, “You just tall, that’s all.” Grey laughed at that while Granny wiped her eyes and the girls poured cool water across the beans.
I edged forward until I could put my hand on Granny’s chair, fingers sliding over the smooth, worn trellis of woven slats to feel the heat of her body through her cotton dress. The laughter echoed around me, the music, truck brakes ground up on the highway, and somebody started shouting far off as the dark descended and the fireflies began to flicker past the boys’ heads. Granny put her arm down and squeezed my wrist. She leaned over and spat a stream of brown snuff off the side of the porch. I heard the dull plopping sound it made as it landed in the dusty yard. I slipped under her shoulder, leaned across the side of the rocker, and put my face close to her breast. I could smell wet snap beans, tobacco, lemon juice on her neck, a little sharp piss scent, and a little salt.
“Ugly,” I repeated, and buried my face in her dress, my smile so wide the warm cotton rubbed my teeth.
“Pretty ugly,” Granny whispered above me, her fingers sliding across the back of my head, untangling my hair and lifting it up off my neck. “Almost pretty. Oh, you’re a Boatwright all right, a Boatwright for sure.”
I laughed up into her neck. Granny was ugly herself, she said so often enough, though she didn’t seem to care. Her wide face was seamed and spotted with freckles and long deep lines. Her hair was thin and gray and tied back with one of the little black strings that came off a snuff pouch. She smelled strong—bitter and salt, sour and sweet, all at the same time. My sweat disappeared into her skirt, my arms wrapped around her waist, and I breathed her in like the steam off soup. I rocked myself against her, as happy and safe as Little Earle had felt with her teeth on his belly.
“You know, Bone, your mama’s gonna be late,” Temple told me. “These hot nights, they take forever to clean up down at the diner, and old Glen’s gonna be there hanging over the counter and slowing her down. He’s pure crazy where your mama’s concerned.”
I nodded solemnly, hanging on to Granny. The radio sounded louder, the boys started to fight. Everybody was busy, everybody was talking, but I was perfectly happy at Granny’s side, waiting for Mama to come home late from the diner, take Reese and me back to the tiny duplex she had rented downtown. If the heat continued into the night Mama would put us out on the screened porch on a makeshift mattress of couch cushions and sheets. She would sit up by us out there, humming and smoking in the quiet dark, while the radio played so soft we couldn’t make it out.
The world that came in over the radio was wide and far away and didn’t touch us at all. We lived on one porch or another