Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [114]
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