Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [116]
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