Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [118]
Her dark eyes glittered at me, but I wasn’t afraid. My insides were boiling, and my skin burned. My hatred and rage were so hot I felt like I could have spit fire. When she put her hand on my wrist, I felt the hairs on my forearm tingle and stand up. A cold electric current ran up to the back of my neck.
“People are the same,” she said in a whisper. “Everybody just does the best they can.”
I took a long breath and let it out in a rush of bitter words. “Other people don’t go beating on each other all the time,” I told her. “They don’t get falling-down drunk, shoot each other, and then laugh about it. They don’t pick up and leave their husbands in the middle of the night and then never explain. They don’t move out alone to the edge of town without a husband or children or even a good friend, run around all the time in overalls, and sell junk by the side of the road!”
Aunt Raylene crossed her arms over her breasts and looked at me. “I don’t like being yelled at, never have.” Her hands gripped her upper arms so tightly I saw the fingers tremble.
“And I don’t know about other people, but I’ve always believed everybody does what they have to do in this life.” She stopped and started again. “When you’re thirty years old and supporting your own children and doing the best you can when you don’t know where your next dollar is coming from, then you can yell at me. Maybe.” She shook her head, and turned away, brushing loose dirt off her thighs.
“It’s almost suppertime,” she told me. “And you’re filthy. You go get yourself cleaned up and I’ll see whether I feel like feeding you or not.”
“You don’t have to feed me.” I couldn’t look at her and say it. My head dropped down and I wiped my nose on my sleeve.
“I know what I have to do and what I don’t. You think about it, and you’ll see that the biggest part of why I live the way I do is that out here I can do just about anything I damn well please.”
I looked up at her hesitantly. Aunt Raylene’s face was beet-red, and her eyes were not on me. They were looking out past the highway. She seemed like she wanted to cry almost as much as I did, but like me, wasn’t going to let herself.
“I said, go wash yourself.”
I went.
The stories I made up for myself changed. In the half-sleep that preceded full sleep I began to imagine the highway that went north. No real road, this highway was shadowed by tall grass and ancient trees. Moss hung low and tiny birds with gray-blue wings darted from the road’s edge to the trees. Cars passed at a roar but did not stop, and the north star shone above their headlights like a beacon. I walked that road alone, my legs swinging easily as I covered the miles. No one stopped. No one called to me. Only the star guided me, and I was not sure where I would end.
I stayed at Raylene’s for three days, and then Mama called to say I either had to come back or start school out there. I’d heard about the country school from Garvey years before, and knew I would hate it. They didn’t even have a library. Reluctantly, I went back to the apartment over the Fish Market. Mama bought me a new pair of sneakers to replace the ones I had worn out, but said nothing about me running off in the first place. Several times I caught her watching me with a painful concentrated expression, but I didn’t ask her what she was thinking. Reese told me that she had been crazy-angry when I turned up gone, and was ready to call the police when Aunt Raylene called.
“They talked about you a long time,” she said. “Aunt Raylene told Mama to let you get it out of your system, and Mama told Aunt Raylene to mind her own business. I thought they were gonna yell at each other like they used to, but Mama just gave in. She said she didn’t know what to do with you, didn’t know what to do with nobody, and Raylene could keep you if you wanted to stay.”
Reese grinned at me almost