Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [126]
One of the cows moaned out in the dark pasture. I swallowed again. “I’m waiting for you to go home,” I said. “I’m waiting for you to go back to Daddy Glen.”
There was a long silence. “You think I’m going to?” Mama whispered finally.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Oh, Bone.” She sat up, took another cigarette out, and lit it with a match. In the glow I saw her cheeks pale and shiny. “You want to come over here and sit by me?”
“No.” I didn’t move. I felt as if I had become hypersensitive, as if I could hear everything, the cow’s hooves in the damp grass, the dew slipping off the porch eaves, Mama’s heart pounding with fear.
“Bone, I couldn’t stand it if you hated me,” she said.
“I couldn’t hate you,” I told her. “Mama, I couldn’t hate you.”
“But you’re sure I’m gonna go back to him.”
“Uh-huh.” I coughed and cleared my throat.
“Oh God, Bone! I can’t just go back. I can’t have you hating me.”
“I an’t never gonna hate you.” I took a deep breath, and made myself speak with no intonation at all. “I know you love him. I know you need him. And he’s good to you. He’s good to Reese. He just ...” I thought a minute. “I don’t know.”
We were quiet for a while. When Mama spoke she sounded almost like a girl, unsure of herself and scared. “Maybe he needs to talk to somebody. Raylene said maybe he needed a doctor.”
I wiped my face and shrugged. Now I felt tired, aching tired, so deeply tired it was hard to pull air all the way down into my lungs. “Maybe,” I said.
“I won’t go back until I know you’re gonna be safe.” Mama’s voice was determined. “I promise you, Bone.”
“I won’t go back.” The words were so quiet, so flat, they didn’t seem to have come out of me. But once they were said, some energy seemed to come back to me.
“I wouldn’t make you, honey.”
“No. I know. It’s not that, Mama. I know you wouldn’t.” I sat up, rocked my head forward, and heard my neck bones make an odd cracking sound as the muscles stopped straining. When I spoke this time, my voice was strong, the words clear. “I know you’ll go back, Mama, and maybe you should. I don’t know what’s right for you, just what I have to do. I can’t go back to live with Daddy Glen. I won’t. I could go stay with Aunt Carr for a while or move in with Raylene. I think she’d be glad to keep me. But no matter what you decide, when you go back to Daddy Glen, I can’t go with you.”
“Bone.” Mama got up from her mattress so fast I felt myself push back against the wall nervously. Her hands came down on my shoulders, squeezed gently. “What are you saying to me?” she asked.
I could see her face. The moon must have risen. In the dim reflected light from outside, her cheekbones and shadowy eyes were ghostly. She was afraid.
“I love you,” I said, “but I can’t think of anything else to do.”
She gripped me hard. I could feel her fingernails biting in, the intensity of her fear. She shook her head and pulled me to her neck. “Oh God, what have I done?” she cried.
“Mama, don’t,” I said gently. “Please.” She let go of me but still knelt there close. I wondered if she could see me as clearly as I could see her. If so, what was she seeing in my face?
A rain began to fall outside. With no wind, it came down in a sweet, sprinkling whisper, little drops flicking through the tender new growth on the trees and bushes. Mama put her palms flat against her eyes. “All right,” she said. “All right.”
I swallowed. I wanted to reach for her, to say I was sorry, to say that I hadn’t meant it, that I would go back with her, but I didn’t move. After a minute she got up and went back to her pallet. She didn’t smoke anymore. She pulled her blanket up and lay still, so quiet she might have been asleep as soon as she lay down.
Much later, in the early dawn with the blanket pulled over my head, I heard Mama start crying, trying hard not to make a sound and almost succeeding. Only her breath catching every little while gave her away. My own eyes were dry. I didn’t feel like I was going to cry. I didn’t feel like I was ever going to cry again.
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