Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [137]
“Ruth Anne,” Aunt Raylene whispered. “Girl, look at me. Stop thinking about what happened. Don’t think about it. Don’t try to think about nothing. You can’t understand it yet. You don’t have to. It don’t make sense, and I can’t explain it to you. You can’t explain it to yourself. Your mama ...” She stopped, and I looked back at her. “Your mama loves you. Just hang on, girl. Just hang on. It’ll be better in time, I promise you.”
I promise you, she said. My mouth twisted. I stared at her hatefully.
Raylene looked at me as if my rage hurt her, but she said nothing, just climbed heavily out of the truck. She moved slowly, hugging her old purse to her bosom and stopping only to give the panting dog a quick pat on the head before she went up and laid the purse on the steps. She came back and took me up again as easily as if I weighed no more than that purse. She carried me inside the house, the dog following, and put me in her bed. The dog settled himself on the rug, comfortably. I lay still, ignoring Aunt Raylene’s movements but thinking even so about the woman she had loved, the woman who had loved her child more. It was too much for me. I’d have to think about it some other time.
The dog turned to me with hopeful brown eyes, his tongue hanging down as if he wanted me to invite him up on the bed. Big dumb sad eyes waited on me. I wanted to beat my fists until bones splintered, kick my heels into raw meat, scream until my tongue pulled loose and split at the root, but everything was slow, words and feelings just moved across my brain. I was slow, numb, and stupid. The pain in my arm was comforting, the throbbing at my temple was a music I needed in order to keep breathing.
Everything hurt me: my arm in its cotton sling; the memory of the nurse’s careful fingers; the light that glinted into my eyes from the flawed glass of Raylene’s window; my hip where it pressed against the mattress. Most of all my heart hurt me, a huge swollen obstruction in my chest. Every time I closed my eyes there was a flash of Glen’s face as he had looked above me. I kept turning my head as if Mama’s prayers still echoed in my ears, and even the slow drag of that dog’s eyes raked over my skin like a pitchfork cutting furrows in dust. I had seen my whole life in Sheriff Cole’s eyes, contemptible, small, meaningless. My mama had abandoned me, and that was the only thing that mattered. When Raylene brought me some soup later, I refused to eat. “I hate her,” I whispered through torn lips. “I hate her.”
“You’ll forgive her,” Raylene said.
I pulled the sheet up over my mouth.
How do you forgive somebody when you cannot even speak her name, when you cannot stand to close your eyes and see her face? I did not understand. If I thought of Mama, I thought of her with her head thrown back and her mouth open, Glen’s bloody face pressed to her belly. I could not stand to remember that, could not watch it again. I turned away, closed my eyes, and prayed for the darkness to come back. I wanted to die. I refused to eat, refused to speak, covered my face, and would not let Aunt Raylene coax me out of bed. She left me alone, and I woke up with my eyes wet and my mouth open, but with no memory of dreaming. The only sound was the yellow dog’s tail thumping the rug. My heart, the pulse that pounded in my head, beat to that rhythm. Everything in me said no, repeated it, drummed it, hummed and sang it. I had no more spirit of meanness than a bug had. I was just a whisper in the dark saying no and hoping to die.
Raylene came in the morning and fed me grits with a spoon. She let me be quiet that day, but the next, she picked me up and carried me out to the porch to sit on her rocker in the sun. I wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t speak, but she didn’t seem to care. She watered her plants, fed her dogs and chickens,