Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [138]
I stayed on the porch and would not talk to anyone, not to Raylene and not to Earle when he brought me his battered record player and tried to make me laugh. He played some of the same records I had listened to with Aunt Ruth, but I sat unmoving, dry-eyed and distant. Eventually he left me alone. Raylene didn’t try to talk to me. She brought me beans to pick over, which I did with no interest. She also asked me to rip out the hem on some old curtains, but that I refused to do. Not that I argued with her. I just left them lying untouched on the dusty boards by the rocker. I would have slept in the rocker, but Raylene threatened to drag me out of it kicking and screaming.
“I an’t gonna have you sleeping on the porch,” she fumed. So I pulled myself up painfully and crept off to bed like an old lady, bent over and cramped. I did what I had to do so they would leave me alone. I heard Raylene talking to Earle about Mama. They were worried. No one knew where she had gone. No one knew where Glen was either, though the uncles were talking about paying a bounty to anyone who found him. Earle was adamant, Beau had bought a new shotgun, but it was Nevil who scared Raylene.
Nevil came out to Raylene’s one evening and stood silently in front of me. He touched my bruised chin with one outstretched finger, traced my hairline, and leaned forward to kiss my left cheekbone with dry chapped lips. I wanted to speak to him but instead held my breath, looking into his dark hooded eyes.
“I promise,” he said, and I saw Raylene cover her mouth with one hand. I knew what he meant, and I smiled. He turned and went down the steps abruptly, stomping with his bootheels. Raylene called his name, but he didn’t pause. Fay told Raylene that Nevil had stopped sleeping at home. He was living in his truck, driving the county roads at night, searching.
“He’ll get himself killed,” Raylene told me, but I refused to say anything.
I didn’t care anymore who got killed.
The night Mama came, Raylene was at the record player, listening to every record Earle had brought over. That music seemed to echo off the porch ceiling, the silvery river surface, and the night sky. The guitar plunked and became clearly Patsy Cline’s voice singing “Walking After Midnight.” The driving notes and the dark undertone of the drum paced her voice. I listened closely, heard the pause as the song ended, and then Patsy’s voice started again, taking up from the beginning, the scratches and popping of the worn record overwhelming that heartbreaking voice, making me wish I could still cry the way I had with Aunt Ruth.
The silence extended, the soft rustle of the river barely audible. A breeze swelled and died down. The music came back, the chords different. Not Patsy Cline. Kitty Wells. “Talk Back Trembling Lips.” Her twangy voice shook and scolded, louder still than Patsy’s drawl. Mama always said Kitty had a smoky voice, not as pure as Patsy‘s, but familiar. That raw accent, like Beau’s or Alma’s, flattened vowels and stretched-out syllables to fit the chorus. I rocked back and listened to the record play through. The next one was another of Mama’s favorites, Patsy Cline telling the world that it wasn’t God who made honky-tonk angels. Grief filled me.
I stared up into the pattern of rusty dried paint and spider-fine traceries on the porch ceiling. I opened my mouth to cry, but no cry came. Tears kept running down my face into my collar, but I didn’t make a sound. Children cried. I was not a child. Maybe, I told myself, I should go stay with Aunt Carr up in Baltimore or go out to Eustis and visit Aunt Maybelle and Aunt Marvella. I closed my eyes and licked my lips.
The screen door swung closed with a thud. I turned my head.
Mama stood motionless in one of her old short-sleeved dresses,