Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [139]
Aunt Ruth had told her after Lyle Parsons’s funeral that she would look the same till she died. “Now you look like a Boatwright. Now you got the look,” she’d said. In all the years since, that prophecy had held true. Age and exhaustion had worn lines under Mama’s mouth and eyes, narrowed her chin, and deepened the indentations beside her nose, but you could still see the beautiful girl she had been. Now that face was made new. Bones seemed to have moved, flesh fallen away, and lines deepened into gullies, while shadows darkened to streaks of midnight.
I breathed hard, feeling like I was underwater looking at her. She came across the porch, her face stern, her mouth set in a rigid line. The muscles in her neck stood out in high relief. I pushed myself up. She came straight to the rocker. My face felt plaster-stiff. The music was still playing. It wasn’t God who made us like this, I thought. We’d gotten ourselves messed up on our own.
“Baby.” Mama’s voice was a raspy whisper.
I did not move, did not speak.
“Bone.” She touched my shoulder. “Oh, girl.”
I could not pull away, but still I did not speak. I wondered if she could see herself in my pupils.
She drew back a little and dropped down to half-kneel beside me. “I know,” she said. “I know you must feel like I don’t love you, like I didn’t love you enough. ”
She took hold of her own shoulders, hugging herself and shivering as if she were cold. “Bone, I never wanted you to be hurt. I wanted you to be safe. I wanted us all to be happy. I never thought it would go the way it did. I never thought Glen would hurt you like that.”
Mama shut her eyes and turned her head as if she could no longer stand to look into my face. Her mouth opened and closed several times. I saw tears at the corners of her eyes.
“And I just loved him. You know that. I just loved him so I couldn’t see him that way. I couldn’t believe. I couldn’t imagine ...” She swallowed several times, then opened her eyes and looked at me directly.
I looked back, saw her face pale and drawn, her eyes red-rimmed, her lips trembling. I wanted to tell her lies, tell her that I had never doubted her, that nothing could make any difference to my love for her, but I couldn’t. I had lost my mama. She was a stranger, and I was so old my insides had turned to dust and stone. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see again the blood on Glen’s hairline, his face pressed to her belly, feel that black despair whose only relief would be death. I had prayed for death. Maybe it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t mine. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of anybody’s fault. Maybe it was like Raylene said, the way the world goes, the way hearts get broken all the time.
“You don’t know how much I love you,” she said, her face as stark as a cracked white plate. “How much I have always loved you.”
My heart broke all over again. I wanted my life back, my mama, but I knew I would never have that. The child I had been was gone with the child she had been. We were new people, and we didn’t know each other anymore. I shook my head desperately.
“Mama,” I said, not wanting to speak but not able to stop the rush of that cry. I shuddered, and the word came out like a bird’s call, high and piercing. The sobs that followed were hoarse and ugly. I grabbed the front of Mama’s dress with my good arm, ignoring the pain in my shoulder as I pushed forward into her embrace. She caught me, pressing my face against her throat and whispering into my ear.
“It’s all right, baby. You just cry. You just go on and cry.” Her hands touched me gently, lifted, and came back down as if she were afraid she might hurt me but couldn’t keep from reaching for me again. “You’re my own baby girl. I’m not gonna let you go.”
Over Mama’s shoulder, I saw Raylene in the doorway, her face as red as a new apple. Mama’s hands stroked my hair back off my face, cupped my head, held me safe. I pressed my face into her neck, and let it all go. The grief. The anger. The