Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [32]
“Too much pride in that boy,” Earle told Mama mildly. “If he don’t lighten up a little he’s gonna rupture something. Hell, we all know we got to help each other in this life.” He winked at me, hugged Reese, and teased Mama till she giggled like a girl and made him a fried-tomato sandwich. When he got ready to leave, he gave Reese a quarter and me a half-dollar.
“You’re growing up, honey,” Uncle Earle told me. “You’re gonna be as pretty as your mama one of these days.” I smiled and rolled that half-dollar in my palms. Earle had lived alone since his wife left him, and he spent most of his evenings either out drinking or over at one of his sisters’ houses. Before Mama had decided she was going to marry Daddy Glen, Uncle Earle was always around, but we saw less and less of him all the time. For a moment then, I wished we lived with him so Mama could take proper care of him and he could give us coins and make Mama laugh.
When Daddy Glen came home late that night, he refused to go to bed even though he had to work the next day. He sat out in the living room with the radio on, his expression fixed and angry. Mama sat up with him and tried to get him to talk, but he still wouldn’t speak to her. When we got up the next morning, his face looked thin and white, and his blue eyes were so dark they looked black.
The strained silence lasted for weeks, and even after it seemed to ease, Daddy Glen was different. His face took on a brooding sullen look. At dinner one night I watched him shove his plate away angrily. “Nothing I do goes right,” he complained. “I put my hand in a honey jar and it comes out shit!”
“Oh, Glen,” Mama said. “Everybody has trouble now and again. Things will get better. Just give it time.”
“Shut up!” he screamed at her. “Don’t give me that mama shit. Just shut up. Shut up!”
Mama froze, one hand still lifted to reach toward the bread basket. Her face was like a photograph, black-and-white, her eyes enormous dark shadows and her skin bleached in that instant to a paper gloss, her open mouth stunned and gaping.
Reese dropped her head down into her hands and gave a soft thin cry that turned immediately to sobs. Without even thinking about it, I locked my fingers tight to the edge of the table and pushed myself up to a standing position. Daddy Glen’s face was red, swollen, tears running down his cheeks. Mama’s eyes swept over to me like searchlights, and his followed.
“Oh, God,” he moaned, and Mama shuddered. Daddy Glen stumbled around the table, his hip thudding against the edge, shaking the bowls and glasses. “Oh, Anney. I’m sorry. Oh, God! I don’t want to be yelling at you.” He kissed her forehead, cheekbones, chin, his hands pressed to the sides of her face. “Oh, Anney, I’m sorry!”
“It’s all right,” she whispered, stroking his arms, and trying to push him away. “It’s all right, honey. I understand.”
Reese went on sobbing while I stood gripping the edge of the table with no idea what I had been about to do. I looked down at my hands, my fingertips flattened and white, my nails bitten off in ragged edges. My hands were still, but my arms were shaking. What had I been going to do? What had I been going to do?
Daddy Glen looked at me standing there. “I know how much your mama loves you,” he said, putting his hand on my arm, squeezing tight. When he let me go, there was a bruise, and Mama saw it right away.
“Glen, you don’t know your own strength!”
“No.” He was calmer now. “Guess I don’t. But Bone knows I’d never mean to hurt her. Bone knows I love her. Goddammit. You know how I love you all, Anney.”
I stared up at him, Mama’s hands on my shoulders, knowing my mouth was hanging open and my face was blank. What did I know? What did I believe? I looked at his hands. No, he never meant to hurt me, not really, I told myself, but more