Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [41]
Mama put the last pin on a pair of Daddy Glen’s worn jockey shorts and gave a shake to one of his shirts so that the sleeves hung down straight. “Some days, I don’t know how anybody stands you, Earle Boatwright, always saying the worst about everybody. I think the one who sits up nights is you, just thinking of evil-hearted things to say about people.”
Earle laughed again. “Oh, you’re right, baby sister. I spend all my spare time making notes on things people have done that they don’t want no one to talk about, and I make sure I talk about just those things.” He hefted his bag on one hip and me on the other. “Tell me, Bone, has your mama told you yet how your aunt Carr come to live so far away in Baltimore City and come home so rarely we barely recognize her when she does?”
“Oh, Earle!” Mama put one hand over her mouth and grabbed the pecans with the other. “Don’t talk bad about Carr. Come on in and I’ll get out my Karo syrup and pie pans.”
Earle swung me up high so that I straddled his shoulders, my legs hanging down on either side of his neck. “Yes, ma’am. I got a taste for pecan pie the way you make it when you’re mad.” He tickled my bare foot till I grabbed his ears to make him stop.
“When your mama’s pissed at me, Bone, she chops the nuts up fine the way I like them. Otherwise she don’t bother, and if the nuts an’t chopped small they don’t sweeten up right for my taste.”
At the screen door he paused, and I pulled his ears again. “But what about Aunt Carr? An’t you gonna tell me how she moved to Baltimore?” He turned his head to look up at me and gave his famous slow grin. “You know your mama don’t want me to tell you that story.”
I kicked my feet against his chest. “But an’t you gonna tell me anyway?”
Earle laughed and swung me down. He pushed the screen door with his hip and took a quick look inside to see that Mama had gone on to the kitchen. “Well.” He lit a cigarette, striking the match one-handed.
“Your aunt Carr was a sensitive girl, tender on the subject of how pretty your mama and Alma were when she wasn’t much to look at herself. Carr wanted to be beautiful so much it made her mean. She used to talk so awful about Raylene it was a shame, insisting Raylene had to learn to use makeup and fix her hair, start working on getting herself a man. But I always thought she just went on at Raylene so she could boast about how hard she worked at looking good. Raylene and Alma and your mama used to just laugh at her about it, make her so mad. I an’t saying Carr didn’t love her sisters, but sometimes you could tell she didn’t much like them. And oh! She did have a thing for the young Mr. Wade. The girl just plain wanted him, and maybe she could see that he wasn’t giving a minute’s notice to her when Alma was around. It wore on her bad.
“Then one Thanksgiving Wade joked where everyone could hear that Alma was the younger, sweeter version of Carr—the blossom next to the windfall, I think he said. Carr’s face was a study right then. You could see every thought running across it, none of them pretty. And by Christmas, I swear that girl had snapped up old Baltimore Benny like he was new bait in a cold spring. Had her first baby by the next fall, and got Benny to move back up with his people right after that. It took Wade and Alma another five years to marry themselves, though Alma’s twins waited barely long enough for the preacher to stop talking before they pushed their way out of her belly.”
Earle rolled his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. “Seems like after that we were all grown up and everything was different. It’s the way of things. One day you’re all family together, fighting and hugging from one moment to the next, and then it’s all gone. You’re off making your own family, scared of what’s coming next, and Lord, things have a way of running faster and faster all the time.” He looked off across the yard as if he were seeing a lot more than his oil-green Chevy parked on the