Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [47]
“Whose birthday is it?” was about the only safe thing to ask, since it was always somebody’s birthday, or a wedding or christening. The Waddells didn’t have as many cousins and aunts and uncles as we did, but the women still made babies—somebody was always celebrating something.
One Sunday it was a double, a birthday for James and one of his kids. “One of the children,” Daddy Glen’s sister-in-law Madeline corrected me. “Kids are billygoats.”
Goddam right, I thought, staring over at my puffy cousin in creased pants, an eight-year-old copy of his fat ugly father. They served us tea in the backyard, just us—Anney’s girls, they called us. Their kids went in and out of the house, loud, raucous, scratching their nails on the polished furniture, kicking their feet on the hardwood floors, tracking mud in on the braided rugs.
“Those little brats need their asses slapped.” Mama was sitting with us at the picnic table in the garden, out where no one could hear her. She’d come to check on us where we sat in our starched dresses, our faces as stiff as the sleeves. Reese and I were sweaty and miserable trying not to wiggle around on the benches, to look well-behaved for Mama’s sake and stay out of the way of those kids who hated us as much as we did them.
“When are we going?” we kept asking Mama, knowing she couldn’t tell us but asking just the same.
“Soon,” she’d say, and light another cigarette with shaking hands. Mama didn’t smoke in Daddy Waddell’s house, though no one ever told her she couldn’t. They just didn’t leave ash-trays out. But I once saw Madeline smoking over the kitchen sink, dropping her ashes down the drain. It made me wonder if all of them went off in the kitchen or bathroom to smoke, pretending the rest of the time that they didn’t have any such dirty habits.
“Can’t we go home now?”
“No, James wants to show Daddy his new lawnmower.”
“I thought he got a new one last year.”
“This one’s the kind that you can ride on while you cut the grass.”
“Don’t seem the yard’s big enough to need that.”
“Well”—Mama gave a short laugh—“I don’t think James buys anything just ’cause he needs it.” She brushed herself down carefully before going back in, though there wasn’t a speck of ash on her. “You girls play nice, now.”
We sat still, wonderfully behaved, almost afraid to move. “Yes, ma‘am. No, ma’am.” We kept our backs straight and never spoke out of turn, trying to imagine that Daddy Glen would look out and see us and be proud. His people watched us out the windows. Behind them, shelves of books and framed pictures mocked me. How could Reese and I be worthy of all that, the roses in their garden, the sunlight on those polished windows and flowered drapes, the china plates gleaming behind glass cabinets? I stared in at the spines of those books, wanting it all, wanting the furniture, the garden, the big open kitchen with its dishes for everyday and others for special, the freezer in the utility room and the plushy seats on all the dining-room chairs. Reese tugged at my arm, wanting me to talk to her, but I couldn’t speak around the hunger in my throat.
From behind the rosebushes, I heard Daryl and James talking. “Look at that car. Just like any nigger trash, getting something like that.”
“What’d you expect? Look what he married.”
“Her and her kids sure go with that car....”
I pushed my black hair out of my eyes and looked in at one of my wide-mouthed cousins in a white dress with eyelet sleeves looking back at me, scratching her nose and staring like I was some elephant in a zoo—something dumb and ugly and impervious to hurt. What do they tell her about us? I wondered. That we’re not really family, just her crazy uncle’s wife’s nasty kids? You’re no relative of mine, you’re not my people, I whispered to myself. New and terrible words rolled around in my head while the air turned cool on my neck.
To Reese’s surprise, I got up, shook out my skirt, and strolled off for a walk through Madeline’s rosebushes. I put