Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [49]
“What did I tell you?” he shouted, and lifted me high, shaking me back and forth till my head rocked on my neck. “You bitch. You little bitch.” My body slammed the wall, my heels knocking hollowly a foot above the floor. I saw Reese run away through a shimmering wave of dizziness, and then I was under his arm being carried down the hall to the bathroom. He kicked the door shut behind us and dropped me.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I was so frightened I stuttered.
“Not as sorry as you’re gonna be.” He pulled his belt free from the loops and wrapped the buckle end around his palm. “I’ve waited a long time to do this, too long.”
His face was pale, his jaw rigid, his eyes almost red in the glare of the fluorescent light over the mirror. I stumbled back against the tub, terrified, praying Mama would come home fast. Mama would stop him. His left hand reached for me, caught my shoulder, pulled me over his left leg. He flipped my skirt up over my head and jammed it into that hand. I heard the sound of the belt swinging up, a song in the air, a high-pitched terrible sound. It hit me and I screamed. Daddy Glen swung his belt again. I screamed at its passage through the air, screamed before it hit me. I screamed for Mama. He was screaming with me, his great hoarse shouts as loud as my high thin squeals, and behind us outside the locked door, Reese was screaming too, and then Mama. All of us were screaming, and no one could help.
When Daddy Glen unlocked the door, Mama slapped him and grabbed me up in her arms. He held one hand to his cheek and watched as I hiccuped and cried into her neck. “You son of a bitch,” she cursed him, and ran water to wash my face.
“She’s my girl too,” he said. “Someone’s got to love her enough to care how she turns out.” His face was sullen, swollen and empty, like he had woken up from a long, long sleep.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Mama yelled, pushing him out the door. She put me on her lap and washed my face, my neck, the backs of my swollen thighs.
“Oh, my baby,” she kept saying. I lay still against her, grateful to be safe in her arms. The air felt funny on my skin, and I had screamed so hard I had no voice left. I said nothing, let Mama talk, only half hearing what she was whispering. “Baby,” she called me. “Oh, girl. Oh, honey. Baby, what did you do? What did you do?”
What had I done? I had run in the house. What was she asking? I wanted her to go on talking and understand without me saying anything. I wanted her to love me enough to leave him, to pack us up and take us away from him, to kill him if need be. I held on to her until she put me to bed, held on to her and whimpered then. I held on to her until I fell into a drugged, miserable sleep.
I woke up to the sound of them talking, their words echoing through the closed door of the bedroom. I heard everything he said, heard Mama crying in his arms. Daddy Glen told her I had called him a bastard, that I had come running through the house knocking things over and called him that name. He cried and swore he hadn’t meant to beat me so bad, he didn’t know what had made him do it. He sobbed and then beat his fists against the mattress so hard the springs squeaked.
“She told me she hated me,” he said, “told me I would never be her daddy. And I went crazy, Anney. I just went crazy. Do you know? Do you understand how much I love you all, love her?
“And—oh, God, Anney! They laid me off today. Just put me out without a care. And what am I going to do to feed these girls now?”
Reese lay on the bed with me, her fingers in her mouth, her eyes enormous. She said nothing. I lay still, listening to Daddy Glen’s lies, wondering if he thought he was telling the truth. I kept looking into Reese’s face, her baby face, smooth and empty and scared. The sound of Mama crying grew softer, faded. In