Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [52]
“Bone, be more careful,” Mama begged me.
I didn’t daydream about fire anymore. Now I imagined people watching while Daddy Glen beat me, though only when it was not happening. When he beat me, I screamed and kicked and cried like the baby I was. But sometimes when I was safe and alone, I would imagine the ones who watched. Someone had to watch—some girl I admired who barely knew I existed, some girl from church or down the street, or one of my cousins, or even somebody I had seen on television. Sometimes a whole group of them would be trapped into watching. They couldn’t help or get away. They had to watch. In my imagination I was proud and defiant. I’d stare back at him with my teeth set, making no sound at all, no shameful scream, no begging. Those who watched admired me and hated him. I pictured it that way and put my hands between my legs. It was scary, but it was thrilling too. Those who watched me, loved me. It was as if I was being beaten for them. I was wonderful in their eyes.
My fantasies got more violent and more complicated as Daddy Glen continued to beat me with the same two or three belts he’d set aside for me. Oiled, smooth and supple as the gristle under chicken fat, those belts hung behind the door of his closet where I could see them and smell them when I helped Mama put away his clothes. I would reach up and touch the leather, feel it warm under my palms. There was no magic in it, no mystery. Sometimes I would make myself go in that closet and wrap my fingers around those belts as if they were something animal that could be tamed.
I was ashamed of myself for the things I thought about when I put my hands between my legs, more ashamed for masturbating to the fantasy of being beaten than for being beaten in the first place. I lived in a world of shame. I hid my bruises as if they were evidence of crimes I had committed. I knew I was a sick disgusting person. I couldn’t stop my stepfather from beating me, but I was the one who masturbated. I did that, and how could I explain to anyone that I hated being beaten but still masturbated to the story I told myself about it?
Yet it was only in my fantasies with people watching me that I was able to defy Daddy Glen. Only there that I had any pride. I loved those fantasies, even though I was sure they were a terrible thing. They had to be; they were self-centered and they made me have shuddering orgasms. In them, I was very special. I was triumphant, important. I was not ashamed. There was no heroism possible in the real beatings. There was just being beaten until I was covered with snot and misery.
My collarbone fused with a lump the second time it was broken—an accident, Daddy Glen insisted, just like the first time when I had fallen off the porch. In the hospital the young intern glared and ordered lots of X-rays.
“How’d she break her coccyx?” he demanded of Mama over the sheaf of X-rays when we were ready to go home. He had a funny accent and a mass of black curly hair. He leaned over Mama like he was going to hit her.
“Her what?”
“Her tailbone, lady, her ass. What have you been hitting this child with? Or have you just been throwing her up against the wall?”
“What are you saying?” Mama’s face was white and stiff; his was red and angry. “What are you saying?” This time Mama’s voice went high and loud. A middle-aged nurse in a rumpled uniform was suddenly at my right side, one hand on the doctor’s arm and the other reaching for Mama. There was a tag on her pocket that read “Myer.”
“Let’s not get excited,” she said. “Let’s calm down.”
The doctor took hold of my chin. His fingers were warm, the skin rough and dry. “Tell us,” he said. “You tell us.”
I looked into his pupils and I could see myself there, my face tiny and strange above the bandage wrapping my shoulder and arm. He looked angry, and impatient, and disgusted. He glared at Mama with no pity at all. I could feel Mama’s fingers gripping the palm of my free hand,