Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [60]
“Oh, Ruth!” Earle tried to jerk away, but Aunt Ruth was holding him too tight. I bit down harder, tasting metallic blood in my mouth, feeling my eyes swell up with hot tears, but almost choking on a crazy need to laugh. Aunt Ruth looked so funny, all spindly and frail hanging on to her big tall red-faced brother so hard she was nearly choking him. But he had always been her baby, like Beau and Alma and Raylene and Mama. Ruth had half-raised them and still acted more like their mother than Granny ever did. I watched Aunt Ruth’s bluish fingers clutch at Earle’s arms while he tried to keep his greasy black hands off her yellow chenille robe.
“Oh, Ruth,” he groaned and gave it up. He hugged her back, picking her up in his arms. “Don’t cry on me. We’ll both be sick if you get to crying all over me.” He stumbled across the porch and went down on one knee to put her back in her rocker. “It an’t fair. I an’t never been able to argue with a woman when she starts crying.”
I hung on to the porch railing, watching the two of them hug each other tight. I couldn’t imagine hugging Reese like that, telling her how I really felt, crying with her. It made me jealous, made me wish I was part of that embrace, that generation, as quick to yell and curse as to cry and make up. Daddy Glen said I was a cold-hearted bitch, and maybe I was. Maybe I was.
The morning Mama drove up in Beau’s truck, I was on the porch with four little earthenware pots and Aunt Ruth’s big bucket of wandering Jew. She’d had the idea the day before that she’d like to hang those pots just under the eaves of the porch, and swore that I could leave half the plant in the bucket and break up the rest of the red-and-blue-green tangle into the little pots.
“What you think, sister?” Aunt Ruth called to Mama. “An’t they gonna look fine up there under the eaves? Stuffs so sturdy it might even grow up over the roof.”
“Might,” Mama agreed, coming up to give me a fast hug. “Grows quick enough anyway.”
“People say it’s a weed but I’ve always liked it, specially since it don’t take any effort to keep it going.” Aunt Ruth patted the seat of the cane-back chair beside her rocker. “Come sit with me. An’t seen you in weeks.” She leaned forward to look directly into Mama’s face as she sat down. “You look different, almost rested. What you been doing, napping a lot?”
Mama laughed and shook her head. “Just sleeping better since it cooled off a little.” She pointed at the pile of wet moss and clay I was mixing with black dirt. “Everything looks fresher now that the heat’s broke. I’d swear, Bone, you’ve grown a full inch this month.”
I just grinned and went on gently separating the tightly meshed roots of the old plant. Aunt Ruth had said some of it would die back but if I could avoid bruising the fine hairs on the roots, most of it would live. So I had to go slow as I unraveled the long, pale shoots.
“Oh, Bone’s gonna be a tall thing.” Aunt Ruth took a sip of tea and shook the glass. “You want something to drink, Anney? Bone made me up a fresh pitcher this morning, got lots of sugar and lemon in it.”
“Lord, yes. It might have cooled down a bit, but it’s still hot enough.” I jumped up, slapping my hands against my jeans to loosen the dirt. “But don’t put too much ice in it,” she called.
She didn’t have to say that. I knew how Mama liked her ice tea. I took a lemon and cut six paper-thin slices from the middle, dropped them in a glass, and squeezed the rest of the juice over them. Three cubes of ice on that, then I poured the sweet tea up to the rim of the glass. I sipped it as I carried it to the porch. I heard them before I stepped through the door.
“You think it’s gonna last?” Aunt Ruth’s voice was soft, Mama’s reply even softer.
“I sure hope. You know what his daddy’s like, but Glen’s like a new man since he started this job. He’s sure this shows how much his daddy cares about