Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [64]
“But you sound terrible,” he told us sadly. “You just can’t sing. ”
“Oh, hell, Travis, we know.” Aunt Ruth looked too pleased with herself to take offense, but I was shocked. I thought we’d been sounding pretty good. “We know and we don’t care. It’s just so much fun. Why don’t you join us? Come on. Bone, put on that one Earle loaned us. You like Stonewall Jackson, don’t you, Travis?”
“Oh, no. You an’t gonna get me started. I an’t no singing fool.” He backed out the door like he was afraid something was gonna jump on him. I shrugged and put on the Jackson song. If I squeezed my neck down tight I could almost mimic Stonewall’s deep sad sound. My voice came out rusty and dark as his, like a man singing up from the bottom of a coal mine.
Aunt Ruth beamed at my attempt, laughing until she almost strangled. “Oh, God, Bone! Good God, you are something. You are just about more than I can stand.” She fell back weakly, her fingers still keeping time to the music. “Lord God, you are. You are. Lord God, play it again.”
The weekend before school was supposed to start, Mama said I had to move back home and leave Aunt Ruth to the care of her daughter Deedee. Deedee had agreed to come home only after Travis promised to make the payments on her prized Chevy sedan, and she delayed her arrival until the night before I was to leave and showed up irritable and complaining of having to come back at all. She acted like her mama’s illness was her personal cross to bear. I was appalled.
“She could die any time,” I told Deedee the next morning. “Don’t you ever think about that?”
We were out on Aunt Ruth’s porch waiting for Mama to come for me, Deedee sitting in the rocker while I leaned against the rail. Deedee just smirked, lit another of the Chesterfield cigarettes that Aunt Ruth hated, and tossed the dead match back at me. “She an’t gonna die, not yet anyway, not till I’m out of my mind with boredom and ready to kill her myself. You don’t know, Bonehead. You don’t know how long Mama’s been dragging around. I been picking up after her and my lazy-assed brothers all my life. People always whining at me what a tragedy it is, Mama so sick and likely to die. Uh-huh, right, I say. First it was female trouble and she couldn’t lift nothing, then it was bad lungs and nobody supposed to smoke in the house. Never could play the radio or make no noise after sunset so she could get her rest. Never no boyfriends could come by and honk to take me out. No new dresses ’cause her medicine cost so much. Nothing but wheezing and whining and telling me what to do.”
Deedee’s face was hateful, her eyes flinty and piercing. She reached up and grabbed my forearm, pulling me down close to her. “You don’t know what it’s like, Bone. Getting out on your own and then being dragged back home. Wait a few years, get yourself a sweetheart, a job that pays you your own money, stuff you like to do that your mama thinks is silly or sinful.” She let go of my arm and kicked the rocker into motion. “Hell, just about everything I like in this world is silly or sinful. Silly sinful Deedee, that’s what they call me. Well, damn them, I don’t care. I got my car and my own plans, and when that car’s paid for, you can bet your ass I’ll be gone again. Next time I get out of here, the devil himself an’t gonna be able to drag me back.”
The hair on the nape of my neck stood up. I didn’t know what to say, what to think. Earle had finished painting the porch last weekend, and now the white boards shone in the sun, throwing the noon light up into Deedee’s dark eyes. I remembered Earle leaning against the porch rail shaking his head, his voice hoarse and sad as he complained that he just didn’t understand how things could get so messed up. The simplest things, I thought. I went down the stairs and squatted on the bottom step with my fingers templed on my knees as if I were praying. Deedee sounded like she hated her mama, wanted her to die. I couldn’t understand that, couldn’t stand to think about it. I watched for Mama’s car and sang over and over in my head,