Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [74]
“Those eyes of yours could break the heart of God,” Mrs. Pearl told me as she patted my black hair fiercely. I blinked and tried to tear up for her. “Lashes, oh! Bob, look at the lashes on this child. You grow up you can do Maybelline commercials on the television, honey. ’Course, not that you’re going to want to. You don’t ever let anybody talk you into putting any of that junk on you. Your eyes are a gift from God!” She leaned close to my shoulder and put one hand on the top of my head, turning me so that I looked directly into her eyes. Her caramel-brown pupils were enormous flat surfaces that reflected nothing; her voice was honey-coated and sincere. I could not tell if she was making fun of me or speaking from her heart.
“Mama has more ways of saying ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’ than any preacher I’ve ever heard.” Shannon blinked her pink eyelids at me. “She’s got a talent for it, talking real soft and low one minute, saying ‘Gawd’ so that you see him in your mind like some kind of old family relation, all quiet and well-mannered like an old man. Or she can drag it out long and loud, ‘Gaaaaad,’ and just shock you senseless. When she really gets going she’s got this hollow-sounding moan that just about rocks you off your feet.
“Her ‘Jesus’ is even better. Everybody says ‘Jesus’ so much round here, you forget sometimes who he was supposed to be, but Mama rations her Jesuses. You hear her say ‘Jesus’ the way she does and you know for sure that Jesus was a real person, that little boy used to bring doves back to life, that quiet young man never known to curse or fornicate. You can just see him—a man, like your daddy maybe, aged by the sins of the world, a life sacrificed for you personally.” Shannon cackled her raspy laugh.
“I’ll tell you. I couldn’t stand it when I was little, but I got used to it as I got older. Now I love it, people getting all pale and nervous when Mama starts talking about ‘Gaaaaad.’ ”
The bookstore never made any money. It was Mrs. Pearl’s specialty sewing that was the backbone of the Pearl family income. Not surprisingly, she was famous for gilt-rendered scenes on the costumed sleeves and jackets of gospel performers. I got to where I could spot a Mrs. Pearl creation on the “Sunrise Gospel Hour” without even trying. She had a way of putting little curlicues at the base of the cross that was supposed to suggest grass, but for everyone who knew her, it was an artist’s signature.
There was no doubt that Mrs. Pearl loved her work. “I feel like my whole life is a joy to the Lord,” she told me one day, surrounded by her sewing machines and racks of embroidery thread. She was knotting tassels on a red silk blouse for one of the younger Carter girls. “My sewing, Mr. Pearl’s work, the store, my precious daughter.” She glanced over at Shannon with a look that mirrored the close-up of Mary and the Baby in the center of the Illustrated Christian Bible that was always on special down at the store.
“Everything that comes to us is a blessing or a test. That’s all you need to know in this life... just the certainty that God’s got His eye on you, that He knows what you are made of, what you need to grow on. Why, questioning’s a sin, it’s pointless. He will show you your path in His own good time. And long as I remember that, I’m fine. It’s like that song Mr. Pearl likes so much—‘Jesus is the engineer, trust his hand on the throttle...’ ”
Shannon giggled and waved me out on the porch. “Sometimes Mama needs a little hand on her throttle. You know what I mean?” She laughed and rolled her eyes like a broken kewpie doll. “Daddy has to throttle her back down to a human level or she’d take off like a helium angel.”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed back, remembering what Aunt Raylene had said about Mrs. Peart—“If she’d been fucked right just once, she’d have never birthed that weird child.” I poked Shannon on one swollen arm, just in