Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [78]
" There was no predicting who the hand of God might touch, where the clarion would sound. Sometimes one pure voice would stand out, one little girl, one set of brothers whose eyes would lift when they sang. Those were the ones who could make you want to scream low against all the darkness in the world. “That one,” Shannon would whisper smugly, but I didn’t need her to tell me. I always knew who Mr. Pearl would take aside and invite over to Gaston for revival week.
“Child!” he’d say. “You got a gift from God.”
Uh huh, yeah.
Sometimes I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t go in one more church, hear one more choir. Never mind loving the music, why hadn’t God given me a voice? I hadn’t asked for thick eyelashes. I had asked for, begged for, gospel. Didn’t God give a good goddam what I wanted? If He’d take bastards into heaven, how come He couldn’t put me in front of those hot lights and all that dispensation? Gospel singers always had money in their pockets, another bottle under their seats. Gospel singers had love and safety and the whole wide world to fall back on—women and church and red clay solid under their feet. All I wanted, I whispered, all I wanted, was a piece, a piece, a little piece of it.
Shannon overheard and looked at me sympathetically.
She knows, I thought, she knows what it is to want what you are never going to have. I’d underestimated her.
That July we went over to the other side of Lake Greenwood, a part of the county I knew from visiting one of the cousins who worked at the air base. Off the highway we stopped at a service station to give Mrs. Pearl a little relief from the heat.
“You ever think God maybe didn’t intend us to travel on Sunday afternoon? I swear He makes it hotter than Saturday or Friday. ”
Mrs. Pearl sat in the shade while Mr. Pearl went off to lecture the man who rented out the Rhythm Ranch. Shannon and I cut off across a field to check out the headstones near a stand of cottonwood. We loved to read the mottoes and take back the good ones for Mrs. Pearl to stitch up on samplers and sell in the store. My favorites were the weird ones, like “Now He Knows” or “Too Pure.” Shannon loved the ones they put up for babies, little curly-headed dolls with angel wings and heartbreaking lines like “Gone to Mama” or “Gone Home.”
“Silly stuff.” I kicked at the pieces of clay pot that were lying everywhere. Shannon turned to me, and I saw tears on her cheeks.
“No, no, it just tears me up. Think about it, losing your own little baby girl, your own little angel. Oh, I can’t stand it. I just can’t stand it.” She gave big satisfied sobs and wiped her hands on her blue gingham pockets.
“I wish I could take me one of these home. Wouldn’t you like to have one you could keep up? You could tell stories to the babies.”
“You crazy.”
Shannon sniffed. “You just don’t understand. Mama says I’ve got a very tender heart.”
“Uh huh.” I walked away. It was too hot to fight. It was certainly too hot to cry. I kicked over some plastic flowers and a tattered green cardboard cross. This was one of the most boring trips I’d ever taken with the Pearls. I tried to remember why I’d even wanted to come. At home Mama would be making fresh ice tea, boiling up sugar water to mix in it. Reese would be slicing peaches. Daddy Glen would be out of the way, off working on the lawn mower. I swatted at mosquitoes and hoped my face wasn’t sunburning. I was tired of Shannon, tired of her mama’s endless simpering endearments, tired of her daddy’s smug contempt, and even more tired of my own jealousy.
I stopped. The music coming through the cottonwoods was gospel.
Gut-shaking, deep-bellied, powerful voices rolled through the dried leaves and hot air. This was the real stuff. I could feel the whiskey edge, the grief and holding on, the dark night terror and determination of real gospel.
“My God,” I breathed, and it was the best “My God” I’d ever put out, a long, scared whisper that meant I just might start to believe He hid in cottonwoods.