Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [79]
There was a church there, clapboard walls standing on cement blocks and no pretense of stained-glass windows. Just yellow glass reflecting back sunlight, all the windows open to let in the breeze and let out that music.
Amazing grace... how sweet the sound... that saved a wretch like me ... A woman’s voice rose and rolled over the deeper men’s voices, rolled out so strong it seemed to rustle the leaves on the cottonwood trees.
Amen.
Lord.
“Sweet Jesus, she can sing.”
Shannon ignored me and kept pulling up wildflowers.
“You hear that? We got to tell your daddy.”
Shannon turned and stared at me with a peculiar angry expression. “He don’t handle colored. An’t no money in handling colored.”
At that I froze, realizing that such a church off such a dirt road had to be just that—a colored church. And I knew what that meant. Of course I did. Still I heard myself whisper, “That an’t one good voice. That’s a churchful.”
“It’s colored. It’s niggers.” Shannon’s voice was as loud as I’d ever heard it, and shrill with indignation. “My daddy don’t handle niggers.” She threw wildflowers at me and stamped her foot. “And you made me say that. Mama always said a good Christian don’t use the word ‘nigger.’ Jesus be my witness, I wouldn’t have said it if you hadn’t made me.”
“You crazy. You just plain crazy.” My voice was shaking. The way Shannon said “nigger” tore at me, the tone pitched exactly like the echoing sound of Aunt Madeline sneering “trash” when she thought I wasn’t close enough to hear. I wondered what Shannon heard in my voice that made her as angry as I was. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the shame we both were feeling, or maybe it was simply that Shannon Pearl and I were righteously tired of each other.
Shannon threw another handful of flowers at me. “I’m crazy? Me? What do you think you are? You and your mama and your whole family. Everybody knows you’re all a bunch of drunks and thieves and bastards. Everybody knows you just come round so you can eat off my mama’s table and beg scraps we don’t want no more. Everybody knows who you are ... ”
I was moving before I could stop myself, my hands flying up to slap together right in front of her face—a last-minute attempt not to hit her. “You bitch, you white-assed bitch.” I wrung my hands, trying to keep myself from slapping her pasty face. “Don’t you never hit anybody in the face,” Mama always said.
“You little shit, you fuck off.” I put the words out as slick and fast as any of my uncles. Shannon’s mouth fell open. “You just fuck off!” I kicked red dirt up onto her gingham skirt.
Shannon’s face twisted. “You an’t never gonna go to another gospel show with us again! I’m gonna tell my mama what you called me, and she an’t ever gonna let you come near me again. ”
“Your mama, your mama. You’d piss in a Pepsi bottle if your mama told you to.”
“Listen to you. You ... you trash. You nothing but trash. Your mama’s trash, and your grandma, and your whole dirty family ...”
I swung at her then with my hand wide open, right at her face, but I was too angry. I was crazy angry and I tripped, falling onto the red dirt on my spread hands. My right hand came down on a broken clay pot, hurting me so bad I could barely see Shannon’s dripping, flushed cheeks.
“Oh ... shit. You ... shit.” If I could have jumped up and caught her, I would have ripped out handfuls of that cotton-candy hair.
Shannon stood still and watched as I pushed myself up and grabbed my right hand with my left. I was crying, I realized, the tears running down my face while behind us the choir had never stopped singing. That woman’s voice still rolled over the cottonwoods. Was blind but now I see ...
“You’re ugly.” I swallowed my tears and made myself speak very quietly. “You’re God’s own ugly child and you’re gonna be an ugly woman. A lonely, ugly old woman.”
Shannon’s lips started to tremble, poking out of her face so that she was uglier than I’d ever seen her, a doll carved out of cold grease melting in the heat.
“You ugly thing,” I went on. “You monster, you greasy cross-eyed stinking sweaty-faced ugly