Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [90]
“You’ve changed, Bone.” Mama pulled towels and sheets out of the washing machine and dropped them into the basket I was holding.
“No ma’am, not really.” I dropped my head down.
“Yes, you have. I’d say you were even a little taller. You hold your head up more. I can even see your eyes now and then.” Mama grinned at me and dropped the last of the towels in my basket. She had to reach over the machine for her bag of clothespins, an old T-shirt she had sewed closed at the bottom and hung on a coat hanger. While her face was turned, I looked up and made sure my box was still securely in place.
“Reese tell you that Shannon Pearl called?”
I was already going out the door toward the clothesline, but Mama’s words stopped me. “She did?”
“Uh huh. I didn’t talk to her, but Reese said she just asked if you were around. You might think about calling her back.”
“I don’t know, Mama. I don’t know if I should.”
“Well, I an’t telling you that you have to, but you should think about it, Bone. An’t no sense in being hardhearted, and talking to her won’t kill you. She might want to apologize, you know.”
“Yes ma’am.” I started shaking out a sheet to hang it on the line. I didn’t want Mama to see my face. I had no intention of calling Shannon Pearl.
Mama never asked why Shannon Pearl and I had quarreled. The only time she mentioned it was when she agreed with Aunt Raylene that it was probably better to stay out of kids’ arguments. I’d walked in on them talking together and knew immediately what they had been discussing, so I turned right around and went back out. Mama had gotten angry when Mrs. Pearl called to tell her that I’d never apologized for taking a swing at Shannon, though not because she thought I should have been made to apologize. Her anger was at my careless stupidity.
“Don’t you know you can put somebody’s eye out, hitting them in the face?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“No reason to be hitting people anyway.”
“No ma’am.”
“Well ...” She looked at me closely. I knew she was waiting for me to say something, but I just kept my eyes on the table. “I don’t know about the Pearls. They should have brought you home right away, ‘stead of making you sit in the car while they went all over everywhere.” She started rummaging through her purse for her cigarettes. “And I don’t know why she’s calling after all this time.”
“No ma’am.” I didn’t want to discuss Shannon Pearl. By now, I was sure, she was lonely for someone to talk to and had gotten her mama to call us.
Mama sighed tiredly. “Well, you just stay out of trouble. I don’t want to be explaining your behavior to other people all the time.”
“No ma’am.”
It was just before Thanksgiving that Shannon Pearl called our house and got me on the phone. “I’m not gonna apologize,” she said right away, as if no time at all had passed. Her voice sounded strange after not hearing it for so long.
“I don’t care what you do,” I told her. I held the phone with my shoulder and picked my cuticles.
“Stop that,” Mama said as she went by on her way to the kitchen.
“Yes ma’am,” I said automatically.
“What’s that?” Shannon sounded hopeful.
“I was talking to my mama. Why’d you call me?”
There was a sigh, and then Shannon cleared her throat a couple of times. “Well, I thought I should. No sense us fighting over something so silly, anyway. I bet you can’t even remember what it was about.”
“I remember,” I told her, and my voice sounded cold even to me. For a moment I was ashamed, then angry. Why should I care if I hurt her feelings? Who was she to me?
“My mama said I could call you,” Shannon whispered. “She said I could ask you over this Sunday. We’re gonna have a barbecue for some of Daddy’s people from Mississippi. They’re bringing us some Georgia peaches and some eggshell pecans.”
I bit at my thumbnail