Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [17]
Mattie sucked her gums and thought of the women at the mill who stepped aside when her mama passed. Everybody said Shirley Boatwright believed her piss was wine. Everybody said she repeated whatever she heard to the foreman on the second shift. And if Shirley Boatwright pissed wine, then there was no doubt that nasty son of a bitch pissed store-bought whiskey.
“When we grow up . . .” Bo started whispering every night, and each child would finish the line in turn.
“I’m gonna move to Texas.”
“I an’t never gonna eat tripe no more.”
“I’m gonna have six little babies and buy them anything they want.”
“Gonna treat them good.”
“Gonna tell them how pretty they are.”
“Gonna love them, love them.”
Sometimes, Mattie would let the youngest, Billy, climb up onto her lap. She’d hug and stroke him and quietly sing some gospel song for him, making up the words she couldn’t remember. “When we grow up,” Bo kept whispering. “When we grow up . . .” That too could have been a song.
None of them knew what they might not do. Only Mattie had an idea that it was possible to do anything at all. Walking to work every morning, she passed the freight siding where James Gibson pulled barrels off his father’s wagon. The Gibsons ran a lumber business and most of the cane syrup shipped out of Greenville went out in their barrels. If he was there, James stopped and watched her walk by. Every time he saw her pass, he smiled.
“I’ve got nine brothers,” he told her one morning. “But not one sister. Lord, I do love to look at pretty girls.”
It was the first time anyone had ever suggested Mattie might be pretty. She started leaving home earlier so she could walk slower past the railway siding. On the mornings when one of the other Gibson boys was there, she felt disappointed. They tended to giggle when they saw her, which always made her wonder what James said about her to them.
“I told them to keep an eye on you.” James smiled wide when she asked him. “I told them to keep their hands off and their eyes open. What you think about that?”
“I think you talking a lot for nothing having been said between us.”
“What do we need to say?”
But Mattie could not answer that. She didn’t know what she wanted to say to anybody. She only knew she wanted to start finding things out. She felt as if her eyes were coming open, as if light were sneaking into a dark place inside her. At the dinner table Mattie watched how her mama spooned rice out of the bowl, all the while talking about how only trash served food out of a cooking pot.
“Quality people use serving dishes.” Shirley slapped Bo’s hand. “Quality people don’t come to the table with grease under their nails.”
“I washed.”
Mattie watched rice grains fall off her fork. She hated butter beans with rice. White on white didn’t suit her. Black-eyed peas with pork and greens—that was better. Red tomatoes on the side of the plate almost spoke out loud. Best of all was pinto beans cooked soft and thick with little green bits sprinkled on at the last and chopped collards laid round the sides of the plate. Color. When she had her own kitchen, there would be lots of color.
“If you’d really washed, you would be clean,” Shirley was saying. “Nobody in my family ever came to the table with dirt under their nails. You go wash again.”
My family, Mattie thought. My family.
Bo’s face creased and uncreased, as if the words he wasn’t saying were pushing up inside him. His long skinny body vibrated in his overalls. He kept quiet, though, and pushed himself up to go out to the porch to wash again. Tucker slapped his behind lightly as he went past. Mattie put her fork between her teeth, realizing in that moment how bad their father was looking. He wasn’t eating either. It didn’t seem as if he ever ate much anymore. All he did was drink lots of tea out of his special jar from under the pump.
He’s a drunk, Mattie thought, examining the broken veins in her father’s nose. He really is a drunk.
“What are you thinking about, Miss High and Mighty?” Shirley spooned