Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [25]
I am my mama’s daughter, her shadow on the earth, the blood thinned down a little so that I am not as powerful as she, as immune to want and desire. I am not a mountain or a cave, a force of nature or a power on the earth, but I have her talent for not seeing what I cannot stand to face. I make sure that I do not want what I do not think I can have, and I keep clearly in mind what it is I cannot have. I roll in the night all the stories I never told her, cannot tell her still—her voice in my brain echoing love and despair and grief and rage. When, in the night, she hears me call her name, it is not really me she hears, it is the me I constructed for her—the one who does not need her too much, the one whose heart is not too tender, whose insides are iron and silver, whose dreams are cold ice and slate—who needs nothing, nothing. I keep in mind the image of a closed door, Mama weeping on the other side. She could not rescue me. I cannot rescue her. Sometimes I cannot even reach across the wall that separates us.
On my stepfather’s birthday I make coffee and bake bread pudding with bourbon sauce. I invite friends over, tell outrageous stories, and use horrible words. I scratch my scars and hug my lover, thinking about Mama twelve states away. My accent comes back and my weight settles down lower, until the ache in my spine is steady and hot. I remember Mama sitting at the kitchen table in the early morning, tears in her eyes, lying to me and my sister, promising us that the time would come when she would leave him—that as soon as we were older, as soon as there was a little more money put by and things were a little easier—she would go.
I think about her sitting there now, waiting for him to wake up and want his coffee, for the day to start moving around her, things to get so busy she won’t have to think. Sometimes, I hate my mama. Sometimes, I hate myself. I see myself in her, and her in me. I see us too clearly sometimes, all the little betrayals that cannot be forgotten or changed.
When Mama calls, I wait a little before speaking.
“Mama,” I say, “I knew you would call.”
Gospel Song
At nine, I knew exactly who and what I wanted to be. Early every Sunday morning I got up to watch The Sunrise Gospel Hour and practice my secret ambition. More than anything in the world I wanted to be a gospel singer—a little girl in a white fringe vest with silver and gold crosses embroidered on the back. I wanted gray-headed ladies to cry when they saw my pink cheeks. I wanted people to moan when they heard the throb in my voice when I sang of the miracle in my life. I wanted a miracle in my life. I wanted to be a gospel singer and be loved by the whole wide world.
All that summer, while Mama was off at work, I haunted the White Horse Cafe over on the highway. They had three Teresa Brewer songs on the jukebox, and the truckers loved Teresa as much as I did. I’d sit out under the jalousie windows and hum along with her, imagining myself crooning with a raw and desperate voice. Half asleep in the sun, reassured by the familiar smell of frying fat, I’d make promises to God. If only He’d let it happen! I knew I’d probably turn to whiskey and rock ’n’ roll like they all did, but not for years, I promised. Not for years, Lord. Not till I had glorified His Name and bought my mama a yellow Cadillac and a house on Old Henderson Road.
Jesus, make me a gospel singer, I prayed, while Teresa sang of what might have been God, and then again might have been some black-eyed man. Make me, oh make me! But Jesus must have been busy with Teresa ’cause my voice went high and shrill every time I got excited, and cracked and went hoarse if I tried