Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [28]
I had the idea that because she was so ugly on the outside, it was only reasonable that Shannon would turn out to be saintlike when you got to know her. That was the way it would have been in any storybook the local ladies’ society would have let me borrow. I thought of Little Women, The Bobbsey Twins, and all those novels about poor British families at Christmas. Tiny Tim, for Christ’s sake! Shannon, I was sure, would be like that. A patient and gentle soul had to be hidden behind those pale and sweaty features. She would be generous, insightful, understanding, and wise beyond her years. She would be the friend I had always needed.
That she was none of these was something I could never quite accept. Once she relaxed with me, Shannon invariably told horrible stories, most of which were about the gruesome deaths of innocent children. “. . . And then the tractor backed up over him, cutting his body in three pieces, but nobody seen it or heard it, you see, ’cause of the noise the thresher made. So then his mama come out with iced tea for everybody. And she put her foot down right in his little torn-open stomach. And oh Lord! Don’t you know ...”
I couldn’t help myself. I’d sit and listen, open-mouthed and fascinated, while this shining creature went on and on about decapitations. She loved best little children who had fallen in the way of large machines. It was something none of the grown-ups knew a thing about, though once in a while I’d hear a much shorter, much tamer version of one of Shannon’s stories from her mama. At those moments, Shannon would give me a grin of smug pride. Can’t I tell it better? she seemed to be saying. Gradually I admitted to myself what hid behind Shannon’s impassive pink-and-white features. Shannon Pearl simply and completely hated everyone who had ever hurt her, and spent most of her time brooding on punishments either she or God would visit on them. The fire that burned in her eyes was the fire of outrage. Had she been stronger or smarter, Shannon Pearl would have been dangerous. But half-blind, sickly, and ostracized, she was not much of a threat to anyone.
“I like your family,” Shannon sometimes said, though we both knew that was a polite lie. “Your mama’s a fine woman,” Roseanne Pearl would agree, while she eyed my too-tight raggedy dresses. She reminded me of my stepfather’s sisters looking at us out of smug, superior faces, laughing at my mama’s loose teeth and my sister’s curls done up in paper scraps. Whenever the Pearls talked about my people, I’d take off and not go back for weeks. I didn’t want the two parts of my life to come together.
We were living out past Henderson Road, on the other side of White Horse Highway. Up near the highway a revival tent had been erected. Some evenings I would walk up there on my own to sit outside and listen. The preacher was a shouter, something I had never liked. He’d rave and threaten, and it didn’t seem as if he was ever gonna get to the invocation. I sat in the dark, trying not to think about anything, especially not about the whipping I was going to get if I stayed too long. I kept seeing my Uncle Jack in the men who stood near the highway sharing a bottle in a paper sack, black-headed men with blasted rough-hewn faces. Was it hatred or sorrow that made them look like that, their necks so stiff and their eyes so cold?
Did I look like that?
Would I look like that when I grew up? I remembered Aunt Grace putting her big hands over my ears and turning my face to catch the light, saying, “Just as well you smart; you an’t never gonna be a beauty.”
At least I wasn’t as ugly as Shannon Pearl, I told myself, and was immediately ashamed. Shannon hadn’t made herself ugly, but if I kept thinking that way I just might. Mama always said people could see your soul in your face, could see your hatefulness and lack of charity. With all the hatefulness I was trying to hide, it was a wonder I wasn’t uglier than a toad