Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [49]
“I still had Annie then. Lord, I never think about her anymore.”
I remembered then the last child she had borne, a tiny girl with a heart that fluttered with every breath, a baby for whom the doctors said nothing could be done, a baby they swore wouldn’t see six months. Aunt Alma had kept her in an okra basket and carried her everywhere, talking to her one minute like a kitten or a doll and the next minute like a grown woman. Annie had lived to be four, never outgrowing the vegetable basket, never talking back, just lying there and smiling like a wise old woman, dying between a smile and a laugh while Aunt Alma never interrupted the story that had almost made Annie laugh.
I sipped my beer and watched my aunt’s unchanging face. Very slowly she swung the pool cue up and down, not quite touching the table. After a moment she stepped in again and leaned half her weight on the table. The five ball became a bird murdered in flight, dropping suddenly into the far right pocket.
Aunt Alma laughed out loud, delighted. “Never lost it,” she crowed. “Four years in the roadhouse with that table set up in the back. Every one of them sons of mine thought he was going to make money on it. Lord, those boys! Never made a cent.” She swallowed the rest of her glass of water.
“But me,” she wiped the sweat away again. “I never would have done it for money. I just loved it. Never went home without playing myself three or four games. Sometimes I’d set Annie up on the side and we’d pretend we were playing. I’d tell her when I was taking her shots. And she’d shout when I’d sink ’em. I let her win most every time.”
She stopped, put both hands on the table, and closed her eyes.
“ ’Course, just after we lost her, we lost the roadhouse.” She shook her head, eyes still closed. “Never did have anything fine that I didn’t lose.”
The room was still, dust glinted in the sunlight past her ears. She opened her eyes and looked directly at me.
“I don’t care,” she began slowly, softly. “I don’t care if you’re queer or not. I don’t care if you take puppy dogs to bed, for that matter, but your mother was all my heart for twenty years when nobody else cared what happened to me. She stood by me. I’ve stood by her and I always thought to do the same for you and yours. But she’s sitting there, did you know that? She’s sitting there like nothing’s left of her life, like . . . like she hates her life and won’t say shit to nobody about it. She wouldn’t tell me. She won’t tell me what it is, what has happened.”
I sat the can down on the stool, closed my own eyes, and dropped my head. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want her to be there. I wanted her to go away, disappear out of my life the way I’d run out of hers. Go away, old woman. Leave me alone. Don’t talk to me. Don’t tell me your stories. I an’t a baby in a basket, and I can’t lie still for it.
“You know. You know what it is. The way she is about you. I know it has to be you—something about you. I want to know what it is, and you’re going to tell me. Then you’re going to come home with me and straighten this out. There’s a lot I an’t never been able to fix, but this time, this thing, I’m going to see it out. I’m going to see it fixed.”
I opened my eyes and she was still standing there, the cue stick shiny in her hand, her face all flushed and tight.
“Go,” I said and heard my voice, a scratchy, strangling cry in the big room. “Get out of here.”
“What did you tell her? What did you say to your mama?”
“Ask her. Don’t ask me.