Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [51]
When I started to cry it wasn’t because of that. It wasn’t because of babies or no babies, or pain that was so far past I’d made it a source of strength. It wasn’t even that I’d hurt her so bad, hurt Mama when I didn’t want to. I cried because of the things I hadn’t said, didn’t know how to say, and cried most of all because behind everything else there was no justice for my aunts or my mama. Because each of them to save their lives had tried to be strong, had become, in fact, as strong and determined as life would let them. I and all their children had believed in that strength, had believed in them and their ability to do anything, fix anything, survive anything. None of us had ever been able to forgive ourselves that we and they were not strong enough, that strength itself was not enough.
Who can say where that strength ended, where the world took over and rolled us all around like balls on a pool table? None of us ever would. I brought my hands up to my neck and pulled my hair around until I clenched it in my fists, remembering how my aunt used to pick up Annie to rub that baby’s belly beneath her chin—Annie bouncing against her in perfect trust. Annie had never had to forgive her mama anything.
“Aunt Alma, wait. Wait!”
She stopped in the doorway, her back trembling, her hands gripping the doorposts. I could see the veins raised over her knuckles, the cords that stood out in her neck, the flesh as translucent as butter beans cooked until the skins come loose. Talking to my mama over the phone, I had not been able to see her face, her skin, and her stunned and haunted eyes. If I had been able to see her, would I have ever said those things to her?
“I’m sorry.”
She did not look back. I let my head fall back, rolled my shoulders to ease the painful clutch of my own muscles. My teeth hurt. My ears stung. My breasts felt hot and swollen. I watched the light as it moved on her hair.
“I’m sorry. I would . . . I would . . . anything. If I could change things, if I could help . . .”
I stopped. Tears were running down my face. My aunt turned to me, her wide pale face as wet as mine. “Just come home with me. Come home for a little while. Be with your mama a little while. You don’t have to forgive her. You don’t have to forgive anybody. You just have to love her the way she loves you. Like I love you. Oh girl, don’t you know how we love you!”
I put my hands out, let them fall apart on the pool table. My aunt was suddenly across from me, reaching across the table, taking my hands, sobbing into the cold dirty stillness—an ugly sound, not softened by the least self-consciousness. When I leaned forward, she leaned to me and our heads met, her gray hair against my temple brightened by the sunlight pouring in the windows.
“Oh, girl! Girl, you are our precious girl.”
I cried against her cheek, and it was like being five years old again in the roadhouse, with Annie’s basket against my hip, the warmth in the room purely a product of the love that breathed out from my aunt and my mama. If they were not mine, if I was not theirs, who was I? I opened my mouth, put my tongue out, and tasted my aunt’s cheek and my own. Butter and salt, dust and beer, sweat and stink, flesh of my flesh.
“Precious,” I breathed back to her.
“Precious.”
Demon Lover
Katy always said she wanted to be the Demon Lover, the one we desire even when we know it is not us she wants, but our souls. When she comes back to me now, she comes in that form and I never fail to think that the shadows at her shoulders could be wings.
She comes in