Джеймс Кейн - Rainbow’s End

“I say she’s a Jezebel.”

“Sleeping up makes her that?”

“What do you think it makes her?” she said again.

“Maybe a girl in love.”

“Love? Love?”

“Mom, tell me something.”

“Tell you what?”

“There was a girl I looked up, that I had reason to look up. Named Myra Giles, who sounds a lot like you. She was sixteen years old and went in the hospital here to have a child. She had it and two months later got married. So she must have been sleeping up. Does that make her a Jezebel?”

She raised up on one elbow and stared at me a long time. In the dark her eyes looked big, no longer blue, but black. “When did you find that out?”

“Oh, a few months ago. I was getting my papers in order for some insurance I thought I might buy. They want birth certificates, parents’ marriage license, and so on. So I went down and looked myself up. It’s OK with me. All I saw in those papers was a sixteen-year-old girl who was in love. There’s no law against it. I glory in her, and if I’m what came of it, I’m thankful for that, too. But let’s get back to the subject. Did that make her a Jezebel?”

“Could be, it did.”

“Well, Jezzie, hello.”

“How’d you like to go to hell?”

“Well, you said it, I didn’t.”

“You bet I said it. I have to. But it wasn’t me.”

“Not you? Are you being funny?”

“It wasn’t me, now you know! I wasn’t even supposed to tell you, you’re not my son! And Jody was not your father! It wasn’t me who had you! I was the one who got married, but I didn’t have you! It was Big Myra, my cousin who has the same name and went into the hospital there, the clinic they had on Fourth Street. But then, when she couldn’t keep it, she begged me to take it and raise it. So to do that I had to get married. We were going to, Jody and I, but we weren’t ready to then. But with her nursing that baby, he was so cute. I wanted him. So we went and got married sooner, sooner than we had intended. I love you, I always did, but you’re not my child at all, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t—”

“Shouldn’t what?”

“Whatever I feel like!”

“Like bellering around?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean Jezebellering.”

“You quit talking to me like that!”

“And you quit talking to me like that! That’s a hot one, Mom, ain’t it? All of a sudden, so you can unzip my pants and take out what’s in there, you tell me you’re not my mother. Isn’t it time to laugh?”

She pushed me out of the way, got up, and turned on the light. Then she stood pulling her dress and twisting it, to straighten out the places where it was ripped or torn or strained. Then she went in the living room where the light was already on and sat down. After a while she said: “If you want to laugh, laugh. I wouldn’t know what at.”

“At that comical tale you told.”

“If it’s comical to you, it’s comical to you. It never was to me. And it never was to Big Myra.”

Why it took so long for it to sink in, to penetrate my mind, that it might be true what she’d said, I don’t have any idea. Until then it hadn’t occurred to me even to wonder about it. But when she mentioned Big Myra, who I’d always supposed was my aunt, I suddenly had a flash. I saw the look Aunt Myra would have when she’d bring me a toy, a horn or a skateboard or a drum, that always made me so happy. She looked a little like Mom, a shade taller, and slim, but instead of being pretty, beautiful — pale, with blue-black hair and big black mountain eyes. That coloring, they say, comes from Indian blood. She doted on me, and God knows I doted on her — and I knew now the reason both ways. I went over to Mom, put my hand on her head, turned her face to the light, and said: “You’re telling me the truth?”

“Yes, of course I am.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“It was part of how we fixed it up. I had to promise I’d never tell you, so—”

“So what?”

“You wouldn’t mess things up.”

“With Aunt Myra, you mean?”

“Her or — anyone.”

It must have been five minutes before it dawned on me who she was talking about. “You mean, my father?”

“I mean like I said, with anyone .”

“Goddamn it, answer me.”

“OK then, with him.”

“Who is ‘him’?”

“I don’t know; she never said.”

“Mom, spit it out. Who am I?”

“Don’t you think I’d say if I knew? Now that I’ve said this much? She was working in Logan County, had a job with the Boone County Coal Corporation, a typist or something. And a guy came along who was married. He was taking a survey for a bus line they wanted to run. She never would say who he was, and that’s all I know about it.”

More time went by while I soaked that up a bit. Then: “Mom, did he have something to do with it, the deal you made about me? Did he want you to take me too?”

“I don’t know. I never saw him. Maybe he came on, maybe he stayed with her there in Marietta while we were talking about it. She never said. I don’t know.”

“And why did you take me in?”

“I already said, I loved you.”

“And my father, I mean Jody Howell, what did he think about it? Did he love me?”

“At least he loved me — then.”

“And that’s why he agreed?”

“Well, why wouldn’t he agree? By then we knew I couldn’t have any children. The doctors had already told me.”

I already knew she had some kind of condition that made it impossible for her to have children, so I didn’t go further with it. More soaking in took place, with her sitting there in her chair, kicking her foot, and now and then looking at me. She had a hunted, guilty expression, not the one she had had when she kept staring at nothing. After some minutes, though, it began to gnaw at me that the whole story hadn’t been told. Now I had more flashes, of how my father had acted toward me, the cold way he had. I never felt toward him the way I’d felt toward Mom or toward Aunt Myra. Pretty soon I asked: “What made him so willing? So willing for you to take me?”

“I already said: he loved me.”

“Was that all?”

“It was all so long ago. I don’t remember.”

“Was any money paid?”

“Well, I would imagine so, yes.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know. It was paid to him.”

After a long time I asked, “Was it that that he used to buy the other place with and build that crazy house?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“Did he or didn’t he?”

“He didn’t tell me everything!”

“Was board paid for me?”

“I don’t know.”

“They wouldn’t have paid that to him. They’d have paid it to you.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“Aunt Myra and my father.”

“Sometimes something was paid.”

“Like the first of every month?”

“I don’t know; it’s been so long.”

“How long?”

“What do you mean, how long?”

“Since board for me was paid.”

“I said, I don’t remember.”

“Is board still being paid for me?”

“You quit banging at me.”

“In other words, it is?”

She didn’t answer, which meant it was, and at last I eased up on her. I had to. By now I’d found out so much that my head was spinning around. I was like a cow that had cropped all the grass it could hold and had to lie down a while so it could chew its cud. I had no idea yet how I felt about it, whether I liked it or not, changing Mom for Aunt Myra or my father for some other guy I knew nothing at all about, except that he must have been decent and really in love with Aunt Myra to put out for me all those years. Also, of course, he must have been able to, which meant he was not just a nobody. All that, though, was stuff that just rattled around. One thing, though, remained to be cleared up. Why, after keeping her pledge all those years, did she up and tell me now? When I asked her, she sidestepped the question. “It had to come out,” she whined. “It had to be told sometime.”