Дороти Эллисон - Bastard Out of Carolina

Aunt Alma laughed. “Why, you look like our Bone, girl.”

“I don’t look like Mama. I don’t look like you. I don’t look like nobody.”

“You look like me,” Mama said. “You look like my own baby girl.” She put her fingers delicately on my cheeks, pressing under my eyes. “You got the look, al right. I can see it, see what it’s gonna be like when you grow bigger, these bones here.” Her fingers slipped smoothly down over my mouth and chin. “And here. You gonna look like our granddaddy, for sure. Those Cherokee cheekbones, huh, Alma?”

“Oh yes, for sure. She’s gonna be another one, another beauty to worry about.”

I smiled wide, not real y believing them but wanting to. I held stil then, trying not to flinch as Mama began to brush relentlessly at my knotted hair. If I got a permanent, I would lose those hours on Mama’s lap sitting in the curve of her arm while she brushed and brushed and smoothed my hair and talked soft above me. She always seemed to smel of buttery flour, salt, and fingernail polish—a delicate insinuating aroma of the familiar and the astringent. I would breathe deep and bite my lips to keep from moaning while my scalp ached and burned. I would have cut off my head before I let them cut my hair and lost the unspeakable pleasure of being drawn up onto Mama’s lap every evening.

“Do I look like my daddy?” I asked.

There was silence. Mama brushed steadily while Aunt Alma finished pul ing the rags from Reese’s hair.

“Do I? Like my daddy, Mama?”

Mama gathered al my hair up in one hand and picked at the ends with the side of the brush. “Alma, get me some of that sweet oil, honey, just a little for my palm. That’s enough.”

The brush started again in long sweeping strokes. Aunt Alma started to hum. I dropped my head. It wasn’t even that I was so insistent on knowing anything about my missing father. I wouldn’t have minded a lie. I just wanted the story Mama would have told. What was the thing she wouldn’t tel me, the first thing, the place where she had made herself different from al her brothers and sisters and shut her mouth on her life?

Mama brushed so hard she pul ed my head al the way back. “You just don’t know how to sit stil , Bone.”

“No, Mama.”

I closed my eyes and let her move my head, let her pul and jerk my hair until she relaxed a little. Aunt Alma was humming softly. The smel of sweet oil on Mama’s fingers hung in the air. Reese’s singsong joined Aunt Alma’s hum. I opened my eyes and looked into Mama’s. You could see Reese’s baby smile in those eyes. In the pupils gold flecks gleamed and glittered, like pieces of something bright reflecting light.

3

Love, at least love for a man not already part of the family, was something I was a little unsure about. Aunt Alma said love had more to do with how pretty a body was than anyone would ever admit, and Glen was pretty enough, she swore, with his wide shoulders and long arms, his hair combed back and his col ar buttoned up tight over his skinny neck.

Sometimes after Glen had been over to visit and gone, Mama would sit on the porch and smoke a cigarette, looking off into the distance.

Sometimes I’d go slide quietly under her armpit and sit with her, saying nothing. I would wonder what she was thinking, but I didn’t ask. If I had, she’d have said something about the road or the trees or the stars. She’d have talked about work or something one of my cousins had done, or one of the uncles, or she’d have swatted my butt and sent me off to bed, then gone back to sitting there with her face so serious, smoking her Pal Mal cigarette right down to the filter.

“You and Reese like Glen, don’t you?” Mama would say now and then in a worried voice. I would nod every time. Of course we liked him, I’d tel her, and watch her face relax so her smile came back.

“I do too. He’s a good man.” She’d run her hands over her thighs slow, hug her knees up close to her breasts, and nod to herself more than me.

“He’s a good man.”

The nights Mama worked at the diner, she’d leave us with Aunt Ruth or Aunt Alma. But sometimes, if she wasn’t working too late, she would make up a bed of blankets and pil ows in the backseat of her Pontiac and take us with her. She’d feed us dinner in a booth near the kitchen and let us listen to the jukebox for a while before she put us to bed in the car, tel ing me sternly not to unlock the door for anyone but her. While we sat in that booth, I’d watch her at work. She was mesmerizing, young and sweet-faced and too pretty for anyone to be mean to her. The truckers teased her and played her favorite songs on the jukebox. The younger ones would try to get her to go out with them, but she’d joke them out of it. The older ones who knew her wel would compliment her on us, her pretty girls. I watched it al , admiring the men with their muscular forearms and broad shoulders as they sipped the coffee my mama served them, absorbing the music as it played continuously, keeping Reese from spil ing her milk or sliding down under the table, and smiling at Mama when she looked over to me.

“You’re Anney’s girl, an’t you?” one of them said to me. “Your little sister looks just like her, don’t she? You must look like your daddy.” I nodded careful y.

When Glen Waddel came, Mama would get him a beer and sit with him when she could. Sometimes, if she was busy, he would carry us out to her car when Reese got sleepy, holding us in his big strong arms with the same studied gentleness as when he touched Mama. I always wanted to wait til Mama could tuck us into our bed of blankets, but she seemed to like for Glen to carry us out with al the truckers watching. I’d see her look over as he went out with us, see her face soften and shine. Maybe that was love, that look. I couldn’t tel .

My mama dated Glen Waddel for two years. People said it took her time to trust men again after Lyle Parsons died. Mama would occasional y take Reese and me with her to pick Glen up from his new job at the RC Cola plant. Sometimes he would stil be working, lifting flats of soda bottles to stock his truck for the next morning’s route. Al those ful cases had to be loaded and the empties pul ed off and transferred to the conveyor belt for cleaning and shipment to the bottling plant. He would shift each case of twenty-four bottles above his head and onto the truck with a grunt, swinging from his hips with his whole weight, arms extended and mouth sucked in against his tongue with concentration. His col ar was open, his pale blue short-sleeved uniform shirt was limp, and it stuck to his back in a dark stripe down his spine. Mama would stil be in her waitress dress, smel ing of salt and fried food, and just as sweaty and tired as he was, but Glen would smile at her like he knew she sweat sugar and cream. Mama would lean out the window of the car and cal his name softly, and he would blush dark red and start moving a little faster, either to show off his strength or to get out of there sooner, we weren’t sure.

Glen was a smal man but so muscular and strong that it was hard to see the delicacy in him, though he was strangely graceful in his rough work clothes and heavy boots. There were bottle fragments on the pavement, crushed shards ground into the tarmac, and al the men wore heavy work boots with thick rubber soles. Glen Waddel ’s feet were so fine that his boots had to be bought in the boys’ department of the Sears, Roebuck, while his gloves could only be found in the tal men’s specialty stores. He would pivot on those boy-size feet, turning his narrow hips and grunting with his load, everything straining and forceful, while his hands cradled cases and flats as delicately as if they were soft-shel ed eggs. His palms spread so wide he could easily span half a case’s width, keeping every bottle level no matter how high he had to throw the flat.