Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison Read Free Book Online

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 tell me, the first thing, the place where she had made herself different from all her brothers and sisters and shut her mouth on her life?
    Mama brushed so hard she pulled my head all the way back. “You just don’t know how to sit still, Bone.”
    “No, Mama. ”
    I closed my eyes and let her move my head, let her pull and jerk my hair until she relaxed a little. Aunt Alma was humming softly. The smell 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
    L ove, 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 collar 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 Pall Mall 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 tell 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 pillows 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, telling 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 well would compliment her on us, her pretty girls. I watched it all, 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 spilling 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 carefully.
    When Glen Waddell 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 till Mama could tuck us into our bed of blankets, but she seemed to like for Glen to carry us out with all the