I hugged that hook up tight to my midriff and ran back to the door, calling for Grey as I went. He was still grabbing things and throwing them down, the pillow case now looped into the waistband of his jeans. It took him twenty minutes to finally come up and join me. He was trembling, his dark-tan face streaked with sweat and dust. His mouth worked, opening and shutting, but no sounds came out. He had his shirttail tied tight around his middle to hold the stuff he couldn’t carry. I put my hand on his arm.
“Come on. We an’t gonna lock the door, you know.” I squeezed my fingers and felt his excitement in the rigid band of muscles. “And your hands are full anyway.”
He blinked at me, pushed his face close to mine. “I an’t never gonna forget this, Bone,” he told me. “Never in this life.” I nodded solemnly back at him, and a smile broke out on his face. “Goddam!” he whispered once more as he went out the door, sounding this time like a happy child.
I pulled the double doors together so that they looked shut and ran after Grey’s shadow. We went up State Street past a little group of gray-faced men just down from the Texaco station, all of them looking so much like my uncles it made my throat hurt. I yelled at them as I ran, “The goddam Woolworth’s doors are standing open. It’s open. The whole store’s wide open.”
They looked at us, me hugging that hook to my belly, Grey stumbling with the weight of the bags he carried and stuff spilling out of his shirt. I saw one of them turn and look back up State Street toward the Woolworth’s building. Another dropped a cigarette and started off at a run. I knew by morning there wouldn’t be a case that hadn’t been opened, a counter that hadn’t been cleared. That was the thing that made me happy, the sound of those boots running down the street and the thought of what all those men would carry home. My ancient outrage at Tyler Highgarden seemed silly compared to that.
Under my sweaty fingers I felt the black paint flaking off the metal edge of one prong of that hook. I could scrape the rest of it down. My anger beat inside me. Maybe when the metal was clean and pure and shiny, I would take off one night. Maybe I would go all the way over to Uncle James’s house and pull up my mama a rosebush or two.
16
I
was sleepy the next day, and nervous. The exhilaration was gone. I kept expecting something to happen, someone to come in and confront me with what Grey and I had done. It had been so easy to get back to Aunt Alma’s and into bed with Reese without anyone noticing—too easy. I kept waking up suddenly, all night long, until finally I jerked awake and the room was full of daylight. Reese was still heavily asleep near the edge of the bed, but I heard Temple talking in the next room. I got up and dressed, trying to look like I’d had all the sleep I needed.
Aunt Alma had stayed over at Aunt Ruth’s with Mama. Patsy Ruth was complaining that she had been on her own and hadn’t even known it. Garvey and Little Earle didn’t care. They were too busy arguing over whether Little Earle had spit in Garvey’s new harmonica. I kept looking at Grey’s shining features, wondering why everybody else didn’t see how smugly he was grinning, but there was too much confusion. No one even looked at him.
Temple had come by to make sure we all got some breakfast, her swollen belly showing how close she was to having her first child. She kept pushing herself up straight and putting her hand on her lower back as if it ached. She served us all bowls of grits with cheese and set a platter of fried fatback in the center of the table.
“Patsy Ruth and Little Earle.” She called their names like they were stray puppies. “I promised Mama I’d make sure you got off to school, so move it along.” She wiped grease off the edge of the platter and put a bowl of butter down beside it. “Bone, your mama said you were to stay over here till she comes to get you. But she might not get here till afternoon, so let Reese sleep as long as she wants.”
“Why do we have to go to school if Bone and Reese don’t?” Little Earle was offended.
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” Temple sounded like she’d been married for twenty years. “All I know is you’re going. If you want to argue with Mama about why, you can do it when she gets home tonight. Right now I’ve got to get Tadpole ready to come home with me.”
I took a piece of fatback to chew and went into the living room with the book I’d gotten from Aunt Raylene,
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
by C. S. Lewis. I loved the story, but I was so tired I fell asleep, not waking up until Mama put her hand on my shoulder.
“Where’s Reese, Bone?” Her voice sounded strange.
“I think she’s still asleep, Mama.” I pulled myself up off the couch and followed her into Alma’s kitchen. She dropped her purse on the kitchen table and sank heavily into one of the metal chairs. Her mascara was smeared under bloodshot eyes. She sat quiet, looking at me. I couldn’t read her expression.
“Mama, did I do something wrong?”
“No. No, baby.” She shook her head, her eyes focusing on mine for just a moment before they looked past me.
“It’s not you.” She opened her bag, took out her Pall Malls, lit one, and began to rake her hair out with her other hand. I got her an ashtray.
“You want me to make coffee?”
“No, baby.”
I sat down at the table.
“Is Alma still at Ruth’s?”
She nodded, paused, and looked at me directly. “Bone, your aunt Ruth died early this morning.” Her eyes glistened. I waited for her to start crying, but she didn’t. She just sat there smoking. I looked at my hands. I couldn’t believe what she had said. Aunt Ruth was dead? No. Mama cleared her throat.
“Alma is still with Travis and Raylene. I just came to get you and Reese. There’s a lot to do. So much I can’t even think yet. ”
“I’m sorry, Mama.” My voice cracked. I swallowed hard, wanting to cry but feeling no tears come. Even after all this time, I had not really expected Aunt Ruth to die. Everybody kept saying she would beat this, the way she had before. Mama had talked as if this illness were just something that had to be gotten past, as if Ruth just needed time and quiet to get better. Everyone did. Then I remembered how thin she was when I stayed with her, how frail and weak, her whole body shaking when she laughed, the way she looked at me when she asked me if she was dying. I had known, of course I had known. It was death Aunt Ruth was thinking about all the time. Death was the reason she had talked so much, so intently, death was the fire burning her up. With every breath and laugh and wiped-away tear, she had been dying. I had known that, but I had still imagined Aunt Ruth would go on, her dying something always still to come. The fantasy had been helped along by not seeing her every day as I had all summer. All these months, I had known what was happening over at that house, known and denied it, because I could do nothing else.
“Ruth was never pretty, you know.” Mama’s voice surprised me. I looked up at the clock, but the light over the stove was off. There were half a dozen butts in the ashtray, and Mama’s mascara had run even more. I licked my lips.
“Aunt Alma said she was striking.”
“Oh.” Mama shrugged. Her fingers wiped her cheek, smeared the mascara back toward her temple. “That’s what they say when a girl’s got a strong face and an’t ugly, but an’t pretty neither. When we were little I think Ruth would have given just about anything to be pretty. She used to stand in front of Granny’s wardrobe mirror and stare at herself when she thought no one was looking, but I never teased her about it. She got enough teasing from the boys.” Mama ground her cigarette out.
“Truth is, she just about raised me. Daddy was gone by then, and Granny was always running after the boys or your aunt Alma, who was always getting herself in some trouble or the other. Ruth was the one that was there for me, that I could talk to. Once she told me that she liked to pretend I was hers. I was the baby, had just started school when she married Travis and moved down the road from us. She was over at our place almost as much as hers, cooking for Granny and picking up after us. Travis used to get mad and come beating on the door yelling for her to get her ass home to him.”
Mama pulled her lips in and bit the lower lip lightly. It was something I had seen Aunt Ruth do often, something I did myself when I was nervous. Now it almost made me cry. I wiped at my own eyes, watching Mama use the back of her hand to wipe her eyes again.
“For some reason, Ruth didn’t think she could have babies. When she got pregnant, she was so happy. It was a mystery to me why she liked having children so much. Seemed like everybody else whined and complained about it, but Ruth just took on so, laughed and sang and made her own baby clothes. Then, one time, I asked her why she acted so happy, and she stared at me like I was just plain crazy. Told me it was proof. Being pregnant was proof that some man thought you were pretty sometime, and the more babies she got, the more she knew she was worth something. I just about cried, and at the same time I wanted to hit her for talking like that, talking like she wasn’t worth something on her own. Talking like my love didn’t make her worth something!”
I remembered all the times I had stared in the bathroom mirror, knowing I wasn’t pretty and hating it. I felt a cold chill go up my back, as if Aunt Ruth had just touched my spine. Mama was shaking her head, reaching to open her bag, rummaging around and pulling out a napkin. Carefully she dabbed under her eyes. “Go get me some cold cream, Bone. Let me get some of this gunk off.”
I ran into the bathroom and grabbed the Noxzema jar. Reese was there, her hair all tousled and her eyes gummy with too much sleep. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” she complained. “Where is everybody?”
“Everybody’s gone, but Mama’s here. Get cleaned up and come out to the kitchen.” I hurried away. Mama would have to tell her. I couldn’t.
When I got back, Mama was still in the same position with the napkin under her eyes, but now she was truly crying. Big tears were spilling out and streaking down her face. I ran to her and threw my arms around her. For a moment we clung together, and then, awkwardly, she pulled her arms free and pushed me a little away.
“You loved her too, didn’t you, Bone?” She looked hard into my face as if she could see inside me. “You know how much she loved you?”
I nodded. I couldn’t talk. Mama hugged me to her, rocked me against her breasts. Her hands squeezed my shoulders and shook me a little.
“Oh, my little girl,” Mama whispered. “I wish I could be sure Ruth knew how beautiful she was.”
17
R
eese had never been to a funeral before, and I was unsure how we were supposed to behave. Reese was just worried about what we were going to wear. “Don’t we have to go buy black dresses?” she kept asking. “Mama, when we gonna go get our black dresses?” She sounded as if she was already thinking about going to school the day after the funeral in her new black dress. Not so long ago that was what I would have been thinking. Now all I could think about was Aunt Ruth and the way she had talked to me all last summer. When Mama shushed Reese and told her she could just wear her dark blue skirt and a white blouse, I went off to sit on the porch steps, hugging my knees to my chest.
There was a tight painful place inside me that squeezed me, not my heart, but just above my heart. I remembered the way Aunt Ruth had looked when she smiled at me, how thin she had been with her bird fingers and feverish eyes. But most of all I remembered the way she had laughed with Earle and then stared off into the distance all those long hours in the hot afternoons.
“Can we talk to each other or not?” she had asked me. I had tried, but in the end I had lied. I hadn’t told her that she was dying, hadn’t told her the truth about my fear of Daddy Glen. I hadn’t told her that I knew what he was thinking when he looked at me, that I could see in his eyes not only confusion and anger but something hotter and meaner still. I hadn’t told her about the way he had touched me. I had been too ashamed. Mama thought that keeping me out of the house and away from Daddy Glen was the answer, that being patient, loving him, and making him feel strong and important would fix everything in time. But nothing changed and nothing was really fixed, everything was only delayed. Every time his daddy spoke harshly to him, every time he couldn’t pay the bills, every time Mama was too tired to flatter or tease him out of his moods, Daddy Glen’s eyes would turn to me, and my blood would turn to ice. I had never said that to Aunt Ruth, never said it to anyone. I didn’t know how.
My head ached so bad I didn’t even hear Daddy Glen shout. I was still curled up on the porch when he stepped through the front door.
“I was calling you, girl.” He grabbed me by the shoulder. He hadn’t had time to shower yet, and his face was still sweaty, his uniform smelling of spilled milk. I looked up at him with hatred and saw the pupils of his eyes go small and hard.
“I didn’t hear you,” I said plainly, coldly.
“You damn well did.” He pulled me up to my feet.
“I didn’t,” I yelled at him. My blood was pounding in my head. “I didn’t hear you. You an’t got no business calling me a liar.” Through the open door I could see Mama come out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel.
“Glen,” she called. “Glen.”
“You think ’cause your aunt died you can mouth off to me?” Daddy Glen was almost spitting with rage. “You think you can say just anything you damn well please! You got another think coming.”
He dragged me into the house. Reese jumped up off the couch and ran for the bedroom. “Glen,” Mama called again, coming after us, but he didn’t stop. My shoulder hit the door-jamb as he pushed me ahead of him into the bathroom. I stumbled and would have fallen on the floor, but he was still hanging on to my arm. The door slammed behind us.
“Glen! Don’t do this, Glen!” Mama’s hands beat on the bathroom door.
I stood, looking up at Daddy Glen, my back straight and my hands curled into fists at my sides. His features were rigid, his neck bright red. He kept one hand on me while he pulled his belt out of its loops with the other. “Don’t you say a word,” he hissed at me. “Don’t you dare.”