I woke up to the sound of them talking, their words echoing through the closed door of the bedroom. I heard everything he said, heard Mama crying in his arms. Daddy Glen told her I had called him a bastard, that I had come running through the house knocking things over and called him that name. He cried and swore he hadn’t meant to beat me so bad, he didn’t know what had made him do it. He sobbed and then beat his fists against the mattress so hard the springs squeaked.
“She told me she hated me,” he said, “told me I would never be her daddy. And I went crazy, Anney. I just went crazy. Do you know? Do you understand how much I love you all, love her?
“And—oh, God, Anney! They laid me off today. Just put me out without a care. And what am I going to do to feed these girls now?”
Reese lay on the bed with me, her fingers in her mouth, her eyes enormous. She said nothing. I lay still, listening to Daddy Glen’s lies, wondering if he thought he was telling the truth. I kept looking into Reese’s face, her baby face, smooth and empty and scared. The sound of Mama crying grew softer, faded. In the stillness that followed I heard Daddy Glen whispering, heard a murmur as Mama replied. Then there was a sigh and the creak of their bed as he comforted Mama and she comforted him. Sex. They were making love, Mama sighing and sobbing and Daddy Glen repeating her name over and over. I looked into Reese’s eyes, and we listened to the small sounds they were making.
“You made him mad,” Reese whispered. “You better be careful. ”
I tried to be careful, but something had come apart. Something had gotten loose like the wild strands of Aunt Marvella’s hair unraveling in the dust. There was no way I could be careful enough, no way to keep Daddy Glen from exploding into rage. Dr Pepper took him on as a route man, but at less pay than the uniform service. He had one of the short routes, not much money to be made on it, and not enough work to make it full-time. He came home at odd hours, early and late. Mama started working later and later, for whatever money she could get, and I stayed out of the house as much as I could. If I went home when he was there and Mama wasn’t, he was always finding something I’d done, something I had to be told, something he just had to do because he loved me. And he did love me. He told me so over and over again, holding my body tight to his, his hands shaking as they moved restlessly, endlessly, over my belly, ass, and thighs.
“You’re just like your mama,” he’d say, and press his stubbly cheek to mine.
I would stand rigid, ashamed but unable to pull away, afraid of making him angry, afraid of what he might tell Mama, and at the same time, afraid of hurting his feelings. “Daddy,” I would start to whisper, and he would whisper back, “Don’t you know how I love you?” And I would recoil. No, I did not know.
He never said “Don’t tell your mama.” He never had to say it. I did not know how to tell anyone what I felt, what scared me and shamed me and still made me stand, unmoving and desperate, while he rubbed against me and ground his face into my neck. I could not tell Mama. I would not have known how to explain why I stood there and let him touch me. It wasn’t sex, not like a man and woman pushing their naked bodies into each other, but then, it was something like sex, something powerful and frightening that he wanted badly and I did not understand at all. Worse, when Daddy Glen held me that way, it was the only time his hands were gentle, and when he let me go, I would rock on uncertain feet.
Daddy Glen smelled of sweat and Coca-Cola, of after-shave and cigarettes, but mostly of something I could not name—something acid, bitter, and sharp. Fear. It might have been fear. But I could not have said if it was his fear or mine. I could not say anything. I only knew that there was something I was doing wrong, something terrible. He said, “You drive me crazy,” in a strange distracted voice, and I shuddered but believed him.
I became even more afraid of Daddy Glen, the palms that slapped, the fingers that dug in and bruised, the knuckles he would sometimes press directly under my eyes, the hands that shook and gripped and lifted me up until his eyes would stare into mine. My own hands were so small, my fingers thin and weak. I wished they were bigger, wider, stronger. I wished I was a boy so I could run faster, stay away more, or even hit him back.
Grey gave me a rubber ball, hard rubber, black and small enough to hide in my hand. I cupped it in my palms so no one would see. I worked that ball with passion, rolled it between my fingers with determination, squeezed it stubbornly, clenching each finger against my thumbs. One day my hands would be as strong as Daddy Glen’s were. No matter the size, I told myself, one day my hands would be a match for his. Some days I thought I was working that ball so that I could grow to be more like him; other days I knew that wasn’t why.
That spring, Earle and Daddy Glen argued over some tools Daddy Glen swore he had loaned Earle and never gotten back. Earle took offense and stopped coming over to visit. After that Daddy Glen started talking bad about the Boatwrights all the time, glaring at me if I asked Mama anything about what he now called “that trash.” He made fun of how often the uncles would get blind drunk and shoot up each other’s trucks, he talked dirty about Mama’s nieces who were always sneaking off to the Rhythm Ranch to sip whiskey and dance with men older than their fathers. No matter what Daddy Glen said, Mama never said much at all. Her face was tired all the time.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she’d say when I tried to tell her something Granny or Aunt Alma had passed on to me. “Nothing to be proud of in shooting people for looking at you wrong.”
I was ashamed of the way Daddy Glen talked, but Mama didn’t seem ashamed. She just got quiet, more and more quiet all the time. I begged her to tell me stories like Granny did, but she said I was too young to hear such things. Maybe when I was grown and had my own family she would tell me what few things she thought I needed to know, but until then she expected me to ask no questions she didn’t want to answer. Glen was right, Mama told me, she didn’t want me to grow up as wild and mean as Earle or Beau or even Raylene.
When Daddy Glen beat me there was always a reason, and Mama would stand right outside the bathroom door. Afterward she would cry and wash my face and tell me not to be so stubborn, not to make him mad. I’d promise, but I had a talent for sassing back and making Daddy Glen mad, though it was hard to know how not to make him mad. Sometimes when I looked up into his red features and blazing eyes, I knew that it was nothing I had done that made him beat me. It was just me, the fact of my life, who I was in his eyes and mine. I was evil. Of course I was. I admitted it to myself, locked my fingers into fists, and shut my eyes to everything I did not understand.
“Bone.” Cousin Deedee was the first to call me Bone, but everyone did by the time we were living in West Greenville. Dog bone, penny bone, suckle bone, milk tooth, goat head, horse head, tiger bone, collarbone, hipbone, neckbone, knees and toes.
“You are hard as bone, the stubbornest child on the planet!” Daddy Glen told me. “Cold as death, mean as a snake, and twice as twisty.”
Daddy Glen was careful not to hit me when one of the aunts was visiting, and never much when Mama would see, except for those times he could justify as discipline, dragging me into the bathroom while she waited on the other side of the locked door. It was when Reese and I were alone with him that he was dangerous. If I ran from him, he would come after me. He shook me so hard my head wobbled loosely, and he’d joke that chickens and goats had more starch to them than a Boatwright, even a half-Boatwright like I was.
It was the bones in my head I thought about, the hard, porous edge of my skull cradling my brain, reassuring me that no matter what happened I could heal up from it eventually. It was the heat in my heart, my hard, gritty center. I linked my fingers behind my head, clenched my teeth, and rocked back and forth. The sturdy stock we were boasted to be came down in me to stubbornness and bone.
I was always getting hurt, it seemed, in ways Mama could not understand and I could not explain. Mama worried about how careless I was, how prone to accident I had become. “Maybe you’re thin-boned,” she g
uessed, and started buying me vitamins. I didn’t know what to say to her. To say anything would mean trying to tell her everything, to describe those times when he held me tight to his belly and called me sweet names I did not want to hear. I remained silent, stubborn, resentful, and collected my bruises as if they were unavoidable. There were lumps at the back of my head, not swellings of flesh and tissue but a rumpled ridge of bone. My big toes went flat and wide, broken within a few months of each other when I smashed into doorjambs, running while looking back over my shoulder.
“How could you do that?” Mama asked me. It was my fault, I wasn’t supposed to run in the house.
“She’s always getting into something,” Daddy Glen complained. “Lucky she’s such a hardheaded brat.”
I watched him from under lowered lashes, my head turned slightly to the side, careful not to grin out of my unmarked stubborn face.
“Bone, be more careful,” Mama begged me.
I didn’t daydream about fire anymore. Now I imagined people watching while Daddy Glen beat me, though only when it was not happening. When he beat me, I screamed and kicked and cried like the baby I was. But sometimes when I was safe and alone, I would imagine the ones who watched. Someone had to watch—some girl I admired who barely knew I existed, some girl from church or down the street, or one of my cousins, or even somebody I had seen on television. Sometimes a whole group of them would be trapped into watching. They couldn’t help or get away. They had to watch. In my imagination I was proud and defiant. I’d stare back at him with my teeth set, making no sound at all, no shameful scream, no begging. Those who watched admired me and hated him. I pictured it that way and put my hands between my legs. It was scary, but it was thrilling too. Those who watched me, loved me. It was as if I was being beaten for them. I was wonderful in their eyes.
My fantasies got more violent and more complicated as Daddy Glen continued to beat me with the same two or three belts he’d set aside for me. Oiled, smooth and supple as the gristle under chicken fat, those belts hung behind the door of his closet where I could see them and smell them when I helped Mama put away his clothes. I would reach up and touch the leather, feel it warm under my palms. There was no magic in it, no mystery. Sometimes I would make myself go in that closet and wrap my fingers around those belts as if they were something animal that could be tamed.
I was ashamed of myself for the things I thought about when I put my hands between my legs, more ashamed for masturbating to the fantasy of being beaten than for being beaten in the first place. I lived in a world of shame. I hid my bruises as if they were evidence of crimes I had committed. I knew I was a sick disgusting person. I couldn’t stop my stepfather from beating me, but I was the one who masturbated. I did that, and how could I explain to anyone that I hated being beaten but still masturbated to the story I told myself about it?
Yet it was only in my fantasies with people watching me that I was able to defy Daddy Glen. Only there that I had any pride. I loved those fantasies, even though I was sure they were a terrible thing. They had to be; they were self-centered and they made me have shuddering orgasms. In them, I was very special. I was triumphant, important. I was not ashamed. There was no heroism possible in the real beatings. There was just being beaten until I was covered with snot and misery.
My collarbone fused with a lump the second time it was broken—an accident, Daddy Glen insisted, just like the first time when I had fallen off the porch. In the hospital the young intern glared and ordered lots of X-rays.
“How’d she break her coccyx?” he demanded of Mama over the sheaf of X-rays when we were ready to go home. He had a funny accent and a mass of black curly hair. He leaned over Mama like he was going to hit her.
“Her what?”
“Her tailbone, lady, her ass. What have you been hitting this child with? Or have you just been throwing her up against the wall?”
“What are you saying?” Mama’s face was white and stiff; his was red and angry. “What are you saying?” This time Mama’s voice went high and loud. A middle-aged nurse in a rumpled uniform was suddenly at my right side, one hand on the doctor’s arm and the other reaching for Mama. There was a tag on her pocket that read “Myer.”
“Let’s not get excited,” she said. “Let’s calm down.”
The doctor took hold of my chin. His fingers were warm, the skin rough and dry. “Tell us,” he said. “You tell us.”
I looked into his pupils and I could see myself there, my face tiny and strange above the bandage wrapping my shoulder and arm. He looked angry, and impatient, and disgusted. He glared at Mama with no pity at all. I could feel Mama’s fingers gripping the palm of my free hand, hear her breathing like she was going to be sick. When I looked up into her face I saw her terror, and behind it her love for me. Daddy Glen was outside waiting in the car with Reese. The nurse started talking, but I didn’t listen.
“Mama, take me home,” I whispered. Mama’s hand slipped around my waist. Her fingers felt icy through the thin cotton material of my blouse—icy but comforting.
“Let go of my girl,” she told the doctor. His mouth twisted, and he gave my chin a little shake. I let my eyes move over his face. He didn’t know us, didn’t know my mama or me. “You can tell us,” he said in his stranger’s voice.
I held on to Mama and wouldn’t say anything at all. The doctor slapped the bed beside me hard, then turned and slammed the door open with his fists. I looked at the nurse. Mrs. Myer was watching me carefully, her hand over her mouth, her eyes old and wise.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Mama finally, dropping her hand. “He’s young and he’s not been here long.”
We waited, Mama holding me, Mrs. Myer taking long, slow breaths and glancing back at the door. A black woman with a clipboard full of papers came in and passed them over.
“You’ll need to sign this,” Mrs. Myer told Mama. She didn’t look at me again.
I knew exactly what she thought, but I didn’t know about Mama. Her face was strange and hard, her hand where it held me was still cold, but now it was shaking too. For the few moments they left us alone, she looked into my face like it was a map of hell.
“Bone,” she whispered.
I waited.
“Sweetheart.”
Someone walked past in the hall. I put my head over against Mama’s breast, listening to her heart, not wanting to hear anything else.
“Baby.”
“Mama,” I begged. “Mama, take me home.”
“We’re gonna go to Aunt Alma’s house,” she told me while lifting me into the backseat. The look she gave Daddy Glen when he tried to help her seemed to freeze his heart. His hands stretched before him, he kept reaching out but not touching her. In the front seat, Reese sat with her thumb in her mouth, her face blank and still. Propped up in the back with pillows, I leaned my cheek against the plastic seat cover and tried not to move too much. My shoulder felt hot and enormous, like a balloon full of paip waiting to blow through me. Daddy Glen followed Mama around the front of the car, plucking at her shoulders hesitantly, but she kept shaking him off. “Don’t!” she shouted once. The car shook when she slammed the door, and I gritted my teeth. Daddy Glen leaned in the window, pleading, tears showing on his face in the lights of the emergency room entrance.
“Anney, oh, Anney, just talk to me. Don’t do this. Anney, please; Anney!”
Mama started the car off slowly, letting him hang on to the side until she pulled out into the street. I didn’t see the look she gave him then, but I heard his cry, hoarse and meaningless, as she gunned the engine, her foot holding down on the brake, the Pontiac jerking but holding. He let go of the door but didn’t step back. His face was still close and then it was gone.
Mama’s chin was sharp, shining now against other car lights, now against the lights from the dash. I watched the tears on her face when she looked back at me. I closed my eyes, opened them. Everything seemed spongy and strange, but I couldn’t care anymore. The cool air rushing in the wind
ow was damp and sweet. If there really was a God or even magic, that air would blow through me and out again. It would go back down that road to the hospital, sweep up the dirt, and throw it in Daddy Glen’s eyes. It would make him see who he was, what he had done. That doctor would come out on his way home, see him there, and know who he was. The wind would tell him, the moon, or maybe even God. That doctor would know, and he would start his car, knowing. He would slam that car into gear and roar across that lot. The grille would stop just inches from Daddy Glen’s terrified face.
“You son of a bitch,” that doctor would scream. “You ever touch that child again and I’ll grind you into meat and blood!”
Daddy Glen would weep tears of blood. Jesus, maybe, would come into his heart. He’d follow us out to Alma’s and get on his knees before the whole family. “I have sinned,” he’d say, and hold his hands out to me, beg my forgiveness and cry my name. Mama would say no. My aunts would say no. My uncles, Reese, the minister, everyone in the world would stand up and say no. But I would pull myself up from my sickbed. I would look right into his eyes, into the lamps of his soul.
Yes, I would say.
Yes. I forgive you.
Then probably I would die.
I almost laughed, my shoulders shook. The pain was hot and took the story away so fast I made a little sound. I swallowed hard, determined not to cry. Mama reached over for me. Her face looked old, very old and tired. It made my heart hurt to see her look that way. I couldn’t hurt her, I couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t, honey, don’t. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Her lips were swollen where she had bitten them, and I felt my own lips swollen and cracked against my teeth.
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