Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Uncle Earle liked Glen Waddell well enough, but like Granny he didn’t think much of the Waddell family. He’d even said so to Glen’s face, but the boy had just grinned at him, and that didn’t seem right. Even if he didn’t get on with his people, Earle believed that Glen shouldn’t let anybody bad-mouth them. If they had traded a few punches over it, bled on each other a little and made up after, the whole thing would have felt better to Earle all around. But Glen was a quiet sort who never fought in friendly style. He either gave you that slow grin or went all out and tried to kill you. The latter earned him a little respect, Earle admitted. The cops had had to be called on Glen once at the foundry before he left to take the job at the RC Cola plant. Glen was a grown man, a working man, and he loved Anney Boatwright. Everybody knew that, even Granny. “Now, Earle, don’t you be making no trouble.” Granny pushed her hair back behind her ears and smoothed down the wrinkles on her green print blouse. “I want Alma to get pictures of everybody. I want a book of family pictures for my cedar chest.” Earle laughed and sneaked around to poke Alma while she was focusing on Granny and Mama, then chased Reese and me out into the yard, catching Reese and throwing her up in the air so high she flapped her arms like she was going to fly. I dodged them and cut through the bushes, ignoring the brambles that caught in the skirt of the new dress Mama had made me wear. From the other side of Earle’s truck, I stood and looked back at them, Granny up on the porch with her hesitant uncertain smile, and Mama down on the steps in her new blouse with Glen in that short brush haircut, while Alma posed on the walkway focusing up at them. Everybody looked nervous but determined, Mama stiff in Glen’s awkward embrace and Glen almost stumbling off the steps as he tried to turn his face away from the camera. It made my neck go tight just to look at them. Only Earle and Reese were relaxed, Reese shrieking and giggling, still up in Earle’s arms, her legs outstretched as he spun the two of them around and around on the wet grass in the bright sunlight. “Bone, Bone,” Reese screamed. “Oh, Bone, help me! Help me!” “I’m gonna fly you to the stars, little girl,” Uncle Earle teased through clenched teeth, making Reese scream all the louder. The words were barely out of his mouth when he slipped in the grass, coming down hard on his butt. His legs flew straight out in front of him, and Reese landed safely on his lap, her scream turning to a giggle as Earle started to curse. “Goddam, I’ve ruined these britches now.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “She might, but she might not. Among our people hair stays blond sometimes.” Mrs. Parsons tried to smile at Mama, but her face didn’t soften until she looked down at Reese. I was sitting on the arm of the sofa next to Mama, where I could look out the window to see the waiting truck and the empty road all the way up to the next intersection. I kept listening for the sound of the Pontiac, hoping not to hear it. Daddy Glen might come home while Mrs. Parsons was still here, and I knew Mama was worried about that, her hands pulling again at her belt loops nervously. Mrs. Parsons looked over at Mama’s hands and then spoke carefully. “That money’s all there’s gonna be, I’m afraid. My property an’t worth much, and truth is I signed it over to Matthew just after my boys died. Matthew’s promised to take care of me, and I trust that he will. Thing is, Lyle didn’t have no title to the land and no other insurance as far as we know.” Mama shook her head once and looked up directly into Mrs. Parsons’s face. “I know he didn’t have nothing,” she said. “I knew that when he died, and it’s never mattered to me. Didn’t expect his death benefit, to tell you the truth. Thought he wasn’t entitled to nothing from the army.” Her face looked sad but not so stiff as it had. Mrs. Parsons’s face was a match for hers. “I wish you would get lots and lots of money from the insurance.” Reese wiggled happily in Grandma Parsons’s arms and beamed at all of us. “Oh, I don’t need no money, child.” Grandma Parsons laughed and pushed herself up off the couch. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get going, Anney. It’s a long trip for me to get home.” I looked closely at Mama to see if she had heard the old woman say her name, but Mama was already up and reaching for Mrs. Parsons’s glass. “Don’t you want more?” Mama was saying as she headed for the kitchen. Mrs. Parsons shook her head and said no while hanging on to Reese. I saw Mama’s shoulders relax a little as she turned to come back to us. The road outside was still quiet. Grandma Parsons bent over to hug Reese tightly one more time. “You just remember, honey, I got the best of Lyle when I got you,” she told her. That sounded strange to me, as if she’d hatched my baby sister herself off her boy’s dead frame. But Reese grinned like a princess and wiggled her toes into the nap of the rug. She followed Grandma Parsons out to the truck begging her to stay over. “Reese, be good,” Mama told her. “You can see your grandma next month when we go up to her place.” “You will come?” Mrs. Parsons looked sad and nervous all over again.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  In the second century there was, however, no canon of prescribed texts because there was, as yet, no standard form of Christianity. Marcion (c. 100–165), who held many gnostic ideas, wanted to sever the link between Christianity and the Hebrew scriptures, since he believed that Christianity was an entirely new religion. Marcion wrote his own gospel, based on the epistles of Paul and an expurgated reading of Luke. This made many Christians deeply uneasy about their relationship with Judaism. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons (c. 140–200) was appalled by both Marcion and the Gnostics and insisted on the link between the old scriptures and the new. He compiled a list of approved texts in which we see the future New Testament in embryo. It began with the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – in that order – continued with the Acts of the Apostles (a history of the early church), included epistles by Paul, James, Peter and John, and concluded with two prophetic descriptions of the end: Revelation and the Shepherd of Hermas. But the canon was not fixed until well into the fourth century. Some of Irenaeus’s chosen books, such as the Shepherd of Hermas, would be rejected and others, such as Hebrews and the epistle of Jude, would be added to Irenaeus’s list. The Christian scriptures were written at different times, in different regions and for very different audiences, but they shared a common language and set of symbols, derived from the Law and the Prophets as well as the Late Second Temple texts. They brought together ideas that originally had no connection with one another – son of God, son of man, messiah and kingdom – into a new synthesis.51 The authors did not argue this logically but simply juxtaposed these images so repeatedly that they merged together in the reader’s mind.52 There was no uniform view of Jesus. Paul had called him the ‘son of God’, but had used the title in its traditional Jewish sense: Jesus was a human being who had a special relationship to God, like the ancient kings of Israel, and had been raised by him to uniquely high status.53 Paul never claimed that Jesus was God. Matthew, Mark and Luke, who are known as the ‘synoptics’ because they ‘see things together’, also used the title ‘son of God’ in this way, but they also implied that Jesus was Daniel’s ‘son of man’, which gave him an eschatological dimension.54 John, who represented a different Christian tradition, saw Jesus as the incarnation of the Word and Wisdom of God which had existed before the creation of the world.55 When the final editors of the New Testament put these texts together, they were not disturbed by these discrepancies. Jesus had become too immense a phenomenon in the minds of Christians to be tied to a single definition.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The title of ‘messiah’ was crucial. Once Jesus had been identified as God’s ‘anointed’ (christos), the Christian writers gave the term a radically new meaning. They read the Hebrew scriptures in Greek and whenever they found a reference to a christos – be it a king, prophet or priest – they immediately interpreted it as a coded reference to Jesus. They were also attracted to the mysterious figure of the servant in Second Isaiah, whose suffering had redeemed the world. The servant had not been a messianic figure, but by constantly comparing the servant with Jesus christos, using the same ‘blurring’ technique, they established for the first time the idea of a suffering messiah. Thus three separate figures – servant, messiah and Jesus – became inseparable in the Christian imagination.56 So thorough was the Christians’ pesher exegesis that there is scarcely a verse in the New Testament that did not refer to the older scriptures. The four evangelists seemed to use the Septuagint as another source for the biography of Jesus. As a result it is difficult to disentangle fact from exegesis. Did his executioners really give Jesus vinegar to drink and cast lots for his garments or was this incident suggested by certain verses from the Psalms?57 Did Matthew tell the story of the virgin birth of Jesus simply because Isaiah had prophesied that a ‘virgin’ would conceive and bear a son called ImmanuEl (the Septuagint translated the Hebrew almah, ‘young woman’ as parthenos, ‘virgin’)?58 Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that it would be possible to construct an entire gospel from the Jewish scriptures, without quoting a single word by Jesus himself.59 We do not know who wrote the gospels. When they first appeared, they circulated anonymously and were only later attributed to important figures in the early church.60 The authors were Jewish Christians,61 who wrote in Greek and lived in the Hellenistic cities of the Roman empire. They were not only creative writers – each with his own particular bias – but also skilled redactors who edited earlier material. Mark wrote in about 70; Matthew and Luke in the late 80s, and John in the late 90s. All four gospels reflect the terror and anxiety of this traumatic period. The Jewish people were in turmoil. The war with Rome had divided families and communities and all the different sects had to rethink their relationship with the temple tradition. But the apokalypsis of the ruined shrine seemed so compelling to the Christians that they felt inspired to proclaim the messiahship of Jesus, whose mission, they believed, had been bound up with the temple.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] I spent the night before the funeral with Aunt Raylene over at Aunt Ruth’s place, helping her clean things up a bit and cook a ham and two different casseroles, one with noodles and cheese and one big vegetable mix with a cornmeal crust. Deedee had spent the evening locked in her bedroom playing the radio, and Travis was still down at the funeral home when Aunt Raylene made me go to bed. I woke up late and had to hurry to get a bath while Aunt Raylene cooked some biscuits and a pan of bacon. I’d been careful the night before not to let Raylene see the bruises on my legs when she had put me to bed in Butch’s old room. She had been so distracted she’d noticed nothing. This morning I had no appetite but ate a bacon biscuit dutifully and drank the rest of Aunt Raylene’s coffee while she finished getting dressed. Then I went out on the porch to wait for her. The radio was playing “Get a Job” by the Silhouettes, the chorus staccato and driven, echoing loud in the early morning. Deedee was sitting in the porch rocker in her nightgown with her hair still done up in pin curls. “I hate that damn hillbilly music, always have,” she told me conversationally while I stared at her. “You got to get dressed. Aunt Raylene is just about ready to go.” I looked around for somebody else, but Uncle Travis’s truck was still gone and there was no one else there. Deedee looked like she hadn’t slept. She was smoking an unfiltered Chesterfield, her hand trembling slightly as she sucked intently on it, and her eyes bloodshot and squinted against the sunlight. “But that’s all the music Mama would ever play,” she went on as if I hadn’t said a thing. “Howling, yodeling, whining music, trashy music. Get mad every time I played my stations, called it nigger music. Told me it would ruin me. Like she hadn’t told me time and time again I was ruined already.” Deedee had one leg drawn up so that her arm was propped on her knee, the cigarette poised just in front of her mouth. An almost empty pack was in her other hand, and there was a box of kitchen matches on the floor beside a saucer full of ashes. The radio paused, pulsed, and the music changed. “Elvis Presley and the Jordanaires,” the DJ announced, “at the fairgrounds in Spartanburg this Sunday afternoon. I’m gonna be there, you can bet on it. Now here’s the man himself.” The music that had been playing softly in the background came up loud now. “I got a woman mean as she can be…” “I’ve seen Elvis now three times. What you think about that, Bonehead? You like Elvis?” Deedee looked at me almost hatefully. I shrugged. “Well enough. I an’t never seen him.” “You an’t never seen anything.” “No.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Everything in that picture was clear, sharp, in focus, the contrast so strong you could trace the lines where sunlight sheared off and shade began. There was a blush on Mama’s cheek like the shadow of a bird, polka dots on her seersucker blouse, a raised nap on her dark calf-length skirt, and a fine part in her brushed-back blond hair. Mama was beautiful in it, no question, though there was a puffiness under her eyes and a tightness in the muscles of her neck that made her chin stick out. But her smile was full, her eyes clear, and you could see right into her, see how gentle she was in the way her neck angled as she looked past Glen to Reese and me, the way her hands lay open on her lap, the fingers slightly bent as if they were ready to catch the sunlight. Beside Mama, Glen was half in shadow with his head turned to the side, but the light shone on his smile, his cheek, his strong hands and slender frame. The smile was determined, tight, forceful, the eyes brilliant in the camera lens, gleaming in the sun’s glare, the shoulders tense and hunched forward a little, one arm extended to hold Mama close, reaching around her from where he sat to her left. You could not tell a thing about Glen from that picture, except that he was a good-looking man, strong and happy to be holding his woman. Mama’s eyes were soft with old hurt and new hope; Glen’s eyes told nothing. The man’s image was as flat and empty as a sheet of tin in the sun, throwing back heat and light, but no details—not one clear line of who he really was behind those eyes. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live with him once the honeymoon was past. I looked at the picture again and remembered the day of the picnic, the way he kept pulling Mama back against him, his hands cupped over her belly possessively. I had heard Alma tease Mama the day before the wedding that she better hurry up and get married before she started showing. Mama had gotten all upset, demanding to know how Alma had found out she was pregnant. I wondered if she had told Glen yet. “Come on, girls.” Glen’s voice when he called Reese and me for the picture had had a loud impatient note I had never heard before. I’d come back around Earle’s truck at a walk and looked into his face carefully. Yes, he knew. He was so pleased with himself, he looked swollen with satisfaction under that terrible haircut. Mama had said he wanted her to have his son, and it looked to me like he was sure he had it on the way.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Mama started taking me with her to the diner. There I could earn my own money washing dishes, money Mama didn’t make me save for clothes but let me spend as I pleased, mostly on secondhand books from racks at the thrift store that I could then trade in at the paperback exchange. Reese complained that I never played with her anymore, that I was always working or reading or sleeping. When school let out for the summer, I found a hiding place in the woods near Aunt Alma’s where I could camp for hours with a bag of Hershey Kisses and a book. The librarian gave me Black Beauty, Robinson Crusoe, and Tom Sawyer. On my own I found copies of Not as a Stranger, The Naked and the Dead, This Gun for Hire, and Marjorie Morningstar. I climbed up a tree to read the sexy parts over, drank water out of the creek, and only went home at dark. Mama was still worried about me, I could tell. “Honey, are you all right?” she asked me one morning. I just shrugged and went back to the paperback copy of The Secret Garden I’d never returned to the school library. She pushed the book down and took it away, making me look at her. Her face was thinner, her skin rougher, and there were shadows under her eyes that never went away. People no longer talked about how beautiful she was, but about how beautiful she had been. “I want you to do something for me.” She looked down at the book in her hands, at her fingers tracing the cracked spine and tape-wrapped cover. I gritted my teeth, afraid of what she might ask. “Your aunt Ruth isn’t doing well, you know. She’s gotten a lot weaker this summer, Travis says.” That surprised me. I had thought Mama would want to talk about how withdrawn I had become, how I never watched television with them now, or played with Reese or talked to anybody. Besides, Aunt Ruth had been sick so long everybody took it for granted. Could she really be that much worse? “Now that Deedee and Butch are gone, Travis worries about Ruth when she’s home alone. He asked me if you might not be willing to stay out there for a while, at least until she’s better.” Mama opened The Secret Garden to the place where I had slipped my bookmark, a piece of ribbon embossed with the Piggly Wiggly logo. “What do you think?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I said automatically. I hadn’t seen Aunt Ruth in a while, not since the day after Christmas, when Mama had taken us over to Aunt Alma’s for dinner with all her sisters. Even then Aunt Ruth had been thin and weak, her fingers blue and swollen where they lay in her lap. What would I do if she got worse while I was with her? What if she were to die?

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Every time we went to see Mrs. Parsons, Daddy Glen would whine that Mama shouldn’t be running up there to that hateful old woman. “I don’t like that old biddy telling stories on you,” he kept saying, imagining that Grandma Parsons damned him and Mama as soon as Mama was out of the sound of her voice. I didn’t bother to tell him that she never spoke about them at all, that she talked about everyday stuff, how the garden was going or the weather or the cow’s disposition. The only grown-up she ever mentioned was Reese’s daddy, Lyle, and then only to say Reese had his smile—the soft, slow baby grin she told us had made Lyle the best-loved boy in the county. It was Mama who told us Lyle had been the youngest of three boys, and that the two others had died within a year of Grandma Parsons’s favorite. She told us to be kind to Mrs. Parsons, who was left with only one daughter she never saw and a couple of brothers who were waiting to sell off her land when she died. “Reese should get a share of that land,” Daddy Glen told Mama one autumn afternoon when we came back from visiting up in the hills. “Not that she’ll ever need anything from those stuck-up mountain people.” He rubbed at the back of his neck and looked out through the kitchen window as if he were looking into the future. “Still, it’s only right she gets what her daddy would have wanted her to have. You let me deal with them. I’ll take care of our girl.” When Grandma Parsons’s brother, Matthew, came by with some papers for Mama to sign, Daddy Glen met him at the door and took the papers in hand. “We’ll just look at these,” he said loudly, and then walked him out to the edge of the property, lowering his voice so we couldn’t hear what he said. Mama bit her lips and watched as the stiff-backed Matthew glared at Daddy Glen and then climbed into his truck. She went out as the truck drove off. “Honey, you didn’t say nothing rude to him, did you?” Daddy Glen turned to her with a sweet little smile. He put his arm around her and kissed her on the temple. “Don’t you worry,” he said, and gave her a quick pat on the behind. “I know what I’m doing. You got to be clear with these people, real clear.” He looked so pleased with himself that he couldn’t stop grinning. “I know their type. I sure do.” Mama frowned, and he gave her a little shake. “Now, don’t you go signing none of those papers when I’m not here. I’m telling you, you don’t know what they might be stealing from you. Let me handle it.” She nodded nervously, shooing us back in the house for dinner.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I was walking home slowly, trying to keep my skirt from blowing up in the wind and thinking about the luxury of an hour or two before Reese would get home, a solid piece of time when I would be able to lie around on the couch, listen to the radio, drink Coca-Cola, and read the paperback of The Group I had finally managed to sneak out of the library. Walking up past Woolworth’s in the fresh spring breeze, I was carrying my shoes and tugging at my hem when I saw Mama running down the stairs from the apartment. She was still wearing her hair net and flat white shoes, so she couldn’t have been home very long. From the way she was moving, something had to be wrong, so I picked up and ran, reaching the car just as she did. Even so, she had the Pontiac engine roaring by the time I grabbed the door handle. I jumped in and threw my books in the backseat before she could stop me, but I was still surprised when she didn’t tell me to get out, just gunned the engine so that the wheels spun as we pulled out onto the highway. “It’s your Aunt Alma,” she said. “Little Earle called. Sounded terrible. Couldn’t even get out what had happened, so don’t ask.” Mama looked stern—scared and angry at the same time. I wondered what was wrong, if it was something Uncle Wade had done, or maybe one of the cousins. It could be anything with the way Aunt Alma had been since Annie died. “Don’t we just lead charmed lives?” Aunt Alma had said the last time we saw her. “Bad things seem to be happening all the time.” I concentrated on gripping the door handle while Mama roared out toward the West Greenville Highway. She took the Old Henderson Road turnoff, past the gas station where Uncle Wade had been working before his accident, and turned onto the dirt road that cut through open country where the interstate was supposed to go in next year. Aunt Alma had gotten a deal on one of the condemned farmhouses out there, and had moved in after Ruth died. Little Earle was waiting for us beside the cow grate down near the mailbox, his face white and his shirt streaked with muddy brown stains. There was snot all over his upper lip, and he kept wiping his hands down over his middle where the worst of the mud had smeared. Mama didn’t get out of the car, just stopped for a minute and leaned out the window. “You all right?” she yelled, and he nodded. He sure didn’t look all right to me.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “It’ll be all right,” Mama kept telling Reese and me, but she didn’t explain how. When Reese cried and said she wanted to go home, Mama held her and promised to let her stay with Patsy Ruth this summer. I sat at the table and watched them across the room, remembering the last time Mama had run away from Daddy Glen. It had only been a few days. This was now over a week. How much longer would she last? Another week? A month? I dug my nails into the soft skin inside my elbows and rocked a little on the chair. I wouldn’t cry, not where Mama could see me. I wouldn’t cry. For Reese the whole thing had been an adventure until Mama refused to let her go over to sign her name on Uncle Wade’s cast. Three days after the funeral Uncle Wade had shot himself in his right foot, and was stuck home limping around with his leg in a big cast the boys had plastered all over with oil and gas decals from the service station. We’d heard all about it from Little Earle at school, but Mama ignored Reese’s begging and brought home a couple of paint-by-number sets for us instead. “I don’t want you going nowhere that I can’t come keep an eye on you,” she told Reese. When Aunt Raylene came over, Mama didn’t even invite her inside, just spoke through the door. “Let us be, Raylene. Just let me be for a while. I need some time to think.” “Anney, you can’t hide away like you some criminal.” Aunt Raylene sounded impatient. “You an’t the one done nothing wrong. You an’t the one at fault.” “I don’t care who’s at fault,” Mama yelled. “I just need to be left alone!” Aunt Raylene called Mama’s name softly twice more but finally went slowly down the stairs and drove away. We all shared one big bed, but most nights Mama would fall asleep on the couch, one arm thrown over her face so it covered her eyes. That night Mama lay on the couch, and cried so quietly I could just barely hear her through the closed door. I curled up on the far side of the bed and listened to the small sounds of her weeping until I fell asleep and dreamed that the walls of the apartment fell away and you could see all the way out to the house where Daddy Glen was sitting up staring through the open windows waiting for us to come back. When I woke up in the early dawn, I went to make sure Mama was all right. I tried to be quiet, but she was awake, lying there looking up at the dirty gray ceiling. “Bone,” she whispered. “It’s too early. What are you doing up?” I hesitated. I wanted her arms around me but I stood there rigidly, mouth shut tight, eyes dry.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Aunt Ruth took a sip of tea and shook the glass. “You want something to drink, Anney? Bone made me up a fresh pitcher this morning, got lots of sugar and lemon in it.” “Lord, yes. It might have cooled down a bit, but it’s still hot enough.” I jumped up, slapping my hands against my jeans to loosen the dirt. “But don’t put too much ice in it,” she called. She didn’t have to say that. I knew how Mama liked her ice tea. I took a lemon and cut six paper-thin slices from the middle, dropped them in a glass, and squeezed the rest of the juice over them. Three cubes of ice on that, then I poured the sweet tea up to the rim of the glass. I sipped it as I carried it to the porch. I heard them before I stepped through the door. “You think it’s gonna last?” Aunt Ruth’s voice was soft, Mama’s reply even softer. “I sure hope. You know what his daddy’s like, but Glen’s like a new man since he started this job. He’s sure this shows how much his daddy cares about him, hiring him on and giving him his own route. Doesn’t even seem to matter that he’s getting less money than the other routemen, says that’s just to prove he an’t getting no special treatment.” “Sounds special to me, sounds nasty. The whole bunch of them make my bones hurt.” “Oh, Ruth. I don’t know.” I put my head against the screen and waited. “Glen’s had so much trouble, been through so many jobs. An’t many people would take him on at all at this point, and God knows, he’s trying so hard. He’s out of the house at dawn, don’t get home till after sundown, goes in on weekends to do maintenance on his truck. He wants to do good, he wants to prove himself. He acts like a different man.” “Well.” Aunt Ruth sounded less sure of herself than Mama did. “He ask about Bone?” There was a pause. I put my teeth on the rim of Mama’s glass. “He an’t mentioned her once since she came over here.” Mama’s voice had dropped even more. Now it was a whisper. “He’s good as gold with Reese. But it’s like he don’t even remember Bone, like she was run off or dead, somebody we’re not supposed to mention at all. I tell you, Ruth, I don’t know what to do some days.” “Doesn’t sound like you have a lot of choice, honey.” Aunt Ruth’s voice was kind but firm. “You knew when you went back what the problem was. I can’t say whether he’s a good or a bad man. I know you love him, like I know I don’t much care for him myself…” “Ruth…” “No, listen to me. I an’t gonna tell you to leave him.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Lord, yes. It might have cooled down a bit, but it’s still hot enough.” I jumped up, slapping my hands against my jeans to loosen the dirt. “But don’t put too much ice in it,” she called. She didn’t have to say that. I knew how Mama liked her ice tea. I took a lemon and cut six paper-thin slices from the middle, dropped them in a glass, and squeezed the rest of the juice over them. Three cubes of ice on that, then I poured the sweet tea up to the rim of the glass. I sipped it as I carried it to the porch. I heard them before I stepped through the door. “You think it’s gonna last?” Aunt Ruth’s voice was soft, Mama’s reply even softer. “I sure hope. You know what his daddy’s like, but Glen’s like a new man since he started this job. He’s sure this shows how much his daddy cares about him, hiring him on and giving him his own route. Doesn’t even seem to matter that he’s getting less money than the other routemen, says that’s just to prove he an’t getting no special treatment.” “Sounds special to me, sounds nasty. The whole bunch of them make my bones hurt.” “Oh, Ruth. I don’t know.” I put my head against the screen and waited. “Glen’s had so much trouble, been through so many jobs. An’t many people would take him on at all at this point, and God knows, he’s trying so hard. He’s out of the house at dawn, don’t get home till after sundown, goes in on weekends to do maintenance on his truck. He wants to do good, he wants to prove himself. He acts like a different man.” “Well.” Aunt Ruth sounded less sure of herself than Mama did. “He ask about Bone?” There was a pause. I put my teeth on the rim of Mama’s glass. “He an’t mentioned her once since she came over here.” Mama’s voice had dropped even more. Now it was a whisper. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] “He’s good as gold with Reese. But it’s like he don’t even remember Bone, like she was run off or dead, somebody we’re not supposed to mention at all. I tell you, Ruth, I don’t know what to do some days.” “Doesn’t sound like you have a lot of choice, honey.” Aunt Ruth’s voice was kind but firm. “You knew when you went back what the problem was. I can’t say whether he’s a good or a bad man. I know you love him, like I know I don’t much care for him myself…” “Ruth…”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Oh, Lord.” Maybelle shook her head. “I don’t want to fight you, Alma. And maybe you’re right. I know how lonely Anney’s been. I know.” She pulled her hands free, tucked some loose gray hairs up in the bun at the back of her neck, and turned to her sister. “We got to think about this, Marvella. We got to think hard about our girl.” They did what they could. The sisters sent Mama a wedding present, a love knot Marvella had made using some of her own hair, after Maybelle had cut little notches in their rabbits’ ears under a new moon, adding the blood to the knot. She set the rabbits loose, and then the two of them tore up half a dozen rows of their beans and buried honeycomb in a piece of lace tablecloth where the beans had flourished. The note with the love knot told Mama that she should keep it under the mattress of the new bed Glen had bought, but Mama sniffed the blood and dried hair, and shook her head over the thing. She couldn’t quite bring herself to throw it away, but she put it in one of her flower pots out in the utility room where Glen wouldn’t find it stinking up their house. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Reese and I hated the honeymoon. We both thought we would get to go. For weeks before the wedding Mama kept telling us that this was a marriage of all of us, that we were taking Glen as our daddy at the same time she was taking him as a husband. She and Alma had even sewed us up little lace veils to wear as we walked ahead of her at the wedding, Reese carrying flowers while I carried the rings. But Mama and Glen left halfway through Aunt Alma’s dinner, with only one quick kiss goodbye. “Why don’t we get to go?” Reese kept demanding while everybody laughed at her. I got so mad I hid in Alma’s sewing room and cried myself to sleep in her rocker. When I woke up I was on her daybed with a quilt across me and the house quiet. I got Alma’s picture album out and climbed into the rocker. The new pictures from the picnic were at the back. There were half a dozen snapshots of Reese and me, alone, together, and with Granny or Earle. There was only one good one of Glen and Mama, only one in which you could see her smile and his eyes. In most of them, Mama’s head was bent so that only her chin showed, or Glen’s face was turned away so that you saw only the pale line of his neck and ear under his new haircut. Because of that, perhaps, the good picture was even more startling.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Hell no, she tried to get Alma out of the house so she could give up the furniture quietly. She didn’t care what happened, didn’t care that the furniture-store man really was trying to rob her mama, just didn’t want the neighbors to think they couldn’t keep up the payments.” “As if everybody didn’t know it already. You can’t keep secrets like that.” “Well, you and I don’t even try. And certainly Alma don’t. She knows who she is. But it’s different for the kids. Seems like they’re all the time wanting just what they can’t have, and they’ve got such a funny dose of pride.” “No pride at all or too much, I can’t tell sometimes.” “Different from us is all, maybe.” Aunt Raylene’s face went slack and her voice dropped. “Look at your girls too, Anney. I’ve seen it in them. Not like Temple. No. But something. Something hard and angry that only shows now and again.” They went quiet and looked over at me. I tried to pretend I hadn’t been listening, concentrating on waving the steam away so that I could see down into the pot. But if I slanted my eyes sideways, I could still see them clear. Through the steam they both looked older—two worn, tired women repeating old stories to each other and trying not to worry too much about things they couldn’t change anyway. It struck me then how young they both were to be looking so old, neither of them as old as Madeline, Mama not yet twenty-six and Aunt Raylene less than ten years older. Still, they seemed so different from me, almost as if they had come out of another century. I wished then that I could be more like them, easier in my body and not so angry all the time. Too much pride or too little? What was wrong with me? I wondered. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] After all the peaches had been canned, the tomatoes and the snap peas, Aunt Raylene did the rest of the fruit, the plums and the apples and the blackberries. The days were full of sweat and steam and boiling pots. I spent every minute I was not in school planted on a stool in her kitchen, peeling or scrubbing or watching pots while Aunt Raylene told me stories and my neck cramped with worry. I was afraid somebody would find my hook under her porch, but I couldn’t get it out of there until the canning was done. If one of the uncles found that hook, I knew Aunt Raylene would figure out that it was me who had brought it up out of the cellar. One early evening when we were almost finished putting up the canned fruit racks, Grey came into the kitchen, his face so bright it jumped out at me. His grin was spread so wide I gave him a shove before Aunt Raylene could see. “You found it!” I hissed at him.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “You got to get the tomatoes almost done before you put the eggs in, ‘cause you don’t cook the eggs much at all. Want them soft. Want them to melt like butter between your teeth and your tongue.” She spooned me out a scoop of eggs and put two biscuits on the plate next to the soft browned tomatoes. Reese spread butter on her biscuits and poured a big dollop of jelly next to her eggs. My stomach was so tight I didn’t see how I could eat, but Mama sat right across from me and smiled so wide I knew I had to eat it all. I did, slowly, while Daddy Glen sat silent in the next room and Mama went on talking like he wasn’t there at all. My eyes kept sliding over to where his hands gripped his thighs. I curled mine under the table, rubbed my leg muscles. The biscuits stuffed me but didn’t satisfy. Once I started eating I could not get full. Reese seemed to feel the same way. She ate until her eyes looked swollen shut from too much food. Then she lay her face down on the table as if she were going to nap right there. Mama smiled at her and reached over to tuck her lank blond hair behind her ears where it couldn’t fall in her eyes. She buttered all the biscuits that were left and wrapped them in a towel to keep for morning. All the time she went on talking about nothing in particular, about her mama and meals she had watched her aunts cook up late at night, about a noise the Pontiac had started to make, and how she really needed to clean out the trap on the washing machine. I listened to Mama with my mouth open. It felt like there was a wind blowing from my neck down to my belly, hot and chill at the same time, dropping little sparks into my nervous system. Finally Mama put Reese and me to bed together, sitting up beside us as if she were going to spend all night there. I could hear the television set still playing softly in the front room, and I tried to stay awake, but the food was like a drug in my system. I slid off into the dark and a dream of great soft strangling clouds lying like fogbanks on a field of blackberries. I woke up to Reese’s swollen frightened face and the low angry sound of Daddy Glen’s voice down the hall. I linked my fingers with Reese’s and prayed for silence, closing my eyes so tight my ears buzzed.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Reese and I never talked about our private games, our separate hours alone in the bedroom. These days we barely talked at all. But we made sure no one else ever went in the bedroom when one of us was there alone. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] It was the worst time for Reese and me to be fighting. Neither of us was ever supposed to be home in the afternoon without the other, but I couldn’t tell when she might blow up at me and run off somewhere. Daddy Glen had gotten his dairy routes changed and no longer had a full schedule. He’d been coming home a lot in the afternoons and had gone back to looking worried all the time. He’d yell at me one day that I was getting too big to run around in a T-shirt with no bra, and the next accuse me of pretending to be grown-up. Mama said he was fighting with his daddy and we were to stay out of his way until things settled down. But Aunt Alma and Uncle Wade were fighting again too, so I couldn’t hang around over there, and Aunt Ruth was really sick now. “You go out to Raylene’s,” she told me finally. “You never sent me to Raylene’s before,” I complained. “I thought you didn’t want me going out to her place.” I was hoping she’d let me come to the diner again and work in the kitchen. I liked it down there. I liked listening to the waitresses tell jokes and watching the truckers flirt with Mama like she was still the prettiest woman in the county. “I never said that. I an’t never said nothing to you about Raylene.” I could tell Mama was angry from the high pitch of her voice. “Did somebody say something to you about Raylene?” “No, Mama.” “You sure?” Mama took hold of my wrist so hard my skin burned. “You sure?” “What would anyone say about Raylene?” Mama let go of my arm. “Never mind asking questions. Just don’t you go making things up, little girl. You’re not too big to have your britches warmed.” “I’m sorry. But you never sent me out to Raylene’s before.” “Well, maybe I didn’t think you were old enough to be staying out on the river before.” Mama was exasperated and impatient. She pushed her hair back with both hands and wiped her lips. “Garvey’s doing some work for Mr. Berdforth’s service station these afternoons after he gets out of school. He can give you a ride, and I should hope I can trust you not to get in any trouble while you’re there.” [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Garvey was happy to give me a lift to Aunt Raylene’s place, particularly after Mama gave him a dollar for gas money. “I an’t making no real money cleaning up for Mr. Berdforth,” he told me. “Man’s as cheap as they come. But at least I’m learning something. Daddy says a mechanic can always find a job.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  It was Mama who told us Lyle had been the youngest of three boys, and that the two others had died within a year of Grandma Parsons’s favorite. She told us to be kind to Mrs. Parsons, who was left with only one daughter she never saw and a couple of brothers who were waiting to sell off her land when she died. “Reese should get a share of that land,” Daddy Glen told Mama one autumn afternoon when we came back from visiting up in the hills. “Not that she’ll ever need anything from those stuck-up mountain people.” He rubbed at the back of his neck and looked out through the kitchen window as if he were looking into the future. “Still, it’s only right she gets what her daddy would have wanted her to have. You let me deal with them. I’ll take care of our girl.” When Grandma Parsons’s brother, Matthew, came by with some papers for Mama to sign, Daddy Glen met him at the door and took the papers in hand. “We’ll just look at these,” he said loudly, and then walked him out to the edge of the property, lowering his voice so we couldn’t hear what he said. Mama bit her lips and watched as the stiff-backed Matthew glared at Daddy Glen and then climbed into his truck. She went out as the truck drove off. “Honey, you didn’t say nothing rude to him, did you?” Daddy Glen turned to her with a sweet little smile. He put his arm around her and kissed her on the temple. “Don’t you worry,” he said, and gave her a quick pat on the behind. “I know what I’m doing. You got to be clear with these people, real clear.” He looked so pleased with himself that he couldn’t stop grinning. “I know their type. I sure do.” Mama frowned, and he gave her a little shake. “Now, don’t you go signing none of those papers when I’m not here. I’m telling you, you don’t know what they might be stealing from you. Let me handle it.” She nodded nervously, shooing us back in the house for dinner. Grandma Parsons called that night, but Daddy Glen took the phone and talked to her in a quiet husky voice that reminded me of the way Uncle Nevil would sometimes whisper from behind his cupped hand. “Uh-huh,” he said. “That’s right.” Mama watched for a moment and then stepped outside to smoke in the shelter of the side porch. I followed her out and leaned into her hip. Her hand stroked down the back of my head, smoothing out my hair. Her face was lit by the reflection from the streetlight, her mouth turned down and her eyes sad. I could tell she was worried. “It’ll be okay,” I whispered up at her, and she smiled back down at me. “Yeah, probably,” she said. “And if it won’t, it just won’t.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Earle laughed and sneaked around to poke Alma while she was focusing on Granny and Mama, then chased Reese and me out into the yard, catching Reese and throwing her up in the air so high she flapped her arms like she was going to fly. I dodged them and cut through the bushes, ignoring the brambles that caught in the skirt of the new dress Mama had made me wear. From the other side of Earle’s truck, I stood and looked back at them, Granny up on the porch with her hesitant uncertain smile, and Mama down on the steps in her new blouse with Glen in that short brush haircut, while Alma posed on the walkway focusing up at them. Everybody looked nervous but determined, Mama stiff in Glen’s awkward embrace and Glen almost stumbling off the steps as he tried to turn his face away from the camera. It made my neck go tight just to look at them. Only Earle and Reese were relaxed, Reese shrieking and giggling, still up in Earle’s arms, her legs outstretched as he spun the two of them around and around on the wet grass in the bright sunlight. “Bone, Bone,” Reese screamed. “Oh, Bone, help me! Help me!” “I’m gonna fly you to the stars, little girl,” Uncle Earle teased through clenched teeth, making Reese scream all the louder. The words were barely out of his mouth when he slipped in the grass, coming down hard on his butt. His legs flew straight out in front of him, and Reese landed safely on his lap, her scream turning to a giggle as Earle started to curse. “Goddam, I’ve ruined these britches now.” “Serve you right if you did,” Granny yelled at him. “You could have killed that child. Reese, you get your little dimple ass up here with your mama.” “You come on too, Bone,” Mama called to me. “You and Reese come on up here for Alma to get a picture of the four of us together.” “Yeah, come on, girls.” Glen held on to Mama with both hands around her waist. “Smile, now, everyone,” called Alma as the shutter clicked. Bastard Out of Carolina 4 T he spring Mama married Glen Waddell, there were thunderstorms every afternoon and rolling clouds that hung around the foothills north and west to the Smokies.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  But Aunt Alma and Uncle Wade were fighting again too, so I couldn’t hang around over there, and Aunt Ruth was really sick now. “You go out to Raylene’s,” she told me finally. “You never sent me to Raylene’s before,” I complained. “I thought you didn’t want me going out to her place.” I was hoping she’d let me come to the diner again and work in the kitchen. I liked it down there. I liked listening to the waitresses tell jokes and watching the truckers flirt with Mama like she was still the prettiest woman in the county. “I never said that. I an’t never said nothing to you about Raylene.” I could tell Mama was angry from the high pitch of her voice. “Did somebody say something to you about Raylene?” “No, Mama.” “You sure?” Mama took hold of my wrist so hard my skin burned. “You sure?” “What would anyone say about Raylene?” Mama let go of my arm. “Never mind asking questions. Just don’t you go making things up, little girl. You’re not too big to have your britches warmed.” “I’m sorry. But you never sent me out to Raylene’s before.” “Well, maybe I didn’t think you were old enough to be staying out on the river before.” Mama was exasperated and impatient. She pushed her hair back with both hands and wiped her lips. “Garvey’s doing some work for Mr. Berdforth’s service station these afternoons after he gets out of school. He can give you a ride, and I should hope I can trust you not to get in any trouble while you’re there.” Garvey was happy to give me a lift to Aunt Raylene’s place, particularly after Mama gave him a dollar for gas money. “I an’t making no real money cleaning up for Mr. Berdforth,” he told me. “Man’s as cheap as they come. But at least I’m learning something. Daddy says a mechanic can always find a job.” “Yeah.” I was restless and uninterested in Garvey’s troubles. Aunt Alma joked that the twins were too lazy to fart on their own, and sometimes I thought she was right. They were certainly dumb enough. Neither of them ever read a book or talked about anything but how rich they were gonna be “someday.” Mama said you could tell they were starting to grow up by how silly they had become, that teenagers always got stupid before they got smart. I wondered if that was what was happening to me, if I had already started to get stupid and just didn’t know it. Not that it mattered. Stupid or smart, there wasn’t much choice about what was going to happen to me, or to Grey and Garvey, or to any of us. Growing up was like falling into a hole.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  She had promised me she would never do it without me, but I worried that as soon as she was a little older she would be hitchhiking all over the county. So every time we hitched a ride, I made up a new horror story. The habit was so strong in me that nervous as I was, I automatically started another one, this time about the phantom driver who went around picking up girls and skinned them like young deer, eating the meat and tanning their hides to make coin purses and pocketbooks. “He’ll never get us,” Reese laughed. “We just have to be careful never to take a ride with a man alone.” I thought about that for a moment. “Well, it an’t so easy to know who the phantom is,” I told Reese. “Sometimes he catches a married couple first, hiding in the back of their car while they’re in the gas-station bathroom. When they drive off, first he murders them and then he props them up so you’d think they were the only people in the car. That way he catches lots of people who would never get in a car with a man alone.” Reese chewed her lower lip and stared up the highway. I could see she was thinking this new information over carefully. She examined the people in the truck that stopped for us, an elderly woman in a dark blue shirtwaist dress, and a younger man in khaki work clothes. Before climbing in back she slapped the side of the cab hard enough to see both of them jump in their seats. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. The old lady scolded us for catching a ride on the highway. “You could get killed or worse,” she told us through the back window. “Young girls on the roads are an invitation to the wicked. Anything could happen to you.” We both nodded solemnly and thanked her politely when we jumped off just down the road from Aunt Alma’s place. It was past midnight when Mama came for us. Reese was asleep in Aunt Alma’s bed, but I was sitting up with Uncle Wade, nodding over the picture puzzle he worked at when he couldn’t sleep. “Girl, your mama,” he said, giving me a little push. I jerked fully awake when Mama touched my shoulder. Her hands were heavy and smelled faintly of Jergens Lotion. “Come on, Bone,” she whispered. “We’re going home.” She thanked Uncle Wade in a tired voice. Her hair was limp and her face scrubbed clean.