Fear

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)

  “God!” I screamed with all the strength I had. Not loud enough, not loud enough for anybody but me to hear, but he let go of my throat and slapped my mouth, crushing my lips into my teeth. He started a steady rhythm, “I’ll teach you, I’ll teach you,” and pounded my head against the floor. “You’ll die, you’ll die,” I screamed inside. “You will rot and stink and cave in on yourself. God will give you to me. Your bones will melt and your blood will catch fire. I’ll rip you open and feed you to the dogs. Like in the Bible, like the way it ought to be, God will give you to me. God will give you to me!” All the time my left hand was flailing, reaching, scrambling for anything, something. Where was that knife? Where was Aunt Alma? He reared up, supporting his weight on my shoulder while his hips drove his sex into me like a sword. “Give me something! Give me something!” I begged. I tried vainly to bite him, my teeth pushing up through my clamped-down lips. “Give me something!” He went rigid, head back and teeth showing between snarling lips. I could feel his thighs shaking against me as my butt slid in the blood under me. “Oh God, help me, let me kill him. Please, God. Please, God. Let me kill him. Let me die, but let me kill him.” He went limp and came down on me, rag-loose and panting. His hand dropped from my mouth, but the urge to scream was gone. Blood and juice, his sweat and mine, my blood, all over my neck and all down my thighs, the sticky stink of him between my burning legs. How had it all happened so fast? I tried to lick my lips, but my tongue was too swollen. I couldn’t feel my tongue move, just my lips opening and closing with no sound coming out. Red and black dots swam up toward the ceiling and back down toward me. Daddy Glen moved a little, mumbling something I could not understand. I saw past him the open door and the late-afternoon sun darkening. I closed my eyes, opened them, felt like I had passed out briefly. He was still on me, but something was different, some feeling in the air. I looked again to the door and saw her. Mama’s enormous white face was moving toward us where we lay, toward me. “Mama,” I tried to say, but never got it out. Glen’s body jerked above me and pulled back. The air hit me like a fist, all my wet and open places. I whimpered. He screamed. “Anney!” She hit him with something I could not see. Then she was grabbing things, canisters off the stove, pans, glasses, plates, anything she could throw at him. I smiled. The corners of my mouth tore, but it didn’t matter. “No, Anney, no!” “You monster!”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Yes,” Mama said. “I see, honey. You are. We both are. We’ll just sit here a while and wait for him.” She kept her face pressed close, not looking away from Aunt Alma’s eyes, as if only her presence was keeping Alma attached to the earth. One of the girls started whimpering over by the garden. I looked back, unable to resist the notion that everyone had gone crazy. Women all over Greenville County were going to smash stuff and then sit down to wait for Armageddon or sunrise or something. It sounded like a good idea to me. “Bone, get away from there.” It was Uncle Earle’s whisper. He was standing well back over near the stand of pines where the drive turned, his black hair gleaming in the sunlight and an expression on his face of almost comical nervousness. “Come on, girl. Get back in the car and let your mama handle this.” His hands were flat on his thighs, and his jaw was set. He looked scared, deathly scared. “I’m gonna cut his throat,” Aunt Alma said in the most reasonable voice imaginable. “I got the knife for it.” “Where is that?” Mama asked her. “In my pocket.” Aunt Alma’s hands came down, patted the skirt of her dress. Her right hand slipped into a pocket I hadn’t noticed before and came out with a razor, the straight edge closed into the handle. She flicked her wrist and it swung open, the blade shining in the sunlight. She brought her left hand up and laid the blade on her palm, looking down at it like it was beautiful. “Oh, that’ll do it,” Mama said, her voice still soft and matter-of-fact. She looked back over at me. “Bone, girl, go inside and get your aunt a glass of tea, why don’t you?” Her eyes tracked past me to Uncle Earle, and she shook her head slightly. He nodded and started backing away toward the pines. “We should get you cleaned up a little, Alma. You look like you got caught in a storm.” She gave a soft little laugh and pulled gently at her sister’s arms. Alma shuddered and hunched over the razor. Mama went still, her face carefully empty.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  She waved the tines up close to Grey’s face. “You think this is a big old fishhook? Well, it an’t. It’s for trawling, for dragging. You go down in the river and they’ll use something like this to pull you up in chunks. Pull you loose from the junk in that deep mud. Pull you up in pieces, you hear me? Nasty slices of you, little boy, for your mama to cry over.” Aunt Raylene’s tale didn’t really scare us. When I tried to imagine my flesh in pieces it was like a cartoon, completely unreal, but in the night stringy terrible pieces of meat loomed in my dreams. The hooks got in my dreams too, dripping blood and river mud. Maybe it hadn’t been fish parts I’d cleaned out of them. It could have been anything. I made up stories about where those hooks had come from, who had lost them, until Patsy Ruth got nightmares. She dreamed that she had drowned in the river and the morticians had to sew pieces of her back together to look like somebody. Only they had to sew different people’s pieces together just to make up one reasonable body to bury to show her mama. When she told Aunt Alma, Alma told me to stop making up such gruesome stories. Aunt Raylene put a lock on her cellar door to keep all of us away from the hooks, and everyone seemed to forget them. But a few weeks later, I started to dream about them again. This time their razor points whistled when the wind blew, and the steel edges reflected light where there was none. I would wake up from those dreams with my teeth aching, my ears throbbing as if there were a wind blowing on me, stinking, cold, and constant. I wanted one of those hooks, wanted it for my own, that cold sharp metal where I could put out my hand and touch it at any time. I started going over to Aunt Raylene’s place every chance I got, hanging out and being helpful. I pulled weeds and picked tomatoes, corn, and peppers. When canning started, I was there to boil the mason jars and melt the wax while Raylene cut and chopped at her kitchen table. I brought the fruit jars up from the cellar. I brought up the wax, the rubber seals, and the metal racks, and when Aunt Raylene went out to put her neck under the old water pump on the far side of the house, I brought up one of the hooks. I hid it under the porch before anyone could see, laughing because it was so easy to do, but when I got back to the kitchen, Mama was standing there over the bubbling vats. “You want these peaches to boil over?” she asked me. “You got to watch this stuff close. You can’t be running off in the yard with a fire under these pots.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I sobbed once, and he dropped back down and let go of me. I bit my lips and held still. He brought his hand up to wipe it on the blanket, and I could smell something strange and bitter on his fingers. I pulled away, and that made him laugh. He kept laughing as he scrubbed his fingers against the blanket. Then he lifted me slightly, turning me so he could look into my face. The light was gray and pearly, the air wet and marble-cold, Glen’s face the only thing pink and warm in sight. He smiled at me again, but this time the smile was not in his eyes. His eyes had gone dark and empty again, and my insides started to shake with fear. He wrapped the blanket around me tight and put me back with Reese in the nest of blankets and pillows he’d built up so many hours ago. I hunched my shoulders against the seat and watched Glen’s head in the gray light, his short hairs bristly and stiff. He lit another cigarette and started humming again. He looked back once and I quickly closed my eyes, then was too afraid to open them again. His hum went on in time to the soft radio music, and the smell of Pall Malls began to soothe me. I didn’t know I was falling asleep until I woke up in the bright gray light of full morning. Glen was gone, the car still and cold. There was an ache between my legs, but I wasn’t afraid in the daylight. I sat up and looked out on gray clouds and dew-drenched fir branches. The asphalt looked wet and dark. There were a few nurses going in and out the emergency-room doors, talking in low mumbly tones. I breathed through my mouth and watched as more and more people drove into the lot, wondering if I had dreamed that whole early-morning scene. I kept squeezing my thighs together, feeling the soreness, and trying to imagine how I could have bruised myself if it had been a dream. When Glen came out of the emergency room, the doors swung back like a shot in the morning air. His face was rigid, his legs stiff, his hands clamped together in front of him, twisting and twisting. I looked into that face and knew it had not been a dream. I pulled Reese up against me, ignoring her soft protesting cry. Glen climbed in the car and slammed the door so hard Reese woke up with a jerk. She twisted her head like a baby bird, looking from me to Glen’s neck and back again. We sat still, waiting. He said, “Your mama’s gonna be all right.” He paused. “But she an’t gonna have no more babies.” He put his hands on the steering wheel, leaned forward, pushed his mouth against his fingers. He said, “My baby’s dead. My boy. My boy.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Anney deserved an end to trouble in her life. The night Mama went into labor, Glen packed the Pontiac with blankets and Cokes for Reese and me, and parked out in the hospital lot to wait. He’d been warned it was going to take a while for the baby to come, and when he couldn’t stand pacing the halls anymore, he came down to smoke cigarettes and listen to music on the car radio while Reese and I napped in the backseat. At some point well before dawn, when it was still dark and cold, he reached across the seat to tug my shoulder and pull me up front with him. He gave me some Coke and half a Baby Ruth and told me he’d been in to check a little earlier and Mama was doing fine. “Fine.” I blinked at him and nodded, unsure what I was supposed to do or say. He smoked fiercely, exhaling out the top of the window where he’d opened it just a few inches, and talking to me like I was a grown-up. “I know she’s worried,” he said. “She thinks if it’s a girl, I won’t love it. But it will be our baby, and if it’s a girl, we can make another soon enough. I’ll have my son. Anney and I will have our boy. I know it. I know.” He talked on, whispering quietly, sometimes so softly I could not understand him. I pulled my blanket around me and watched the sprinkling of stars visible just over the tall fir trees at the edge of the lot. The song playing low on the radio was a Kitty Wells tune that Mama liked. I rocked my head to the music and watched the night. I was thinking about the baby Mama was having, wondering what it might be like, if maybe it wouldn’t be a girl. What were they going to name it? Glen Junior, if it was a boy? They had never said. Mama thought it was unlucky to choose a name for a baby till it was born. Glen put his hand on my neck, and the stars seemed to wink at me. I wasn’t used to him touching me, so I hugged my blanket and held still. He slid out from behind the steering wheel a little and pulled me up on his lap. He started humming to the music, shifting me a little on his thighs. I turned my face up to look into his eyes. There were only a few lights on in the parking lot, but the red and yellow dials on the radio shone on his face. He smiled, and for the first time I saw the smile in his eyes as plain as the one on his mouth.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Mama put on a clean bra and one of the sleeveless red pullover sweaters she’d gotten from her friend Mab down at the diner—the one Mab joked was made to show just how high her tits could point. Daddy Glen came to the doorway and stood watching her with his throat working but no sound coming out. Mama outlined her mouth in bold red lipstick, combed back her dark blond hair, and hung her big old purse on one arm. She glanced up the hall and saw me leaning against the kitchen doorway. “Did you call Earle?” I nodded, uneasy at lying, but not wanting to upset her. It would be hours before Earle would be free to come get us, and I’d already decided not to wait for him. Mama paused, shook her head, walked back to the bedroom, and reached under the bedframe to pull out the box where she stored her shiny black patent-leather high heels. When she stood up in those, she looked like a different person, older and harder, her mouth set in a grim little smile. Her blond hair looked even brighter, her eyes darker, her complexion paler. She was coldly beautiful. Daddy Glen was still standing in the hall, but Mama stepped around him as if there wasn’t really anyone there, as if cocking her hip and swinging to one side were just a normal part of walking down the hall. Daddy Glen swayed a bit as she passed but did not move to stop her. His hands hung along his pockets while he breathed through his mouth like he was going to be sick. Her heels clicking on the floor were almost as loud as the cracking of his knuckles where he stood. I followed closely behind Mama, afraid to look back at Daddy Glen, afraid my glance might break the spell that seemed to be holding him in the hallway. Mama said nothing, just gave me a hug and a kiss, and slid behind the wheel of her Pontiac. When the car engine roared, the spell broke. Daddy Glen ran out and stood on the tarmac watching Mama drive away. His face was rigid. He didn’t even look in my direction, but my belly crawled up tight against my backbone. I felt as if the grass had turned to ammonia and was burning in my throat, as if Daddy Glen’s skin was radiating red heat and waves of steamy sweat. Around the narrow straps of his sleeveless T-shirt I watched the muscles in his shoulders roll and bunch. I knew he could easily break my arms as methodically as he was cracking his knuckles, wring my neck as hard as he was wringing his hands. I backed up carefully, then ran around the house, climbing the fence between our yard and the neighbor’s so I couldn’t be seen.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “I’ve prayed for you to die,” he hissed between set white teeth. His hand caught the front of my blouse and dug into the material. “Just die and leave us alone. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d have been all right. Everything would have been all right.” He sobbed and dragged me forward so that I was up on my knees swaying in his grip until my blouse tore, and I fell back under him. He grabbed for me again, and something hit me hard between the legs. I screamed. His boot or his leg? He dropped down on top of me. “You’re not going anywhere.” He laughed. “You think you’re so grown-up. You think you’re so big and bad, saying no to me. Let’s see how big you are, how grown!” His hands spread what was left of my blouse and ripped at the zipper on my pants, pulling them down my thighs as my left hand groped to hold them. I tried to kick, but I was pinned. Tears were streaming down my face, but I wasn’t crying. I was cursing him. “Damn you! Damn you! Damn you! God will damn you!” He reached with one hand to shove my pants down almost to my ankles and with the other to open his britches. “You’ll shut up. I’ll shut you up. I’ll teach you.” He ripped my panties off me like they were paper. Then he jerked me up a little and spread my legs. “You fucker!” I punched up at him with my almost useless right arm. “You little cunt. I should have done this a long time ago. You’ve always wanted it. Don’t tell me you don’t.” His knee pushed my legs further apart, and his big hand leisurely smashed the side of my face. He laughed then, as if he liked the feel of my blood on his fist, and hit me again. I opened my mouth to scream, and his hand closed around on my throat. “I’ll give you what you really want,” he said, and his whole weight came down hard. My scream was gaspy and low around his hand on my throat. He fumbled with his fingers between my legs, opened me, and then reared back slightly, looking down into my face with his burning eyes. “Now,” he said, and slammed his body forward from his knees. “You’ll learn.” His words came in short angry bursts. “You’ll never mouth off to me again. You’ll keep your mouth shut. You’ll do as you’re told. You’ll tell Anney what I want you to tell her.” I gagged. He rocked in and ground down, flexing and thrusting his hips. I felt like he was tearing me apart, my ass slapping against the floor with every thrust, burning and tearing and bruising.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I didn’t see Raylene anywhere. I checked the parlor, but it was full of smoke, the smell of whiskey, and men talking in husky voices. Travis was on the couch with his head fallen back, his cheeks all flushed, the veins on his nose showing blue-purple. I went down the hall trailing my hands along each wall. This was not hard at all. As long as I moved slowly and kept my head up, there was no problem. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I was sweaty, flushed. Sure looked drunk to me. I grinned. It was too hot. The window over the toilet seemed to be painted closed. I straddled the toilet, pounded on the window frame until it loosened, and opened it. Cool air washed over my face. I bent down, pulled my panties off awkwardly, skirt up, and without turning around dropped down backwards on the toilet seat. Peeing had never felt so wonderful before. I laid my cheek on the cool porcelain back of the toilet and just enjoyed the release. The door opened behind me. I pushed up, startled, and slipped, falling back down on the seat. Twisted around, I tried to push up again, but a loud abrupt hiccup plopped me right back on the seat again. Raylene laughed. “Who slipped you a drink, Bone?” She didn’t sound that angry. She pushed the door closed behind her and steadied me with one hand. “You’re about falling-down drunk.” “No, I’m not. I only had a little.” “Uh huh. Yeah.” She laughed and pulled some paper off the roll and handed it to me. “Come on. Let’s get you up.” Her hand was under my right elbow, helping me stand. I tried to back off the seat, but her grip held me. “Aunt Raylene.” I turned my head to look up at her again, ready to try and persuade her that I wasn’t really drunk. Her expression stopped me. She was looking down at my panties where they draped my left shoe, the brown stains in the seat showing clearly in the bright light. She pulled me back a little, and her left hand lifted my skirt. I tried to push it back down with my numb fingers, but she had a good grip. “Sweet suffering Jesus!” A shock went right through me. Suddenly I was terrified, unreasonably, horribly terrified. “No,” I begged. “No, please.” But the door was open. She was pulling me out. I hung back, but she was unstoppable. She pushed me into Deedee’s empty bedroom. “Earle,” Aunt Raylene was yelling. “Earle, come here. You and Beau, you come here.” “No.” I said it again. “Please, please.” “Be quiet, Bone. An’t nobody gonna hurt you. I swear to you, an’t nobody ever gonna hurt you again.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I felt Mama’s hips shift awkwardly as she spoke. I looked up to watch her face as her mouth shifted into an equally awkward stubborn smile. “You know I wouldn’t sign anything that you hadn’t looked at first.” Daddy Glen smiled as if that satisfied him. I let my air out carefully. Reese went on waving though the truck was long gone. I hooked my thumbs in the belt loops of my jeans and stood by her until Mama and Daddy Glen went back into the house. “He’s quiet, but you make Glen mad and he’ll knock you down,” Uncle Earle said good-naturedly. “Boy uses those hands of his like pickaxes.” If they thought we weren’t near enough to hear, Earle and Beau would go on about Daddy Glen’s other parts. “He gets crazy when he’s angry,” they laughed. “Use his dick if he can’t reach you with his arms, and that’ll cripple you fast enough.” I was too young to understand what they meant, why they laughed so mean and joked that no woman would ever leave Daddy Glen, or roared and spat comparing the size of his nose to his toes to his fingers. “Man’s got a horse dick,” Butch boasted to other boys, and that I understood. But it wasn’t Daddy Glen’s sex that made me nervous. It was those hands, the restless way the fingers would flex and curl while he watched me lean close to Mama. He was always watching me, it seemed, calling me to him whenever Mama and I would start talking, sending me to get him a glass of ice tea or a fresh pack of cigarettes out of the freezer, where he kept his cartons so they wouldn’t go stale in the summer heat. Mama told me I should show him that I loved him, but no matter how hard I tried, I never moved fast enough for him. “That child an’t never gonna love me,” he complained tearfully to Mama one afternoon. “Oh, Glen, don’t say that.” Mama’s voice was thin and shaky, as if she were afraid he was right. “Bone loves you, honey.” She kissed his cheek, put her hands on either side of his face, and kissed his lips. “She loves you. We all love you.” Daddy Glen pulled her down to him and sighed softly as she kissed his eyelids and then rubbed her cheeks against his. I ran outside. Dinner would be late, or we’d wind up going out for hamburgers. Whenever they started kissing on the couch, they’d go in the bedroom and shut the door for an hour at least. When they came out Daddy Glen would be smiling and easy in his body.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  His voice got harder, hoarser but no louder, and it was the quiet that terrified me. It reminded me of Alma with the razor in her hand and madness in her eyes. Daddy Glen’s eyes were just as crazy, more crazy. There was pain in them, deep pain, yes, but hate was the thing that made them burn. Suddenly his fist shot out like it was on a spring. His knuckles raked the side of my chin, and I fell back on the table. “You can’t destroy me so easy,” he said. “Anney’s gonna come back, she told me. She just needs a little time. I can understand that after everything that’s happened.” He leaned toward me, one hand extended. “But if she wasn’t gonna come back to me, I’d kill you. You know that? I’d break your neck.” His hand touched the side of my face, my ear, my neck, slid down my front, the slight swells of my breasts. His blue eyes trailed down my body. “Ahhh,” Daddy Glen moaned. He pulled me to his chest, holding me tight, breathing hard. There was blood in my mouth and a roar in my head. I went hard, stiff, metal-hard, as hard as the butter knife I found I had grabbed without thinking. He kissed me wetly, his teeth grinding into my mouth. I jerked that knife up and rammed it into his side hard as I could. It slid along his belt, smearing peanut butter on his shirt, not even tearing the material but hurting him anyway. I could tell. “Damn you!” He threw me away from him so that my back hit the counter and I slipped down, falling as he came toward me, kicking at me. His boot hit me solidly in the shoulder. His arm came down, caught my right wrist, and jerked hard, pulling me up sharply, then dropped me. Something gave, crunching audibly, while a wave of sickening heat followed, and my arm flopped uselessly under my body. “You little cunt!” He kicked again, and his boot slipped along the side of my head, cutting my ear so that blood gushed. Then that boot thudded into my belly and I rolled sideways, retching bile down my right arm. “You!” he cursed, and it echoed in my head. “You goddam little bastard!” “You!” I told him. “Mama’s never gonna go back to you. I won’t let her. I hate you.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Aunt Raylene.” I turned my head to look up at her again, ready to try and persuade her that I wasn’t really drunk. Her expression stopped me. She was looking down at my panties where they draped my left shoe, the brown stains in the seat showing clearly in the bright light. She pulled me back a little, and her left hand lifted my skirt. I tried to push it back down with my numb fingers, but she had a good grip. “Sweet suffering Jesus!” A shock went right through me. Suddenly I was terrified, unreasonably, horribly terrified. “No,” I begged. “No, please.” But the door was open. She was pulling me out. I hung back, but she was unstoppable. She pushed me into Deedee’s empty bedroom. “Earle,” Aunt Raylene was yelling. “Earle, come here. You and Beau, you come here.” “No.” I said it again. “Please, please.” “Be quiet, Bone. An’t nobody gonna hurt you. I swear to you, an’t nobody ever gonna hurt you again.” Earle pushed through the door. “Raylene, what you yelling about? The kids are asleep upstairs, and you’re yelling loud enough to scare people in the next county.” Raylene whirled on him. “Shut up and look at this.” She turned me around and flipped my skirt up. I started to stutter. “No, no.” “Damn.” Earle’s voice was soft, and scarier than I could have ever imagined. I wrapped my fingers around the back of my neck, dropped my head, and shook all over. “Leave me alone,” I begged. My panties were still tangled on my left shoe. “Hush, hush.” Aunt Raylene’s arms wrapped around me like a blanket. She sat on the bed and pulled me up on her lap. “Hush.” Earle was gone. The door opened again, and Nevil and Beau were there. “It true?” Beau demanded. “That son of a bitch beat her bloody?” “Like a dog,” Raylene told him. “Child’s striped all the way down to her knees.” She pulled my panties free of my shoe and threw them at him. “I’d kill him.” She said it in a very matter-of-fact tone that made me believe her. “No,” I moaned. “Shit!” Nevil’s voice was barely recognizable. There was a scream from down the hall, a loud crashing noise, and Earle’s voice shouting, “I’ll murder you, you son of a bitch!” Nevil and Beau turned together. “No,” I pleaded. “Aunt Raylene, please!” But she just held me tight. I turned, started punching her, trying to get free. Mama’s arms came around me so suddenly I almost stopped breathing. “Mama! I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “No, darling. No! It’s not what you think.” What was it, then, I wondered, and flopped over on my belly. Pain. My shoulder, my knees, my thighs, my face—everything hurt but none of it mattered. It was all far off. Rubbery and numb, my arm was under my face. “You!” Mama screamed. There was more crashing, but I didn’t look up. Would she think I wanted him to do that? Would she think I asked for it? What would he tell her? I had to tell her that I had fought him, that I had never wanted him to touch me, never. But the blood running out of me was stealing all my energy, all my air. I could not talk, could not think. For a moment then I wanted to be dead already, not to have to look into Mama’s face ever again, and not his. Never his, never again. Please, God, let him die, let me die, let someone die. Don’t let him hurt my mama. “You bastard! You monster!” “Anney, please!” “Don’t you touch me. Don’t you touch her!” I tasted tears, snot, blood that had run down from my ear. I spat and tried to push myself up. I had to get up, do something, get Mama out of there. Mama’s hands were on me now, feeling for the damage. My head cleared a little, and I looked up. He was across the room, face white and stricken, and she was down on her knees with me. A roar went up through me, and I gritted my teeth. We had to get out of there, get away from him. I got to my knees. “Come on, honey,” she cooed like I was a baby again. “I’m gonna get you to a doctor.” Her hands smoothed my blouse, knotted the torn pieces together over my belly, dragged my pants up my legs a little at a time, covering me up. “Anney, no, wait,” he was saying, but she wasn’t listening. That’s good, don’t stop. Keep moving, Mama. Get us out of here. “Come on, baby,” she said, and pulled me to my feet. I swayed on rubber-band knees, an empty bowl of pain for a belly. Those dots were floating everywhere. I looked over at Daddy Glen. His face was as empty as my belly. Icy terror rode up my legs to my heart. Get out, we’ve got to get out of here. You don’t know, Mama, you don’t understand. She was whispering, “Baby, baby,” holding me tight to her hip as she started for the door.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “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. 4 [image file=image_rsrc2PR.jpg] The spring Mama married Glen Waddell, there were thunderstorms every afternoon and rolling clouds that hung around the foothills north and west to the Smokies. The moon came up with a ghostly halo almost every night, and there was a blue shimmer on the horizon at sunset. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] “An’t no time to be marrying,” Granny announced. “Or planting or building nothing.” [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] “You sure, now, Anney?” Earle must have asked Mama twice before he drove her down to the courthouse in his pickup truck to meet Glen and get the license. It seemed he just couldn’t take her ready smile for an answer, even though he agreed to be best man after Glen’s brother had refused the honor. He asked her one more time before he let her out of the truck. “You’re worse than Granny,” Anney told him. “Don’t you want to see me settled down and happy?” He gave it up and kissed her out the door. Granny wasn’t surprised when she heard that Great-Grandma Shirley had turned down her invitation to the wedding dinner Aunt Alma organized. The Eustis aunts, Marvella and Maybelle, the ones who insisted they could tell the future from their beans, also skipped the dinner, though Marvella was polite about it. “I know he loves Anney,” Marvella told Alma when she came by to collect flowers from their garden. “And sometimes love can change everything.” Maybelle was not so generous. “Yeah, Glen loves Anney. He loves her like a gambler loves a fast racehorse or a desperate man loves whiskey. That kind of love eats a man up. I don’t trust that boy, don’t want our Anney marrying him.” “But Anney loves Glen,” Alma told Maybelle impatiently. “That’s the thing you ought to be thinking about. She needs him, needs him like a starving woman needs meat between her teeth, and I an’t gonna let nobody take this away from her. Come on, Maybelle, you know there an’t no way to say what’s gonna happen between a man and a woman. That an’t our business anyway, that’s theirs.” Alma took Maybelle’s hands between her own. “We just got to stand behind our girl, do everything we can to make sure she don’t get hurt again.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “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.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  That vent would snap free with one good shove. It was as clear in my head as the face of the man who still managed the store—Tyler Highgarden. I knew his nervous, skinny-faced children from Greenville Elementary School. If they hadn’t been such sorry miserable creatures, I’d have gotten the cousins to beat them up for their father’s sins, but they’d never looked worth the trouble. Still, Tyler Highgarden and the Woolworth’s humiliation had itched at me for years, always in the back of my mind. The revelation that there was something I could do about it was too exciting not to act on. The fan blades weren’t sharp, just greasy and covered with dust. I reached through and measured carefully, and then went back over to the water tower and pulled my hook free. I coiled the rope up and tied it around the prongs. I would push it ahead of me into the darkness. I didn’t think it would get stuck, any more than I thought I would. I didn’t even think of it as a weapon. All I knew climbing over the dirty blades and wiggling around the engine block was that I wanted those razor points with me. I was a little scared and half convinced I might get caught, but those points were sharp and certain and tangibly dangerous, the way I wanted to be. I couldn’t leave them behind. The exhaust pipe widened on the other side of the fan, and there was a filter there made of prickly stuff that bit my fingers. I unfastened it on my side, crawled through, then fastened it again, pushing the hook ahead of me in the dark. There was no warning at all when the hook suddenly banged against a sharp bend in the pipe and swung out of my hand. I fell after it, my shoulder hitting a thick cushion of cotton batting and the edge of the frame that held up the insulation and sealed the vent. The frame thudded and slipped sideways, dropping free on one side and swinging open. The hook fell ahead of me with a crash. I caught the edge of the vent cover, held myself an instant, then followed the hook. I bit my tongue as I fell, and it was a miracle I didn’t scream. I hit the side of the rack that displayed pattern books and slammed into a glass countertop that broke with a dull snap under me. I gasped and registered immediately the points of the hook sticking up from another case just inches from my butt. “Oh, my God,” I whispered. “Sweet suffering Jesus.” My hip ached where I’d hit, but nothing seemed broken.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  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. “She’s up at the house,” he whispered, as if he were afraid to talk too loud. “I tried. I tried, but she wouldn’t let me do nothing.” He hugged his shoulders tightly. “She’s up there by herself. I got the girls away and called you.” There was a pause as he gulped air between every few words. “And then Uncle Earle. Uncle Earle said not to go back, and anyway, she scared me. Mama scared me.” He stopped and looked back up the dirt drive that wound to the side and disappeared into the pines. “Oh God, Auntie, she’s gone crazy as a milk cow, just like Daddy said she would!” “Wipe your face and keep quiet,” Mama told him fiercely. “I’ll send Bone down for you in a little while, and I don’t want you scaring your sisters. You wash your face and get some of that dirt off yourself.” She sounded almost hateful—a way I had never heard her talk before to any child. I turned from watching Little Earle to look at her and almost rolled across the seat when she started the Pontiac racing up the drive again.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “No,” I whispered. “I don’t want to live with you no more. Mama can go home to you. I told her she could, but I can’t. I won’t.” “Won’t?” He touched my cheek. I looked up at him. “You won’t live with me?” His eyes were hard blue rocks, his mouth an angry line. “You’re not even thirteen years old, girl. You don’t say what you do. I’m your daddy. I say what you do.” “No.” I said it quietly. My throat was so tight it was hard to say anything. I saw him rock back away from me, close his eyes, push his hands together in front of his body as if he were about to pray. He shook his head. “No,” I said again. “I’m trying to be reasonable with you, girl. I want you to talk to your mama. I want you to stop this nonsense before you make me really mad.” His clasped hands shook. He opened his eyes. “No.” I said it louder. “I’d rather die than go back to living with you.” “You would?” His lips curled into a mean smile. “I bet you would,” he said in a whisper. There was a long quiet moment. I could hear my heartbeat. “Make me that sandwich,” he said, “and we’ll talk.” I stood unmoving, watching his face and hands. “No. I don’t want to talk. I want you to leave.” He shook his head and went on smiling. “I’ll tell Mama,” I said desperately. “I’ll tell her.” His hands came up and grabbed my shoulders, shook me. “You don’t want to make your daddy a sandwich?” His voice grated with rage. “You don’t want to do nothing for me?” Another shake. He lifted me so that my feet came off the floor. My mouth opened. I wanted to scream, but nothing came out. I remembered all the times he had lifted me like that before, lifted me, shaken me, then pulled me to his chest, held me against him and run his hands over me, moaned while his fingers gouged at me. I had always been afraid to scream, afraid to fight. I had always felt like it was my fault, but now it didn’t matter. I didn’t care anymore what might happen. I wouldn’t hold still anymore. I tried to wiggle free, and he laughed. He dropped me. I staggered back against the table. “You’re the one. You’re the reason. She loves me, I know it. But it’s you, you’re the one gets in the way. You make me crazy and you make her ashamed, ashamed of you and ashamed of loving me. It an’t right. It an’t right her leaving me because of you. It an’t right.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  He pushed my skirt to the side and slid his left hand down between my legs, up against my cotton panties. He began to rock me then, between his stomach and his wrist, his fingers fumbling at his britches. It made me afraid, his big hand between my legs and his eyes glittering in the dim light. He started talking again, telling me Mama was going to be all right, that he loved me, that we were all going to be so happy. Happy. His hand was hard, the ridge of his wristbone pushing in and hurting me. I looked straight ahead through the windshield, too afraid to cry, or shake, or wiggle, too afraid to move at all. He kept saying, “It’s gonna be all right.” He kept rocking me, breathing through his mouth and staring straight ahead. I could see his reflection in the windshield. Dawn began to filter through the trees, making everything bright and cold. His hand dug in further. He was holding himself in his fingers. I knew what it was under his hand. I’d seen my cousins naked, laughing, shaking their things and joking, but this was a mystery, scary and hard. His sweat running down his arms to my skin smelled strong and nasty. He grunted, squeezed my thighs between his arm and his legs. His chin pressed down on my head and his hips pushed up at the same time. He was hurting me, hurting me! I sobbed once, and he dropped back down and let go of me. I bit my lips and held still. He brought his hand up to wipe it on the blanket, and I could smell something strange and bitter on his fingers. I pulled away, and that made him laugh. He kept laughing as he scrubbed his fingers against the blanket. Then he lifted me slightly, turning me so he could look into my face. The light was gray and pearly, the air wet and marble-cold, Glen’s face the only thing pink and warm in sight. He smiled at me again, but this time the smile was not in his eyes. His eyes had gone dark and empty again, and my insides started to shake with fear. He wrapped the blanket around me tight and put me back with Reese in the nest of blankets and pillows he’d built up so many hours ago. I hunched my shoulders against the seat and watched Glen’s head in the gray light, his short hairs bristly and stiff. He lit another cigarette and started humming again. He looked back once and I quickly closed my eyes, then was too afraid to open them again.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  He talked on, whispering quietly, sometimes so softly I could not understand him. I pulled my blanket around me and watched the sprinkling of stars visible just over the tall fir trees at the edge of the lot. The song playing low on the radio was a Kitty Wells tune that Mama liked. I rocked my head to the music and watched the night. I was thinking about the baby Mama was having, wondering what it might be like, if maybe it wouldn’t be a girl. What were they going to name it? Glen Junior, if it was a boy? They had never said. Mama thought it was unlucky to choose a name for a baby till it was born. Glen put his hand on my neck, and the stars seemed to wink at me. I wasn’t used to him touching me, so I hugged my blanket and held still. He slid out from behind the steering wheel a little and pulled me up on his lap. He started humming to the music, shifting me a little on his thighs. I turned my face up to look into his eyes. There were only a few lights on in the parking lot, but the red and yellow dials on the radio shone on his face. He smiled, and for the first time I saw the smile in his eyes as plain as the one on his mouth. He pushed my skirt to the side and slid his left hand down between my legs, up against my cotton panties. He began to rock me then, between his stomach and his wrist, his fingers fumbling at his britches. It made me afraid, his big hand between my legs and his eyes glittering in the dim light. He started talking again, telling me Mama was going to be all right, that he loved me, that we were all going to be so happy. Happy. His hand was hard, the ridge of his wristbone pushing in and hurting me. I looked straight ahead through the windshield, too afraid to cry, or shake, or wiggle, too afraid to move at all. He kept saying, “It’s gonna be all right.” He kept rocking me, breathing through his mouth and staring straight ahead. I could see his reflection in the windshield. Dawn began to filter through the trees, making everything bright and cold. His hand dug in further. He was holding himself in his fingers. I knew what it was under his hand. I’d seen my cousins naked, laughing, shaking their things and joking, but this was a mystery, scary and hard. His sweat running down his arms to my skin smelled strong and nasty. He grunted, squeezed my thighs between his arm and his legs. His chin pressed down on my head and his hips pushed up at the same time. He was hurting me, hurting me!

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  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.