“It’s all right.” Shannon got to her feet beside me, keeping her hand on my back. “She’s just a little sick.” She paused. “If you got her a Co-Cola, it might settle her stomach.”
I wiped my mouth, then wiped my hand on the grass. I looked up again. Shannon was standing still, sweat running down into her eyes and making her blink. I could see she was hoping for two Cokes. The man was still standing there with his mouth hanging open, a look of shock on his face.
“Lord God,” he said again, and I knew before he spoke what he was going to say. It wasn’t me who’d surprised him.
“Child, you are the ugliest thing I have ever seen.”
Shannon froze. Her mouth fell open, and her whole face seemed to cave in as I watched. Her eyes shrank to little dots, and her mouth became a cup of sorrow. I pushed myself up.
“You bastard!” I staggered forward, and he backed up, rocking on his little silver heels. “You goddam gutless son of a bitch!” His eyes kept moving from my face to Shannon’s wilting figure. “You think you so pretty? You ugly sack of shit! You shit-faced turd-eating—”
“Shannon Pearl!”
Mrs. Pearl was coming around the tent.
“You girls ...” She gathered Shannon up in her arms. “Where have you been?” The man backed further away. I was breathing through my mouth, though I no longer felt so sick. I felt angry and helpless, and I was trying hard not to cry. Mrs. Pearl clucked between her teeth and stroked Shannon’s limp hair. “What have you been doing?”
Shannon moaned and buried her face in her mama’s dress.
Mrs. Pearl turned to me. “What were you saying?” Her eyes glittered in the arc lights from the front of the tent. I wiped my mouth again and said nothing. Mrs. Pearl looked to the man in the purple shirt. The confusion on her face seemed to melt and quickly became a blur of excitement and interest.
“I hope they weren’t bothering you,” she told him. “Don’t you go on next?”
“Uh, yeah.” He looked like he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t take his eyes off Shannon. He shook himself. “You Mrs. Pearl?”
“Why, that’s right.” Mrs. Pearl’s face was glowing.
“I’ve heard about you. I just never met your daughter before. ”
Mrs. Pearl seemed to shiver all over, then catch herself. Pressed to her mama’s stomach, Shannon began to wail.
“Shannon, what are you going on for?” She pushed her daughter away from her side and pulled out a blue embroidered handkerchief to wipe her face.
“I think we all kind of surprised each other.” The man stepped forward and gave Mrs. Pearl a slow smile, but his eyes kept wandering back to Shannon. I wiped my mouth again and stopped myself from spitting. Mrs. Pearl went on stroking her daughter’s face but looking up into the man’s eyes.
“I love it when you sing,” she said, and half giggled. Shannon pulled away from her and stared up at them both. The hate in her face was terrible. For a moment I loved her with all my heart.
“Well,” the man said. He rocked from one boot to the other. “Well ...”
I reached for Shannon’s hand. She slapped mine away. Her face was blazing. I felt as if a great fire was burning close to me, using up all the oxygen, making me pant to catch my breath. I laced the fingers of my hands together and tilted my head back to look up at the stars. If there was a God, then there would be justice. If there was justice, then Shannon and I would make them all burn. We walked away from the tent toward Mr. Pearl’s battered DeSoto.
“Someday,” Shannon whispered.
“Yeah,” I whispered back. “Someday.”
Driving backcountry with Mr. Pearl when he went on his prospecting trips meant stopping in at little rural churches with gospel choirs, shabby tents with a soloist or two, and occasional living-room prayer meetings that might shelter an extraordinary young singer. Following up Mr. Pearl’s tips was extended, tedious work requiring great patience and tact. All too many of the singers couldn’t sing at all, and hadn’t an ear good enough to know when they went off tune. A few were enthusiastic enough that Mr. Pearl cautiously encouraged them to try out for one of the existing gospel groups. But mostly all he found was an echo of the real stuff, a diluted blend of harmony and aspiration.
“Pitiful, an’t it?” Shannon sounded like her father’s daughter. “That sad old organ music just can’t stand against a slide guitar. ”
I nodded reluctantly. I still wanted to believe that spirit, determination, and hard work could lift even the most pedestrian voice into the rarefied atmosphere of heartfelt gospel music.
" There was no predicting who the hand of God might touch, where the clarion would sound. Sometimes one pure voice would stand out, one little girl, one set of brothers whose eyes would lift when they sang. Those were the ones who could make you want to scream low against all the darkness in the world. “That one,” Shannon would whisper smugly, but I didn’t need her to tell me. I always knew who Mr. Pearl would take aside and invite over to Gaston for revival week.
“Child!” he’d say. “You got a gift from God.”
Uh huh, yeah.
Sometimes I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t go in one more church, hear one more choir. Never mind loving the music, why hadn’t God given me a voice? I hadn’t asked for thick eyelashes. I had asked for, begged for, gospel. Didn’t God give a good goddam what I wanted? If He’d take bastards into heaven, how come He couldn’t put me in front of those hot lights and all that dispensation? Gospel singers always had money in their pockets, another bottle under their seats. Gospel singers had love and safety and the whole wide world to fall back on—women and church and red clay solid under their feet. All I wanted, I whispered, all I wanted, was a piece, a piece, a little piece of it.
Shannon overheard and looked at me sympathetically.
She knows, I thought, she knows what it is to want what you are never going to have. I’d underestimated her.
That July we went over to the other side of Lake Greenwood, a part of the county I knew from visiting one of the cousins who worked at the air base. Off the highway we stopped at a service station to give Mrs. Pearl a little relief from the heat.
“You ever think God maybe didn’t intend us to travel on Sunday afternoon? I swear He makes it hotter than Saturday or Friday. ”
Mrs. Pearl sat in the shade while Mr. Pearl went off to lecture the man who rented out the Rhythm Ranch. Shannon and I cut off across a field to check out the headstones near a stand of cottonwood. We loved to read the mottoes and take back the good ones for Mrs. Pearl to stitch up on samplers and sell in the store. My favorites were the weird ones, like “Now He Knows” or “Too Pure.” Shannon loved the ones they put up for babies, little curly-headed dolls with angel wings and heartbreaking lines like “Gone to Mama” or “Gone Home.”
“Silly stuff.” I kicked at the pieces of clay pot that were lying everywhere. Shannon turned to me, and I saw tears on her cheeks.
“No, no, it just tears me up. Think about it, losing your own little baby girl, your own little angel. Oh, I can’t stand it. I just can’t stand it.” She gave big satisfied sobs and wiped her hands on her blue gingham pockets.
“I wish I could take me one of these home. Wouldn’t you like to have one you could keep up? You could tell stories to the babies.”
“You crazy.”
Shannon sniffed. “You just don’t understand. Mama says I’ve got a very tender heart.”
“Uh huh.” I walked away. It was too hot to fight. It was certainly too hot to cry. I kicked over some plastic flowers and a tattered green cardboard cross. This was one of the most boring trips I’d ever taken with the Pearls. I tried to remember why I’d even wanted to come. At home Mama would be making fresh ice tea, boiling up sugar water to mix in it. Reese would be slicing peaches. Daddy Glen would be out of the way, off working on the lawn mower. I swatted at mosquitoes and hoped my face wasn’t sunburning. I was tired of Shannon, tired of her mama’s endless simpering endearments, tired of her daddy’s smug contem
pt, and even more tired of my own jealousy.
I stopped. The music coming through the cottonwoods was gospel.
Gut-shaking, deep-bellied, powerful voices rolled through the dried leaves and hot air. This was the real stuff. I could feel the whiskey edge, the grief and holding on, the dark night terror and determination of real gospel.
“My God,” I breathed, and it was the best “My God” I’d ever put out, a long, scared whisper that meant I just might start to believe He hid in cottonwoods.
There was a church there, clapboard walls standing on cement blocks and no pretense of stained-glass windows. Just yellow glass reflecting back sunlight, all the windows open to let in the breeze and let out that music.
Amazing grace... how sweet the sound... that saved a wretch like me ... A woman’s voice rose and rolled over the deeper men’s voices, rolled out so strong it seemed to rustle the leaves on the cottonwood trees.
Amen.
Lord.
“Sweet Jesus, she can sing.”
Shannon ignored me and kept pulling up wildflowers.
“You hear that? We got to tell your daddy.”
Shannon turned and stared at me with a peculiar angry expression. “He don’t handle colored. An’t no money in handling colored.”
At that I froze, realizing that such a church off such a dirt road had to be just that—a colored church. And I knew what that meant. Of course I did. Still I heard myself whisper, “That an’t one good voice. That’s a churchful.”
“It’s colored. It’s niggers.” Shannon’s voice was as loud as I’d ever heard it, and shrill with indignation. “My daddy don’t handle niggers.” She threw wildflowers at me and stamped her foot. “And you made me say that. Mama always said a good Christian don’t use the word ‘nigger.’ Jesus be my witness, I wouldn’t have said it if you hadn’t made me.”
“You crazy. You just plain crazy.” My voice was shaking. The way Shannon said “nigger” tore at me, the tone pitched exactly like the echoing sound of Aunt Madeline sneering “trash” when she thought I wasn’t close enough to hear. I wondered what Shannon heard in my voice that made her as angry as I was. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the shame we both were feeling, or maybe it was simply that Shannon Pearl and I were righteously tired of each other.
Shannon threw another handful of flowers at me. “I’m crazy? Me? What do you think you are? You and your mama and your whole family. Everybody knows you’re all a bunch of drunks and thieves and bastards. Everybody knows you just come round so you can eat off my mama’s table and beg scraps we don’t want no more. Everybody knows who you are ... ”
I was moving before I could stop myself, my hands flying up to slap together right in front of her face—a last-minute attempt not to hit her. “You bitch, you white-assed bitch.” I wrung my hands, trying to keep myself from slapping her pasty face. “Don’t you never hit anybody in the face,” Mama always said.
“You little shit, you fuck off.” I put the words out as slick and fast as any of my uncles. Shannon’s mouth fell open. “You just fuck off!” I kicked red dirt up onto her gingham skirt.
Shannon’s face twisted. “You an’t never gonna go to another gospel show with us again! I’m gonna tell my mama what you called me, and she an’t ever gonna let you come near me again. ”
“Your mama, your mama. You’d piss in a Pepsi bottle if your mama told you to.”
“Listen to you. You ... you trash. You nothing but trash. Your mama’s trash, and your grandma, and your whole dirty family ...”
I swung at her then with my hand wide open, right at her face, but I was too angry. I was crazy angry and I tripped, falling onto the red dirt on my spread hands. My right hand came down on a broken clay pot, hurting me so bad I could barely see Shannon’s dripping, flushed cheeks.
“Oh ... shit. You ... shit.” If I could have jumped up and caught her, I would have ripped out handfuls of that cotton-candy hair.
Shannon stood still and watched as I pushed myself up and grabbed my right hand with my left. I was crying, I realized, the tears running down my face while behind us the choir had never stopped singing. That woman’s voice still rolled over the cottonwoods. Was blind but now I see ...
“You’re ugly.” I swallowed my tears and made myself speak very quietly. “You’re God’s own ugly child and you’re gonna be an ugly woman. A lonely, ugly old woman.”
Shannon’s lips started to tremble, poking out of her face so that she was uglier than I’d ever seen her, a doll carved out of cold grease melting in the heat.
“You ugly thing,” I went on. “You monster, you greasy cross-eyed stinking sweaty-faced ugly thing!” I pointed all my fingers at her and spit at her patent-leather shoes. “You so ugly your own mama don’t even love you.” Shannon backed off, turned around, and started running.
“Mamaaaaa!” she wailed as she ran. I kept yelling after her, more to keep myself from crying now than to hurt her.
“Ugly ... ugly ... ugly.”
12
There was no way on God’s green earth that I was ever going to speak to Shannon Pearl again. I didn’t even want to go to church. “Damn Bushy Creek anyway,” I told Reese. “An’t nobody there can sing worth a damn, and that preacher’s so full of himself he crowds out all the air—what air there is, all those old biddies sweating talcum powder and perfume.”
“Listen to you!” Reese rapped my belt buckle with her knuckles and then reached past me for the little bit of Coke left in the bottle I’d just set down. “Sounds like you done lost your religion.”
Reese and I had turned from absolute allies into competitors overnight, arguing all the time and fighting over everything from who got the chicken gizzard to who was the toughest. After years of wearing finger curls and ruffled dresses, Reese had turned tomboy with a vengeance, wrestling and spitting with the boys and refusing to wear anything Mama bought her. She’d begged a couple of pairs of Butch’s old coveralls from Deedee and wore them all the time, but what she really wanted was a pair of blue jeans like the ones I’d bought myself with my dishwashing money. She was also fiercely jealous of the braided leather belt Uncle Earle had sent me, with its brightly polished buckle shaped like a horseshoe, and was constantly trying to get her hands on it. I had to keep my eye on her or she would have “borrowed” it every chance she got.
“You should talk,” I snapped, wishing she would just go away and leave me alone. “You just go to church so you can beg Kool-Aid and cookies after Sunday school.”
“I an’t ashamed of that. I don’t see you turning down nothing people are giving away for free. Besides, you’re just jealous ’cause everybody’s always petting on me at Sunday school, and it used to be you getting all the attention.”
I snorted contemptuously but said nothing. You couldn’t argue with Reese, she liked it too much. I hooked my thumbs behind my belt buckle and leaned back to stare at her, refusing to speak. Silence was the only way to get to Reese. She couldn’t stand it if you wouldn’t talk to her.
“Oh, don’t you start that, you mean old thing.” Reese stamped her bare feet in the dirt and pointed the Coke bottle at me. “I’m on to you, Bone. I know all your tricks, and I an’t gonna play no more. You just sit on your damn old belt. I hope it strangles you. I an’t gonna be there to see it.”
It was around then that I discovered that Reese was masturbating almost as often as I was. In the middle of the night, I woke up to feel the bed shaking slightly. Instead of sprawling across the bottom of the bed as she usually did, her legs and arms thrown wide, Reese was at the far edge of the mattress, her body taut and curved away from me. I could hear the sound of her breathing, fast and shallow. I knew immediately what she was doing. I kept still, my own breathing quiet and steady. After a while there was a moment when she held her breath, and then the shaking stopped. Very quietly then I slipped my right hand down between my legs and held myself. I wanted to do it too, but I couldn’t stand the thought that she might hear. But what if she did
? I felt Reese relax and sprawl wide again. I held my breath, I moved my hand, I almost did not shake the bed at all.
Reese would go back to our bedroom alone every day when we got home from school. When she came out, I would go in. Sometimes I even imagined I could smell what she had been doing, but that could not have been so. She was a little girl and smelled like a little girl. Neither of us smelled like Mama, the ripe fleshy scent of a woman grown. I pulled my shorts down and made sure of it, carefully washing between my legs with warm soap and water every time I did that thing I knew my sister was doing too.
One afternoon, I went outside and stood listening for the sound of Reese alone in the bedroom. She was quiet, very quiet, but I could hear the rhythm of her breathing as it gradually picked up speed, and the soft little grunts she made before it began to slow down again. I liked those grunts. When Reese did it in the middle of the night, she never made any sound at all. But then, I was just as careful myself even when I was safely alone. I wondered if Reese did it differently in the daytime. I wondered if she lay on her back with her legs wide, the way I liked to when I was alone, rather than on her stomach with both hands under her the way she did at night. There was no way to spy on her, no way to know. But I imagined Reese sometimes while I did it myself, seeing her sprawled across our big Hollywood bed, rocking only slightly, showing by nothing but her breathing that she was committing a sin.
I walked in on Reese one afternoon while she was lying on the bed with a pair of mama’s panties over her face. All her features were outlined under the sheer material, but her breath puffed the silk out over her lips. Frantically, she snatched them off and shoved them behind her on the bed. I grabbed a book I had been reading off the dresser and pretended I hadn’t seen anything.
Reese played out her own stories in the woods behind the house. I watched her one afternoon from the top of the tree Mama hung her birdfeeder on. She hadn’t seen me climb up there and didn’t know I had a clear view of her as she ran around in an old sheet tied to her neck like a cape. She seemed to be pretending to fight off imaginary attackers. Then she dropped to the ground and pretended to be wrestling. Rolling around in the grass and wet leaves she kept shouting “No! No!” The haughty expression on her face was replaced by mock terror as she threw her head back and forth wildly like the heroine in an adventure movie.
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