Free Cavedweller by Dorothy Allison Page A

tongue snaked out to lick his lips.
    Lizard, Cissy thought again. Granddaddy Byrd stared at the Datsun as if he were thinking on how to get them into it, longing for the steady quiet he had treasured before they drove into his yard. Grimly Cissy pushed herself up off the steps and walked across the yard. She heard Delia’s shoes slap on the porch as she came out of the kitchen and sat down beside Granddaddy Byrd, who slid away a few inches.
    “You sure you don’t want something?” Delia’s voice was softer. Her skin shone, her hair was smoothed back, the collar of her blouse was damp and open. She looked almost like a girl again.
    Granddaddy Byrd eyed Delia for a moment, then cleared his throat with a rough hawk and spat. “Why’d you come back?”
    Delia took a deep breath. “The girls,” she whispered. “I want to see my girls.” Cissy realized suddenly how skinny Delia was, all bones and angles. Her knees and elbows stuck out. Sitting there beside Granddaddy Byrd, she looked like a cartoon creature, a Halloween skeleton in a short skirt and T-shirt.
    “You spoke to Clint yet?”
    Cissy stepped close to the Datsun’s bumper. She heard a pinging from inside the engine as it cooled, and the clinking of the glass on the steps as Delia set it down.
    “Naaa.” It was as if the breeze had stretched the word out, not Delia. The bright, fresh look of hope disappeared.
    Granddaddy Byrd coughed angrily. Cissy watched the color drain from Delia’s face. She looked even worse than she had in the restaurant.
    “Naaa,” she said again. Her eyes shifted to Cissy. They were a shade lighter than Granddaddy Byrd’s eyes, but like his they could go hard. Now they glinted like the shale that flashes from under the ledges of old mountains. The hollow in Delia’s throat pearled with sweat and pulsed with heat. The muscles there flexed as she swallowed, but she said nothing more.
    “You can’t avoid the man, Delia. Specially not if you want to see those girls.”
    Granddaddy Byrd did not seem to see what his words were doing, the way Delia was folding into herself. He talked like a preacher, Cissy thought. Randall had always warned against preachers, men who talked as if the Bible were propped against their breastbones, God’s truth a razor beneath their tongues. Randall’s daddy had been a preacher. “And he was an evil old man,” he said. “Died blaming his sins on his children and his wife, my mama, who was the sweetest woman you’ll never get to meet. That man ran her into the grave. What I am saying is, don’t trust preachers, Little Bit, don’t let them get after you. You got to keep yourself away from those razor tongues.”
    “You’ll have to talk to him,” Granddaddy Byrd said, his voice gravelly. He kept his face forward, as though Delia were somewhere out in the yard instead of right beside him.
    “I don’t know.” Delia reached for her glass and tapped the bottom lightly on the step. “Don’t think Clint’s necessarily going to want to see me.” Her head was bent. Blown dust settled over her hair, her skirt, her bare arms and calves.
    “Clint’s still your husband.” Now Granddaddy Byrd was looking directly at Delia. “He didn’t choose to divorce you, did he? No, he held on all the time you were gone. And he heard, everybody heard, what you had done.” His crippled hand gestured in Cissy’s direction. “Likely once he knows you’re back, he’ll expect you to come see him.”
    “I don’t know that.”
    “Delia.”
    They were facing each other now, bodies rigid, eyes locked. Cissy saw Delia slowly angle away from the old man, saw her shoulders hunch and settle. She got smaller and smaller, but her head did not turn, her eyes did not drop. She might crack, but she would not soften. A slight vibration moved down Granddaddy Byrd’s long frame, from his leathery neck to his outthrust bony knees, as he clasped his hands in front of him and pulled his elbows in to his sides, like a mantis