Free Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

up to be something special. Whatever I have to do.” She smiled and kissed him, her open mouth pressing his lips hungrily.
    Reese put her fat little hands on his arm and said, “Daddy,” and the two of them lifted her up between them.
    “Daddy,” I tried to say, but it sounded funny in my head. I remembered those moments in the hospital parking lot like a bad dream, hazy and shadowed. When Daddy Glen looked at me, I saw no sign that he ever thought about it at all. Maybe it had not happened. Maybe he really did love us. I wanted him to love us. I wanted to be able to love him. I wanted him to pick me up gently and tell Mama again how much he loved us all. I wanted to be locked with Reese in the safe circle of their arms.
    I stood still and felt my eyes fill with tears. Mama pulled away from Daddy Glen and gathered me up. Over her shoulder I saw Daddy Glen’s icy blue eyes watching us, his mouth a set straight line. He shook himself and looked away. I held on to Mama with fingers as hard and cold as iron.
     
    Daddy Glen didn’t like us listening to all those stories Granny and Aunt Alma were always telling over and over again. “I’ll tell you who you are,” he said. “You’re mine now, an’t just Boatwrights.” He told us about his daddy, Mr. Bodine Waddell, who owned the Sunshine Dairy, and about his brothers. His oldest brother, Daryl, had lost his bid for district attorney, but his law firm was building a reputation as the one to hire if you wanted a city contract. His older brother, James, was about to open up his dental office, and starting next year we’d go to him to get our teeth fixed.
    “Granny says we got good teeth,” I told Daddy Glen. “She says the one thing God gave the Boatwrights is hard, sharp teeth.”
    “And you believe everything she says, don’t you?” His eyes sank into the wrinkles of his squint, shiny as mica in sunlight, while his mouth twisted so that one side of his grin was drawn up. He looked as if he was about to laugh, but instead he just pursed his lips and spat.
    “Your granny is the worst kind of liar. That old woman wouldn’t tell the truth if she knew it.” He put his hand under my chin, his big, blunt fingers pressing once lightly and then pulling away. “You stay clear of that old woman. I’ll tell you what’s true. You’re mine now. You and Reese just keep your distance from her.”
     
    I didn’t trust Daddy Glen, didn’t believe him when he said all Granny’s stories were lies, but I never could be sure which of the things she told me were true and which she just wished were true, stories good enough to keep even if they were three-quarters false. All the Boatwrights told stories, it was one of the things we were known for, and what one cousin swore was gospel, another swore just as fiercely was an unqualified lie. Raylene was always telling people that we had a little of the tarbrush on us, but the way she grinned when she said it could have meant she was lying to make somebody mad, or maybe she just talked that way because she was crazy angry to start out.
    “What’s it mean?” I asked Ruth’s youngest boy, Butch.
    “Means we got some colored people somewhere back up the line.” He grinned at me. “Means Raylene’s a pisser. She’ll say anything, and everybody knows it.”
    I thought about that a while, and then asked anyway. “Do we?” I watched his smile widen slowly into a smirk.
    Butch was just one year older than me, and I knew I could ask him anything—not like Garvey or Grey or Aunt Ruth’s other boys. They were always trying to pretend they were more grown-up than they were, and I could never tell what might start them acting weird. Butch was different—a little soft, not put together too tightly, some people said.
    “The boy don’t act like a Boatwright,” was the way Uncle Earle put it. “Don’t seem to have a temper in him at all. And he’s got a right strange sense of humor. Don’t know what’s serious. ”
    But I