Free Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison Page A

loved Butch the best of all my cousins. I could talk to Butch, ask him things, and most of the time he’d purse his lips, squint, and drawl me an answer that was sure to be trustworthy—that is, if he wasn’t in one of his teasing funny moods. Sometimes his answers would sound strange if plausible, and it wasn’t till much later that I’d figure the joke in what he’d said
    So when Butch said, “Colored, oh yes, we got colored,” I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not. He pushed his white-blond hair back behind his ears and squinted and grinned right into my face. “Boatwrights got everything—all colors, all types, all persuasions. But the thing is”—he sucked his lower lip up between his teeth and looked around to make sure we were alone—“Boatwright women got caustic pussy. Kills off or messes up everything goes in or out their legs, except purebred Boatwright babies and rock-hard Boatwright men. And even with us, it burns off anything looks the least bit unusual, polishes babies up so they all pretty much look alike, like we been rinsed in bleach as we’re born,
    “’Cept you, of course, all black-headed and strange.” His face became expressionless, serious, intent. “But that’s because you got a man-type part of you. Rock-hard and nasty and immune to harm. But hell, Boatwright women come out that way sometimes.” I stared at him, open-mouthed and fascinated, pretty sure he was shitting me but taken with it all anyway. His tongue slipped out between his lips, and there might have been the beginning of a grin in his eyes.
    “Naaaa,” I hissed at Butch. “Naaaa!”
    People were crazy on the subject of color, I knew, and it was true that one or two of the cousins had kinky hair and took some teasing for it, enough that everyone was a little tender about it. Except for Granny, people didn’t even want to talk about our Cherokee side. Michael Yarboro swore to me that Cherokees were niggers anyway, said Indians didn’t take care who they married like white folks did.
    “Oh, lots of care they take,” Aunt Alma hooted. “The Yarboros been drowning girls and newborns for surely two hundred years.” Butch didn’t have to tell me about that one. The Yarboro boys were talked about worse than my uncles, and everybody knew they were all crazy. When I started school, one of the Yarboro cousins, a skinny rat-faced girl from the Methodist district, had called me a nigger after I pushed her away from the chair I’d taken for mine. She’d sworn I was as dark and wild as any child “born on the wrong side of the porch,” which I took to be another way of calling me a bastard, so I poked her in the eye. It had gotten me in trouble but persuaded her to stay away from me. I didn’t worry too much about what people thought of my temper. A reputation for quick rages wasn’t necessarily a disadvantage. It could do you some good. Daddy Glen’s reputation for a hot temper made people very careful how they talked to him.
     
    Reese’s daddy’s people lived back up in the hills above Greenville. Her grandmother had a farm off the Ashley Highway, but we rarely went there to visit. Mrs. Parsons didn’t seem to like Mama, though she was always pulling out some present for Reese and never failed to give me a nod of welcome. I was jealous of Reese for having Mrs. Parsons as a grandmother, since Mrs. Parsons looked like one in a way my granny never did. She looked like a granny you’d read about or see in a movie. I loved her thick gray-and-white braids, pinned together at the back of her neck, loved the stinky old cow that lived in a shed behind her four-room shotgun house, and the sweet red tomatoes and pulpy green peas she grew over near her creek. Mrs. Parsons wore blue gingham aprons and faded black dresses with long sleeves she would roll back to her elbows. My granny wore sleeveless print dresses that showed the sides of her loose white breasts and hitched up on her hips. She kept her thin gray hair