DOROTHY ALLISON

This is Dorothy Allison. I was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina. Grew up listening to country music. I%u2019m going to be reading from %u201CBastard Out of Carolina,%u201D my first novel.

I%u2019ve been called Bone all my life, but my name%u2019s Ruth Anne. I was named by and for my oldest aunt, Aunt Ruth. My mama didn%u2019t have much to say about it, since, strictly speaking, she wasn%u2019t there. The way it happened was, mama and carload of my aunts and uncles had been going out to the airport to meet one of the cousins who was on his way back from playing soldier. Aunt Alma, Aunt Ruth, her husband Travis, they were all squeezed in the front, and mama, she was stretched out in the back, sound asleep. Mama hadn%u2019t adjusted to pregnant life very happily and by that time she was 8 months gone and she had a lot of trouble sleeping.

She said when she lay on her back it felt like I was crushing her. When she lay on her side, it felt like I was climbing on her backbone and there was no resting on that stomach at all. Her only comfort was the backseat of Uncle Travis%u2019s Chevy, which was jacked up so high it cradled little girls and pregnant women. And moments after lying back into that seat, mama had fallen into her first deep sleep in 8 months. She slept so hard even the accident didn%u2019t wake her up. Now my Aunt Alma insists to this day that what happened was in no way Uncle Travis%u2019s fault, but I know the first time I ever saw Uncle Travis sober, I was 17, and they had just removed half of his stomach and a piece of his liver.

I cannot imagine the man hadn%u2019t been drinking. There%u2019s no question in my mind but that they had all been drinking. Except mama, who never could drink, and certainly not when she was pregnant. No, mama was just asleep, everybody else was drunk. And what they did was plow headlong into a slow moving car. The front of Uncle Travis%u2019 Chevy accordianed, the back flew up, the aunts, Uncle Travis, were squeezed so tight they just bounced a little, but mama, still asleep, flew over their heads through the windshield over the car they hit.

Going through the glass she cut the top of her head. When she hit the ground she bruised her backside, but other than that she really wasn%u2019t hurt at all. Of course she didn%u2019t wake up for three days, not til after Granny and Aunt Ruth had signed all the papers and picked out my name. So I am Ruth for my Aunt Ruth, and Annie for my mama, and I got the nickname Bone just after mama brought me home from the hospital. Uncle Earl announced I wasn%u2019t no bigger than a knuckle bone, and Aunt Ruth%u2019s youngest girl, DeeDee, she pulled back the blanket to see the bone.

It%u2019s lucky I%u2019m not Maddie Raylene like Granny wanted. But mama had always promised she was going to name her first daughter after her oldest sister, and Aunt Ruth just thought mama%u2019s child should naturally carry mama%u2019s name since they had come so close to losing her. Other than the name, they got everything else wrong. Neither Aunt Ruth nor Granny could write very clearly, and they had not bothered to discuss how Annie would be spelled, so it went up three different times on the form. Anne. Annie. Anna.

As for the name of the father, Granny refused to speak his name after running him out of town for messing with her daughter, and Aunt Ruth had never been too sure of his last name anyways. Oh they tried to get away with just scribbling something down, but if a hospital don%u2019t mind how a baby%u2019s middle name is spelled , they are definite about a daddy%u2019s last name. So Granny gave one, Aunt Ruth gave another.

The clerk got mad, and there I was, certified a bastard by the state of South Carolina. Mama always said it never would have happened if she had been awake. After all, she told my Aunt Alma, they do not ask for a marriage license when they put you up on the table. She was convinced she could have bluffed her way through it. Said she was married firmly enough and no one would have questioned her.

It%u2019s only when you bring it to their attention they write it down. And Granny said it didn%u2019t matter no how. Who cares what was written down? Did people read courthouse records? Did they ask to see your birth certificate before they sat themselves on your porch? Everybody who mattered knew, and she didn%u2019t give a rat%u2019s ass about anybody else. She%u2019d tease mama about that damn silly paper with the red stamp on the bottom. %u201CWhat was it? You wanted someone to frame that thing? You wanted to prove you done it right?

%u201D Oh Granny could be mean where her pride was involved. %u201CThe child is proof enough. Ain%u2019t no stamp on her nobody can see.%u201D But if Granny didn%u2019t care, oh mama did. Mama hated to be called trash. Hated the memory of every day she%u2019d ever spent bent over other people%u2019s peanuts and strawberry plants while they stood tall and looked at her like she was a rock on the ground. The stamp on that birth certificate burned her like the stamp she knew they%u2019d tried to put on her. %u201CNo good, lazy, shiftless white trash.

%u201D She worked her hands to claws, her back to a shovel shape, her mouth to a bent and awkward smile, anything to deny what Greenville county wanted to name her. And now a soft talking black eyed man had done it for them %u2013 put a mark on her and hers. He was all she could do to pull herself up eight days after I was born and go back to work waiting tables with a tight mouth and swollen eyes. My mama was working grill at the White Horse Caf? the day the radio announced that downtown courthouse fire had gone out of control, burning it and the hall of records to the ground.

It was midway through the noon rush. Mama was holding a pot of coffee in one hand, two cups in the other. She put the cups down, passed the pot to her friend Mabs, said, %u201CI%u2019m going home.%u201D %u201CYou what?%u201D %u201CI%u2019ve got to go home.%u201D %u201CWhere%u2019s she goin?%u201D %u201CTrouble at home.%u201D The cardboard box of wrinkled and stained papers was tucked under the sheets at the bottom of Aunt Alma%u2019s chifferobe.

Mama pulled out the ones she wanted, dropped them in the sink without bothering to unfold them. She lit a kitchen match when the phone rang. %u201CYou heard, I suppose?%u201D It was Aunt Ruth. %u201CMabs said you took off like someone set a fire under you.%u201D %u201CNot me,%u201D mama said. %u201COnly fire I got here is the one burning up all these useless papers, this birth certificate.

%u201D Aunt Alma%u2019s laughter spilled out of the phone all over the kitchen. Girl, there ain%u2019t a woman in town gonna believe you didn%u2019t set that fire yourself, half the county%u2019s gonna tell the other how you burned down the courthouse.%u201D %u201CLet them talk,%u201D mama was blowing at the sparks flying up. %u201CTalk won%u2019t send me to jail. The sheriff and half his deputy%u2019s know I was at work all morning, I served them their coffee. I can%u2019t get in no trouble cuz I%u2019m glad the courthouse burned down.

%u201D She blew at the sparks, whistled into the phone. Laughed out loud. Halfway cross down Aunt Ruth balanced the phone against her neck, squeezed Granny%u2019s shoulder, laughed with her. Over at the mill, aunt Alma looked out the window at smoke billowing out downtown. She had to cover her mouth to keep from giggling like a girl. In the outer yard, over at the works, Uncle Earl, Glenn Maydel, they were moving iron, listening to the radio, both of them grinning and looking up at each other at the same moment and bursting out laughing. For a moment, it was almost as if everyone, all over Greenville could hear each other, and all of them, all of them were laughing, as the courthouse burned to the ground.