Read Bastard out of Carolina for Free Online Page B

babies.”
    “Oh, it an’t that.” Mama pulled me up onto her lap and started the arduous process of brushing out my hair. “All us Boatwrights go dark as we get older. It’s just the way it goes. Blond goes red or brown, and darker and darker. An’t none of us stays a blond once we’re grown.”
    “’Cept you, honey,” Aunt Alma grinned.
    “Yeah, but I got Clairol, don’t I?” Mama laughed and hugged me. “What you think, Alma? Should I cut this mop or not? She can’t keep it neat to save her life, hates me pulling on it when I try to brush it out.”
    “Hell yes, cut it. I’ll get the bowl. We’ll trim it right down to her neck.”
    “Noooo!” I howled, and wrapped my hands around my head. “I want my hair. I want my hair.”
    “But you won’t let us do nothing with it, honey.”
    “No! No! No! It’s my hair and I want it. I want it long and tangled and just the way it is.”
    Aunt Alma reached over and took the hairpin out of my mouth. “Lord, look at her,” she said. “Stubborn as the day is long.”
    “Uh-huh.” Mama put both hands on my shoulders and squeezed. She didn’t sound angry. I raised my head to look at her. Her brown eyes were enormous close up, with little flecks of light in the pupils. I could almost see myself between the flashes of gold.
    “Well, what you expect, huh?”
    I looked back at Aunt Alma. Her eyes were the same warm brown, deep and shining with the same gold lights, and I realized suddenly that she had the same cheekbones as Mama, the same mouth.
    “She’s just like you.”
    My mouth wasn’t like that, or my face either. Worse, my black eyes had no gold. I didn’t look like anybody at all.
    “You, you mean,” said Mama.
    She and Aunt Alma nodded together above me, grinning at each other in complete agreement. I loosened my hands from around my skull slowly, letting Mama start brushing out my hair. Reese put her pudgy little fingers in her mouth and stared at me solemnly. “B-Bone,” she stammered.
    “Yes,” Aunt Alma agreed, hefting Reese up in her arms. “Our stubborn Bone is just like her mama, Reesecup. Just like her aunts, just like a Boatwright, and just like you.”
    “But I don’t look like nobody,” I wailed.
    Aunt Alma laughed. “Why, you look like our Bone, girl.”
    “I don’t look like Mama. I don’t look like you. I don’t look like nobody.”
    “You look like me,” Mama said. “You look like my own baby girl.” She put her fingers delicately on my cheeks, pressing under my eyes. “You got the look, all right. I can see it, see what it’s gonna be like when you grow bigger, these bones here.” Her fingers slipped smoothly down over my mouth and chin. “And here. You gonna look like our granddaddy, for sure. Those Cherokee cheekbones, huh, Alma?”
    “Oh yes, for sure. She’s gonna be another one, another beauty to worry about.”
    I smiled wide, not really believing them but wanting to. I held still then, trying not to flinch as Mama began to brush relentlessly at my knotted hair. If I got a permanent, I would lose those hours on Mama’s lap sitting in the curve of her arm while she brushed and brushed and smoothed my hair and talked soft above me. She always seemed to smell of buttery flour, salt, and fingernail polish—a delicate insinuating aroma of the familiar and the astringent. I would breathe deep and bite my lips to keep from moaning while my scalp ached and burned. I would have cut off my head before I let them cut my hair and lost the unspeakable pleasure of being drawn up onto Mama’s lap every evening.
    “Do I look like my daddy?” I asked.
    There was silence. Mama brushed steadily while Aunt Alma finished pulling the rags from Reese’s hair.
    “Do I? Like my daddy, Mama?”
    Mama gathered all my hair up in one hand and picked at the ends with the side of the brush. “Alma, get me some of that sweet oil, honey, just a little for my palm. That’s enough.”
    The brush started again in long sweeping