I took hold of her arm and shook her. She flung it off and slapped me. I slapped in return, which was where I made my mistake. She whirled to her knees on the bed, so the dress ripped open. Then she began beating me with her fists, in between clawing at my face and grabbing me, to hold me close and bite me. I didn’t yelp and neither did she. It was grunting, gasping fury, with me fighting her off and her fighting back in. At last she flopped back on the bed and started to bawl, so I could go to my room, to the den, to have a look in the mirror and see what she’d done to my face. It was cut up all right. After slapping the Listerine on, I got the bleeding stopped and finally went back to her. Her crying seemed to have stopped, but as soon as I opened the door, it started up again, the old camp-meeting yodel, loud, clear, hopeless, and 100 percent phoney. I said: “OK, knock it off or I’m letting you have it.”
All that got was more of the same, but louder.
I hauled off and slapped her, first on one side of the face, then on the other. She just hollered louder. I got a pitcher of water and started to pour. “Cool it or you’re getting cooled.”
She didn’t quite stop but did ease off, so I knew at last that we could talk. “Now,” I asked her, “what’s this all about? What in the hell is it all about?”
“Oh!” she wailed. “That I should live to see this day!”
“What day?” I wanted to know. “It’s Sunday. What other day is it?”
“After all these years, after all I’ve done, slaving and scrimping and slaving—”
“And don’t forget those fingers,” I reminded her. “Working them to the bone.” Because, of course, I’d heard some of this before, in one connection or another. In fact, I knew most of it by heart. But this time she went on and on, reciting it by the book, leaving nothing out. It wasn’t until all of it had been said two or three times that at last she got around to the night before. “And then to think, that when at last there was hope, when the sun was coming up, when the rainbow had showed in the sky, that I should be stabbed in the back — by my own little boy, and a horrible Jezebel!”
“Where was this creature? I didn’t see any Jezebel.”
“A slut, that slept up with men, then took up with my own little Davey!”
“Hey! Little Davey is me!”
“Just a Jezebel!”
“How you know she slept up with guys?”
“I can tell by looking at her. Anyone can tell. That rotten look on her face.”
“And sleeping up with guys, that makes her a Jezebel?”
“What do you think it makes her?”
“I wouldn’t know what it makes her — maybe nothing. What she is is a very nice girl.”
“I say she’s a Jezebel.”
“Sleeping up makes her that?”
“What do you think it makes her?” she said again.
“Maybe a girl in love.”
“Love? Love?”
“Mom, tell me something.”
“Tell you what?”
“There was a girl I looked up, that I had reason to look up. Named Myra Giles, who sounds a lot like you. She was sixteen years old and went in the hospital here to have a child. She had it and two months later got married. So she must have been sleeping up. Does that make her a Jezebel?”
She raised up on one elbow and stared at me a long time. In the dark her eyes looked big, no longer blue, but black. “When did you find that out?”
“Oh, a few months ago. I was getting my papers in order for some insurance I thought I might buy. They want birth certificates, parents’ marriage license, and so on. So I went down and looked myself up. It’s OK with me. All I saw in those papers was a sixteen-year-old girl who was in love. There’s no law against it. I glory in her, and if I’m what came of it, I’m thankful for that, too. But let’s get back to the subject. Did that make her a Jezebel?”
“Could be, it did.”
“Well, Jezzie, hello.”
“How’d you like to go to hell?”
“Well, you said it, I didn’t.”
“You bet I said it. I have to. But it wasn’t me.”
“Not you? Are you being funny?”
“It wasn’t me, now you know! I wasn’t even supposed to tell you, you’re not my son! And Jody was not your father! It wasn’t me who had you! I was the one who got married, but I didn’t have you! It was Big Myra, my cousin who has the same name and went into the hospital there, the clinic they had on Fourth Street. But then, when she couldn’t keep it, she begged me to take it and raise it. So to do that I had to get married. We were going to, Jody and I, but we weren’t ready to then. But with her nursing that baby, he was so cute. I wanted him. So we went and got married sooner, sooner than we had intended. I love you, I always did, but you’re not my child at all, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t—”
“Shouldn’t what?”
“Whatever I feel like!”
“Like bellering around?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean Jezebellering.”
“You quit talking to me like that!”
“And you quit talking to me like that! That’s a hot one, Mom, ain’t it? All of a sudden, so you can unzip my pants and take out what’s in there, you tell me you’re not my mother. Isn’t it time to laugh?”
She pushed me out of the way, got up, and turned on the light. Then she stood pulling her dress and twisting it, to straighten out the places where it was ripped or torn or strained. Then she went in the living room where the light was already on and sat down. After a while she said: “If you want to laugh, laugh. I wouldn’t know what at.”
“At that comical tale you told.”
“If it’s comical to you, it’s comical to you. It never was to me. And it never was to Big Myra.”
Why it took so long for it to sink in, to penetrate my mind, that it might be true what she’d said, I don’t have any idea. Until then it hadn’t occurred to me even to wonder about it. But when she mentioned Big Myra, who I’d always supposed was my aunt, I suddenly had a flash. I saw the look Aunt Myra would have when she’d bring me a toy, a horn or a skateboard or a drum, that always made me so happy. She looked a little like Mom, a shade taller, and slim, but instead of being pretty, beautiful — pale, with blue-black hair and big black mountain eyes. That coloring, they say, comes from Indian blood. She doted on me, and God knows I doted on her — and I knew now the reason both ways. I went over to Mom, put my hand on her head, turned her face to the light, and said: “You’re telling me the truth?”
“Yes, of course I am.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“It was part of how we fixed it up. I had to promise I’d never tell you, so—”
“So what?”
“You wouldn’t mess things up.”
“With Aunt Myra, you mean?”
“Her or — anyone.”
It must have been five minutes before it dawned on me who she was talking about. “You mean, my father?”
“I mean like I said, with anyone.”
“Goddamn it, answer me.”
“OK then, with him.”
“Who is ‘him’?”
“I don’t know; she never said.”
“Mom, spit it out. Who am I?”
“Don’t you think I’d say if I knew? Now that I’ve said this much? She was working in Logan County, had a job with the Boone County Coal Corporation, a typist or something. And a guy came along who was married. He was taking a survey for a bus line they wanted to run. She never would say who he was, and that’s all I know about it.”
More time went by while I soaked that up a bit. Then: “Mom, did he have something to do with it, the deal you made about me? Did he want you to take me too?”
“I don’t know. I never saw him. Maybe he came on, maybe he stayed with her there in Marietta while we were talking about it. She never said. I don’t know.”