Our People Don't Take Kindly to Charity

I've been having the kind of week where extremely old memories come back to me in the middle of the most mundane moments. I'm rereading Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina for the FOURTH TIME before setting out on my next chapter, which includes a discussion of the work and an original interview I did with Allison a few months ago. No other book reminds me more of my mother, as it follows the childhood perils of Bone--a victim of sexual abuse, labeled as "trash" and "bastard child," growing up poor and hungry in South Carolina.

Where I just stopped reading, Bone has been caught stealing tootsie rolls from the drug store. Oddly enough, I have to go to court tomorrow to testify against the man/boy that stole from us. It reminded me of the one time I stole a piece of gum at the tiny market in my hometown. I don't know my age, but I must have been a toddler because I remember being nearly eye level with the bottom rung of the candy display. We weren't poor, per se, but we did have a rough couple of months before my sister was born when my father got laid off from his factory. Mom was working around the clock at Wal-Mart, and my father--never one to take charity--refused unemployment benefits. Instead, he left every morning and stood in line to procure whatever day labor was available.

On the days he didn't find work, he would stay home with me. Always good with his hands--though he was a big, scary Southern daddy, he had delicate hands like my Bunny--he would make silly hats for me out of construction paper. Depending on the season/holiday, he would create a theme, prop me up on the appropriate "backdrop," sometimes my mother's handmade afghan or the bedspread on their water bed, and he would document them in photos:


You can tell he was off work for several months because of the changing hat themes.

All of this--Allison's words, my petty theft, our impending court case, and my father's pictures--reminded me of my mother's admonishments to me from early, early childhood: never take anything that doesn't belong to you. Her case-in-point comes from her personal tale of delinquency. Nevermind uncomfortable struggle, she was dirt ass poor. She says their house always smelt like piss, and it made her embarrassed to ever have anyone over for a visit. To this day, she cleans like a mad woman. One day, when she was a young child, Mom went to the drugstore and stole a giant candy bar. Eagerly unwrapping the foil, she took one bite and felt movement in her mouth. The entire bar was covered in ants. She took this as a sign of her sin, and she never, ever stole again.