Daddy’s people came in from Louisiana to bury him, a bunch of dark-skinned, black-haired people I never met before, the Garigeaus. They were Cajuns but they are not part of this story, since I never did them any harm, nor were they much interested in me. Along with the Garigeaus came a heavyset girl who turned out to be the first, and I guess only, Mrs. Garigeau. That was a cruel blow to Momma, to find out that way she wasn’t a true wife, and I was a bastard. They let us all come to the church though, St. Margaret’s, the first time I had ever been in a Catholic church and the last for many years until I was whipped into it kicking and screaming by God, like the dumb dog I was and am. I remember liking the incense and trying to get up and follow the rest of them to communion and Momma pinching my arm and making me sit still. They had the mass and cremated him and took him in a little box back to Plaquemines Parish, where they all came from. They have their graves in stone boxes above ground there, because of the floods, this fact told to me by a little cousin I never saw again.
The other wife meant there was no survivors’ money for us, and the insurance company wouldn’t pay the insurance the shippers made Daddy carry because they claimed negligence in the accident, which was what they called getting a blow job off a fifteen-year-old whore he’d picked up in Decatur and in the midst going off the Tennessee River bridge on 20 east.
Well, we were stony broke after that. Momma went back to work at the Tasty-Freeze, and we all moved back with Gran. When I think of the torments of hell, I often think of it like that, two women and a girl in a small little house, all the time fighting both ways, hot and cold. I guess I hated the cold kind the worst, the banging of doors, nobody talking, food slammed down on the table, silent meals. Gran was a good woman, I guess, or started out good, but she had put all her hopes on her daughter and then on me, that one of us would get out of this what she called the stinky armpit of Florida and amount to something, and it was pretty certain by then that one of us was a man-crazy slut without a lick of sense and the other was a retard, me.Retard was Momma talking, not Gran, and for days at a time when I’d done something she didn’t like she would call me that, or Ree, or Emmytard.
But a few weeks into the summer after fourth grade, Momma started taking better care of herself and cleaning and cooking, because of Raymond Robert Dideroff, who came one warm summer Sunday night to supper. Ray Bob, as he was known, was the chief of police of Wayland. He had been married to Louellen Pritchard for a long time, and had two boys?Jon Dideroff was in my class at school and Ray Jr. was a year ahead of me?but a couple of years back she had run off, no one could figure out why, because Ray Bob it was agreed in Wayland was quite the man. Which he was, a big, broad-shouldered, square-jawed fellow with slick-back sandy hair and crinkly blue eyes. The Dideroffs had been in Wayland since the year zip, had plenty of money, what they call prominent citizens, which the Boone family was definitely not. Ray Bob was also a deacon in the Amity Street Assembly of God Church. I believe that when we sat down that night it was the first time anyone had said grace over food in our house, and I got a wicked kick under the table from Momma just as I was about to grab a drumstick beforehand.
Well, it was pretty clear to me what was going on, and as I sat there eating chicken I began to think about what I could do to mess things up for Momma without getting caught out and killed. Toward the end of pie and coffee I had thought up a few good ones, but then something strange happened. Ray Bob leaned back in his chair after his second hunk of key lime pie and looked around the room, as if he was planning on buying the place and remarked to Gran about how many books there were in the room and asked if we were all readers. Gran said she had always like to read and she talked about writers she liked for a little while and Ray Bob and her agreed on how they liked some of them, and Momma said she loved to read too but never got the chance because she was working double shifts to keep the money coming in, which was a lie, but Gran knew better than to call her on it just then, and then…it is hard to explain but something came into the room with that lie, like a smoke, like Satan himself was there and we were his little dolls he was playing with and having just the best old time.
Ray Bob turned to me and locked those blue eyes into mine and the hair stood up on the backs of my arms and on my neck because I saw that he could see right into me right through to my deepest secrets, that he could see the evil working deep in me and that he thought that it was kind of cute. And I saw that what was looking into me was something that not even Ray Bob knew about in his own heart, which was the scariest thing about it, like you’re playing in the river and all of a sudden you realize you’re not where you thought you were, not on a safe sandbar but out in the main current and there was no bottom under your feet and the river had hold of you. I had thought I was the wickedest thing going but right then I knew I was just paddling in the shallows of it.
He had a deep, pleasant voice like a TV announcer, and he said how about you, honey, you a reader too? Momma broke in and said oh she wants to so bad but she’sdyslexic, we tried everything, and where she dug up that word I don’t know, maybe retained against need from one of Mrs. Barrett’s lectures, but he paid her no mind, just kept boring inward and stripping me with those eyes, and he said, oh, I think Emmylou can read pretty good when she wants to. Gran spoke up and started to say no, really Ray Bob, she can’t read a lick but I cut her off and said Ican read, my own voice seeming to come from some other little girl. He said go read us something honey.
Now as part of her act Momma had gone up into the attic and brought down her grandfather’s family Bible and dusted it off and sat it on a doily on the sideboard next to the table, like we had Bible reading every day, and so I just had to reach out and grab it and I opened it at random with the blood pounding so hard in my head that I saw red spots. It was I Kings 14 that the book opened to and I read At that time Abijah the son of Jeroboam fell sick And Jeroboam said to his wife, Arise, I pray thee, and disguise thyself that thou be not known as the wife of Jeroboam and get thee to Shiloh: behold there is Ahijah the prophet, which told me I should be king over this people.
I read the next verse too about the cracknels and the cruse of honey and then Momma yelled real loud and said that it was a miracle that she had prayed for so long and came over and dragged me off the chair and gave me a hard furious hug. Over her shoulder I could see the look on Gran’s face, the shock of betrayal. I guess she had really wanted to make me into a little her, someone who would enjoy the things she did, books and good music, and might attend the limited cultural events available to the Caluga County bourgeoisie, maybe a girl to take on trips to Atlanta or Miami, who’d go on to a four-year college like she did, only not get pregnant in junior year and have to drop out, and here I was, all what she wanted but keeping it hidden, and then trotting it out for the likes of Ray Bob Dideroff. She aged about ten years while I was looking at her. After a while, me showing off my reading prowess to Momma and Ray Bob, she kind of busied herself with clearing the supper things away. Of course, she never read to me anymore, or called me on how come I did that to her. She kind of faded out of our lives after that, nothing violent, but Ray Bob didn’t much care for her, stuck-up was the word mostly used and also she wasn’t church and she was a member of the ACLU, which was more than enough to put her in his bad books. Actually, now that I think of it, nearly everyone Momma knew from before was in Ray Bob’s bad books, an imposing set of volumes, and I guess that should’ve told us something, but did not, Momma being so happy to finally be on easy street.