by Rae Cine
Trigger warnings. Spoiler alerts.
In “Where Moral Authority Begins: Part II,” I am curious about what truth costs a child and her family in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. I have obsessed over this novel for years, not only the story but also the language—authentic, textured, defined in place and socio-economics to which I am particularly drawn having grown up as a young girl in northern Appalachia. I am also in love with my paperback copy. French flaps and deckle edges. I have written about my love of French flaps. The French flap and deckle edge makes this paperback Bastard something more than a book. It is really an experience.
Allison set the novel in South Carolina but the textures are familiar to me, the way Cincinnati chili tastes of cinnamon and southern chili Tex-Mex. The spices are different but the feel is home. And so is the trauma.
Bastard reveals brutal truths through its young narrator, “Bone,” thirteen years old and a survivor of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Glen, Bone’s stepfather, but we don’t know this in the beginning. Bone introduces her story, taking us back to when she was still inside her mama, Anney, who is fifteen:
I’ve been called Bone all my life, but my name’s Ruth Anne. I was named for and by my oldest aunt—Aunt Ruth. My mama didn’t have much to say about it, since strictly speaking, she wasn’t there. Mama and a carful 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, and her husband, Travis, were squeezed into the front, and Mama was stretched out in back, sound asleep. Mama hadn’t adjusted to pregnant life very happily, and by the time she was eight months gone, she had a lot of trouble sleeping. She said that 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 up her backbone, and there was no rest on her stomach at all. Her only comfort was the backseat of Uncle Travis’s Chevy, which was jacked up so high that it easily cradled little kids or pregnant women. Moments after lying back into that seat, Mama had fallen into her first deep sleep in eight months. She slept so hard, even the accident didn’t wake her up…. (1)
Read the full essay at Eckleburg.
Where Moral Authority Begins
Part I: Toni Morrison’s Beloved
Part II: Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina
Part III: Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God
Part IV: Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
Rae Cline’s debut novel, Precious Ugly (7.13 Books), is a work of Appalachian literary fiction. It was a finalist for the Curt Johnson Prose Award and CRAFT’s First Chapters Contest. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, North American Review, and StoryQuarterly. She is the founding editor of Eckleburg and lives in New York City.