| Sounds like a lie, but its really the truth You might think Angel-Elouise is a funny name cuz so many people make me out to be the opposite. An angel, I mean ... but in the famous words of Jessica Rabbit, “I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way.” My daddy always said if I continued in my ways, I’d end up going where the bad people go. That’s my step-daddy – he’s a Baptist, a real, fire-breathing, sulfur and brimstone, burn in hell for all eternity, full-immersion Baptist. My other dad -- my bio-dad – he’s a Piscapalian. They don’t believe in hell -- the Piscaplalians, I mean -- or heaven, or Jesus or God, or anything, for that matter. Well, they do, sorta, but they they say them’s just cymbals what can’t be understode. Least, that’s what my step-daddy says. But I’m gettin’ ahead of myself. Let me splain what I mean. It gets awful hot in McCauleysville, Carolina. That’s South Carolina? Which is where I come from, is why I mention it. During the summer, the heat creeps up and peels the paint off the walls of the houses, it’s that hot, and there ain’t nothing to do but sit around and watch the sweat drip off your nose – unless you go to the mall, which a lot of people do, but I think that’s so stupid because so many stupid people do that and come wheeling out of the Wall-Mart with their shopping baskets full, their fat kids stuffed into the shopping carts in and amongst all the stuff they just bought to replace all the other stuff they got at home that looks exactly the same and works just as good, cept it ain’t new, an with this look on their faces like they’ve just received the rapture, like they’ve seen Jesus hisself come down and he told ‘em they was going to heaven that very day if only they’d go out to the shopping mall and buy some new stuff. (I know a whole lot about rapturing and Jesus because both my daddys are preachers – the one my mother had me with, and the one she’s living with now -- but I’ll splain that later.) Like I was saying, all there is for me to do in McCauleysville is sit in my room under the swamp cooler till it drips a hole in the top of my head and stare at pictures of the ocean. Not the ocean we got here, a couple hours over in Myrtle Beach -- that’s a little piddly ocean, with little piddly waves that wouldn’t wash a youngun’s little toy boat -- but the Pacific Ocean, way over on the West Coast, over in California, where things aren’t so stupid, where the waves aren’t so piddly, and where things are so all blessed good and boring and stupid all the time. If it seems to you that I have a bad attitude (and I probably do), I’ll splain why as we go on. McCauleysville is named after some Civil War hero who led a charge against the Yankees, or something, and kept a something like a million slaves on his plantation here abouts, and whipped all the men slaves and had sex and babies with all the women slaves – so half the people around here, both black and white, is descended from him, and you can’t throw a rock without hittin’ a McCauley – but when I pointed out in my history class project that anybody who done all that bad stuff wasn’t no hero in any body’s history book and proposed that we name the town MartinLutherKingsburg (after you know who). Well, you can imagine, they made me out to be the bad one, alright, with some sorta heathenish attitude, and by the time I’m done talking to you, you’ll probably have one too. Then we’ll both be bad. First off, it’d probably help if I splain who I am. And the next best way to know somebody is to meet their family, so let me tell you about mine. My family is so big (that’s one of the stupid parts) that I’ve got two of everything. It seems like every part of my family comes in pairs like we was lining up for a pleasure cruise on No’s ark. I’ve got two Granmas – Granma LucyMae and Granma BettyLou. They live in a little shack out on the innerstate and Granma BettyLou is always yelling at Granma Lucymae on account that Granma BettyLou weights 350 pounds and don’t have no legs. Well, it’s not on account of that that Granma BettyLou is always yelling. She’s always hollering at Granma Lucymae to bring her her pain pills. But Granma Lucymae is very strict and won’t give Granma BettyLou more pills than the doctor allows, so Granma BettyLou lies in her hog wallow of a bed, in their wee, little tar paper shack out on the inner state hollering away like a hog stuck in a fence for her pain pills. “It hurts awful bad, Lucymae!” Granma BettyLou will shout. Over and over and over again. If that ain’t stupid, I don’t know what is. And that’s why I have to sleep with a fan. I know that don’t make sense, but it’s what my English teacher calls four shadowing, which is another way of saying I’ll fill in the parts of the jigsaw later. My daddy –I guess you might call him my real father – he’s a Baptist Preacher right here in McCauleyville. I say my “real” father because he’s the one that made me with my mama. My real mama. Not the lady my daddy married later on, which is not my real mama, even though she tries to make me feel obliged to call herself that, but I never do, not because she ain’t nice, which she is in her own way, but just to spite her and my daddy because he screwed around on my mama (that’s a real stupid thing for a preacher to do, don’t you think?), and that’s why they ain’t married anymore, and my mama’s married now to a Piscapalian Minister, the difference being between a Baptist preacher and a Piscapalian minister being the Piscapalian has a college degree and don’t yell so loud and sweat so much when he’s preaching. Also, he don’t screw around on my mamma, like my son-of-a-bitch real daddy did, though I can’t say that has anything to do with his being Baptist. I guess you can tell I have a bad attitude towards my daddy, too? Asides from my mama, who I’ve already told you a little about, and there’s the lady my real daddy married -- her name’s Deborah. She’s a big haired woman with fake boobs she got over in Columbia and stupider than a pile of cow turds. I mean, she says to me one day, “Dick was gone for four hours the other day.” (Dick’s my daddy's name – as I explain more, you’ll see how propriate it is, but you’ll probably think I’m a dirty-minded person for even thinking of such things.) Anyway, she’s saying to me, “I don’t know where he was, and he won’t tell me, he just keeps saying he had stuff to do. What do you think he was doing all that time?” So, when she asks me this, I think, du-uh, what was he doing for hours at a time when he was cheating on my real mamma with you? But I clamp down on my tongue ‘cuz I figure blurtin’ somethin’ that mean an’ nasty would make me stupider than her, so I just say, “I don’t know, could I have some more lemonade please?” But then I’m sipping on my lemonade and my attitude towards my daddy is getting badder and badder, and not Christian at all, as in honor thy cheating daddy and thy stupid stepmother – and I just come out and ask, all innocent like, “Are there any ladies at the church that’ve been in special need of ministering lately?” Big ol’ hair Deborah’s hand was shakin’ so bad, she couldn’t hardly pour me another glass of lemonade. Had to pour it for myself. You see, my daddy's very handy at ministering to ladies in need like have lost their husbands and might be looking for a spare husband that just happened to be laying around, unused, like my stepmother’s old husband (he wasn’t old, he was just the one before my father took her over) – but he was dead, so I guess that counts, sorta. He was crushed by a thresher machine he’d been trying to fix. He was in a hurry, seeing as a storm was coming, and had to make an adjustment but dint want to waste any time stopping the thing, and he’d got right up in it while the blades was running, and it rolled right up over the top of him and spit him out in a 500 pound bale of alfalfa. They had to bury him in a funny shaped square coffin on account they couldn’t separate him from the alfalfa straw, and my stepmama needed an awful load of ministering after that, you can imagine, which my real mama objected to when she found out – said nobody dint need that much ministerin -- and which is why she divorced my father. And I would’ve divorced him too if I had the chance, cuz one time afore that, my daddy was so busy ministering all day and all night that he had missed my 10th birthday party. But do you think my mama said diddlysquat about that? And do I need to tell you the answer to the question? And does it sound like I have a bad attitude towards my mother, too? I reckon I’m just a bad girl on all counts. But I can’t help it that everybody else is so stupid it hurts, and I’d rather be bad, like I am, than stupid as a wood door, like some of them. And I have pairs of aunts and cousins, cousin Billy and cousin Bobby, aunt Susie Lulu and Aunt Sassy, and scads more – I’m naming only a few to give you an idea about the size of the whole stupid menagerie, really, like some god blessed No’s ark, all the relatives going up two-by-two. But one only gay uncle. He’s all by hisself. He’s not really totally gay on account of he’s married and has six children (three sets of twins -- three pairs, you’ll notice, just like Noa), but he sneaks off and does gay things with other men. (Who else?) But, of course, I’m the bad one for noticing that stuff ain’t what it’s made out to be. Which is what I always do, but I’ll splain that later, too, and a lot of other stuff that I can’t think of right now. Continues... |
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