Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

102 ◆ Crab Orchard Review
Melanie Jennings
those little nape hairs of Jerry’s. My aunts were all the time telling
me to put some clothes on and fiddling with my hair and buying me
ribbons and things I would never in a million years wear. It was a
fact that I was like my mother and everyone knew there was no sense
trying to change Ruth’s Baby, that I’d be hard-headed and stubborn
as the day is long. And proud as a bitch, my Uncle Lloyd always said,
something I loved repeating to myself. He wasn’t a church-goer.
Lloyd was part of the things I was supposed to stay away from,
but which Jerry and I were learning made life worth living. It was the
battle of good and evil being played out in every one of us each minute
of every day, just like Pastor preached, and it was so hard being so
good all the time that every once in a while you felt like you deserved a
reward for all the good you’d been doing. And bad things felt so good
it was hard telling the Devil no. But things were shifting lately and I
could tell. Bad things that felt good had escalated from lining stepgramma-Erma’s
dentures with Tabasco sauce when she’d leave them
sitting out on the kitchen sink, to letting Jerry fall asleep against my
sleeping bag on Saturday nights and then pushing him off in the morning.
Today seemed to be marking the biggest shift, outlining clearly
our different territories—Jerry’s with his baptism and being thirteen,
and mine with being twelve and not-yet-baptized. And yet I so wanted
to join him in everything he did. I think Uncle Lloyd was the only one
who saw it coming and he suddenly started giving me hair ribbons
too and bellowing at Jerry to “Stop horsing around so hard with your
cousin! And Baby get your ass over here!”
I was constantly comparing myself to the ladies in Uncle Lloyd’s
magazines which he kept by the toilet at Jerry’s house. Nippy had a
long time ago given up trying to throw them out and so had a little
doll with a long pink crocheted dress that draped over a rectangular
box to hide what she called “the nasty girls.” After I’d sneak off the
doll’s dress and the box that smelled of Nippy’s talcum powder, I’d get
the goods. They were like nothing I’d ever seen before and they kept
me coming back for more every other Saturday evening after dinner.
Once I’d even lain on the linoleum and hiked up my shorts as far as
they could go and felt my chest and between my legs. I thought about
Jerry and Uncle Lloyd and even Jesus. I knew I was going to hell then.
But I prayed for mercy while my hands slid up my legs. I’d promise
to never do it again. At least not until next Saturday, since there was
always church on Sunday to beg for forgiveness.
All the singing had stopped and the shouting dispersed into tired