Great lines from Little Altars Everywhere

I reluctantly guess I can see why some people don't like Rebecca Wells. She just captures certain aspects of Southern-ness to me though. The smells and the feel of summer especially.

I love the chapter "Skinny-Dipping" about Baylor reminiscing about summers spent at a camp at Spring Creek. I could almost type the whole chapter out here but I won't. All I can think is, yes a child could have narrated this and yes this is the South in the summer and yes I could listen to this forever and there always was a giant fan that looked like it could suck you up:

Your first dive into the water in the morning is the finest thing in the world. It's never too cold. It's Louisiana summer creek water, not some northern-state water-where I've never been, but I know it's so cold it takes your breath away and would give Daddy a heart attack. Little Spring Creek is the kind of water that lets you wake up slow, lets you roll over on your back and float and stare at the clouds without getting the shivers, without having to swim fast to keep from freezing to death. Mama says, This is the kind of water that spoils Southerners for any other part of the country.

...

Anyway, what we usually do is this. We swim in the morning. Then when it starts to get around noon, we pack up and walk over to Spring Creek Shop-and Skate, which is your only roller rink and grocery store in Central Louisiana. Inside the store it is all cool, with the concrete floor under your feet and the jukebox playing in the skating rink....And we get our bread and milk from there, and the big blocks of ice that you have to carry out to the car with these big iron tongs. If you drop that ice on your foot you'll be crippled forever so you better be careful. 

....

Finally when it cools down a little, the Ya-Yas let us go without them back to the skating rink. We rent skates for a quarter. Sidda is all the time playing Nat King Cole on the jukebox. There's this huge fan at one end of the rink that I swear you could get sucked into if you don't watch out. I won't skate down at that end. We put ice cream sandwiches on mama's tab, and we eat them sitting on the bench. Then Lulu always goes and gets her a second one, even though she knows we're only supposed to charge one apiece. I been working on my skating but I'm not what you call the greatest.

....

And if you think that sheriff scared my mama and her friends, you are wrong. No. This is what they do. They get out of their swim cover-ups and put on their shorts and tops and build a fire in the pit, and we all have a weenie roast. mama rubs Six-Twelve all over us and we turn our hot dogs in the flames, and the ladies help us put mayonnaise and ketchup on the buns. And we have this huge wooden bowl of potato chips and tall cold bottles of Cokes, and the ladies are drinking cold Jax beer out of the red cooler.

I don't know what it is about mayo and the South. I can remember when I was a kid, a friend of my grandmother's thinking it was the oddest thing that I didn't like mayonnaise and how I only wanted mustard on my sandwiches.

Here is a bit where Siddha mourns a haircut that was pushed on her by her mother and one of her drinking buddies:

I was used to how I had looked for so long and how my hair felt when I reached up to roll it between my fingers. When I was alone, I used to hold a clump of my hair and just smell it. and tht would make me feel good because it was my smell and it made me feel more there. 

Later, Vivi dumps an ashtray into the trashcan full of hair and sets it on fire. I just picture Vivi's poor kids, being shuttled around by her drunk mother and left in random places to hunt for food (anchovy paste and tonic) and a place to sleep so Vivi doesn't have to go home and fight with her husband (who thinks, correctly, she's a sloppy selfish drunk.) More of Siddha on the hair but lots of things really:

But I can feel the ground underneath me. And I tell myself: The earth is holding me up. I am lighter than I was before. My hair is like grass planted on the top of my head. If I can just wait long enough, maybe it will grow back in some other season.

And here's a bit where Vivi contemplates her children moving out (Vivi is a really shitty mother and borderline shitty person and like many people who are in that way, she has no idea):

It was all so fast and furious-having them, raising, them, watching them go. I thought when Baylor left: All right now, this is when my life can begin! But it never did begin and I can't tell you why. 

There's a certain deceptive economy that Wells uses to get you to know her characters. I really liked the chapter "Looking for My Mules" that Vivi narrates where an old black man wanders onto Pecan Grove looking for his mules so he can plow. It's 1991, there's not much farm land left in that part of Louisiana and no one uses mules. Shep tries to run him off, realizes what the man's story is, and is overcome with grief for all that is lost. It's surprisingly moving since neither of these characters are particularly likeable:

We all three of us sit there not saying a word. Part of me wants to sob, and part of me wants to scream bloody murder. Part of me wants to take Shep by the throat and yell, You care more about this old black man than you do about me!


But I don't say a word. I will not be dragged away from Pecan Grove in my old age because they claim I'm nuts (like certain people have implied when they thought I wasn't sharp enough to know exactly what they were saying.) They don't know what sharp is. I have been sharp as a tack my whole life, so nobody better even try to fool me. 
...


We sit that way for-oh, I don't know-about fifteen minutes. Until I'd seen at least two lightning bugs over by the clothesline. When the sheriff's car pulls into the driveway.....The car backs out, and the old man rolls down the window and calls out to Shep: I sho nuff hope the good Lord give us enough rain this year!
Shep walks over to the car and leans down to him, puts his hand on the man's shoulder and says, I do too, padnah, I do too. 


Then the sheriff's car pulls out of the driveway...Shep watches until it's out of sight, then he stares out into the field where the beans have disappeared in the dark. He stands in that way for a good long time with his hands in his pockets. When he turns to me, his eyes are so soft and serious.


He says, it goes by so fast, Vivi, it just goes by so goddamn fast.
I know, Babe, I fell him and try to hook my arm through his.
But he turns and walks up the drive saying, I'm hungry. It's way past suppertime.
Oh God, I think, it's such a good life, but it hurts!



 ....

I will tell him that when we are old and looking for our mules, we don't have to be alone, we can help each other....I walk down the hall to Shep's room....I reach down to open the door, try to turn the knob to the right.
The door is locked.
There are only two of us in this house and he has locked his door before going to sleep. 
I will never let him hurt me again as long as I live, I say to myself. As I walk back down the hall, I say it over and over to myself. One of these days I will learn. 

The book ends with Siddha, which is appropriate. I will follow these words of wisdom, I will follow these words of wisdom:

 I have one main rule for myself these days: Don't hit the baby. It means: Don't hurt the baby that is me. Don't beat up on the little one who I'm learning to hold and comfort, the one I'm trying to love no matter how raggedy she looks. It's sort of a code, a shorthand of the heart. 

I murmur Don't hit the baby when I wake up, when I ride the subway, when I board a plane, when I step into a theatre. I whisper Don't hit the baby before I go to sleep. And on the nights when I make it through without a futon-soaking nightmare, I know I've breathed it like a prayer during my sleep.