Beautiful Revolutionary by Laura Elizabeth Woollett

Author:Laura Elizabeth Woollett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, REL020000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2018-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

3.

In retrospect, it makes sense, but until Father orders all the men and women who’ve ever begged him for sex to stand up in the members-only meeting, Bobbi Luce never imagined her dad could be one of them. Not because he’s her dad, or because he’s married to her mom, but because she’s always imagined those men to be young, hip, college-educated, and her dad is just a dumb old cracker who says things like, ‘tough tomatoes’ and ‘’55 was a good year.’

And yet, she remembers things. Snippy remarks from her mom over the years. How he never even looked at Terra when she walked around the house in too-short nightgowns, though Bobbi and her brothers couldn’t look enough. How weird he was around Lenny Lynden, and how his weirdness made her mom even more of a bitch than usual.

‘That time you fucked me up the ass all those years ago,’ Bobbi’s dad blubbers, the crude words strange on his lips. ‘That was the only time I was ever happy.’

Bobbi hates her dad. Not as much as her mom, but enough to be surprised by how little hate she actually feels, seeing him stand up with all those younger, better-looking people.

‘Of course, they’re all white,’ Bobbi overhears Eunice Mosley bitch to Flora Armstrong, a black girl whose style she’s always liked, on their way out of the building that night, and she’s ashamed she didn’t notice something so obvious. Because white skin is the most obvious thing Bobbi’s dad has in common with doll-pretty Polly Hurmerinta, and Evelyn’s sister Sally-Ann Burne, and Harry Katz, the moody med student, and dreamy blue-eyed Lenny Lynden, and Bobbi’s big brother Roger, and every other person who admits to having forced Father to make a sacrifice of his body.

‘What do you expect?’ Flora catches Bobbi looking. ‘White folks always want to think they’re something special.’

And it’s true, Bobbi does want to think she’s special, though all evidence seems to be to the contrary. While her mom says she has an ‘artistic temperament’, Bobbi knows she doesn’t have the talent to match it: she can’t sing like Flora, can’t turn their sappy Temple stage-plays into genuine tragedy like Tish Bud, can’t play drums like her brother Danny, can’t even bead and crochet like her sister, Dot, who’s got about as much imagination as a filing cabinet. She isn’t pretty like Dot, let alone beautiful like Minnie and Alice, and while she isn’t particularly interested in being beautiful, at least that’d be something. She isn’t a good horse-rider, though she’s been riding practically since she could walk. She likes writing, but she doesn’t trust herself to use big words correctly. Graduating Evergreen High without distinction, it’s a relief to no longer worry about being brought up for her mediocre grades, shouted down as a slack-ass counterrevolutionary. Yet it’s also clear that now she’s an adult, her time for believing she’s special is over.

‘I’m going to be a nurse,’ Bobbi starts telling people, and immediately sees a change in the way they look at her, like she’s not as selfish and useless as they assumed.

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