Work Text:
He watched, open mouthed with wonder, as the old woman’s gnarled, work roughened hands moved, well practiced. She pressed the heavy silver tube of lipstick against her thin lips, filling them with deep maroon in a single, fluid sweep. Grandma always let him watch as she did her makeup, though Grandpa didn’t approve, always yelling some big, nasty sounding words Bubba didn’t understand and gesticulating when she caught them doing it. She was so elegant, so fancy with those rollers in her hair and black powder on her lashes, and Bubba wanted, more than anything, to be just like her when he grew up. He clutched his baby doll to his chest, her blonde hair sticking up every which way and a narrow crack running down one side of her pale, porcelain face. Grandma pinched his chubby cheek gently, and he gave a gap toothed, crooked smile.
“‘S all done, honey.” Her voice, a whisky and cigarette rasp, soothed him. “How’d I look?”
Bubba squeaked, flapping his free arm, hoping she would understand him. She looked wonderful, but there again, she always did. He loved Grandma so much, loved the way she bounced him up and down on her bony knee, even though he was heavy and she had to strain to lift him up, loved the way that she combed his curly, dark brown hair, so gentle, loved the way she sang lullabies to him when he couldn’t get to sleep. Just the smell of her rose perfume, kept in a tiny, heart shaped pink bottle, was enough to calm him after a nightmare or stop his tears when he grazed his knee.
“P-pretteee,” he managed, struggling to push the words through his disobedient lips. Drayton had been trying to teach him to talk, on and off, throughout all of his life, to no avail. The boy was a ‘tard, he said sometimes, and Grandma would slap his wrist and hiss at him. Not stupid, just different, she told him, and don’t you dare suggest otherwise.
“Oh yeah?” the old lady ruffled his hair with a gnarled hand, and stood, smoothing out the front of her flowery housedress. “Thank you, Bubba. You’re such a polite gentleman. We ought to go get dinner on the table. Wanna help out?”
He nodded eagerly, squealing. There was nothing better than helping Grandma. He waddled out to the kitchen, struggling to reach the peeling, white painted cupboard where the barbecue sauce was, then giving up and settling for making handprints in the flour as she battered chicken wings. When he began to get in the way, she shooed him out into the dry, beige yard, populated by big, bumbling piggies and ragged chickens that pecked through the dirt for grubs. He loved the piggies in particular- he couldn't make his mouth do people words, so he listened to them talk to each other instead and talked like they did, grunting and snuffling, and his brothers understood him just fine. He always cried when one of them got made into bacon, bopped on the head with Grandpa’s sledgehammer, but it was alright, because Grandma said they went to Heaven-with-the-Angels.
The twins were sitting, side by side, on the swing Grandpa had built recently, playing some sort of clapping game and giggling at each other, before their play devolved into wrestling and hair pulling. They were mostly elbows and knees, flashing eyes and pointy, gappy grins. “W-wake up, Bubba!” Nubbins stuttered, in his squeaky child’s voice. He ducked as something was thrown at him. In his dream, fading now, suspended, like a thin white bedlinen drying out in the sun, in front of the waking world, only half covering it, it was an egg, which missed him and instead splattered against the living room window, immediately provoking Drayton’s rage. Just as the man- in Bubba’s mind, perpetually rabbity and middle aged, despite being no more than 35 at the time of his dream- raced out of the house, a bat out of hell, spitting and cursing like an angry cat, he woke up, finding himself curled on his side in his tiny, rickety bed. He’d had the same bed since childhood, and it had quickly become too small for his huge, gormless frame. He grew and grew and kept on growing. With a porcine grunt, he threw off the threadbare, yellow sheet that served as a duvet, stained by years of night sweat, stretched, watching his muscles move beneath the pink satin of his nightdress, also too small. It had belonged to Grandma; now it was stretched taught over his rounded belly and broad back. He walked over to his bucket of masks, and retrieved his Old Lady face, knowing that he would have to do his chores in the morning. Feed Chicken, butcher the meat that would soon go off in this oppressive, endless heat. He felt lighter than usual. Some days he woke up scared, only found his bearings after a few moments of whimpering. Some days he slept well, head completely and utterly empty. It was rare for him to wake up happy. He knew that soon enough, he would be frightened again, and hung on to the feeling like a drowning man hangs on to a plank.
There really had been a time when everything had been good for Bubba; there was no fear, there were no flailing, screaming interlopers coming into his house, there was no people meat, only the kind that walks on four legs. Bubba hadn’t needed his faces back then, because he hadn’t needed to be a Pretty Girl or a Strong Man or a tottering, busy Old Lady, just shy, gentle Bubba, who worked quietly at the slaughter house, made pretty pictures with his crayons and liked to watch cartoons on television. Now nothing felt fun or sweet any more, because Bubba knew that he was a bad boy who did bad things even if Drayton said that those things were actually good. It made something inside his mind tremble and crack, and he had to beat his head to shake the horrible feelings loose. He was scared all of the time, not just of the people, not just because he was no longer the Bubba he had been, but because things would never, could never, go back to the way they were. Bit by bit, he was starting to forget how it felt to be good and happy and loved. Bobby was gone to some place he couldn’t even imagine, Grandpa had stopped moving long ago, Drayton was always hitting, Nubbins was always out, and Bubba was all alone.