Jungle

When I was a kid I hardly had a name. It felt like I was kin to animals. Maybe that was on account of something you couldn’t give a name to—a wildness that lived in us both. There wasn’t a whole lot then to tie me to the human world. I couldn’t remember anyone’s calling me by a syllable that drew me to the sound, made me want to take it on. Oh, I might hear “Hey you,” or “Get on over here, you little stinkweed.” This from the one who stood in for a father, if he stood anywhere at all. Not that I ever called him Daddy. A mouth—that’s what he was—all scrunched up like he’d bit off too much of life and wanted to spit out the taste before he choked on it.

His name was Priam Gillespie. He hated that name, the way people pronounced it Pry-am or Pree-am. Every once in a while somebody would say, “What the hell kind of name of that?”

“It’s what comes of having a librarian for a mother,” he’d explain. “Damn her hide anyway.”

Every once in a while, maybe in a store or the bank, somebody would call him Mr. Gillespie, and I’d look around for the stranger I thought they were speaking to. Sometimes he called me Miss or Missy. “Don’t give me any of that guff, Missy.” Or Toots when I was coming on to being a woman. “Oh, so now you’re getting ready to strut your stuff, eh, Toots?” I wanted to kick him.

Somewhere there was a birth certificate with my paper name. But it just fell by the wayside—it had nothing to do with me. Whenever somebody spoke it, I didn’t look around or say a word. “What’s your name, honey?” some folks would ask, and when they saw a blank, they’d smile down into my face, as if getting closer would turn on the light bulb, and ask, “What’s your dolly’s name?”

It wasn’t a real doll, just a sock with stuffing in it, and button eyes and a mouth sewed on. “Name,” I’d tell them.

“Name—that’s her name?” That would tickle them all right.

And Priam would say, “She’s just ornery—always has been.”

Maybe Ornery should have been my name.

“Just wait till I can send you over to Texas,” he’d say every once in a while, like he was trying to get even with me, “and let that mama of yours do what she was created for.” And then, under his breath, “If she’d quit running around long enough to do anything useful.”

A voice from long ago ran like a tune through my head. I could remember someone holding my hand: I could almost feel the way it curled around mine—warm and a little moist—even when I couldn’t attach a person to it. Was that my mama? I couldn’t see her—I was never sure. I really couldn’t remember any mama at all. Seems like I’d just happened in this place, like a scrap of paper blown in by the wind.

Every once in a while I’d ask when I was going to Texas, but Priam would pull a face and say, “Mind your business. I got troubles enough as it is.”

It took me a while to get a name, as I’ll tell you, and it happened in a way I never expected. That seems the way of things—full of surprises. My life started changing when I was about eleven—when Priam got hold of a piece of land across the highway. Took it for collateral from a Mexican family who’d got into his clutches. I used to play horse with their kids, and Carolina and I liked to braid each other’s hair. Hers was long and black and glossy, and I loved to get my fingers in it. Sometimes I’d eat dinner in their adobe hut—tortillas...