Bastard Out Of Carolina

As the family is preparing to attend Ruth’s funeral, Glen locks Bone in the bathroom and beats her. She resolves not to cry out, and her mother frantically pounds on the door as blows rain down on Bone’s legs. Afterwards, her mother asks her why she had to provoke Glen. She spends the night before the funeral with Raylene and tries to make sure that Raylene does not see the wounds on her legs. At the funeral, several of her family members (including Earle) are drunk, and Bone herself drinks both beer and whiskey. Drunk for the first time, she is not careful enough to hide the evidence of Glen’s beating, and Raylene sees her wounds. Her uncles beat Glen bloody outside while she listens to the sound of his body being thrown against the walls of the house. Anney cries, and apologizes for his behavior, telling Raylene that he loves her and her girls.

Anney has moved with Bone and Reese into an apartment. It is small, damp, and smells like fish. She is unhappy, as is Reese, and Bone blames herself. Although Raylene tries to explain to Bone that nothing that has happened to her is her fault, her mother’s emotional distance and obvious anger seem to indicate otherwise. Even when Bone reaches out to her mother for comfort, she is met with her mother’s cold, flat facial expression and told to calm down. She wonders about Glen’s sexual abuse in particular: Had she encouraged it somehow? Had she actually enjoyed it? Did he single her out through some fault of her own? The thoughts repulse her, but they also confuse her because she does not understand the boundary between the abuse she has survived and her own burgeoning sense of herself as a sexual being. She is angry and dreams of a better, different future.

Her uncle Earle has a new wife, a very young woman, and Raylene is angry with him. This has become a pattern: dating, marrying, and leaving women who are all far too young for him. Bone tries to defend him, and Raylene expresses frustration that Bone would be so forgiving of such obviously problematic behavior. Still, Bone knows Earle primarily as a loving uncle and is unwilling to see his faults. Life continues to be difficult with Anney and Reese, and Bone maintains a close relationship with Raylene. When she tells her aunt of her social difficulties, Raylene explains to her that just because someone has nicer clothes than she does doesn’t mean that their life is better. When Bone challenges Raylene’s own life choices, Raylene responds that she is happy with the decisions that she’s made, that she never wanted to marry or have children, and that things worked out for her exactly as she’d planned them.

Alma has a mental health crisis, in part because she’d recently lost a baby and wanted to try for another. Her husband Wade had not wanted to, and Alma had taken her temper out on her belongings and furniture. When Anney and Bone arrive, her house is in a state of complete disarray, and the two comfort her. Later, the men in the family discuss the “inherent” emotional instability of women, and Anney and Bone sit down to talk. Bone tells Anney that she knows that her mother will return to Glen, and that when she does so, Bone cannot go with her. She admits that she does not know what the right choice is for Anney and that she will not stand in her mother’s way, but that she will go to live with Raylene or another relative rather than endure more abuse.

Bone moves in with Alma and is allowed to miss school. She hears from her sister Reese that Anney and Glen have started talking again. One day, Glen shows up at Alma’s while Bone is alone in the house. He tells Bone that she looks older and speculates that she’ll soon start dating boys. He tells her to make him a sandwich and she refuses. He becomes hostile and combative, accusing her of coming between him and Anney. He tells her that she and her mother have to come back, but Bone explains that she will never live with Glen again. Angrily, he grabs her and begins kissing her. When she stabs him with a butter knife, he begins to beat her. He then rapes Bone, but after he finishes and collapses on top of her, Bone looks up to see her mother in the doorway. Although Anney is initially livid, she eventually starts to cry and holds Glen to her. For the first time, Bone feels true hatred toward her mother.

Bone is taken to the hospital, where an aloof doctor and a kind nurse examine her. The sheriff arrives and wants Bone to explain what happened. She cannot bring herself to tell him the story and is struck by how much he resembles Glen. She muses to herself that the world is full of such men, and she wants little to do with them. Raylene arrives and insists that what Bone needs is to be taken home.

Raylene stays with Bone in the hospital and then brings her home. At her house, Raylene tells Bone that she had once been in love with a woman. She’d asked this woman to choose between Raylene and her child, and the woman chose her child. Raylene learned from that experience that we all do terrible things to the people we love. She explains to Bone that although Anney loves her, she doesn’t seem able to choose her over Glen. Bone seethes with an inner rage and is cold towards Raylene and Earle. Anney visits and tries talking to Bone. She cries, saying that she never meant for Bone to get hurt. She just wanted them all to be safe and happy. She loved Glen and was genuinely confused that he was able to mistreat her daughter. Bone wants Anney back but understands that this cannot be. The two cry together. When Anney gets up to leave, she places an envelope in Bone’s lap. It is her birth certificate, without the word “illegitimate” on it. She is sure that her mother will leave with Glen, perhaps move to Florida or California. Bone wonders what kind of person her mother had been before Bone was born, and what kind of woman she herself will grow up to become. She knows already that she, like the rest of the Boatwright women, is strong.