Sing, Unburied, Sing

by Jesmyn Ward

her. Dragged it out behind the house, into the woods, and burned it. Told me not to come back there, but I saw the smoke. Heard the flames slapping. Sometimes, at night, after Kayla done fell asleep on my shoulder, so deep her head’s heavy as a cantaloupe, I walk to the kitchen to get a glass of water and I hear Pop through the door, hear his voice threading through the keyhole. Once I heard him clear through the wall. First I thought he was praying, but then, from the way his voice whipped up and down, I knew he wasn’t. Sound like he was talking to somebody. I asked him the next day, when I got home from school and he was sitting in his usual spot, waiting on the porch with Kayla sitting next to him on the swing. “Pop?” He was shelling pecans. He looked up at me, but his hands kept working, kept breaking the shell into shards, prying the meat free. Every other half he’d get, he’d pass it to Kayla, and she’d pop the whole thing in her mouth, smile at me when she chewed. “Was you talking to somebody last night?” He paused, half a pecan in his hand. Kayla patted his arm, prodding. “Pop,” she said. “I want it, Pop.” He passed it to her. “Did Leonie call?” I asked. “No,” he said. “I should’ve known,” I said, and spat off the porch into the sand. I wished she was there, imagined what it would feel like if I spat right at her. If she’d even notice. “Don’t,” Pop said, and went back to shelling. “She’s still your mother.” “Michael?” I said. Pop brushed the bitter dust that rinds t...

The push and pull between Jojo and his absent parents-- painful as the separation between husband and dead wife, pecan meat and shell, nourishment and hunger.