Salvage the Bones

by Jesmyn Ward

Mama squatted, screamed toward the end. Junior came out purple and blue as a hydrangea: Mama’s last flower. She touched Junior just like that when Daddy held him over her: lightly with her fingertips, like she was afraid she’d knock the pollen from him, spoil the bloom. She said she didn’t want to go to the hospital. Daddy dragged her from the bed to his truck, trailing her blood, and we never saw her again.

If one of Daddy’s drinking buddies had asked what he’s doing tonight, he would’ve told them he’s fixing up for the hurricane. It’s summer, and when it’s summer, there’s always a hurricane coming or leaving here. Each pushes its way through the flat Gulf to the twenty-six-mile manmade Mississippi beach, where they knock against the old summer mansions with their slave galleys turned guesthouses before running over the bayou, through the pines, to lose wind, drip rain, and die in the north. Most don’t even hit us head-on anymore; most turn right to Florida or take a left for Texas, brush past and glance off us like a shirtsleeve. We ain’t had one come straight for us in years, time enough to forget how many jugs of water we need to fill, how many cans of sardines and potted meat we should stock, how many tubs of water we need. But on the radio that Daddy keeps playing in his parked truck, I heard them talking about it earlier today. How the forecasters said the tenth tropical depression had just dissipated in the Gulf but another one seems to be forming around Puerto Rico.

Junior disappeared between the cinder blocks holding up the house for afternoons, and would only come out when Skeetah threatened to send China under there after him. I asked Junior one time what he did under there, and all he would say is that he played. I imagined him digging sleeping holes like a dog would, laying on his back in the sandy red dirt and listening to our feet slide and push across floorboards.

Foreshadow

“Ain’t nothing hit us in years. They don’t come this way no more. When I was little, they was always hitting us.”

His tongue protrudes through the tiny slit that is his mouth, and he looks like a flat cartoon dog. He is dead. Skeetah lets go of the towel and the puppy rolls, stiff as a bowling pin, across the padding to rest lightly against the red puppy, which is moving its legs in small fits, like blinks.

Manny was holding the ball as tenderly as he would a pit puppy with pedigree papers. I wanted him to touch me that way. “Hey, Manny.” It was an asthma squeak. My neck felt hot, hotter than the day. Manny nodded at me, spun the ball on his pointer finger. “What’s up?” “ ’Bout time,” Daddy said. “Help your brother with them bottles.”

Wut

The bottle shattered, and the glass fragmented, slid along my palms. I dropped what I held. “Move, Junior!” I said. My hands, which moments before had been pink, were red. Especially the left. “I’m bleeding!” I said under my breath. I didn’t yell; I wanted Manny to see me, but not as a weak, sorry girl. Not something to be pitied because I couldn’t take pain like a boy.

“You push,” he said. “My hands are too dirty. Until it stops hurting.” It was always what Mama told us to do when we went running to her with a cut or a scrape. She would push and blow at the wound after putting alcohol on it, and when she’d stopped blowing, it wouldn’t hurt anymore. There. See? Like it never happened.

Foreshadow

But Skeet is shaking his head, and I don’t know if it’s all sweat or if he’s crying. He blinks. He scrapes his pointer over the pure white skull, down the puppy’s chest and her belly. Her mouth opens and her belly inflates. She is her mother’s daughter. She is a fighter. She breathes.

and they swerved to hit a deer;

To hit or not to hit?

He had never kissed me except like this, with his body, never his mouth.

Wut

dug my heels into the backs of his thighs. Even though I knew all the other boys, I knew him and his body best: I loved him best. I showed him with my hips. My hair my pillow in the red dirt. My breasts hurt. I wanted him to lean down, to touch me everywhere. He wouldn’t, but his hips would. China barked, knife sharp. I was bold as a Greek; I was making him hot with love, and Manny was loving me.

Literally Wut

I lie on my back and feel dizzy, light-headed, nauseous. I only ate once today. I see Manny above me, his face licking mine, the heat of his sweat, our waists meeting. How he sees me with his body. How he loves me like Jason. Junior snorts a baby snore, and I drift off with Manny’s breathing in my brain.

“I never thought I’d get five, Esch. With it being her first, I thought I’d get two, maybe. I figured she trample them or that they’d just come out dead. But I never thought she’d let me save so many.” Skeetah is standing so close we touch shoulders for a minute. He won’t look at me when he tells me this; he will study the ground. These are the things he says to no one, not even China. Sometimes he confesses to me; I always listen.

For all them pigs and mutts and rabbits I seen give birth, I ain’t never felt nothing like that. Them puppies is real,” he says.

The only thing that’s ever been easy for me to do, like swimming through water, was sex when I started having it. I was twelve. The first time was laying down on the front seat of Daddy’s dump truck. It was with Marquise, who was only a year older than me. Skeetah’s closest friend, he was so close to the both of us that he basically lived at our house during the summers. The three of us would run out back and get lost in Daddy’s woods, would spend days floating in the water in the Pit on our backs. We spent the summer dusted an orange color, and when we woke up every day of our months-long sleepover, the sheets would feel powdery like dry red clay.

Wtf

“Sorry” and “ ’Scuse me.” I am small, dark: invisible. I could be Eurydice walking through the underworld to dissolve, unseen.

No

The man looks up, climbs from the ditch. It is as if he doesn’t see the woman as he steps so close to her, he could kick her. He has a cell phone in one hand, smashed up against his ear, his thin brown hair in his other. He is wearing a white shirt with white buttons, and the blood has made a beauty contestant sash across his chest. “Can you tell me where I’m at?” he says. His voice is loud, as if he is shouting at an old person who is hard of hearing. “I’m on the phone with 911, and they need to know where I’m at.” “Tell them you in between Bois Sauvage and St. Catherine’s, on the bayou. Tell them the closest road is Pelage, and you right before the Dedeaux Bridge.” The man nods, opens his mouth to speak. “I’m …” He closes it. “Can you? I’m …” He reaches into the passenger-side window, holds the phone in a red grip in front of Skeetah’s face.

“Naw, Esch.” He kneads the water, pushing himself up and kicking away from me. “You know it ain’t like that,” he says, and the pain comes all at once, like a sudden deluge. Manny swims to Randall, who is walking up to the shore, pulling on his clothes. Manny’s back is a shut door. His shoulders are beautiful.

The wrap is one of Randall’s, probably used on his knee, which he’s troubled so much his coach told him he needed surgery. The school will pay for it, but Randall keeps putting it off because he doesn’t want to lose any playing time. After games, his knee swells up like a water balloon.

“Any dog give birth like that is less strong after. Even if you don’t think it. Take a lot out of an animal to nurse and nurture like that. Price of being female.” Finally Manny glances at me. It slides over me like I’m glass. Skeetah laughs. It sounds as if it’s hacking its way out of him. “You serious? That’s when they come into they strength. They got something to protect.” He glances at me, too, but I feel it even after he looks away. “That’s power.”

The blood on Daddy’s shirt is the same color as the pulpy puppy in China’s mouth. China flings it away from her. It thuds on the tin and slides. Randall comes running. Big Henry kneels with Daddy in the dirt, where what was Daddy’s middle, ring, and pinkie finger on his left hand are sheared off clean as fallen tree trunks. The meat of his fingers is red and wet as China’s lips.

“I heard your bitch had our puppies,” Rico says. “Our puppies?” Skeetah asks. “Yeah, ours. I thought we was splitting them down the middle.”

the crowd carrying them out of the door in the kind of frothing waves we only get before hurricanes.

“Get out of here, Batiste!” Randall’s coach yells at him: the green hand towel he has been using to mop his face snaps like a flag in a bad wind. “That’s your people, ain’t it? That’s you! You’re done! Go on!” Randall lobs the ball at the wall of the gym, and it ricochets back onto the court. Players that aren’t frozen by the fight try to catch

“One, two, three,” Randall says, and we are lifting and rolling Daddy onto the bed like our sheets. For one moment, Randall is half his size, thin as a stretched belt, his knees big as softballs, all bone and skin, and we are children again, and Mama has just died and we are hanging her sheets. My eyes sting. Daddy leaves a wet trail across the pillowcase. He moans and holds his bad hand.

Sad

“Don’t go in there when he’s sleep no more.” I shake Junior’s arm again. “He’s sick.” “I know,” Junior mewls. “I know he sick.” Junior closes his hand and pulls suddenly, and his hand slides between mine like wet rope and is out. “I know about his hand and the beer and his medicine.” He bounces. “I saw it when he smashed it. I found it!” Gets louder. “I see things!” “Found what?” “His ring!” “Junior!” “Here!” Junior yells. I can’t see his baby teeth, small and yellow like candy, only his throat, wet and pink, and he is an infant again,

Randall slaps twice, and his hand is as stiff as a board. “Why did you do it?” “She gave it to him!” Junior wails. His voice is a siren. “And it wasn’t no good for him no more!” He sobs. “I wanted it!” He wails. “Her!”

Junior had been playing with an old extension cord, using it like a rope. He’d kept tying it to trees and twirling the cord like a jump rope. The tree was his partner, but he had no one to jump in the middle. Finally Randall untied the cord and I walked over and grabbed the other end. While the sky was darkening, the sun shining more fitfully through the clouds, we turned the cord for Junior and he jumped in the dust.

enough can goods to last us a few days. No more, no less.” “I don’t think it’s enough.” “FEMA and Red Cross always come through with food. We got that much. If it’s not too bad, might still have gas.” “Everybody still growing, Daddy. Esch, Junior, me. Even Skeet. We all hungry.” “We make do with what we got.” Daddy coughs. “Always have. And will.”

I sprinkle salt into the water, but there is more rice than salt in the shaker.

“Well.” Randall sighs. “I don’t know what happened.” “My best friend got into a fight with my brother is what happened.” “I had other shit on my mind. Wasn’t nothing against Skeet.”

I am slapping him, over and over, my hands a flurry, a black blur. His face is hot and stinging as boiling water. “Hey! Hey!” Manny yells. He blocks what he can with his elbows and forearms, but still I snake through. I slap so hard my hands hurt. “I love you!” “Esch!” The skin on his throat is red, his scar white. “I loved you!” I hit his Adam’s apple with the V where my thumb and pointer finger cross. He chokes. “I loved you!” This is Medea wielding the knife. This is Medea cutting. I rake my fingernails across his face, leave pink scratches that turn red, fill with blood. “Stupid bitch! What is wrong with you?” “You!”

“It’s a category five,” Daddy says. “Woman on the news say it’s a category five.” “Oh,” I say, but it is more a breath than a word. Daddy has faced a category 5, but we’re too young to remember the last category 5 hurricane that hit the coast: Camille, almost forty years ago. But Mama told us stories about that one.

Skeetah yanks the door open, and Randall is running into Daddy’s room with a lantern, Junior clinging to his waist while the wind yells outside and the house shudders. There was no need for the lamp; there is a hole in the ceiling in Daddy’s room, the trunk and branches of a tree tossing in the opening. It is a large bush growing wrong. China barks, her nose to the wind. “Daddy!” Randall runs forward into the wind and rain streaming through the gaping hole, the gray day fisting through it. Daddy is on his knees in front of the dresser, pushing an envelope down his pants. He stands and sees us.

Why are my shorts wet? Is it gone? Am I bleeding? Shouldn’t I be cramping? I stand. The floor underneath me is dark. China rolls to her feet, her teeth out, and Skeetah grabs her by her scruff as she lunges. He holds her still. He stands, looking calmly about the room. “It’s water. It’s coming in the house,” Skeetah says. “Ain’t no water coming in the house. Wood just getting a little damp from the rain,” Daddy says. “It’s coming up through the floor,” says Skeetah. “Ain’t nowhere for it to come from.” Daddy waves at the room, waves like he’s stopping one of us from giving him something he doesn’t want: his antibiotics, a letter from a teacher, a school fund-raising brochure.

Daddy gets up then, walks slowly over to the window, each bone bent the wrong way in each joint. Randall moves so Daddy can see out of the crack. “No,” Daddy says. I shift, and the water licks my ankles. It is cold, cold as a first summer swim. China barks, and when she jumps down from the window and bounces, there is a splash. “Daddy?” Randall says. He puts his arm over Junior, who, cringing with his eyes wide, hugs Randall’s leg. But for once, Randall’s arm doesn’t look like metal, like ribbon, like stone; it bends at the elbow, soft, without muscle, and looks nothing but human. “Daddy!” Junior squeals, but he buries his face in Randall’s hip, and Randall’s hip eats the end of the word. Junior rises an inch or so; he must be on his toes. The water is up to the middle of my calf. “Look,” I say. There is something long and dark blue between the trees. It is a boat. Someone has come to save us. But then I squint and the wind lags clear for one second, and it is not a boat, and no one has come to save us. It is Daddy’s truck. The water has picked it up, pushed it from the Pit. The snake has come to eat and play. “Your truck,” Skeetah says. Daddy begins to laugh.

The water is tonguing its way up my thighs. Skeetah hands me the puppies’ bucket. “Hurry,” Randall says. The three puppies squeal little yips that sound like whispered barks. These are their first words.

“Esch, you come with me!” Skeetah says. “This ain’t the time!” Daddy yells. “This ain’t about the puppies!” Skeetah squints at me. “She too small!” Daddy hollers. He grabs my free elbow with his good hand. Grips. “She’s pregnant.” Skeetah points. Daddy’s face shuts, and he pushes.

his eyes open and hurt and sorry as I haven’t seen him since he handed Junior over to me and Randall, said, Your mama—and I kick, grasping at the air, but the hurricane slaps me, and I land in the water on my back, the puppies flying out of the bucket, their eyes open for the first time to slits and, I swear, judging me as they hit.

The hurricane groaned, and it was like hearing a million Daddys moan and push back their chairs after eating plates full of fish fried whole, white bread for the bones, beer. The iron at the center of the tire peeked through, and it was an eye opening. Skeetah shrugged out of my embrace all at once: a school of fish exploding around a rock.

“How long has it been?” Daddy asks. “I don’t know.” My voice is so high it sounds like someone else is talking, like I could turn my face and see another girl there, lying on the floor between her brothers, answering these question. “When we can, we need to find out.” “Yes,” I say, facing him, seeing him folding in on himself, soft where he had been hard, the rigid line of him broken. His helpless hand. Junior will feed the baby, sit on the bed with pillows on both sides to support his arms. He will sit still long enough for that. “Make sure everything’s okay.” I nod. “So nothing will go wrong.”

“This baby got a daddy, Esch.” He reaches out his big soft hand, soft as the bottom of his feet probably, and helps me stand. “This baby got plenty daddies.” I smile with a tightening of my cheek. My eyes feel wet. I swallow salt.