Jesmyn Ward - Sing, Unburied, Sing

I mop up the rest of the slimy residue in her seat, throw the napkins on the asphalt, take a few baby wipes and swipe them across the seat so that it smells like stomach acid and flowery soap.

“It smells better,” Misty says. She’s half leaning out the window of the car, her formerly fluttering hand now cupped over her nose like a mask.

The drive to the next gas station seems miles, and the sun beams directly overhead.

When we pull into the parking lot of the station, the attendant is sitting on the front porch of the wooden building smoking a cigarette. She almost blends into the wall she leans against, because her skin is as brown as the stained boards. She opens the door for me and follows me in, and the string of silver bells hung across the door jingles.

“Slow day,” she says as she slides behind the counter. She’s skinny, damn near as thin as Mama, and her buttoned-up work shirt hangs on her like a flat sheet spread to dry on a clothesline.

“Yeah,” I say, and wander toward the drink coolers in the back. I palm two bottles of Powerade and set them on the counter. The woman smiles, and I realize she’s missing her two front teeth, and a scar meanders in a scratchy line across her head. I wonder if she just has bad teeth, or if whoever gave her that forehead scar knocked them out.

Misty’s walking around the parking lot, holding her phone above her head, searching for a signal. All the car doors are open, and Jojo is sitting sideways in the back while Michaela climbs over him, rubbing her face into his neck and whining. He caresses her back, and both of their hair is molded to their heads. I pour half of a bottle into one of Michaela’s juice bottles and hold out my arms.

“Give her here.”

“Kayla, go,” Jojo says. He isn’t looking at me or the damp day or the empty road, but at Kayla, who begins to cry and grabs at his shirt and holds so tightly, her little knuckles turn white. When I pull her into my lap and sit in the front seat, she plants her chin in her chest and sobs, her eyes closed, her fists tucked under her chin.

“Michaela,” I say. “Come on, baby. You need to drink something.” Jojo is standing above me, his hands shoved into his pockets as he studies Michaela. She doesn’t hear me. She hiccups and wails. “Michaela, baby.”

I put the nipple of the sippy cup in her mouth, and she blocks it with her clenched teeth and whips her head to the side. I grip her harder, trying to hold her still, and her little milk muscles give under my fingers, soft as water balloons. We wrestle like this as she stands and sits and bends backward and writhes and says two words, over and over again.

“No. Jojo.”

I’ve had enough.

“Goddamnit, Michaela! Can you get her to drink some of this?” I ask.

Jojo nods, and I’m already handing her over. Without her, my arms feel weightless.

Michaela drinks a quarter cup, and then she slumps over Jojo’s shoulder, one arm on his shoulder blade, rubbing. I wait fifteen minutes, and just as Misty is buckling herself into the driver’s seat so we can get back on the road, Michaela vomits again. It is electric blue, the color of Powerade.

“You might as well take that off,” I tell Misty. She rolls her eyes and unbuckles her seat belt before squatting on a parking block in the shade to smoke a cigarette. “We going to be here for a minute.”

I don’t want her to throw up in the car again, to retch in the backseat while I’m strapped in the front. We’d just have to pull over again so I can clean her up. The heat rises from the asphalt parking lot, along with steam from the rain. Jojo sits sideways, his feet on the ground, Michaela draped over him.

“You want to lay down, Kayla?” he asks. “You might feel better if you lay down.”

He slides his hands under her armpits and tries to ease her off of him and onto the seat, but she sticks to him, sure as a burr: her arms and legs thorny and cleaving. He gives up and rubs her back.

“I’m sorry you feel sick,” Jojo says, and Michaela begins to cry. He rubs her back and she rubs his, and I stand there, watching my children comfort each other. My hands itch, wanting to do something. I could reach out and touch them both, but I don’t. Jojo looks part bewildered, part stoic, part like he might start crying himself. I need a cigarette. I squat next to Misty on the concrete block and bum a smoke: the menthol shores me up, stacks sandbags up my spine. I can do this. I wait until the nicotine laps at my insides like a placid lake, and then I go back to the car.

“Make her drink more,” I tell Jojo.

Thirty minutes later, she vomits that up. I give her fifteen minutes and I tell Jojo again: Make her drink . Even though Michaela is letting out a steady whine now, bewildered at the cup in her brother’s hand, Jojo does what I ask. Twenty minutes later, she vomits again. Michaela is desolate, hanging on Jojo, blinking at me when I stand inside the car door with more electrolytes. Make her drink , I say again, but Jojo sits there as if he does not hear me, his shoulders hunched up around his ears like he knows I’m out of patience, like he knows that I want to slap him in the side of the head. Jojo , I say. He flinches and ignores me. Michaela rubs her snotty nose and leaking mouth in his shoulder. Jojo, no , she says. The attendant steps out onto the porch, her cigarette already lit.

“Y’all all right?” she asks.

“Y’all got something for vomiting? For kids?”

She shakes her head, and her straightened hair flies free at the temples, waving around like insect antennae.

“Nope. Owner won’t stock nothing like that. He say only the basics. But you’d be surprised how many people come through here carsick, needing Pepto-Bismol.”

Weeds are flowering in bushes at the edge of the gas station lot; purple and yellow and white blooms nod at the edge of the pines. I palm the back of Michaela’s neck where she slumps over on Jojo, who is sitting on the trunk of my car, jiggling his knee and watching me and Misty, frowning.

“Hold on,” I say, and walk off the parking lot and along the tree line.

Mama always told me that if I look carefully enough, I can find what I need in the world. Starting when I was seven, Mama would lead me out in the woods around the house for walks, and she’d point out plants before digging them up or stripping their leaves and telling me how they could heal or hurt. The wind moved high in the trees, but nearly everything was silent below, except for me and Mama, who said: That right there is cow parsnip. You can use the young leaves like celery when you cook, but the roots is more useful. You can make a decoction for cold and flu. And if you make them into a poultice, you can ease and heal bruises, arthritis, and boils. She dug around the roots of the plant with a small shovel she carried on our walks, and then pulled the whole plant up by its leaves and doubled it up before putting it in the bag she carried across her chest. She searched the ground until she found another plant, and said: This pigweed. Ain’t good for any medicine, really, but you can cook with it, use it like you use spinach. Got a lot of vitamins in it , so it’s good for you . Your daddy like it sautéed with his rice , and he say his mama used to make bread with the ground-up seeds. I ain’t never tried that, though. On our way back to the house with the day’s haul, she quizzed me. As I grew older, it was easier for me to remember, to answer her quickly as we picked our way around tree roots. Wormseed , I would say. Good for getting rid of worms if you use it like seasoning in food. But it was hard for me to remember everything. Every day, Mama would point out a plant that had parts that could help women, specifically, seeing as how it was mostly women that searched her out, needing her skills and knowledge. She’d say: Remember you can use the leaves to make a tea that helps with cramps. And it could bring on a period, too. I’d look away and roll my eyes to the pines, wishing I were in front of the TV, not out trudging through the woods with my mama talking about periods. But now, as I walk through the clearing and peer into the woods, looking for milkweed, I wish I’d listened more carefully. I wish I could remember more than the fact that it has pinkish purple flowers. And even though milkweed grows wild in parcels of land like this and flowers in the spring, I don’t see its white-beaded, downy leaves anywhere.