Jesmyn Ward - Sing, Unburied, Sing

“Where we going?” Jojo says.

“To visit your grandparents.”

My heart is a squirrel caught in a snare. The fine hair on my arms stands up and quivers. I see Michael’s daddy, fat and sweating, his rifle balanced loosely on his lawn mower, the sound of the motor grinding and whining because he’s pushing it as fast as it can go over the lawn, trying to get to my car, to me. I see my hands, black and thin-boned, on the steering wheel. I see Given’s hands, fine as mine, but hard with callused coins from the rub of the bowstring.

“Why now?” I ask.

“I’m home,” Michael says. “You know they never drove up to Parchman.”

“Because they didn’t care,” I say, even as I know it’s not true.

“They do. They just don’t know how to show it.”

“Because of me. And the kids,” I say.

This is an old argument between us. Michael tries something new.

“Plus, Jojo’s thirteen. It’s time.”

“He’s thirteen and they ain’t gave a shit to see him or Michaela,” I say.

Michael ignores me and heads north. The air is cooler up in the Kill, since there are even fewer houses and more dark land sleeping under the deepening sky.

“Maybe they’ll surprise us, Leonie,” Michael says.

My mouth tastes like vomit.

“Sugar baby.”

“No.”

Michael pulls to the side of the road. The crickets turn riot.

“Please,” Michael says. He rubs the nape of my neck. I want to scramble out the window of the car and run, to disappear.

“No.”

“They made me, baby. And we made the kids. They going to look at Jojo and Michaela and see that,” Michael says. I feel my shoulders beginning to creep down, to relax, to settle.

“What you told them?” I ask.

Michael looks at the bugs skipping across the windshield like they are dragonflies and it is hard water.

“I told them it was time,” Michael says. “That if they love me, they got to love them, too, because they a piece of me.” He looks at me then, his eyes brown in the fading light, his hair dark: a stranger sitting in the driver’s seat. “Like you,” he says.

I bat his hand off my neck, rub where he touched like it’s a mosquito bite.

“Fine,” I say, and Michael heads north into the Kill.

“Kayla’s hungry,” Jojo says.

“Chip!” Michaela says. Outside, the world is dusk, the fields and trees ink black. I roll up my window, which has been cracked. I woke Misty up when we pulled into her gravel driveway and she’d grabbed her bag from her feet and struggled out of the car with a sarcastic Well, it’s been fun, folks . She’ll hate me for a day or two, but once she washes her clothes and gets the smell of vomit out of her nose, she’ll call. I knew it by the way she leaned into my window after she slammed her door shut, glared at Michael, and said: Good luck . When I stretch over the backseat to roll up the window Misty slept against, Jojo’s looking at the floor like he’s lost something.

“They got leftovers down there?”

“No,” he says.

“We’re going to your grandparents’ house,” Michael says.

“Chip,” Michaela says.

“You’ll eat soon, Michaela,” I say. “Pass her here, Jojo.”

Jojo unbuckles her from the seat, and he pushes her forward. Her hair’s knotted in the back, curls worn fuzzy from the rub of her car seat. I smooth the hair up, trying to tame it into a puff on the top of her head, but she shakes and cries for a potato chip again. I dig in my purse. There’s nothing in the bottom but change and one peppermint I took from the bar. I unwrap it and give it to Michaela, and she sucks and quiets. The car smells like mint and her hair, sweet as sugar. Michael slows to cross the railroad tracks, and just as he does, a tusked wild hog, big as two men and covered in black fur, darts from the woods and sprints across the road, as light on his hooves as a child. Michael swerves a little, and I clutch Kayla but I can’t hold her and she flies forward, hitting her head on the dashboard. Michael swerves off the road and stops. Michaela bounces and slides down on my feet, and she is quiet.

“Michaela,” I say. I grab her under her armpits and drag her up, see a purple knot weeping red on her forehead. She’s alive, because her eyes are open and she’s hitching to cry, her breath stuttering in her throat. She wails.

“Kayla!” Jojo says.

“Jojo!” Michaela puts her forearms into my collarbones, pushing away from me, wanting Jojo again. The headlights vanish into the darkness along with the monstrous pig and suddenly I feel boneless, loose as a jellyfish, and I don’t have the strength to fight her.

“Shhhh,” I say, but even as my mouth is trying to comfort her, I hand her over the backseat, and she’s in Jojo’s arms. He’s patting her back as her arms settle around his neck. Michael and I turn to each other and I frown. We face forward, looking at the mist obscuring the windshield.

“Jojo, buckle her in.” I say this without turning to look at him, because I don’t want to see his face, afraid I might see the hard planes of Pop in his expression: judgment. Or worse, the soft quiver of Mama’s pity.

“You sure?” Michael’s shaken: I can tell by the way he grips the steering wheel and then lets go, grips and lets go, as if he’s testing his reflexes, gauging the nimbleness of his fingers. One bug crackles and hits the windshield, drunk in the lights. And then another.

“You want to go,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s go.”

There is no radio, no talk. Just the growl and pull of the car, the gravel ground under the tires, gatherings of frogs singing in hisses and croaks from ponds in woods and some perfect circles dug into yards. Michael’s parents’ house is different at night, and it’s been so many years since I’ve been there in the dark that it is a hazy memory, even as I look at it: long, straight gravel driveway, yellow in the moonlight, leading to the house through the fields; the gravel shimmers, an after-light left by a sparkler through night air. There are two lit windows, one at each end of the house. Michael cuts the lights so the car creeps and crunches down the driveway, the roll of the rocks under the tires sounding little pops. We park next to Big Joseph’s pickup truck and a blue car with a short hood, boxy body and back. A rosary hangs from the rearview mirror. I ease the car door open, and I suddenly need to pee, desperately. I don’t want to be here. Michael holds out his hand, and I want to climb back in the car, slam the door, drive off with the kids, who are still sitting in the backseat yet. A dog barks in the distance.

“Come on,” Michael says.

“Let’s go,” I tell Jojo. He gets out of the car and stands in the dark. He is as tall as me, maybe a little taller, and I can see him tall as Pop in two or three years. He hoists Michaela up and holds her in front of his chest: her back, his shield. Michaela is touching her forehead, which shows a dark constellation of blood, and asking Jojo questions.

“Mam?” she asks. “Pop? Mam? Pop?”

“No,” Jojo says. “These new people.”

But he doesn’t say who they are, and I want to answer her question, want to be her mother, want to say: Your other grandma or grandpa, your other family, your other Mam and Pop . But I don’t know what to say, how to explain, so I say nothing, and let Michael answer her questions. But he offers nothing, either: he walks up the deck steps to the front porch and the door, pulls the screen door open, and knocks: two sure knocks, hard as a horse’s hooves on asphalt. I follow, and Jojo’s dragging feet purr through the gravel in the dark. Michael walks down the steps, a white ghost in the dark; grabs my hand; and pulls me up to stand next to him at the door.