Jesmyn Ward - Salvage the Bones

Now there’s construction paper taped in makeshift galleries along the wall by the door. They flutter in the wind driven by the industrial fan, and at the concession stand a woman with finger waves, a gold tooth, and lips the color of azaleas rolls her eyes at Junior, who drags his feet when we pass her. Moles fade to freckles in a messy paint splatter across her face. Bags of potato chips are laid out on her folding table in rows, one against the other, orderly and even. I grab Junior’s bony shoulders and push him to the top of the stands where we sit.

The inside of the gym is dark, the steel ceiling beams lost in a humid haze like cloud cover; it is hotter here at the top of the bleachers. Big Henry sits next to Marquise, who sprawls on one elbow and tries to wheedle a sports drink out of him. Randall is already on the court doing drills, tossing the ball to his teammates as they weave in and out of each other in knots and make lay-ups, palm rebounds in lazy arcs. Skeetah sinks into the bleachers until his butt is resting on the floor, his legs kicked out so that his soles are to the court, his arms spread wide across the seat behind him. The corded gather of him eases. He wipes his forehead with the hem of his shirt and it beads again. He nods languidly. He is smiling, his teeth white and even: glistening bone. He is high.

“You’re surprised I came.” Skeetah speaks to the court, his smile grown slack. He blinks solemnly.

“Yeah.”

“What’s been done been done.” Skeet shrugs, his shoulders rise and settle like sleek feathers. “China going to come back to me. To herself. Soon.”

“You bring them back by her to feed yet?”

“Yeah. I held her muzzle shut. Every time she move her head toward them, I pop her on her nose.”

“You think the other three puppies going to make it?”

“Fucking right they going to make it.” Skeetah lays his head back on the bleacher behind his shoulders. He swallows and his Adam’s apple slides like a mouse down the gullet of a snake. “This ain’t beating me.”

Junior is tapping me on my leg, beating out Morse code.

“Esch?”

“Go ’head. Stay away from the concession stand.”

Junior smiles, teeth missing in the front, and then swallows it and tries to look trustworthy enough to stay away from the snack table.

“And don’t try to steal nothing, neither.”

Junior squeals, his mouth turned down at the corners to plead.

“No.”

“Here.” Big Henry is reaching into his pocket, cupping loose change like marbles. He drops the coins in Junior’s hand, which Junior cups and holds before him. He leaps down the stands. His T-shirt billows behind him like a limp flag.

“Not even a thank-you.” Marquise rubs his braids.

“Thank you!” Junior screams.

Big Henry rests his elbows on his knees, shakes his head. Huddled over, his face a surprise emerging from the broad bowl of back. He glances over at me, and it is as if he passed the money to me, as if he dropped it in my hand like chalky pecan candy, like mealy pecans, sun-blackened blackberries. Skeetah is blinking half-lidded at the game, where Randall and his teammates are already glazed with sweat, shining darkly in the dim light like the rain-drenched stone that lines the muddy beach of the pit. Big Henry asks the air in front of him, but everyone knows who he is speaking to.

“You want something?”

His hands are so different from Manny’s, so large, and they are slow-moving as the sheaves of the stunted palm trees planted at odd places along the beach, alien to the Mississippi Gulf, as they bear the dragging wind made slow by the barrier islands.

“No,” I say. I have to go to the bathroom.

I maneuver around clumps of boys and girls, some I go to school with, some from Bois Sauvage and St. Catherine, until I reach the bottom of the bleachers. Still, the gym is more than half empty. All of the parents, six or seven of them, and their toddlers sit on the first row only. Girls slap and slide along the benches while still sitting; boys wear white tees, sleeveless shirts, caps, basketball shorts. There is laughter, shrill calls. Everyone is flirting, saying in nudges and jokes and blushing what they would do in private.

On the court, Randall is already blinking hard at the sweat blinding him. His shirt sticks to him on the sides, close as a bud. He goes up for a rebound, rises up out of the cluster of players, but they buzz angrily, and he falls. The referee whistles, and Randall walks to the foul line, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Nothing about him seems to touch anything else: the court, the ball, his shirt that he picks at so that his skin can breathe. He is a bayou crane, alighting so he doesn’t even sink into the black marsh before taking off in flight.

“Excuse you.”

Bumping into him is a shock. He is solid, stocky, with the kind of chest men get when their bulky muscles start softening to seed. His fresh fade has a tinge of red in the brown, which lights up when he tilts his head at me as it catches the light coming in through the door. He has a gold grill in, the same grill that he had in on the day that he and Skeetah mated China and Kilo. He opens his mouth further, and the letters are stamped in spit-shined jewels, one on each tooth, into the gold: R-I-C-O.

“Sorry.”

Manny stands to one side behind him. He is wearing blue, and he and Shaliyah and Rico must be fresh from the barbershop, for his curls have been cut close so that they are only black waves, but his face stands out without the hair framing it, beautiful: the strong nose, the jaw leading to a hollow where there is a fresh purple mark, the shiny scar on his face making the rest of the skin even more vivid. He jerks his head up, raises his eyebrow in the easy whatsup way boys acknowledge each other. To me. Shaliyah is in sandals and a miniskirt next to him, all dips and swells like a badly rutted road worn smooth by the rain. She wears gold earrings, bracelet, and a necklace even here, where we don’t have to pay for admission.

“What’s up?” Rico says, and I am veering over the edge of the court as he barrels past me. Manny pulls at Shaliyah’s hand, and they follow Rico. I wade through a tide of kids at the door, all Junior’s age or younger, trading small candies they are sucking from wax paper and salty cheesy chips and neon cold drinks they’ve scraped the labels off of with their small, bony fingers. The bathroom is around the back of the gym in a separate, smaller building, and I run to it.

The bathroom is dark, darker even than the gym, and it is small, with only one sink and two dark green stalls. The walls are gray cinder block. I go in the stall farthest from the door, lock it behind me, pee while squatting and then flush, wipe down the seat, and sit on the bowl, which is narrow enough to feel like a seat. I wedge my nose between my thighs and breathe. My stomach and my shirt, bunched together, feel like a pillow wedged in my lap. I wish I could pull it out. My eyes burn. Inside my chest, a machete swings, back and forth, up and down, breaking the living, clearing a pulpy path behind it where green things lie, leaking. My face is wet against my leg. I stay like that until it stops, until the toilet stops ticking, the door creaks open, and the machete pauses, smelling of sap and metal.

I wipe my face with my shirt, open the stall, and he is standing there, pulling the outside door shut behind him, sealing the darkness.

“This is the girls’,” I say weakly.

“Been thinking about you,” says Manny, and then he has pushed me back into the stall, closed it behind us, grabbed my arms and turned us so that he is sitting on the toilet. He unzips his pants, and I grab his dick hard enough to hurt. I want it to hurt. He doesn’t wince, intent on my loose shorts. He pulls me down on him so I am straddling him, and then he is inside. It is easy and wet. He grips my shoulders, pulls me down hard, rolls back away from me, pulls me down again, his face in my chest. It is the first time he has grabbed me over my waist, kept his hands on me closer to my face. Touched me.