Jesmyn Ward: Salvage the Bones

In the bathroom, I looked at myself in the mirror. Undressed and rinsed. Dressed again. My clothes fit the same. My stomach, my hips, my arms all fell in the same straight lines; there was nothing fine or curvy about me. I was still short and skinny, my hair big and curly and black, my lips thin. I didn’t look any different. Daddy taught every one of us to swim by picking us up when we was little, around six or so, and flinging us in the water. I’d taken to it fast, hadn’t coughed up the muddy pit water, hadn’t cried or flailed; I’d bobbed back up and cut the surface of the water and splashed my way back to where Daddy was standing in the shallows. I’d pulled the water with my hands, kicked it with my feet, let it push me forward. That was sex.

The chicken eggs in my shirt are warm as stones, but light, too light to be the color of rocks. I expect them to be heavy as the clay pebbles that share their color, to pull me down in the front. They don’t. I’ve seen frog eggs that turn into tadpoles; in the springtime the ditches around the property are alive with them. When me and Skeet were little we’d lay on our stomachs over the ditches and reach into them and pull up some of the eggs, hold them close so we could see if the little wormy frogs in them had begun to shake, to squirm, to turn long and pointed to spear their way out. When they look like hundreds of little shut eyeballs still, they are lighter than light, cool as a breeze. I wonder if inside eggs, the kind that need the shelter of a body-horse eggs, pig eggs, human eggs-are so light. Would they look clear as jelly with firefly hearts, or would they look as solid and silent as stone? Would they show their mystery, or would they cover it like a secret? Would a human egg let itself be seen?

Junior is pouting because he doesn’t want scrambled eggs again. He is sitting on the floor in front of the TV that works, which is on top of a big old wooden TV that doesn’t work, and he is ignoring the plate of eggs I set in front of him because he won’t eat at the table unless Daddy whips him to it or Randall talks him into it.

“They taste like rubber bands!” he mutters.

I remember the taste of rubber bands. Sharp, like metal. Bitter. For something so soft and forgiving, its taste is awful and not right; the tongue jerks back like an earthworm from a child’s hand. And I know these eggs taste nothing like that.

“Junior, stop being orner.” It’s what Mama used to say to us when we were little, and I say it to Junior out of habit. Daddy used to say it sometimes, too, until he said it to Randall one day and Randall started giggling, and then Daddy figured out Randall was laughing because it sounded like horny . About a year ago I figured out what it was supposed to be after coming across its parent on the vocabulary list for my English class with Miss Dedeaux: ornery . It made me wonder if there were other words Mama mashed like that. They used to pop up in my head sometime when I was doing the stupidest things: tetrified when I was sweeping the kitchen and Daddy came in dripping beer and kicking chairs. Belove when Manny was curling pleasure from me with his fingers in mid-swim in the pit. Freegid when I was laying in bed in November, curled to the wall like I was going to burrow into another cover or I was making room for a body to lay behind me to make me warm. Junior doesn’t giggle. “Somebody has to eat the eggs, Junior. You can’t waste food. They got kids in Africa that’s starving.”

“Give them to China,” Junior mumbles. He is rubbing his ear. “I’m going to eat some noodles.”

“I ain’t cooking you no noodles, Junior. I already cooked you some eggs.”

“You don’t have to cook them.” He stares at the television. There’s a commercial for toys on. He will eat them dry, and he will stick something sharp that he will sneak from the kitchen into the flavor packet to make a small hole. He will suck the spice from that damn flavor packet all day. I grab his plate, and the eggs jiggle like rubber.

Skeetah walks me in the shed after I interrupt his hammering by nudging his leg and pointing at the plate of eggs. I don’t feel like yelling. Feels too embarrassing, too big, too showy, even when it’s only me and Skeet around. Inside, China is laying on her side, and the puppies are squirming in a pile against her, sucking. She looks up, bares her teeth. Sees Skeetah and lets her lips fall a little bit, but still shows fangs. I want to pick one of the puppies up and hold it like Skeet did when China gave birth, let the puppy shove its wet nose into my shirt. Instead I stand at the door and watch Skeet set the plate in front of her on the ground.

“The white one is almost as big as the red one.”

China decides to ignore me and shoves her nose into the plate, licks up some egg. She leaves a slimy web of spit.

“Want to see?” Skeetah says. He bends and picks the red puppy away from China’s tit, and milk dribbles down her belly. All eight of her titties are so swollen with milk they look like human breasts. I breathe in air and swallow past the rock in my throat. The rock melts and burns. I run outside and crouch down and brace myself on my knees and throw up all over the red dirt, my hair falling forward like a black cloud. I can feel Skeetah watching me. When he touches my back with the puppy-free hand, I know this is how he touches China.

Daddy is grinning a beer out of Big Henry, who can buy beer at the gas station on the interstate because he’s so tall and solid, his face so square and serious, that he looks like he’s over twenty-one. He never gets carded, even though he’s only eighteen.

“Big boy like you, I know you know all about that.”

Daddy is leaning into Big Henry’s bulk so that he is cloaked in his shadow, and Daddy looks like he doesn’t know whether he wants to poke or punch.

“Them women like to have something to hold on to.”

Daddy elbows him in the ribs; he has his head down and he’s grinning. This is the way he tells a joke.

“Cost me some women back in the day, not having nothing to me.”

Daddy rubs his hand over his stomach, which I know is flat under his shirt, lean and dark with a thin layer of skin and fat that hangs over his muscle like a light T-shirt. With all that beer, you’d think he’d have a bowling-ball gut, but he doesn’t.

“Used to tell me, ‘Claude, I need a little more man than you. Need something warm. Don’t want no bony hard legs up on me at night.’ ”

Big Henry nods like he’s agreeing. Opens his eyes like Daddy’s interesting.

“Used to say, ‘You know how them big men is.’ ”

Big Henry hands Daddy the beer he’d been sipping on and slumps over the top of Daddy’s truck. The last of the jugs from under the house catches the light; the soap and water look like diamonds inside.

“What y’all did to get ready for them hurricanes today, Mr. Claude?” Big Henry asks. He scans the yard for Randall, for Skeetah, and when he doesn’t see them, snags on me and, resigned, shrugs.

When we were little, Big Henry used to let me ride on his back in the deep part of the pit, the part that was lined with oyster shells. He used to carry me so my feet wouldn’t get cut, even though his feet were bare as mine. They never bled. He hasn’t touched me since then. I thought that one day we would have sex, but he never came for me that way; since the boys always came for me, I never tried to have sex with him. He’s always around, moving in that big careful way of his. He bounces when he walks, sways side to side on his tiptoes. He swings his arms like he’s wading through water. He holds his beer bottles with three fingers.

“I’m going for dog food. Want to come?”

Skeetah asks me this as he rounds the side of the house; Big Henry looks relieved. Skeetah hits the shed, makes China yell. The jugs sit still in the dirt, but the water won’t stop shimmering and swishing inside. Big Henry cranks his car, and we ride.