Red at the Bone

by Jacqueline Woodson

  I think we’re all supposed to be dancing now, Iris said to him. My parents are up.

  Is that what the rule book says? That’s how this thing supposed to go?

  Stop. She lifted her head off of his shoulder.

  Stop what? I’m just asking.

  No, you’re just being passive-aggressive. She took her hand out of his, folded her arms, and looked away from him.

  Now he was lost again.

  3

  The loneliness and the smoking both came during her sophomore year at Oberlin. Iris was living in a single room in Heritage House by then, the only all-black residence hall on campus. At night, as she sat at her desk hungrily bent over the pages of bell hooks’s Ain’t I a Woman, she could hear students hanging out in the lounge. Beneath the sounds of their flirting and laughter, there was always music—LL Cool J and A Tribe Called Quest on permanent rotation, the beats moving around the lounge and into her room. It was 1991, and most days, walking the campus alone, Iris felt like the years were racing by too quickly. Felt like she had so much catching up to do with her life. Saw a future with herself in it—alone.

  On her desk, there was only a small picture of the three of them—her, Aubrey, and Melody sitting on the stoop outside her parents’ brownstone, Melody on Aubrey’s lap and her looking away from the two of them—as though she were already leaving them. Already mostly gone.

  It felt like forever ago that she and Aubrey had spent nights dancing in Knickerbocker Park as a DJ threw down on two turntables and the crowd yelled, The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn. Her own fist pumping into the air as she sipped from a brown-bagged forty-ounce and danced pressing her butt back against Aubrey.

  Months before Melody was born, her parents bought the brownstone in Park Slope—a neighborhood as foreign to her as Mars, with its empty parks and whole swatches of neighborhood where she could walk for a long time without seeing any black people. They’d packed up and moved so fast, she’d barely had time to stick pieces of paper with their new address and phone number into the mailboxes of her friends. Park Slope was two bus lines away from her old neighborhood. On the morning they moved away, Aubrey cried and cried. But months later, his mother in hospice care, he was living with them.

  She thought she’d come to Oberlin and make up for the friends she’d lost track of once Melody was born. She’d stuck her head back into her books with only one goal—to get into a college far away from everybody needing some part of her. But the kids at Oberlin seemed so much younger. Some had proudly talked about arriving virgins and their plans to stay that way until marriage. Too often she wanted to ask, And what if the married sex isn’t good? Then, you’re a whole other kind of fucked. Still, the people living in The House around her reminded her of home. Even the African students, the lilt of their accents rising up over the noise. Their laughter, the smell of the food they brought back from break and reheated in the microwave—ackee and saltfish, peanut stews, garlicky greens and gumbos—all of it mixing with their own newly adult smells and filling The House. The Caribbean girls with their dark flawless skin and thick natural hair reminded her of the girls she’d gone to Catholic school with. Those same girls had known she was pregnant before she even knew. There’s a baby in your belly, you know, they’d whispered, circling around her. We can see the way your busts are so big now and your butt rising like a balloon beneath your skirt. How had they known—all of them no older than her but wiser already, older in some beyond years kind of way. A week later, she came home to find her mother sitting on the closed toilet seat in the upstairs bathroom, her bathroom, holding the box of unopened pads and crying. Then, even as she pressed her hands to her near flat belly, she knew. She had missed periods before. Periods were still new to her and they seemed to come and go as they pleased. But this was beyond the off and on of her period. Her body felt strange. Her nipples tingled even when Aubrey wasn’t touching them. And in the early mornings, her mouth filled with a rank bile that had her running to the bathroom and then, afterward, left her too nauseated to eat anything.

  This can’t be for real, her mother cried into her hand, the box of pads limp in the other. Please God in Heaven Almighty Father of mine, in the name of Your son and the Holy Mother, tell me I’m dreaming. Tell me this isn’t how Satan is coming for us this time. No. Not my baby. Not my sweet, sweet baby.

  If there’s a baby in me, Iris said quietly, her hands still pressing against her stomach, I’m keeping it.

  And why the hell had she been so damn adamant? She’d never dreamed of being a mother. When she looked into her future, she saw college and some fancy job somewhere where she dressed cute and drank good wine at a restaurant after work. There were always candles in her future—candlelit tables and bathtubs and bedrooms. She didn’t see Aubrey there. Aubrey with his dimple and his near white mother and the tiny darkened apartment he had grown up in. They ate margarine there, spread on white bread and topped with grape jelly. The first time Aubrey offered her margarine, she laughed. You know that’s not real butter, right? But he’d just shrugged. Taste good to me. She couldn’t see a future with someone who only knew margarine.

  But in that moment, as her mother wept, she hugged her stomach and claimed whatever was growing there. She saw it all—a baby rising up inside of her, landing fully formed and beautiful into the world. She saw a child her parents couldn’t try to control. This baby would belong to her. She hoped it would be born with Aubrey’s deep brown skin and, maybe, her own amber eyes. Everywhere she and her baby went, people would stop, say, Oh my God, that baby is so beautiful. That’s what it would mean for her, beauty around her always. Beauty constant as a beat. Beauty that was hers alone. She didn’t love Aubrey enough to walk through the rest of her life with him. But she loved him enough to carry a part of him inside her, nourish it, love it, and see what it became. When he cried out in bed, begging her never to leave him, she couldn’t promise she wouldn’t. But she could hold him, stroke the back of his head, say again and again, This is fun, isn’t it? We’re good together, right? And now, she could say, Look what we made.

  She hadn’t thought she’d get pregnant. Most times, Aubrey wore a condom. When he didn’t have one, he pulled out in time. Sometimes, she told him he didn’t have to. She was young and hardly got her period, so whatever was down there that made it possible to have a baby wasn’t even fully formed. She’d thought everything hadn’t yet fallen into place.

  You sure we’re good? Aubrey whispered.

  Of course I’m sure. What do you think I am, stupid?

  Sitting on the toilet seat, her mother said again and again, We’re not that. We’re not somebody’s thrown-out trash like that. And to God, she begged, Please heavenly Father, tell me this is not Your plan for us.

  Now as winter began its gray descent over Ohio, Iris stared at her small stack of mail, a letter from home, Essence magazine, some offers for low-interest credit cards, and thought again about the many lifetimes ago since that conversation with her mother. Would the tragic comedy of memory ever stop replaying? Her mother flinging the box of pads, then lunging for her, screaming as she slapped and pulled at her daughter’s hair. Iris wrapping her arms around her belly and sinking into a silent mass against the cool bathroom tiles. Her mother’s fists and prayers pummeling down over her.

  That afternoon, neither of them knew that Iris was nearly four months pregnant, already anemic and underweight, and that for the next five months, the thing she’d crave over everything else was white bread slathered with margarine.

  You’re fifteen, her mother said, in tears now. There’s so much, Iris. So much more—

  It’s not the end of the world, Mommy. It’s just a baby.

  Back then, that was as far as Iris could see—pregnancy, then birth, then a baby. She hadn’t thought of the shame that would force her mother to move them out of Bushwick. Hadn’t thought about the baby
growing into a child and one day that child becoming her own age—and older than that.

  Iris pressed the cold envelopes and magazine against her lips. I was fifteen, she whispered into them. Fifteen. I wasn’t even anybody yet.

  4

  Even a man’s gonna cry. You can’t help it. The mind going everywhere. From the blessing of a new life coming and that thinking filling up your throat to your own daughter’s childhood snatched right out from under you. Thought I would have Iris as a little girl longer than I did. But sitting here with you asleep in my lap, I can’t imagine life any other way. Every moment for all the generations was leading to you here on my lap, your head against your granddaddy’s chest, already four years old. Hair smelling like coconut oil. Something beneath that, though. Little-girl sweat—almost sour, but then just when I think that’s what it is, it turns, sweetens somehow. Makes me want to sit here forever breathing in your scalp. When did your arms get so long? Your feet so big? These footie pajamas with reindeer all over them remind me of the ones your mama used to wear. She used to fall asleep on my lap just like this. Back at the other house. Oh time time time time. Where’d you go where’d you go?

  My legs hurt tonight. Another place too—deep in my back somewhere, there’s a dull, aching pain. I try not to think about it. Old people used to always say, You only as old as you feel. Here I am closer to fifty than forty, but I feel older than that most days. Feel like the world is trying to pull me down back into it. Like God went ahead and said, I’ve changed my mind about you, Po’Boy. A bath with Epsom salts helps some evenings. Ginger tea keeps Sabe’s good cooking in my belly. Sitting here holding you at the end of the day—that’s . . . well, I’m not going to lie and say this isn’t the best thing that ever happened to my life because it is.

  Look at you laughing in your sleep. Got me wondering what you’re dreaming about. What’s making you laugh like that?

  Tell your granddaddy what’s playing in your pretty brown head, my little Melody. Name like a song. Like you were born and it was cause for the world to sing. You know how much your old granddaddy loves when you sing him silly songs? Sabe says she’s gonna have to get some earplugs if she has to hear one more verse of “Elmo’s World” or that song about how to grow a garden. But me, I can listen to your voice forever. Can’t hear you singing enough.

  Come a day when you’ll hear Erroll Garner playing “Fly Me to the Moon” on the piano and your own sweet mouth won’t know what to do with itself, baby girl. Lord. Lord. Lord. You got so much living ahead of you. I remember the first time I heard Etta James telling the world she’d rather be blind than have her man walk away from her. The way her voice . . . her voice, Melody. Like something maybe you’re right now dreaming about. Wish I could sing it, but that would just wake you up crying. Hmph. Always wished I could sing. Wish I could move my fingers across the piano keys like Sir Garner—that man was a genius. And when he touched down on those keys and played “Jeannine, I Dream of Lilac Time”—man, step back! Ouch. Burn yourself just listening to it. Just listening. Just listening.

  You haven’t been on this earth long enough to understand, but one day you will. Trust your granddaddy on that.

  It’s a pretty night. I think the winter’s trying to leave us. No more snow, but it looks cold out there. Our boy, Benjamin, was born on a night like this—cold and clear and quiet. That was when we were still in Chicago with Sabe’s people. Feels like a long time ago, but not so far in the past that I don’t remember the way that Chicago cold slipped past your bones, I swear. That wind coming off the water? What?! I don’t miss Chicago. But I miss the time. I miss who me and your grandma were back then. Sabe with that belly and the two of us always so happy just to be near each other. The way a fire seemed to rise up every time our arms touched. The way she’d look at me like we had all the hours in the world to spend just grinning at each other. Yeah, I truly miss the time gone by.

  But if we had stayed in that time, you wouldn’t be asleep on me now still holding tight to that book about a rainbow fish. Wouldn’t say this while I was reading it and you were awake, but I don’t know about that fish giving all of its pretty rainbow scales away. Makes me think of your mama. Thought she was still ours. Thought she was still my little girl. But she wasn’t. Thought one day she’d grow up and I’d walk her down the aisle and give her away. Truth is, though, she wasn’t mine to give. Nah sir. She wasn’t mine at all. But it felt like I’d been scaled alive when Sabe told me about you coming. Felt like someone had taken a knife to my skin and just lifted it up off of me. Guess that’s where the tears came from, knowing that there’s so much in this great big world that you don’t have a single ounce of control over. Guess the sooner you learn that, the sooner you’ll have one less heartbreak in your life. Oh Lord. Some evenings I don’t know where the old pains end and the new ones begin. Feels like the older you get the more they run into one long, deep aching.

  That night I got home from work to find Sabe in bed curled around a pillow, I knew. Your grandma was never one to get back into bed once she’d gotten up. Get up. Make the bed. Start the day. That’s who she was. Even after we lost Benjamin, she still got out of bed every morning. Moved slower with that new bend in her back and all, but still, she rose.

  I said, Sabe, you sick, sweetie?

  Your mind takes you places. Standing in our darkened room with only the light from the hall coming in, I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t what I knew but something scarier than that. Something fiercer. Your grandma holding that pillow like she was trying to hold on to life shook me.

  But I knew. Quiet as it’s kept, the connection between me and Iris was something nobody—not even me—understood. But I could look at your mama and know that she’d been with Aubrey in the same way that I could touch her shoulder and feel the hurting or the scared or the rage inside of her. I knew Iris in a way that Sabe didn’t. But still.

  Melody, I hope you never have to hear your daughter scream and cry to keep her baby. I hope you never have to stand in the home you thought you’d grow old in, knowing that the life you’d made with your wife and child was over. I hope you never have to rethink the actions of a God you’d always believed in. Me and Sabe didn’t understand what we were supposed to do with this new burden. Then you were showing yourself. This round bump that used to mean Iris was about to have a growth spurt. Every few months or so when she was small, her stomach would do like yours. Stick out like somebody who hadn’t left the dinner table soon enough. Then the next thing we knew, her stomach would be flat again and she’d be one or two inches taller. But this time, it wasn’t about a growth spurt. That was you already inside her. Now look, you got your granddaddy crying again. Got this old man as misty-eyed as the day I first walked into that hospital room and saw your half-open eyes slide over to me.

  I want to call her Melody, your mama said. After Grandma Melody who almost died in Tulsa.

  After a moment, your mama looked square at me and Sabe and said, But didn’t die.

  Then she said your name again. Melody. And me and your grandma held hands and each said our silent thank-you to the same God we had come close to cursing only months before.

  5

  As Iris stood outside the student union, opening a letter her parents had sent—seventy-five dollars and a picture of Melody with it—the revelation of her pregnancy came rushing back at her. Her father’s sobbing, her mother’s rage, the nuns, the neighbors, and finally, their church. . . .

  It seemed the longer she spent away from them, the more her family haunted her. Each week another letter, each month another picture of the baby that had come from her body morphing into a toddler, then a child. Now laughing. Now a forced smile. Hair in cornrows. Out and curling over her head. Pulled up into a ponytail of beaded braids. Iris could never look at her long enough. Wanted the hours alone to stare at the child’s changing hands and now a new space in her mouth. In last month’s photo, a front tooth dangled
over her bottom lip and Iris laughed out loud, wanting to reach into the picture and yank the loose tooth from her daughter’s mouth. She wondered about the conversations she missed with the child—the fights they must have had over Melody’s need to keep that tooth a day, a week, a month, longer. Why hadn’t Aubrey snuck into her room in the middle of the night and yanked it the way her own father had done—Iris waking in the morning with that new space in her mouth and a crisp dollar bill beneath her pillow. But now the tooth was gone. Had Melody gotten a dollar for it too? Iris studied the space—the pink half circle of gum beside a tiny front tooth that hung at a slight angle as though it too was loose now. Iris shivered. Ran her tongue along her own straight teeth. She had missed the child’s birthday but had called, only to have Melody say, It’s my birthday and it’s party day. Bye! Daddy got me a bicycle. Bye again. And when she reminded the child that the bicycle was from both of them, Melody said, But Daddy put it together. And Daddy’s gonna teach me to ride. Always the phone calls were Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, and TV shows she’d watched. When she tried to ask Melody what she was reading, the child laughed. Everything, she said. I read everything.

  Now, staring at the picture of her daughter, she remembered again how her own mother had said more than once that there was nothing at all maternal about Iris and wondered if the maternal gene kicked in later. Iris wondered if it would happen in her twenties or thirties. And if it did, would she want more children? Definitely not with Aubrey. But if not him, then with whom? The dudes at Oberlin were so not the ones. Maybe she’d go to grad school. Meet someone there?