Red at the Bone

by Jacqueline Woodson

  It was nearly April. In another month, they’d be done with finals and heading home. Jamison back to New Orleans and Iris, for the first time in two years, home to Brooklyn. Maybe Aubrey knew. When they talked, there was such a pleading in his voice, such a hunger for her, that it came close to hurting. He was twenty-one now but still so fragile, so new about things. So . . . young.

  Why’s that happening, Jamison was asking. Are they infected?

  They had been together nearly six months now—their relationship hidden from everyone at Oberlin, in Brooklyn and Louisiana. There was so much power in the not-telling, Iris thought. It terrified her that they’d be found out, that this feeling, this none-ending wanting, would be brought to an end by anyone.

  But there was something else. The slow falling in love with the way Jam’s legs moved as she walked. The heat that rose inside her for Jam’s hands slipping into the back pockets of her jeans. Even the jeans themselves—narrow-legged and low-slung while everyone around them seemed to be leaning toward pleated front pants rising over their navels. Once she walked by a classroom to see Jam in there with her arms slung back over her chair, smirking over the toothpick sticking out of the side of her mouth. Iris had spent the next hour wondering who Jam had been smirking at. But by the time they got together that evening, she’d lost the courage to ask. It felt crazy to even bring it up. Still, the way other students looked at Jam sent something moving through Iris. She didn’t want Jamison’s eyes on anyone but her. When Jamison laughed easily with other girls, Iris felt like she was losing her. When she lay in bed imagining someone else’s mouth on Jamison’s, she had to take slow breaths to calm herself down. She felt red at the bone—like there was something inside of her undone and bleeding. She wanted this thing with Jam to last. Already, she saw them growing old together—Jam with her arm around Iris’s waist in the darkness. Days and days in bed together somewhere. Where—she didn’t know. It didn’t matter, though. Not now. Not yet. She wasn’t gay or lesbian or queer or whatever else. It was just Jam she wanted—her softness, the way she laughed. The way she lifted a cigarette to Iris’s lips and held it while she pulled. Watched as she exhaled smoke, then leaned over and kissed her, her eyes always slightly hooded, like she had just gotten laid and was still thinking about it. Jam she was in love with and would be in love with always. This naked, skin-peeled-back desire for someone was so new that it hurt. It felt too fragile—like Jam could turn to dust in her hands. Could walk away.

  The first time Jam kissed her, she was unsteady for days. It was a Saturday and they had been outside Jam’s dorm smoking Drum and watching white students, huddled together in polo shirts, smoke weed and dip their heads to Boy George. Clowns caress you. Figures undress your fears. . . . Jam had her head thrown back and was smiling. Something about the curve of her throat startled Iris. Earlier, they had finished their own joint, downlow passing it back and forth until all that remained was the roach burning between Iris’s fingers. She had missed weed, and at Oberlin, even the lamest kids seemed to get their toke on. She thought it would be weak shit, but it wasn’t. Staring at Jam’s throat, Iris imagined her lips on it and laughed, blaming the weed.

  Jam caught her looking and said—I want to show you something in my room.

  It was a room she shared with a shy girl from Maine who spent most of her time at the library. Iris had only met the girl once but wasn’t surprised to walk into Jam’s room and see the child’s bed neatly made, with a whole crop of pastel-covered stuffed animals arranged around her pillow and a Fleetwood Mac poster framed above it.

  Jam’s side of the room was all messy bed, Assata Shakur and Huey Newton posters. A row of well-cared-for Pumas lined the floor along her wall—black on white, gold on blue, red on black—the shoes went on and on. At the end of the line was one pair of Timberland boots. Even with all the sneakers, most times Jam wore the Timbs, and the sexiness of them was surprising.

  There was a surrealness to it that made Iris giggle.

  You still high? Jam asked, eyeing her as she pushed the door shut. In the tiny room, they were standing close enough to touch, and before Iris could lie and say no, Jam was kissing her, her mouth pressing hard into Iris’s, her tongue insistent and sweet. They stumbled back against the wall and kept kissing.

  I’m kissing a woman, Iris kept thinking. I’m kissing Jamison!

  She let Jamison’s hands explore her body but grabbed them when they reached for her breasts. Already, she could feel them leaking into her bra.

  It’s milk, she whispered now as Jam stared at her. Iris had pulled the covers up over her breasts and felt beneath them the milk seeping into her sheet. She felt scared suddenly. She couldn’t look at Jam. Stared above her head, out the window.

  She had nursed Melody for nearly three years. Not because she had to—she knew after the first year, the child got all she needed from her milk. No, she continued pulling to her breast first the infant, then the crawling baby, and finally the toddler because the milk kept coming and Melody kept wanting it. She nursed the child because she was supposed to feel some deep electric connectedness to her and didn’t. So she gave her what she had—her body. This physical part of her, staring down into the child’s eyes or into the pages of a textbook or, simply, out the window while Melody lay across her lap. And sucked and sucked and sucked.

  When do I get those back? Aubrey teased, watching them. And she had smiled at him instead of saying, Never. Not now. Not anymore.

  She thought once she finally stopped nursing, the milk would go away, that her breasts would shrink back to some normal size and she’d move on. But the first time Jam kissed her, she felt her shirt growing damp, looked down to see the familiar dark circles, and ended up walking across campus with her books held over her chest the way she had done as a twelve-year-old—when her breasts had first started growing and a band of immature boys followed her home calling out, Hey, Nipples, show us what you growing.

  Melody, Iris said, jutting her chin toward the mirror where a line of Melody’s pictures was tucked along the side. She’s my daughter, not sister.

  Jamison stared at her for a long moment, looked over at the mirror, then leaned back heavily, gently hitting her head against the wall.

  So you lied, she said after a long time had passed.

  If it had been Aubrey, she would have double-talked, reasoned her way out somehow. Turned his question around on him until he doubted what he had always known. But it wasn’t Aubrey. Jam was so different, so deeply on point and grounded. She was the only daughter of atheist college professors. She read Lorde and Baldwin and Nella Larson. She identified as queer, had a pierced nipple, and interrogated white professors. Her mind was sweet and sharp and she had an answer for whatever question came her way. Sitting in bed with her, Iris wondered if she’d ever had to lie. She doubted it. Jam said more than once, Fuck this world. Ain’t I a Woman. It was months before Iris learned about Sojourner Truth. She had thought the “Ain’t I a Woman” thing was Jam’s own. Even their secret relationship—Jam had wanted to tell the world. Said, Fuck this school, I don’t care who knows what we do. It was Iris who had wanted to hide, to keep it quiet. Just between the two of them.

  And now, turning toward her, Iris realized that she had packed a suitcase full of lies and brought them all to Oberlin. Her leaky breasts were only one of them. The man she had at home. The school she’d gotten kicked out of. The baby she’d left behind. The mother who had beaten her and cried . . .

  I did, Iris said. Yeah, I lied. I had a kid when I was fifteen. That’s her. She pointed to the mirror. Melody at one, two, three, four, five. Each year pulling a little bit more of Iris into herself—eyes, lips, nose, smile.

  But here you are fucking me? Jamison propped herself up on her elbow. I don’t get it. Iris could hear students moving around in the hallway.

  I like you, Iris said. She still could not look at her. When she looked down at her own hands,
she realized she had grabbed bunches of sheet and blanket into them and was squeezing it so hard, her knuckles had turned a reddish brown.

  What she was so afraid of saying was, I love you. I want to be with you. For nearly two years, she’d felt so much older than the other students at Oberlin. But with Jamison, she felt like a child suddenly. Wordless and floundering.

  C’mon, Iris, Jam said. You have a baby. Do you have a man? She had risen to the side of the bed and was looking back over her shoulder at Iris. Because I’m sure at fifteen you weren’t trying to do some artificial insemination thing.

  The baby’s dad lives with my parents.

  So you mean he lives with you.

  I live here, Iris said.

  But you go home there. Jamison had pulled on a pair of white boxers and was pulling her jeans on over them. When she had buttoned the fly, she sat back down on the bed, shirtless. Iris wanted to reach out and touch her back. It was broad and dark brown and beautiful. How many other women had touched it, bit into it, pressed the side of their faces against it? She didn’t want to know.

  The milk had stopped running down. She would have to wash the sheets. The one time she’d tasted her own milk, she was surprised by the sweetness and had pressed some out onto her finger for Aubrey to try.

  Can’t I get it from the source? he asked.

  Nope.

  She wanted to tell this to Jam now—that she had only slept with him maybe a dozen times since Melody was born. That she didn’t love him. That if they didn’t have to use words like gay and lesbian and queer and dyke, maybe they could be together. If they didn’t have to be public about it, maybe they could make this work.

  But Jamison was pulling on her shirt—a flannel shirt cut off just at the waist so that when she leaned over to tie her Timberlands, a sliver of brown back teased Iris.

  When she was fully dressed, Jamison walked over to the mirror and took a longer look at the pictures.

  She’s a beautiful kid, she said. Then she came back over to the bed, kissed Iris gently on the forehead. And left.

  17

  Now the house is quiet again, confetti vacuumed away, Iris back at her apartment in Manhattan, and the grown-ups who live here sleeping off the booze.

  Some drunk ass spilled red wine on the side of my dress and now I’m seeing it for the first time. Malcolm on my bed, smiling and high. Me thinking—maybe this time we’ll get it right.

  Hey, he says.

  Hey yourself.

  Lou was drunk as hell, Malcolm says. I can’t believe that cat can’t hold his liquor.

  He says things like that. Cat and cool and dynamite.

  He was dipping into the vodka hard.

  I come over to him, give him my back so that he can undo my zipper.

  What kind of neocolonialist shit you wearing under there, girl?

  Try neo-Victorian. It’s a corset. Something old, you know. Like a wedding but with shit that didn’t really get passed down the same way.

  Malcolm laughs. Your family is bougie as all get-out. I know I’ve said this a million times, but damn. Today. Tonight. The whole thing. He draws exaggerated circles in the air with his hands, shaking his head. He’s gay as hell, I know that. Anybody with eyes and every person under twenty-one, straight or gay, knows it. It’s the grown-ups who can’t fathom what they refuse to see.

  And then there was that old-ass dude from your grandma’s church out there dancing with his lady and trying to roll up on my ear. Talking about meet me in the car. Like this ain’t Brooklyn. Like we gonna park on some dark road. Like I want to suck his wrinkled-ass dick.

  I free my boobs from the corset and Malcolm’s eyes get big.

  Those girls are like, We’re free, thank you, Jesus! Come on over here.

  I pull on one of my dad’s old T-shirts—a gray one with Oberlin College in red letters across the front. It was the first and only shirt Iris brought home for him and stops just at my thighs.

  Then I wrap my head and climb into bed beside Malcolm, let him put his arms around me from behind.

  He cups my breasts and sighs. In the perfect world, he says, these would be mine.

  The one time we tried more than cuddling was the only time I saw him cry. I want to want you so badly, he whispered. By then, we had been a couple for almost a year, Malcolm’s arm around my shoulder as we walked around campus, his hand in mine as we headed with friends to the movies on weekends. But we both knew what we knew. Still.

  You think it will ever happen for me, Malc. The sex thing.

  Shit, Melody. Hell yes and then hell yes again. You’re fuckin’ beautiful and . . . I mean, damn, ever since we were little kids, I wanted to be you. I wanted your hair and your butt and your lips and your eyes and now—look at your perfect-ass tits! Look at your tiny-ass waist and—he lifted one of my hands, kissed the back of it gently—I even want your perfect hands. White boys can’t see you and the brothers just stupid, but you’ll get your fuck on. Trust.

  I turn toward him, burrow my head into his chest. I can feel his heart beating against my forehead. Can smell the Polo cologne he swears by.

  What about you, dude? What about your cherry?

  He takes a deep breath. When he speaks, he sounds tired.

  Sex is easy for a fag, girl. It’s the love I’m after. Bring on the love.

  Yeah, I say through a yawn. The love.

  Today you got introduced to society, Melody, he says sleepily. Shoot, I love that people think the world is even halfway ready for what we about to bring.

  18

  Sitting here this afternoon, I’m thinking about that poem by . . . I think it’s Dunbar, I’m not so sure anymore. Age will do that to you. Soon as something starts coming to your mind, it snatches it back. Makes you forget the stuff you want to remember. Brings back the memories you’re busy trying to forget. This afternoon I miss Po’Boy and Aubrey so much.

  Poem starts out, Dey had a gread big pahty down to Tom’s de othah night. Just thinking about it makes me smile, you know. The way the poet played around with all those words—spelling them some other way than how they were supposed to be spelled but it making sense because that’s how they sounded. I used to know that whole poem by heart. My mama would make me recite it when people gathered. Oration. I had wanted Iris and Aubrey to get Melody to remember it, but they said if she was going to recite anything, it was going to be somebody’s rap song and none of us were having that. So we just settled for them going down to that dance school and learning the cakewalk and some of the other dances they did that night.

  I like remembering the good stuff.

  Something about memory. It takes you back to where you were and lets you just be there for a time. Five years to the day now that Aubrey died. Him like a son to me by then.

  Was I dah? You bet! I nevah in my life see sich a sight.

  It was Dunbar. I’m sure of it now. Paul Laurence Dunbar. My name is Sabe Ella Franklin and I’d like to recite “The Party” by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

  We’d all thought after the cancer took Aubrey’s mama fast as it did that Po’Boy would be the next one to go with the way it came for him just as bad and quick. Oh, how that man suffered in those last days, I can’t even bring myself to— The thing is, I wanted to help him go. House set up like a hospital with his bed right here in our living room because he wanted the light. That’s all I’m going to ask you for, Sabe. Just put me where there’s the most light. So we put him here. And some mornings I’d come down and see him lying there looking out into it, crying. I hurt so bad, Sabe. I hurt so so bad. Those days I just wanted to crush his pain medicine to powder, mix it with orange juice, and help him slip into a deep sleep, then finally—on away from here. But I couldn’t. Melody wasn’t ready. Iris wasn’t ready. The only one ready seemed to be me. I’d known all the Po’Boy this world was giving me to know. The man in the hospital bed was just Su
ffering incarnate. Just a shell of my Po’Boy. And that’s what tore me up inside. But then he’d say, Read to me, Sabe. I just want to hear your voice. Read me some of that Dunbar.

  I tell you, something about the poetry of Dunbar just made us laugh and laugh. Black folks trying to be all proper and speak like white folks and all. Used to get Po’Boy laughing when I read Dunbar’s poems just the way the man intended them to be read. Used to make him go You see how my Sabe do with those poems. Talented as she wants to be! We both loved how he wrote. He was truly saying, Can we just be who we are, people? Can we just take off our masks and laugh and dance and eat and talk? But then he has the nerve to have that name Paul Laurence Dunbar—like you need to say it with your pinky pointing out. Hmph. Made me and Po’Boy shake our heads at all that our people are.

  Lord, I miss Po’Boy. Miss him so much, Lord.

  When I had my ceremony, I’d just turned seventeen, which is what they did sometimes. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Some people waited till twenty-one, but after Iris got pregnant, I think I was nervous, and soon as Melody was born, I told Po’Boy we’d do her ceremony sooner rather than later. I should have known Melody would have been different, though. I should have known that sometimes common sense skips a generation.

  I wore a white dress for mine. We always wore white. Melody tried to wear blue, but I shut that down. My own dress was tea length too and I had on white shoes that my mama had bought at Ohrbach’s back when that store was still around. It was something to walk in there and have the salesman sit you down and take your foot in his hand. They took care with you. Put your foot up onto this inclined stool type of thing, then put that device underneath it. Made you feel so special. Then they brought you the shoes you had chosen in a few sizes. They really cared about their job. Made it seem like working with people’s feet all day was the most important job in the world. But I tell you this. You walked out of there and you owned a pair of shoes that fit. Didn’t have to worry about blisters or your heels getting torn up. None of that.