Milk Blood Heat

by Dantiel W. Moniz

  I know, he says, and my silence concedes my utter secondness—in this news as in the order of our birth. Of course she called him first. I wasn’t the child who needed convincing.

  So? Are we doing this?

  Two weeks from now. I can take four days, no more.

  Our mother wants us to drive. To really see the land, she said—the red hills and the cacti standing tall as soldiers—but we both know she wants us to share a small space. To have no other option but to mend. I sense every reluctance in my brother, his petulance clear, seeming stronger than even those days when we were little and hassled one another over every inch of ground, and I can’t help but prod, he being a natural extension of myself.

  Still a smug little sister, I tell him, We’ll take your car.

  When Lucas turns up in the driveway of our grandparents’ old house, where I live alone, he honks like a bad date. He hates coming inside, to this place where our father had lived as a boy after our grandparents moved him from his beloved Santa Fe to Tallahassee. Nothing similar in the two places, our father often said, but the vigor of the sun. Sometimes I, too, felt our father’s presence in the halls—a figure standing distantly, unmoving, one hand raised toward me, as if in toast.

  I appraise my brother through the windshield in the early morning light, my travel bag slant against my hip. In the time since I’ve last seen him, he’s grown a beard and shorn the waves of his head into a close fade and, because he is vain, everything is kempt. Through the glass, his face is apprehensive, as if cornered, and there’s something I long for in that guarded look. He is lovely. I had set my hair in braids the night before and this morning let them loose around my chin, then put on extra-strength deodorant and foundation for the purple blooming beneath my eyes. I want to appear beautiful to him and without guilt, like someone who’s been wronged but can contemplate forgiveness.

  Lucas speaks first, sticking his head out the window. You getting in or what? He pops the trunk and I throw my bag in next to his and slide into the passenger seat and it’s like old times, except everything has changed. An orange light glows on the dashboard. check engine. And I say, pointing to it, Do you think we’ll make it?

  Our mother opens the door even before we knock. She’s packed us lunches in brown paper bags—ham and Kraft cheese sandwiches and two tangerines each. She seems relieved to see us there together in her living room, even awkwardly, unspeaking, our bodies angled away from one another. Our pictures are everywhere, clearly dusted and attended to; us as kids, us as a family before fracture—­evidence we’d started somewhere and sometimes it was good. Lucas turns his face from it.

  We can’t stay, Ma. We’ve got a lot of road to cover, he says, because he senses, as I do, that she wants us to linger in this past. He kisses her cheek to dull the rejection.

  I understand, she says, and hands the lunches to my brother. Then she turns and places our father carefully into my arms, the ceramic urn taped closed and wrapped in one of her good scarves. White linen with a pattern of peach dahlias, the bundle no bigger than a newborn child. She crosses herself, mumbling blessings into the air, and unlike Lucas, I can’t kiss this away. Cannot turn my face. This is Arlo, our father, and he is everywhere in me. He taught me how to cook, how to type, how, when walking, not to look down at my feet. He had always been precise with me and did not treat me as a child. He told me the names of things; when there was death he called it death, and when he tucked me in at night he would say into my ear, Por la sangre, and wouldn’t leave until I repeated it back. Until I made him believe that I believed it. I had loved him and was frightened of him, as he thought all good daughters should be.

  Leaving, our father at my feet, Lucas turns the wrong way down the road.

  Freeway’s the other direction, I say.

  He rolls his eyes. We’ve got one more stop to make, he says; then, Hold on to that, speaking of the urn. I don’t respond, but bracket the bundle better between my sandals. An image rises up: the lid coming undone and our father’s remains pluming into the car, coming to settle among the lost pens, crumbs, and parking stubs. How we would look stopping at the nearest gas station, covered in him, how reverently we might scrub our faces in the restroom sink. One of us would insert a quarter into the coin-operated vacuum and funnel our father away while the other leaned against the car, crunching a handful of BBQ Fritos. Arlo, in the end, just one more big bad dust bunny. I laugh out loud, and Lucas shoots me a look like I’ve lost it. Maybe I have.

  We pull up to a bungalow, painted sage, with a screened-in front porch and tie-dye mandala sheets for blinds. On the porch I see an old patchwork couch, a lazy ceiling fan. There are books stacked on a milk crate at one end and a philodendron in a clay pot trailing its leaves through the speckled light. Lucas gets out and I realize his intention is to go inside. I realize he lives here, in this different place I do not know.

  I thought we were pressed for time, I say.

  He’s already climbing from the car. He says, You can wait here if you want.

  But I’m curious. I follow him up the short concrete stairs, through the porch—it smells like rosemary and weed—and into the house. The living room is small but surprisingly homey. It feels airy, full of ease and light. Lucas disappears down a hallway and I gaze around at the charming secondhand furniture, the framed Dalí poster propped against a wall. I don’t recognize anything as my brother’s until I see his turntable and records strewn across the breakfast bar. I feel a small pinch of relief, which quickly vanishes as an orange sherbert cat hops down from the TV stand to investigate, curling her small-boned body around my ankles. He hated cats.

  That’s Lucy. I look up to see a silver-haired white girl leaning against the wall of the hallway where Lucas had gone, and now everything makes more sense—the plant, the books, the cat. This co-op vibe. I should have known. When the girl moves into a patch of sun, I can see the curve of her cheek is faintly furred. In the light, her hair becomes lavender.

  Oh, I say, and not wanting to appear startled or rude, I ask if the cat is named for Lucille Ball, that iconic redhead. She says, No, named for the devil for her wickedness. I’m Shelby.

  I tell her my name; that it’s so good to meet her, when really what’s good is that my brother brought me here, let me come in. A promising sign on our horizon. I’m making a note to tell him that I appreciate this—once we’re on the road, some miles between us and the strangers we’ve become—when Lucas appears again. A purple duffel stamped with heart-eye emojis dangles from his hand. I look from his face to the bag. From the bag to the girl. Sorry, she tells me with a crooked-toothed smile. I was supposed to be waiting outside.

  They leave a key under a loose floorboard so their friend can feed the cat. Shelby moves toward the front passenger seat and I can tell it’s not out of spite, but habit. Automatic shotgun. Girlfriend privilege. I stand close to Lucas as he situates her bag in the trunk and turn my face so there’s little chance my lips can be read.

  This isn’t what Mamá meant, I say, stoking the displeasure in my voice, and he bends lower into the trunk. You wanted to take my car, Lucas says. My car, my rules. And I can’t argue with that. These laws are nonnegotiable. When we’re all buckled up and the engine is running, Shelby swivels and presents our father’s urn to me, like she’s offering a treaty. The mood between us feels that sacred.

  My condolences, she says, and I take him. After a moment I put our father in the seat next to me and buckle him in, too, so that every time Lucas checks his mirror for the road, he’ll have no choice but to see.

  Shelby doesn’t believe in evasion, which I find out when I tell her how lucky it was she could get the time off work for this trip and ask her what she does. We’re on I-10, driving west through the panhandle. Out the window, unremarkable stretches of field.

  I’m a foot fetish model, she says, and I gawp at her rosy little toes, her feet propped up on Lucas’s dash, old smudges
on the windshield from past contact like abstract art. Her nails are painted a vivid, acid green, which is not her usual color. Her clients like French tips and hot tamale red. She tells me she had a friend who had a cousin who got her started, but after she blew up, she got her own site. Shelby breaks down the specifics of her job—the brand of pantyhose her clients prefer, level of packages she offers; how much people pay for nothing more than watching her stroke Lucy’s fur against her high arches. She explains the smelly feet trope.

  Like, you know, I’ve just gotten back from a looooong run, and gosh, my feet are sooo tired, so sweaty, and then I make a big production of taking off my runners and my socks and all that. I can’t tell you how many socks I sell. She says she does some of the normal shit too—lace and leather, oh baby I’m so hot for you, just with more feet.

  It’s great, she says, nodding. It pays the rent and I can set my own hours. Plus all the cute shoes and pedis I want. You know, people will buy stuff off your Amazon wish list.

  I try to catch my brother’s eye in the rearview, to see what he thinks about all of this, but he’s resolutely not looking in my direction. I can’t tell anything from the side of his face, but his right hand hasn’t moved from Shelby’s thigh. What do you do? she asks, and I say, Basically clean up shit for a living. Play with people’s human and fur babies. And she says, That’s awesome, like she means it, and I find myself liking her for my brother.

  By hour two of the drive, she’s turned around in her seat, talking exclusively to me, as Lucas hasn’t felt the need to participate. I appreciate her attention, which keeps me from feeling like a child in the backseat. It turns out that Shelby is also a purveyor of random knowledge—interesting facts she collects off Wikipedia and Reddit chat rooms. She knows about wine-making, the chemical makeup of methamphetamine, what the stars of the Real World: Key West are up to now, and about the golden-age architecture of Roman Catholic churches. Shelby says, So, I’m sure you’ve heard about all life originating in Africa, but have you thought about what that means? That, like, the first gods were black too?

  I can tell she’s wanted to ask me this probably since we’d met. She wants me to know that she’s an ally. That for her, my brother is not a fetish. She wants me to be impressed. I want to tell her that she doesn’t have to try so hard—Lucas and I both grew up exoticized in a mostly white school system, so this is far from our first white-partner rodeo. I want to recount all the ridiculous things we’ve heard over the years as proof of allyship—the black best friends and A-pluses earned in Spanish Lit—but she’s been nice to me, so I humor her. I tell her, borrowing from Hurston, gods often reflect the people who create them. She doesn’t catch the reference. I ask her more about herself, tell her what I’ve been up to lately, as if we’re old friends catching up. I’m speaking to her, but I imagine her as a medium between Lucas and me, what I hope he has missed coming through a messenger he’s more willing to receive.

  The three of us have steel bladders, so it’s a while before we stop. When we cross into Mississippi, we pull into a dingy gas station off the highway just outside Lucedale. None of us have ever heard of the chain. We all get out to grab snacks and stretch our legs. Shelby and I walk to the restroom while Lucas pays for gas at the counter. The cashier’s eyes flick over us, cowboy mustache bristling. He doesn’t speak, only takes my brother’s money. Once in the stall, squatting over the discolored seat, my curiosity is finally stronger than my repulsion, and I ask Shelby through the wall: Did you meet my brother off the foot site?

  Oh no, Shelby says, laughing. I can hear her wiping, flushing. I never meet clients in real life. They met at Floyd’s, a college club on the Strip where one of my brother’s friends was deejaying, and started dating just before our father died. She tells me sometimes Lucas appears in her videos, faceless, doing things to her or letting them happen to him. I don’t ask her any more questions, and speak just so she’ll stop. Lucas was never the jealous type, I tell her, which is true except when it concerned the affections of our father. While we’re washing our hands with the diluted scentless soap, Shelby asks, What about you? Seeing anyone special?

  Define special, I say, trying to sound light. My foundation is holding up and my hair still looks great. Maybe she’ll think I’m a cool shoot-from-the-hip, love-them-and-leave-them kind of girl. I haven’t had a serious relationship since before our father got sick. And even then, I didn’t like to lay myself out that way. Love requires a bareness, a certain pliability, and I didn’t thrill at the possibility of being transformed or wiped away. I look at myself in the mirror but instead see Arlo’s tired face—the drawn, long pull of it after he and our mother fought. The two of us are in the living room alone, late afternoon, the light amber in my hair while I play dolls at his feet. I am six and happy, and he clutches my chin and tells me, If I could, I’d marry you.

  Shelby lowers her voice conspiratorially.

  Okay, so here’s a tip. Attraction is all about chemicals. We’re just like animals, you know? She explains that humans secrete pheromones in urine and in sweat, and even if we’re not aware of it, our bodies react. So, she says, what I do is get that clean sweat after a light workout, spritz a little essential oil, but leave my original musk. Here, smell. She beckons me closer and lifts her arm, and to my own amazement I lean into her smooth white pit. Under citrus I detect a smell that’s a cross between chlorine and celery. Not welcome, but maybe not unpleasant either.

  And that’s how I got your brother. She winks at me and flips her thin hair, which moves and shines as if liquid.

  I’ll keep that in mind, I tell her. I wish I could unknow everything she’s said, but her sharing has given us allegiance to one another. As we walk out, she threads her arm through mine and I let her.

  Back in the car, my brother cranks the AC and gives Shelby a look.

  You took long enough. I thought that clerk was going to shoot me.

  Sorry, babe, Shelby says, and pops the top on a can of seltzer. She offers him a swig, which he takes, then she reaches into the lunch our mother packed and grabs a tangerine. Once peeled and quartered, she guides a slice between Lucas’s lips and the bright juice bursts across his chin. Shelby wipes it away and absentmindedly licks her finger afterward, and I look out the window because such lazy intimacy is too much to bear. You want one of these sandwiches? Shelby asks me like they’re hers to give, but I don’t respond. I’m too busy wondering what it’s like to be so comfortable in your own body, you don’t try to mask the scents of its functioning but instead make a profit off them.

  I was always fearful of my own smells—of how they condemned or conspired against me. Our mother instilled in me early what evils might come sniffing, though she never illuminated the specifics. In her stories, they were hungry shadows who preyed on incautious girls. What I knew, I’d learned from our father. National Geographic, two lions roaring onscreen, the male biting the lioness’s neck. Arlo pointing, his dry voice in my ear: They’re having sex. It looked painful. Scary. Bad. This was the evil our mother meant.

  I see myself, fourteen, fifteen, in the bathroom, perched on the closed toilet. My underwear is a tangle around my ankles and in the cotton seat, a teaspoon of off-white glop. Sometimes it had a shimmer like pearl, and when I brought it to my nose, it smelled of egg or nothing at all. A boy at school had just begun reciprocating my clumsy flirtations, and I needed to know if any of this was normal. I call for my mother to join me, and when she enters, I can’t look her in the eye. Already I know that what is between my legs is a hunchbacked sinner, a thing to hide, but I stand and face her, offering my underwear in one hand and parting myself with the other.

  Does this look okay?

  Our mother curls her lip, but even then I didn’t think she meant it.

  It’s fine, she says, and leaves immediately, not wanting to perform the double work of shaming me, since I’ve already shamed myself.

  Lucas insists on driving
the entire first leg and pushes our half-and-half schedule an extra hour. The day is a blur outside the window, meaningless, the sky eventually reddening until it bleeds itself a dusty orange. Shelby finally talks herself out by the time we reach Texas and now snores in the front seat. I like it this way; I can better interpret my brother’s silence, which shifts and deepens like music as the hours tick by. It feels less hostile and more unsure, like a space I can slip inside.

  Around nine we find a Motel 6 on the outskirts of Dallas and Lucas rents two next-door rooms. When he returns, he leans over Shelby in the front seat and says something into her ear, nudging her gently until she wakes, a shy, satisfied grin on her face. We carry our things inside, which for me includes our father. The rooms are typically dank and eerie, but we weren’t expecting much. I place the urn next to the ancient box TV.

  I’m starving, Shelby says when we regroup outside. We all are. We had split our mother’s sandwiches and the rest of the tangerines hours ago. There’s a burger joint across the street, so we order doubles and triples, extra-large fries, even shakes, like we’re celebrating. We take everything back to the hood of Lucas’s car and eat together under a wink of yellow moon. Lucas and I sit on a concrete parking block and he rolls a blunt from weed they’d hidden in a coffee can and my heart unfurls. My brother is soft when he’s high.

  White Grape? I say, pointing to the rolling papers. Those had been our favorites.

  What else is there?

  He licks the blunt and lights it, and after getting it started, hands it to me. The first hit rolls through my body clean as wind, and I hold it as long as I’m able. When I exhale the sweet musk, the night opens above us, wild and listening. We smoke the joint small. Everything is better—the burgers, the shitty motel. Ourselves. I look at Shelby, sitting cross-legged on the hood like an ornament or a seer, the way her pale belly folds over the denim waistband of her shorts. There’s no shame in her. She smiles at me, then inclines her head toward my brother, inviting me to make a move.