Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [104]
“That bridge is washed out.”
“The old one over the bayou? The first or second one?”
“The little third.”
“What about the bridge on the east side?”
“That one’s okay. Road’s full of water, they say. But you can drive through it.”
“What it look like?”
Solly clears his throat. Spits.
“It’s bad.” He clears his throat again. “Real bad.” Solly shrugs. “Where your mama say I need to put that tarp again?”
Big Henry leads him outside to show him the bad spot on the roof. He is barefoot, and his feet look white and tender as a baby’s.
“Esch.” Daddy’s voice from the sofa sounds like he has a Brillo pad lodged in his throat. I turn my head just so I can see his face out of the corner of my eye. This is the way you approach a bristling, unfamiliar dog.
Daddy makes a low humming noise. He sits up, folds his useless hand and his good one over his stomach. Looks at the dead TV.
“What Skeetah said. Is it true?”
I look at the carpet, fuzzy and maroon, that grows fluffy at the edge of the sofa he lays on; no one has ever stepped on it there. I nod, an inch’s slide of my head, into the pillow.
Daddy makes a clicking noise in this throat. Clears it and swallows.
“I shouldn’t have pushed you,” he says.
He rubs his good hand over his face like a cat cleaning its jaw and nose. His nose and cheeks are greasy and shine in the dark. I am quiet, feel every inhale and exhale like an explosion.
“It … happened,” Daddy breathes and stops.
I am blinking quickly, a feeling like boiled water splashed over my chest, soaking up my face.
“I’m sorry,” Daddy says.
I want to say, Yes. Or I know. Or I’m sorry, too. But I squeak, small as a mouse in the room. Wonder where the baby will sleep, wonder if it will lay curled up in the bed with me. If I will teach Junior to give it a bottle, the way Daddy taught us. He is old enough now.
“How long has it been?” Daddy asks.
“I don’t know.” My voice is so high it sounds like someone else is talking, like I could turn my face and see another girl there, lying on the floor between her brothers, answering these question.
“When we can, we need to find out.”
“Yes,” I say, facing him, seeing him folding in on himself, soft where he had been hard, the rigid line of him broken. His helpless hand. Junior will feed the baby, sit on the bed with pillows on both sides to support his arms. He will sit still long enough for that.
“Make sure everything’s okay.”
I nod.
“So nothing will go wrong.”
Daddy is rubbing his pocket with his good hand. I hear the crinkle of plastic. For a moment, Mama is there next to him on the sofa, her arm laid across his lap while she palms his knee, which is how she sat with him when they watched TV together. I wonder if that is phantom pain, and if Daddy will feel his missing fingers the way we feel Mama, present in the absence. But it is still terrible when Daddy looks up at me again, past my left shoulder to the opening door, and she isn’t there.
If it is a girl, I will name her after my mother: Rose. Rose Temple Batiste.
“You want to go to St. Catherine?” Big Henry is talking as he walks through the screen door; his pink feet nudge Randall’s head on accident, and Big Henry jumps back and rattles the door frame. Randall looks up sleepily. I palm Junior’s head and rub.
“What?”
“I got gas. We can ride. See what it’s looking like.”
Randall is waking up slowly. He stretches, talks through his yawn.
“We get back, we’ll go up to the house and try to find some more food. We know y’all ain’t got it to spare.”
“We can go get Skeet,” I add.
Daddy is shaking his head. The side of his short afro is smashed flat.
“Skeetah ain’t going to come,” Daddy says. He is gripping the wrist under his bad hand, rubbing at the skin like he could peel it off. The wire that had seemed to line his bones before the accident, before the hurricane, that made him so tall when he stood next to Mama, has softened to string. “I need something for this.”
If it is a boy, I will name it after Skeetah. Jason. Jason Aldon Batiste.
“We’ll find something,” Big Henry says. I shake Junior awake. Outside,