Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [74]
“Grab her!” Rico yells.
Kilo eddies around China’s shoulder. Swirls and bites. China bites back, returns the kiss, savagely.
“Grab her, son!” Rico yells.
They rise and clench each other with their arms, stand on their back legs. China kicks with her front feet, pushes away from Kilo’s chest to unfurl like a whip to lash back around with her head, to bite and rip again, but when she leans back it is as if Kilo has just seen her breasts, white and full and heavy and warm, and he bows his head like a puppy to drink. But he doesn’t drink. He bites. He swallows her breast.
“No,” Skeetah says.
“Shake her,” Rico calls.
Kilo is a whirlpool, spinning China, shaking her. She claws at him with her paws, her jaw wide, and tries to eat his eyes. But Kilo will not let go.
“Jump!” Skeetah yells. “Jump, China!”
It is what he tells her to do when he wants her to jump from trees. To leap. To fly. China bows into Kilo. She gathers herself, flexes like a muscle. She tongues Kilo’s ear and bites and then leans back and pushes hard with her feet all at once. She rips. Her breast is bloody, torn. The nipple, missing.
“China!” Skeetah calls, and China lands on her front feet, already running toward him.
Kilo howls and falls backward away from China, his ear ragged.
“Come, Kilo!” Rico calls, and Kilo runs to Rico, dragging his ragged ear along the ground, butting Rico’s leg and leaving a bloody print.
“I told you, Skeet,” Randall says.
“Shut up,” Skeetah says.
The gash is a red flame swallowing her breast.
“She can’t fight,” Randall says.
Skeetah is squeezing China’s neck, murmuring in her ear. This time I cannot hear what he says. Skeetah is whispering so closely to China’s ear I only catch half of his lips behind the red-veined white of her ear. Her breast drips blood. China licks Skeetah’s cheek.
Rico stands, already smiling.
“Maybe I don’t want the white one,” Rico says. “Maybe I want the colored one that got more Kilo in it.” He laughs.
Skeetah stands, and China, stout and white, looks up at him.
“She fights,” Skeetah says.
Randall pulls the stick from his shoulders, swings it around to his front.
“She’s already fucked up enough,” Randall says.
“Cuz, if she lost, she lost,” Big Henry says, slowly, as if he is tasting the words.
“She didn’t lose,” Skeetah breathes.
Rico laughs.
Skeetah shrugs and touches the tip of China’s nose with his finger.
“She’s mine, and she fights.”
Kilo grimaces.
“Let’s give this nigga what he want,” Rico says to Kilo.
There is sweat and blood running red and gray down China’s ribs.
“Go ahead, Kilo.”
Kilo runs.
“Go, China! Go!” Skeetah screams, and China hurtles forward, her bloody breast streaming fluid, leaving a trail in the brush.
They meet. They rise. They embrace. They bite, neck to neck. They rip growls from each other, and the wind punches into the clearing and carries the growls away.
Kilo grabs China’s shoulder again, jerks his neck to make her shake.
Skeetah’s fists are curled tight, and his whole body seems to bristle.
“Make ’em know!” Skeetah calls, barely louder than speaking.
China hears.
“Make them know.”
She is fire. China flings her head back into the air as if eating oxygen, gaining strength, and burns back down to Kilo and takes his neck in her teeth. She bears down, curling to him, a loving flame, and licks. She flips over and is on top of him, even though he still has her shoulder. He roils beneath her. She chews. Fire evaporates water.
Make them know make them know make them know they can’t live without you, Skeetah says. China hears.
Hello, father, she says, tonguing Kilo. I don’t have milk for you. China blazes. Kilo snaps at her breast again, but she shoulders him away. But I do have this. Her jaw is a mousetrap snapped shut around the mouse of Kilo’s neck.
When Kilo screams, it is loud and high, as if the wind whistles when it slides past China’s teeth.
Skeetah smiles.
Skeetah calls, “Come, China!”
China spins, takes away part of Kilo’s throat.
China comes.
“Hold! Hold!” Rico screams, sweaty, his face twisted sour. He drags