Red at the Bone

Melody recalls her birth: the light, Iris’s fear, the warmth of her grandmother’s gaze. Years later, her grandmother would tell her that the caul had to be wiped away from her face. Sabe thought the nurse kept it. Melody remembers being given to Iris and latching onto her breast so tightly. She’d been so hungry for her. 

Iris feels that Jam’s leaving her will kill her. She never learned how to live with a feeling like this, and she struggles to stand, eat, or move. She spends days in bed, calling home only to hear the sound of someone who loved her. A few days after their breakup, Iris sees Jam laying outside on the campus lawn with a girl Iris doesn’t recognize. They are laughing, and the girl traces patterns over Jam’s bare stomach. Iris is frozen until Jam smiles at her and asks if they were good; Iris responds that they are. Distantly, though, Iris is remembering the boys before Aubrey, like the pale one with an Afro when she was 13. They weren’t dating, so when she saw him the next week with his arm around another girl, she stayed in bed for days.