Read an excerpt from JackieWoodson’s new novel, “Red at the Bone”
Photo: Riverhead Books But that afternoon there was an orchestra playing. Music filling the brownstone. Black fingers pulling violin bows and strumming cellos, dark lips around horns, a small brown girl with pale pink nails on flute. Malcolm’s younger brother, his dark skin glistening, blowing somberly into a harmonica. A broad‐shouldered woman on harp. From my place on the stairs, I could see through the windows curious white people stopping in front of the building to listen.
The dress, white and unworn, lay spread out on the bed beside me. Behind it, a framed poster of Rage Against The Machine’s 1997 concert. My father and I went because Wu‐Tang was opening. I was twelve then and the two of us yelled and rapped and cheered so hard, we both stayed home the next day drinking lemon‐honey tea to nurse our sore throats.
Iris raised an eyebrow at me. I know you’re not trying to have some kind of abstinence conversation with me. You mean have sex? Can you really not even say it? Sex, Melody. It’s just a three‐letter word. And if we had … waited, as you say. Where would you be? Don’t curse. I don’t regret you. I couldn’t imagine this world without you in it. She came over to the bed, sat down on the other side of the dress, and ran her hand longingly over it. There were crocheted white flowers at the wrist.
But instead, she got up, went over to the window, and pulled the curtain back. She stared down at the block as she freed the rest of her curls. It was gray out, drizzling. Downstairs, the orchestra had arrived. I could hear bows being pulled across violins. Could hear my grandfather playing Monk on the piano and imagined his dark fingers, knotted at the knuckles.She turned back to me.
I hid you from them, you know, she said—like she was looking into my head finally. Seeing something there. That’s how you got here. They were hella good Catholics back then, but you would have been dust. Your grandparents. Your beloved grandparents.I never said I didn’t know. I said I didn’t know what to do. What … yeah! What the heck, Iris?
I tried to imagine her in my grandfather’s clothes. Everything about her was feminine and tailored and perfect. Everything about her felt the opposite of me. I could imagine me in my grandfather’s clothes. But not her. Her back was narrow and straight, her shoulders squared beneath the delicate satin of her robe. She was fourteen months away from her thirty‐third birthday. The age Christ was when he died, hung up on a cross and left to slowly bleed. In school, we’d been asked to discuss this image—Literal or Metaphoric. Truth or Fiction. It was Whitman who said, Argue not concerning God. At the time we were in ninth grade—new to our beliefs and the power of our voices. So we argued.
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