“My choice?” Rico husks.
Randall looks at Skeetah, nods slowly.
“Yeah, your choice.”
Skeetah shakes his head.
“Fuck them,” Skeetah says.
Rico smiles; his name is etched into his golden teeth in blood.
Skeetah spits.
“Yes,” Randall says. “Yes.”
THE EIGHTH DAY: MAKE THEM KNOW
Esch?”
Junior touches me, and I roll away from him.
“Are you going to the fight?”
I woke up this morning and I hurt.
“Skeetah say I can’t go if you don’t go.”
Someone has been beating me.
“He fixing to wash China.”
They have been beating me in my sleep.
“Him and Randall got into a fight because Randall say he shouldn’t be taking her. Say it ain’t her place to go.”
I will not get up for the bathroom. I don’t want to eat.
“Say Skeet always being stupid, and we always ruining things. Like his game. Say the only way he could go to camp now is if Skeetah came up with the money.”
I curl. Under pillow and sheet, I curl around the hurt, around the slipping secret, like a ball.
“Randall dunked the ball so hard this morning he tore the basket down. He made Skeet fix it.” Junior taps my shoulder.
“He broke it. Esch?”
I want it to stop.
I try to read the entire mythology book, but I can’t. I am stuck in the middle. When I put the book down and wipe my wet face and breathe in my morning breath, ripe to the afternoon under the sheet, this is where I have stopped. Medea kills her brother. In the beginning, she is known by her nephew, who tells the Argonauts about her, for having power, for helping her family, just like I tried to help Skeet on the day China first got sick from the Ivomec. But for Medea, love makes help turn wrong. The author says that there are a couple of different versions of how it happened. One says she lies to her brother and invites him onto the ship with the Argonauts as they were fleeing, and that Jason ambushes him. That she watched her brother die, her own face on his being sliced open like a chicken: pink skin cut to bloody meat. The other version says that she kills her brother herself, that her brother runs away with her and the Argonauts, assuming that he is safe, and that she chops him into bits: liver, gizzard, breast and thigh, and throws each part overboard so that her father, who is chasing them, slows down to pick up each part of his son.
I read it over and over again. It is like she is under the covers with me, both of us sweating to water. To get away from her, from the smell of Manny still on me a night and morning afterward, I get up.
Junior is sitting on the floor in the hallway outside of the door.
“What you sitting out here for?”
Junior shrugs, looks up at me.
“I was going to go outside, but Skeetah getting ready to wash China, and it be getting muddy under the house. Why you didn’t wake up?”
“I was tired.”
“Daddy asked why you didn’t bring him something to eat this morning. Randall told him you didn’t feel good.”
“Randall made Daddy some eggs?”
“Yeah.”
“What he doing now?”
“Sleep. He was hollering about the hurricane; say it ain’t stopping, that the woman on the news say it’s coming straight for us. Randall told him to calm down. Him and Big Henry went to the store and got some beer and then Daddy went to sleep.”
Junior follows me down the hall to Daddy’s room. Randall has nailed up a blanket over the window, folded it in half over the box fan, which hums and lets in light. Daddy is asleep, sitting up, slumped over like I left him yesterday. The TV is low, a buzzing firecracker. On the screen, there is a map of the Gulf, and Katrina spins like a top, as if the long arm of Florida has just spun it loose. There are two beer cans next to the bed, one open, both of them sweating. I close his door to a crack.
“You going to the fight?”
Junior touches the back of my arm, and I stop outside the bathroom. He pinches me, and I look down at him, his big dark eyes, his missing teeth, his long eyelashes. He opens his eyes wider, looks hopeful.
“Huh, Esch? Please?”
“Who cut your hair?”
“Randall shaved it this morning. Said it’s too hot for hair.”
“He’s right.” I palm his lightbulb head, shake it.
“Esch.” He grins, and he looks like Skeet in the picture in Daddy’s room. The air is close, close as the water in the pit.
“All right,” I say. “We’ll go.”
I sit sideways on the toilet, rest my arms on the windowsill; my body feels stung all over by catfish, my stomach the lead sinker. In front of the shed, Skeetah is testing the water from the hose with one hand: it is so hot that I know the water boils fresh out of the faucet. He will wait until the water runs cold for her. When Skeetah first sprays China, she shakes. She is standing, legs wide, back straight, her head up. She is licking at the water, and it is as if she was never sick. She is coy as a girl with a lollipop, lapping at the hose. She sneezes and closes her eyes, and the dirt starts to run in sheets down her sides. It is the first time that I have seen her off leash in days.
“Come on,” Skeetah says. “We gonna make you shine.”
Skeetah cuts off the water and picks up a mostly empty bottle of dishwashing liquid and empties it on her back. He begins scrubbing, and the soap turns a pink gray. He rubs the soap up the flat, wide length of her head, down her face. He pulls her fur back so that her clenched teeth show, her fangs curving down sharp against her pink gums. Her eyes are slits, half closed in pleasure. She is stretching into Skeet’s hands. He is pulling her limber, massaging her. Her nose is up to the air, and she is long and beautiful as an outstretched wing. He kneels in front of her, swipes his hand down her chest, and she licks him, happy.
“You came back to me,” he says.
“You shouldn’t be taking her.”
Randall rounds the corner of the house. I expect to see a ball in his hands, but there isn’t. It’s like he’s missing his nose.
“Randall, you can kiss my ass.”
“You ain’t got no reason to be mad. I do.”
“She’s my dog. Those are my dogs.”
“You was steady fucking up. I had to do something.”
“Fuck that coach.” China is grinning against the pull of her skin again. Skeetah’s scrubbing hard. China looks striped. “And fuck Rico. Ain’t nothing about China weak.”
“You still ain’t thinking about the puppies.”
Skeetah turns on the hose. China walks in circles in the water.
“Stay!” Skeetah yells, and she stands frozen. “It wasn’t your dog to give.”
