Red at the Bone

She felt red at the bone—like there was something inside of her undone and bleeding.

If she were older, she would have been able to ask the bigger question—What the fuck have I done?

Pregnancy was one thing, but being someone’s mom was another.

Go do something, CathyMarie had said. You don’t have a single excuse not to. Nothing’s haunting you.

Each of them staring at the other in wide-eyed amazement, as though to say, How the hell did you get here? and Are you going to stay?

Does it sound crazy to say I looked at her and saw the world falling into some kind of order that I didn’t even know it was out of?

Then one day as we were sitting at the botanic garden eating some sandwiches I’d packed for us, the child turned to me and said, Well, you’re my grandmother and Iris is my mother, but you’re like my mother and she’s like . . . Then she stopped and her little face got all frowned up like she was trying to figure it out. I don’t know what she’s like, Grandma. She’s like somebody who is never here with us.

But when your child shows up with a belly and she’s not even full grown yet, you think for a minute that all those blocks of gold don’t mean a damn thing out in the world if you haven’t even taught your own child how to stay pure. How to hold on. How to grow into womanhood right.

The old folks used to say that from the ashes comes the new bird.

if a body’s to be remembered, someone has to tell its story.