Milk Blood Heat

Dantiel W. Moniz

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781838950606
• eBook ISBN:
  9781838950590
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

'A seething excavation of want and human error' Raven Leilani, author of Luster 'Glorious, ecstatic, devastating... A gorgeous debut from a wickedly talented new author'
Lauren Groff, author of Florida 'Sultry, dark, thick with the heat of bodies and minds in sin and transgression. Incredible'
Jamel Brinkley, author of A Lucky Man A thirteen-year-old girl watches her white best friend totter along the edge of a building roof; a woman who lost her child in its first trimester finds empathy and horror in the waters of a city aquarium; a mother protects her teen daughter from a predatory love interest by taking revenge over a very French supper; and two estranged siblings take a road-trip with their dead father's ashes - rediscovering one another and reckoning with all the ways that trust can be betrayed and love can be redeemed. Set in the suburbs and the cities of the modern world but about the ancient essences of who and what we are, Milk Blood Heat is a collection of love and sex, birth and death. Through the stories of ordinary characters confronted by extraordinary moments of violent yet often beautiful reckoning, Dantiel W. Moniz contemplates human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all. Wise and subversive, spiritual and seductive, Milk Blood Heat showcases that the world in which we live can be a place of obstacles and heartbreak... but also one of grace and splendour. A Roxane Gay Bookclub Pick

NECESSARY BODIES

Management didn’t remove the glass bottles, burger wrappers, used condoms, or the cigarette butts—they just dyed the water blue, a kind of golf-course aquamarine Billie had to squint and step closer to make sure of as it frothed from the fountain that ran from nine to nine. Even standing there a few minutes, she couldn’t tell if the hue was only a trick of light. The women in the front office were dreadful, a sneering bunch who had lost their charm as soon as she and Liam signed the lease, so she stopped the first maintenance guy she saw as she crossed the parking lot, one with whom she was on nodding terms. It was an easy relationship that required no names. She said, “Did y’all color the pond?”

“Looks good, right?” he said cheerfully, his white-white teeth flashing in the sun as he hauled cardboard boxes into the back of his utility vehicle. “You can’t even tell it’s not real.”

“Mmm,” Billie said, inclining her car keys toward him. About as real as those veneers, she wanted to say. Everyone knew Jacksonville water to be mostly brown. Moss swayed lightly from the oaks, suggesting breeze, but if there was one, it was a dead wind and even the sidewalk seemed to sweat. A heron ducked its gray head under the ripples, plucking something up and swallowing it—a small fish or maybe a piece of plastic, confused by its glint. She wondered if the pond now had a new taste, a smell or texture that, as humans, they were dumb to. There were turtles in that retention pond, ducks, minnows by the hundreds, and at least two giant carp that patrolled the shallows, smoky-scaled and silent until startled, opening their mouths to green algae and miniature ecosystems tumbling in. What would the dye do to them? She refrained from voicing this as well; there was no time for a debate. As usual, unluckily, she was late. She wished the maintenance guy a good day and got into her car where she thumbed a text to her mother—who more than likely was already seated, peering over her menu toward the door, constructing a slick reprimand for her daughter: I’m otw. Her mother replied: I was so hungry I ordered an appetizer! See you soon!

Billie waded through the dining room chatter, the business types on lunch hour gulping down sweet teas and giant salads smothered in ranch, noodle-armed women leaning over the table talking urgently with their friends while their children made toys of the sugar caddies. Servers weaved in and out of the jumble laden with trays but nimble, in flow with the rush. Her mother was seated at a booth for two, picking daintily at a platter of fried cheese. She looked beautiful as always—hair freshly relaxed and swept from her forehead, a black shift dress, her legs smooth with shea butter.

“Last night I dreamt of fish,” Colette said, even before her daughter could sit. For a moment, Billie couldn’t separate this statement from her earlier concern, wondering how her mother could know about what her complex had done to the pond in the interest of rental value. But then the moment passed and she had to work hard to control the grimace pinching at the corners of her mouth. “You know what that means,” her mother continued, and unfortunately Billie did. That old wives’ tale. Colette meant fish as in fertility, as in birth and babies. Grandbabies. “Last time it was cousin Em. Maybe this time it’s you?”

“I’m on my period,” Billie lied, tossing a glob of cheese into her mouth. It was the quickest way to get her mother to stop, although the pass only ever lasted until the next month.

“It doesn’t have to mean right now.” Her coy mouth, an irritated flick of her wrist. “It’s prophecy. I haven’t been wrong yet. And you know, if you really wanted to do something for me, that’d be the best birthday present. I’m ready to be a Mimi.” Not Nana or Meemaw and certainly not Grandma. Colette didn’t look old enough to be anyone’s grandmother, she commonly remarked, and she wanted to keep it that way.

In two Saturdays it would be her fiftieth birthday, and this was the reason Billie had dragged herself up from a late-night stupor to be with her mother. She was acting as the chief party planner, assisted remotely by her younger sister Violet. At thirteen, Billie had asked their mother why she’d named them the way she had. Old-fashioned, a boy and a flower, leaving her children open for schoolyard mockery. Billie Violet, Colette had said, used to ignoring her daughter’s moods, doesn’t that just sound like some kind of special? Like that jazz singer’s name? Billie never asked why her mother squashed the names together, as if she and her sister were one person, instead of two.

“So, you just always wanted to be a mother?” Billie asked finally, knowing she couldn’t get away from the topic without at least a little discussion.

“Yes, of course. You’ll come around to it. You’ll see.”

That easy assurance, almost arrogant. Like the coloring of the pond, Billie couldn’t tell about this either, whether her mother’s view was a slow truth or patriarchy. Was it that simple? Somehow she didn’t think so. Colette had her young and single, and Billie remembered clearly her mother lying on the couch some days after work, the room darkening around her, their apartment always two steps away from tidy. How she kept a hand over her eyes and even in stillness seemed tired, like it took great effort to be in her body. When Billie misbehaved, Colette would say: I put food in your mouth and clothes on your back, as if Billie had come to her mother in spiritual form and begged her to be a parent.

Billie remembered how once when she was ten, early morning, her mother had gone to run an errand and left her and the infant Violet sleeping in her bed, the baby surrounded by pillows. As far as Billie was aware, neither of them had moved an inch the entire time their mother was gone, except as soon as Colette returned and opened the front door, Violet turned on her side, right off the bed. Violet’s cries came raw and walloping, punching through Billie’s sleep. She remembered her mother, panicked, rushing into the room and grabbing the baby up from the hardwood. The scowl she’d tossed her way. And later, still angry, Colette had leaned down in her face, her voice expansive as heat, and said, utterly calm, I love you, but sometimes I don’t like you at all. She wondered if her mother remembered and where all of this fit into coming around.

Their server came and they ordered—salmon for Colette, who claimed she was watching her figure, the grease of the cheese still on her lips; a burger for Billie, who was not, but felt more and more pressingly that she should the further away from twenty-five she got. Her mother made so many modifications to her meal that by the end, she had ordered off-menu, so Billie kept hers simple, smiling broadly at their girl as she whisked away their menus, hoping to convey that they were good for the tip; somehow no matter where they went or how they acted, their behavior or appearance, their being, was always under scrutiny.

Having said her piece, Colette moved on. She said Violet would get into town late Friday night before the party and would crash on Billie’s couch if Billie was willing. This wasn’t a problem. There had never been any real animosity between the sisters, so far in age as they were, no grudges from their childhood. They were half-siblings who never thought of themselves that way; they liked each other, even if they didn’t talk all that often, the two of them comfortable together and apart.

“I want midnight margaritas! Dancing music! Gold balloons, gold everywhere!” One of her mother’s friends, male and moneyed, was footing the bill, his present. Colette wanted a pecan-studded red velvet cake, a rooftop, White Party prominence. She wanted, in her own words, flash and pizazz, to be seen—attention kindred to that which she’d commanded in her younger days. A mood like the omnipotent buzzing around a honeycomb. “Are you writing this down?”

Billie pointed to her temple. “Mind like a steel trap,” she said, and her mother speared a hunk of fish at the end of her fork and brandished it in her daughter’s direction. “Yeah, okay. And when I blow out my candles, just know what I’ll be wishing for.”

Maybe that was part of the problem, Billie reflected as she stuck her key into her apartment door; that this was how it all felt—like someone else had made a wish and sunk a penny down into the deep of her. She tossed the doggie bag of leftover burger onto the counter and tripped into the bedroom, where Liam and the puppy were still snuggled in the covers. She let her body drop onto the sliver of unoccupied bed. She wished she could still fall asleep like a child, like a husband. Liam turned toward her, cowlicky and sleep-soft, reaching for her reflexively, pulling her into his large warmth. The puppy repositioned himself between them.

“You’re going to be late,” Billie murmured into Liam’s neck.

“I’m getting up,” he said, making no move to do so. She and Liam saw each other mostly nights and weekends: she was freelance, working from home while he managed the twilight hours at a major shipping warehouse Monday through Friday. He left around two, got back most nights after midnight or later. Most of the time she would wait up for him, and when he came home they ate dinner together or she drowsed with her feet in his lap while he watched shows to unwind. It was far from perfect, but they made it work.

“You didn’t tell her did you?” Liam asked, and Billie laughed so viciously it panged hard in her sternum, like a fist. “Are you kidding?” she said. “Who do you think I am?”

Billie liked their marriage, the humor of it that sustained when it was easy, and when it wasn’t. Even when she was dark, Liam really got her. For example, when they’d first got the puppy, a yippy small thing, she’d said, “If the zombie apocalypse ever happens in our lifetime, we’ll have to kill the dog.” And immediately, he’d answered, “Only if we eat him. Waste not, want not.” She loved that about Liam, that she didn’t have to censor herself or worry that he’d think she was bad. Sometimes she despised her husband, but in that way you could only achieve with someone you’d lived with for a long time and deeply loved. She appreciated that they could talk about the hard things. That they could admit the hard things were sometimes funny. However, she hadn’t yet been able to ask him what the zombie policy would be on the baby. That news was still too fresh to joke.

Three days ago the doctor had put her at six weeks and no one knew except Liam and her best friend, Pia. Maybe the dog. Billie didn’t feel bad about lying to Colette. It would have been too much on top of everything—her mother’s proprietary joy, an unequivocal testament to her own deity. Plus, they didn’t know if they would keep it. Billie tickled under the puppy’s chin until he was rowdy and pouncing and biting the tip of her husband’s ear. “All right, all right,” Liam groaned, rolling over. “I’m up.”

Once Liam had shit and shaved and brushed his teeth, he came back into the bedroom to talk to her while he pulled on his work pants, buckled his belt.

“What’ve you got going on today?”

Billie still lay sprawled across the covers, the puppy wriggling happily into her armpit. “Besides existential dread? I’m working on a piece for Harper’s. Something like Pluto’s demoted planetary status and how it equates to the revocation of female autonomy.”

“Hmm, sounds super related.” Billie threw a pillow at him and Liam bomb-rushed the bed, landing lightly on top of her. “I’m serious! I could see it. I mean, you know us men. Indian givers, right?”

“Don’t use that term, white man,” she said, smoothing down his hair. “They deserve much better than y’all.”

He held up two fingers, Scout’s honor. “It is henceforth stricken,” he promised, then took those same fingers and slipped them under the rim of her jeans, down down until he’d struck the center of her own heat, finding an easy side-to-side rhythm. He was so familiar, so good at it. Billie pushed the dog off the bed and closed her eyes, unbuttoned her jeans to give him more freedom. Lifted her hips. Almost let her conscious self fall away. Then the glimmer of what was newly between them. She pulled his hand up and kissed him in a way that was also a shove, the gentlest of rebukes. “Isn’t this how all the trouble started?”

She fastened her jeans and followed Liam to the door. “Try not to worry too much,” he said, jamming on his shoes. “Whatever happens, I’m right here with you.” And Billie knew that, and appreciated him saying it, but the cold fact of it was, this was a fear that truly only resided with her—within her—a hitch in waiting, cellular and primal. She thought how much simpler it would have been to be the giver, Y chromosomed, to have lived up to the implication of her name.

After he was gone, Billie allowed herself a half hour of wallowing, of composing checks and balances, yeses and noes, while she scrolled idly on her phone, but the news was awful and she had work to do. She vomited casually into the toilet, then took the puppy for a short walk around the deranged pond and put him in his crate. She texted Pia: Have to do research. You down to ride? Pia, consistent since their college days, responded within ten minutes: I’m free. Scoop me up. She ended the text with three eggplant emojis, so Billie knew she was serious.

* * *

They bought tickets at the Museum of Science and History, paid a little extra for a four o’clock interactive showing at the planetarium on celestial bodies featuring black holes. It was a quiet time to be there, an adult time, since most kids were sitting at kitchen tables with English workbooks and pre-dinner snacks. Other than a handful of others—some old folks consulting pamphlets and a group of teens with a perpetual look of indifference stretched between them—they practically had the place to themselves. All those whirling lights, hidden compartments, displays of ancient bones. All of the discovery.

“This girl at work said the best thing about being pregnant was that her boyfriend didn’t want to fuck her because he was scared of hurting the baby, so she got to grow her bush fully out. She hadn’t seen her herself like that, like ever, and said after the itching phase, she really enjoyed it.”

The blonde woman at the counter, who had not welcomed them when they entered as she’d done for the previous guests, threw them a scandalized look, but Pia only waved.

“Do you believe that?” Billie asked.

“What, that she liked it?”

“That he was scared of hurting the baby.”

“Not for a second.”

Billie wondered, if they kept it, if Liam would still want to. He told her all the time that he would want to make love to her even when she was eighty, but she thought that was an easy thing to say when old age never felt like it would happen, not to them, not directly, not yet. Billie still used celebrities’ crow’s feet as a measurement of how much physical time had passed—she was just starting to be able to see age in herself. Maybe the transformations of time and pregnancy on the body were related. If she asked him about sex, Liam would say of course, but once he saw that alien belly, the skin p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Milk Blood Heat
• Feast
• Tongues
• The Loss of Heaven
• The Hearts of Our Enemies
• Outside the Raft
• Snow
• Necessary Bodies
• Thicker Than Water
• Exotics
• An Almanac of Bones
• Acknowledgments