Heavy: An American Memoir(12)

My body told different stories about you and Renata. Even though her touch was rough and yours was gentle, when either of you touched me, it all felt like love until it didn’t. Then it felt like dying. Though I had no idea what was going through Layla’s and Dougie’s heads and bodies as they walked in Daryl’s bedroom, I wondered if they ever felt love while they were in there with the big boys.

I know I would have.

Every half an hour, I went back into Beulah Beauford’s and called Malachi Hunter’s house looking for you. I hated that I could never forget Malachi Hunter’s phone number, hated how I could trace the shape of every syllable on his answering machine message.

“You have reached the home of Malachi J. Hunter, the Alpha and Omega of Real Estate Agents in the new South. I am unavailable. Please leave a detailed message and I will return your call. Thank you.”

Malachi Hunter’s favorite way to start sentences was “That damn white man.” According to Malachi Hunter, that damn white man’s crowning failure was that he overestimated himself and underestimated the resolve of “the revolutionary black man in Mississippi.” There were no black women, white women, or Mexican women in Malachi Hunter’s political imagination. But once I understood that Malachi Hunter was “the revolutionary black man in Mississippi” to Malachi Hunter, and being “the revolutionary black man in Mississippi” meant carrying himself like he saw rich radical white men carry themselves in Mississippi, I understood almost everything I needed to know about Malachi Hunter.

You and Malachi Hunter didn’t share the same political imaginations about black folk in Mississippi. You were more invested in organizing, teaching, grassroots political movement to help black folk in rural Mississippi exit poverty and shield ourselves from white folk’s negligence. Malachi Hunter was much more invested in becoming a black southern symbol of wealth and black power before he was fifty. But when it came to kids, y’all were both invested, and really obsessed with what y’all called “redeeming value.” Y’all didn’t think black children should watch shows, listen to music, or read books with violence, nudity, adult situations, or cussing because violence, nudity, adult situations, and cussing lacked redeeming value.

I always thought that was funny.

“This Kie,” I said into Malachi Hunter’s answering machine again. “Please come get me. You told me you would beat me if I went home, so I’m just waiting here in Beulah Beauford driveway. Please come. Beulah Beauford house, it make my head hurt. It’s real sad over here.”

An hour later, you pulled up. It didn’t matter where I was, how late you were, or how angry we were with each other when you dropped me off, nothing on earth felt as good as watching you pull up in our Nova to pick me up.

“I love you,” I told you as I got in the Nova. You didn’t say anything. “I love you,” I said again. Your right cheek was quivering. “You ain’t hear me leaving messages?”

“Put your seat belt on,” you said in the most brittle voice I’d ever heard come out of your head. You’d just started making me wear my seat belt a week earlier. I put the seat belt on when a round, clear tear slid down your cheek. The tear slowed down, sped up past your thin top lip, and slipped into the black corner of your mouth. I’d seen you cry when you talked to me about my grades, or when you lied about having more money than you did, or when you created some strange lie about why my father didn’t send child support.

I put my left hand on the right fist you used to steer our Nova. “How come you can’t look at me?” You stopped the Nova at the stop sign on the corner of Beasley and Hanging Moss and slowly turned your face to mine.

The white of your left eye was filled with a cloud of blood. The brown flesh around the eye was darker and puffed up twice its normal size. It looked like someone put a tiny plum under your eyelid.

When we got to the house, you knew what I was going to get. You pushed me away and rushed into your room. I watched you lift your pillow where you kept your gun. If I got to it first, you knew I would use it.

Instead of going to my room, I got ice, napkins, a jar of pear preserves, a spoon, and our butcher knife.

“You gotta be still, for real,” I told you, wiping the dried blood off your face with thumbs wet from my saliva.

“Have to be,” you said. “Don’t say ‘gotta.’?”

“Gotta,” I said. “Gotta. They gotta have fleas at Beulah Beauford’s house. The fleas over there, they gotta be the maddest fleas in the world the way they be biting me all upside the head. Gotta.”

You laughed so hard and told me not to use the word “be” like that. I hoped you’d never stop laughing. “I don’t want any pear preserves, Kie,” you told me. “Not now.”

“How come?”

“They too sweet.”

When you finally put your arm around my neck, I felt all of your weight. “Hold me tight, Kie,” you said from our bed. “You’re my best friend. I’m sorry,” you said as you fell asleep with the covers over the swollen, slick parts of your face. “I’m sorry for all of this.”

“You my best friend, too,” I told you. “My best friend ever.”

Lying next to you in that bed, I remembered the first time you told me I was your best friend. I knew you kissed my cheeks because you loved me. I knew you asked me to hold you tighter because you loved me. You were so gentle. For more than a year, this was how we spent some of our mornings in my room and yours. Then you met Malachi Hunter. A few weeks later, you started to beat me for talking back and for way-less-than-excellent grades. Sometimes you’d beat me upside the head. Sometimes you’d beat me across the hands. Sometimes you’d beat me as hard as you could in my mouth with belts, shoes, fists, and clothes hangers.