Heavy: An American Memoir(15)

I kept wishing I would have gone in the Mumfords’ house and stolen all their food. Stealing their food felt like the only way to make the rotten feeling in my belly go away.

Before going home, Grandmama took the envelope she’d gotten from the Mumfords’, wrote your name and address on it, and put it in the mailbox downtown.

“Grandmama,” I said, as we turned down Old Morton Road, “do those white folk know your name is Catherine or do they think your name is Reno?”

“I know my name,” Grandmama said, “and I know how much these white folk pay me every week.”

“Do you tell the Mumfords the truth when you’re in their house?”

“Naw,” she said. “I shole don’t.”

“Then what you be telling them?”

“I be telling them whatever it takes to get they little money and take care of my family.”

“But do you ever wanna steal they food?”

“Naw, Kie,” she said. “They test me like that all the time. If I ever stole from them folk, we wouldn’t have nothing. You hear me? Nothing. I’m telling you what I know now. Do not steal nothing from no white folk. Ever. Or you likely to be off in hell with them folk one day.”

In Grandmama’s world, most white folk were destined for hell, not because they were white, but because they were fake Christians who hadn’t really heeded their Bibles. Grandmama really believed only two things could halt white folks’ inevitable trek into hell: appropriate doses of Jesus and immediate immersion in Concord Missionary Baptist church. I didn’t understand hell, or the devil, but I understood Concord Missionary Baptist church.

And I hated most of it.

My slacks were too tight in Sunday school so they were always flooding. My shirt choked my esophagus. My clip-on tie looked like a clip-on tie. No matter the temperature, Grandmama made me wear a polyester vest. My feet grew so fast that my penny loafers never fit. Plus, she stopped me from putting dimes or nickels in my penny loafers because that was something only mannish boys did.

Inside Concord Missionary Baptist church, I loved the attention I got for being a fat black boy from the older black women: they were the only women on earth who called my fatness fineness. I felt flirted with, and like most fat black boys, when flirted with, I fell in love. I loved the organ’s bended notes, the aftertaste of the grape juice, the fans steadily moving through the humidity, the anticipation of somebody catching the Holy Ghost, the lawd-have-mercy claps after the little big-head boy who couldn’t read so well was forced to read a greeting to the congregation.

But as much as I loved parts of church, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t love the holy word coming from the pulpit. The voices carrying the word were slick and sure of themselves in ways I didn’t believe. The word at Concord was always carried by the mouths of the reverend, deacons, or other visiting preachers who acted like they knew my grandmama and her friends better than they did.

Older black women in the church made up the majority of the audience. But their voices and words were only heard during songs, in ad-libbed responses to the preacher’s word and during church announcements. While Grandmama and everyone else amen’d and well’d their way through shiny hollow sermons, I just sat there, usually at the end of the pew, sucking my teeth, feeling super hot, super bored, and really resentful because Grandmama and her friends never told the sorry-ass preachers to shut up and sit down somewhere.

My problem with church was I knew what could have been. Every other Wednesday, the older women of the church had something called Home Mission: they would meet at alternate houses, and bring their best food, their Bibles, notebooks, and their testimonies. There was no instrumental music at Home Mission, but those women, Grandmama’s friends, used their lives, their mo(u)rning songs, and their Bibles as primary texts to boast, confess, and critique their way into tearful silence every single time.

I didn’t understand hell, partially because I didn’t believe any place could be hotter than Mississippi in August. But I understood feeling good. I did not feel good at Concord Missionary Baptist church. I felt good watching Grandmama and her friends love each other during Home Mission.

? ? ?

When we pulled into our yard, Grandmama told me to grab the basket of nasty clothes and put it next to the washer. I picked the clothes up and instead of stopping at the washer, I walked into the kitchen, placed the dirty clothes basket on the floor in between the fridge and the oven.

I looked around to see if Grandmama was coming before stepping both of my penny loafers deep into the Mumfords’ basket and doing “quick feet” like we did at the beginning of basketball and football practice. “I got your gun right here, white nigga,” I said, stomping my feet all up in the white folks’ clothes as hard and fast as I could. “Y’all don’t even know. I got your gun right here, white nigga.”

I was doing quick feet in the Mumfords’ clothes for a good thirty seconds when Grandmama came out of nowhere, whupping my legs with a pleather blue belt. The little pleather blue licks didn’t stop me. I was still doing quick feet like it was going out of style.

“Kie,” Grandmama said, “get out my kitchen acting like a starnated fool.”

I stopped and took my whupping. Afterward, I asked Grandmama whether she meant “starnated” or “stark naked.” I told her I’d rather be a “starnated” fool because I loved stars even though I didn’t think “starnated” was a word. Grandmama and I loved talking about words. She was better than anyone I’d ever known at bending, breaking, and building words that weren’t in the dictionary. I asked her what word I could use to make that Mumford boy feel what we felt.