Heavy: An American Memoir(20)

Tom Mo’ was white. But he was a man. I was black. But I was a boy who other black men called li’l man. I didn’t think I would ever do to Kizzy what Tom Mo’ did. But I wondered if I would feel pressure to do that when I grew up. And if I could do what Tom Mo’ did, were Tom Mo’ and me different to Kizzy? I wondered what Layla would have felt if three white random dudes walked her into Daryl’s bedroom that day, and not three black dudes we knew. I didn’t know how to think about it and not knowing how to think about it made my head hurt, and made me want to eat boxes of off-brand strawberry Pop-Tarts.

At recess that day, the St. Richard white boys moved with the same eager stiffness they always moved with during break. A lot of the white girls at St. Richard and all of us Holy Family kids moved like we’d had a burning secret poured into our ears.

LaThon and I found Shalaya Odom, Madra, Baraka, and Hasanati sitting in a circle, quietly looking at each other’s feet. I’d never seen them sit silently at Holy Family. Shalaya Odom didn’t usually cuss much at all, but when I asked her what was wrong, she said, “That Roots shit, I had my ears covered the whole time.”

LaThon said we should go find Jabari and make sure he was okay. Jabari was the best writer at Holy Family. Out of all of us Holy Family kids, Jabari made the easiest transition to St. Richard. He really wanted to sleep in white-folk houses, ride in white-folk cars, and eat white-folk food.

We walked in the building and thought maybe Jabari was talking to Ms. Stockard about writing fiction, since that was something he liked to do during recess. When we walked in her room, Ms. Stockard said she was glad we came to talk to her because she’d been wanting to talk to us for a few weeks.

“Guys, I really want to be respectful,” she said, sipping on a warm Tab cola. “How is Jabari doing?” We both looked at each other without blinking. “Listen, I need you guys to tell Jabari to take a shower or a bath before coming to school. Maybe a bath at night and a shower or wash-up in the morning. Some students and a few teachers came to talk to me about, you know, his odor. It’s really grossing everyone out.”

We laughed out loud at first because there was nothing funnier than hearing your white teacher talk about how stanky one of your boys was.

“Ms. Stockard, are you trying to say Jabari stank?” I asked her. “Because we heard a rumor that white folk don’t use washcloths no way.”

LaThon burst out laughing.

“I’m not saying anything about”—she used her hands to make air quotes—“?‘stank’ or washcloths. I’m saying some people think Jabari is just gross. You guys can understand how that is not good for any of you, right?”

LaThon and I stood silently next to each other. I wasn’t sure how a teacher could teach a kid they thought was gross.

I didn’t know why Jabari’s stank was okay at Holy Family but somehow gross at St. Richard. I knew Jabari smelled at St. Richard the same way Jabari smelled at Holy Family, the same way he smelled ever since his mother died. It wasn’t his odor, and it wasn’t that he didn’t take showers or use washcloths. Ever since his mother died, there was just a different scent as soon as you walked in Jabari’s house. And if you stayed longer than thirty minutes, you left smelling like Jabari’s house. But all of us were stanky at some point, even Shalaya Odom. When we were stanky, we laughed about it, took a shower, or threw some deodorant, cologne, or perfume on top of the stank and kept it moving.

I understood, swaying there in front of Ms. Stockard, that all of us at Holy Family shared stories with words, word patterns, vocal inflections, and really, bodies that made us feel safe. No one at Holy Family ever used their bodies to say “awesome” or “totally” or “amazing” or “FUBAR” or “like” fifty times a day more than necessary. The narrators of our stories said “fly” and “all that” and “fresh” and “the shit” and “sheiiiit” and “shole” and “shining” and “trippin’?” and “all-world” and “living foul” and “musty” and “sorry-ass” and “stale” and “ashy” and “getting full” and “cuhrazee” and “nigga” and “you know what I’m saying” fifty times a day more than necessary.

There wasn’t a “gross” or anything approximating a “gross” in our vocabulary, or our stories. Bodies at Holy Family were heavier than the bodies at St. Richard. And none of those heavy bodies were gross. Seventh grade was the first year in our lives when boys started calling girls who wouldn’t give us any attention words like “freak” behind their backs. And when they slapped the taste out our mouth, we apologized. But even in our most brittle whispers, we never thought or talked about any girl’s body as “gross.” Or maybe I wanted that to be true. At the end of seventh grade, the same day we went to sing Club Nouveau songs at the old-folk home, Shalaya Odom stood up and walked out with a dark brown stain on the back of her jean skirt. We thought she’d shit on herself until LaThon explained she might have just started her period. We never called Shalaya Odom gross but we laughed in a way the girls at Holy Family would not have laughed at us if we actually had unexpected chunky shit dripping down our legs.

Worse than any cuss word we could imagine, “gross” existed on the other side of what we considered abundant. And in the world we lived in and loved, everyone black was in some way abundant. We’d all listened to grown-folk spade sessions on Fridays. We’d all dressed in damn near our Easter best to watch the pregame, the game, and, mostly, the halftime show of Jackson State vs. Valley, Valley vs. Alcorn, Alcorn vs. Southern, or Grambling vs. Jackson State on Saturday. Saturday night, we’d all driven back home in the backseats of cars, listening to folk theorize about the game, Mississippi politics, and why somebody’s auntie and uncle were trying to sell their child’s World’s Finest Chocolates in the parking lot after the game. Sunday morning, we’d all been dragged into some black church by our parents and grandparents. And every Sunday, we hoped to watch some older black folk fan that black heathen in tennis shoes who caught the Holy Spirit. But outside of stadiums and churches, and outside of weekends, we were most abundant. While that abundance dictated the shape and movement of bodies, the taste and texture of our food, it was most apparent in the way we dissembled and assembled words, word sounds, and sentences.