Heavy: An American Memoir(25)
Even though Abby didn’t really know me, and I didn’t really know her, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I’d heard a lot about big boys cheating on their girlfriends but cheating confused me. I assumed all of those big boys knew sex with someone they loved felt the opposite of gross, the opposite of meager. It was actually the only thing in the world that felt nearly as good as that black abundance. I didn’t understand how sex with someone you didn’t love could feel nearly as good.
“Thank you,” Abby said while we were lying in the bed after having sex the first time. “I know you were scared.”
“How you know I was scared?” I asked her. “My rhythm was meager, huh? I can do better next time.”
“Not at all,” she said, and laughed until she started coughing. “I just know you were scared because I love you. I can tell you love me back. That’s scary.”
No other woman who touched me wanted to only be touched by me. All I wanted to do was make Abby feel as happy as she made me feel. I wondered what it meant to be touched and loved sexually by a white girl in Mississippi, but I was lost in what it felt to be touched and loved by any woman or girl in Mississippi other than you, Grandmama, and Renata. I always assumed the first woman I would have real sex with would be Layla, after I got older, got a decent job, and lost a lot of weight around my thighs.
LaThon called me a sellout and sucker when he found out about Abby Claremont. “We from Holy Family,” he said. “We know better than to do that kind of shit. You forgot where we from?”
Instead of chilling with him after practice, or going to watch Mid-South Wrestling with him on Friday nights, I found ways to be with Abby Claremont. I wanted to talk to him about what my body felt during love and sex, and ask him if his body felt anything like mine. I wanted to know if he kept his shirt on when he had sex. How did he feel right before and right after orgasms? What did he do when sweat dripped in his eyes during sex? If his girlfriend wanted to have sex in the car, but he really needed to take a shower first, did he tell her he was musty so the stank wouldn’t be a surprise? I wanted to tell LaThon I wasn’t a sellout and I wasn’t in love with a white girl but it was hard when I was doing sellout/in-love stuff like riding in her black convertible with the top down, or holding her hand in between classes, or watching her white friends use vowel sounds we prided ourselves on obliterating and never calling them meager to their faces.
The only other girl at my school who asked me to touch her was my friend Kamala Lackey. Kamala Lackey was husky, quick for her size, fine as all outdoors, darker than me, and the wittiest junior at St. Joseph. Like me, Kamala Lackey didn’t have a car or a license. She lived twenty miles away in Canton. So if Kamala Lackey was ever going to ask me to do anything other than hold her hand or touch her breasts in the art closet, we would have to do some serious planning. I was scared to plan or initiate anything with a girl because if a girl said yes to anything I planned, I wondered if it was because she was scared to say no because I was so heavy. I never wanted anyone to do anything with their body they didn’t want to do. If Kamala Lackey kissed me first, I would have kissed her. If she asked me to have sex with her, I would have happily, and fearfully, done it. But I didn’t know if I would have felt as free or defiant after Kamala Lackey and I had sex, though I know I would have felt as beautiful. Kamala Lackey reminded me every third period, “Abby Claremont got that big ol’ jungle fever and you the big ol’ jungle,” since Abby’s last boyfriend was a fat black boy like me. “I’m the big ol’ jungle, too,” she said. “Big ol’ jungles need to be with big ol’ jungles.”
I laughed and laughed and laughed at Kamala Lackey’s joke until I didn’t.
I kept my relationship with Abby Claremont a secret because I knew you would beat me if you knew I was having sex with a white girl, but mostly because I didn’t want you to think you’d raised a big black sellout who thought you were ugly. I wasn’t completely sure I was a sellout, but I knew you were the most beautiful woman in the world. In my imaginary conversations with you, you shook your head and hugged me when I told you I just really liked having sex with a girl who only wanted to have sex with me, and Abby Claremont was the only person in the world for whom that was true. In my imagination, you kissed me on the cheek for saying “for whom.”
Abby Claremont and I had sex a lot but we never asked each other one question about our relationships to sex, other than “why don’t you ever initiate” and “did that feel good to you?” I didn’t know how to answer those questions and I worried if I said the wrong thing, Abby Claremont would think I was weak and wouldn’t want to have sex with only me anymore.
Friday and Saturday nights, Abby and her friends hung out and got drunk in the parking lot of St. Richard. Sometimes I’d be the only black person there. On those days, I tried to stay in the car listening to the new Black Sheep tape until she was ready to leave or too drunk to know where she was. Abby Claremont wanted to have sex a lot of those nights when she was drunk. Usually, I said no because my body told me it was wrong. Once I said yes because I wanted to feel touched, but I didn’t want to be judged if my touch was meager. The day after I had sex with Abby Claremont while she was drunk, I knew I’d done something wrong, though Abby Claremont told me she wanted to do everything we did. I just didn’t know how she could remember anything we did.