Heavy: An American Memoir(26)

When I told her I wanted to talk to her about having sex while she was drunk, she said, “I trust you. Don’t worry about it. I know you’d never hurt me. I know you’re a good dude.”

Near the middle of the basketball season, I played like basketball wasn’t the most important thing in my world. Our coach, Coach Phil Schitzler, a gravelly voiced white man who was also the most popular teacher in school, told Donnie Gee he thought my problem was “that white girl.”

When I went to talk to Coach Schitzler, he demanded I get my priorities straight and stop running around after Abby Claremont. “It’s in your best interest to not be running around chasing no nut with that fast-ass gal,” he told me. “Wait till after the playoffs. Then you can chase all the nuts you want.”

“Chasing a nut” became the phrase all my boys used to describe a person who was fiending for sex, but not fiending for a relationship. Even though LaThon knew I was a sellout, he died laughing every time I said, “That nigga stay chasing a nut.” I never told him I stole “chasing a nut” from Coach Schitzler.

On March 4, 1991, a few weeks after we lost in the playoffs, I went to Jabari’s house after open gym. Abby Claremont was going to pick me up later that night, have sex in the parking lot of Red Lobster, and take me to the end of my street, where I would walk home. While we were watching a basketball game, the news was interrupted with a video of a gang of white police officers surrounding four other white police officers. The four officers in the middle were beating the life out of this heavy-chained black man.

We watched the news replay the video four times.

We all had cops rough us up, chase us, pull guns on us, call us out of our names. We all watched cops shame our mamas, aunties, and grandmamas. We all floated down I-55 creating lyrical force fields from the police and everything the police protected and served, rapping, “A young nigga got it bad ’cause I’m brown.” But here we were, in one of our safe spaces, watching white folk watch white police watch other white police destroy our body.

Abby Claremont’s horn surprised me.

“What’s wrong?” she asked as I got in her convertible.

“Nothing,” I said, and kept picking around the minibag of Funyuns I took from Jabari’s house. “Can we put the top up and can you just take me home?”

“Why?”

“My mama just said I have to be home earlier than usual. She sick. The flu.”

“You are such a fucking liar, Keece,” she said. “Tell me why you want the top up? I’m asking. And what is that smell?” I looked at her in a way I never looked at her before. “Why are you looking at me like that? Say it.”

“Can we just talk about what we’re doing tomorrow?”

Usually when I got out of Abby Claremont’s convertible, we kissed on the lips with lots of tongue. Tonight, I kissed Abby Claremont on her cheek and told her thanks for being so nice to me. She started trying to talk to me about what was happening at home between her father and her mother, but I told her I could not talk about that right now because you were sick.

“Asshole,” she said as I got out of the car. “Don’t fucking call me tonight either. Or tomorrow.”

When I got in the house, you brought your belt across my neck. Earlier in the day, Ms. Andrews, one of your friends who was a teacher at my school, told you Coach Schitzler said I was in a sexual relationship with a white girl. You heard this “news” on the same day you watched a gang of white police officers try to kill a chained black man they later claimed had “Hulk-like” strength.

I did not know Rodney King, but I could tell by how he wiggled, rolled, and ran he was not a Hulk. Hulks did not beg for mercy. Hulks did not shuffle from ass whuppings. Hulks had no memories, no mamas. I wondered what niggers and police were to a Hulk. I wondered if all sixteen-year-old Americans had a little Hulk in them.

I knew, or maybe I accepted, for the first time no matter what anyone did to me, I would never beg anyone for mercy. I would always recover. There was physically nothing anyone could do to me to take my heart, other than kill me. You, Grandmama, and I had that same Hulk in our chest. We would always recover. At some point during my beating, I just stopped fighting and I let you hit me. I did not scream. I did not yell. I barely breathed. I took my shirt off without you telling me. I let you beat me across my back. It was the only beating in my life where watching you beat me as hard as you could felt good.

After the beating, you came to my bedroom. You told me I really needed to think about the difference between loving someone and loving how someone made me feel. You said if I liked how Abby Claremont made me feel, I really needed to ask myself why. You kept telling me I was beautiful. You said there were plenty of black girls in school and I would be safer “courting” one of them. You used words like “fetish” and “experimentation” and “miscegenation.” You said Abby Claremont’s parents were breaking up over our relationship. You said Abby Claremont didn’t know me well enough to love me and only loved the excitement that came with the danger of being with a black boy who drove her father crazy.

I wasn’t sure if you were right, but I knew you were in no position to give me advice about relationships given your experiences with Malachi Hunter.

And I told you exactly that.

You beat my body the fuck up again that night. I did not cry. I just watched you swing down until your arms got tired. “What is wrong with you, Kie?” you kept asking. “I know you’re a better child than this. What is wrong with you?”