Heavy: An American Memoir(43)

Most of the men at Grace House were black. Some saw the stories on the news about my suspension from Millsaps. They joked about how I was going to steal all the chewy Chips Ahoy! out the kitchen the first week I worked there. I never knew where to throw my eyes when they told me day after day how God had a plan for me, and I’d soon understand that plan. The brothers were free to come and go at Grace House, but most of them talked like brothers I’d met just recently released from the penitentiary. I appreciated what they said, but the goofy eighth grader in me appreciated how sincere they were with every word. They were quick to explain how getting kicked out of college for stealing and returning a library book was nothing more than a complicated annoyance.

It’s too simple to say the brothers at Grace House gave me perspective. I’m not sure they gave me anything, other than some of the funniest stories I’d ever heard and access to the painful changes in their bodies. Those stories gave me time and space to shrink back into my comfortable position as a listener. They reminded me I’d been living in a pulpy fiction the past year at Millsaps. They reminded me directly and indirectly I was not the center of the world. I was not nearly as heavy as I thought. There was actually nothing big or heavy about me when I walked into Grace House every day. I was the care provider who liked to read Toni Morrison, watch basketball, watch Martin, and do push-ups, not the care provider who liked to read comic books, do crossword puzzles, and watch Seinfeld, which really meant that to them I was that other paid listener who they trusted to never reveal their names or identities to anyone outside of Grace House.

I listened to the pauses, repetitions, and holes in their stories as much as I listened to the aches and changes of all their bodies. All the brothers I cared for at Grace House told stories about cars, sports, clothes, politics, food, and families but never talked about how they contracted HIV or whom they might have infected. Their stories were as differently shaped as they were, but they all agreed contracting HIV saved their lives. The first few times I heard this, I nodded and even said “I hear that,” but I never fully understood how something so seemingly full of death could actually save a life.

Outside of Grace House, Nzola wouldn’t kiss me anymore. She claimed I worked at Grace House because I was HIV-positive and I wanted to be around my people. I’d only had sexual relationships with two women in my life. Neither of those women told me they were HIV-positive and whenever Gunn and I gave blood or plasma for money, we knew they were checking our blood for the virus. I got tested again anyway just to prove to Nzola I was working at Grace House because I wanted to, not because I wanted to “be around my people.”

When the test came back negative, I told Nzola the results, knowing she’d have to say she didn’t believe me. We’d gone from smiling over greasy pieces of Red Velvet cake to sucking teeth and not even looking at each other over the results of an HIV test.

Every time I saw Nzola after the results came back, we barely spoke other than her asking, “What are you going to do with yourself? Why are you just giving up?”

When I told Nzola on a ride home that Oberlin College might accept my transfer application because of what happened at Millsaps, not in spite of what happened at Millsaps, she cried in front of me for the first time in thirteen months. “I feel like you’re trying to leave me in this shit by my fucking self.”

I reminded Nzola they’d only accepted my transfer application. When Nzola dropped me off at your house, we hugged. “You feel so small,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with us. Is there anything you want to say?”

Nzola walked with me to the mailbox. On top of all the bills you left in the box, there was a thin piece of mail from Oberlin College. I knew it was my rejection letter. “I don’t think so,” I said.

“Take care, Kiese,” Nzola said as she walked back to her car. “Please eat. I worry one day your mama is gonna call me and say you just disappeared.”

It was too late for that. We’d fought, lost, fought again, and both disappeared already. “That won’t happen,” I told Nzola as she reversed out of your yard. “I’m sorry about all of this.”

That night, I stretched out in the driveway and looked at the stars. For the first time in years, I thought about waiting for you to come home the day I ran away from Beulah Beauford’s house. Back then I wanted all my seasons to be Mississippi seasons, no matter how strange, hot, or terrifying. Now I felt something else. I didn’t want to float in, under, and around all the orange-red stars in our galaxy if our galaxy was Mississippi. I wanted to look at Mississippi from other stars and I didn’t ever want to come home again.

? ? ?

Three months later, you walked me out of the house into the passenger seat of your Oldsmobile with tears in your eyes. Ray was in the driver’s seat. He was going to drive me up to Oberlin, and you were going to drive his Impala while he was gone. You and I spent those three months tolerating each other, and really preparing for this day. The shade of the pine trees made both of us colder than we should have been.

“I just love you, Kie,” you said. “I’m so scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“You’ve never left me before. I’ve never been down here, in all this, without you. I just feel like my child, my best friend is leaving me.” You wrapped your arms around my chest and I kissed the top of your braids. “How did you get so small? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Maybe I can visit Oberlin for Thanksgiving.”