Heavy: An American Memoir(54)

“It is not theoretical, Kie,” he tried to tell me that night. “None of it. That’s why I’m so proud of you. They came after you like they came after both sides of your family. Your mother and I went about fighting that terror differently. I fought my fight from the inside of corporate America. You and your mother fought it through education.”

I never understood why black dudes who worked for corporations called their employers “corporate America” no matter if they were CEOs, members of the janitorial staff, or seasonal temporary workers.

Anyway, that was the only time my father mentioned you. Then he started talking about his trips to Vegas and asked me if I ever thought about going out there with him. When I asked him if he ever missed you, his big eyes started closing, so I went in the bathroom, did some push-ups, threw some punches in the mirror, and got in the shower. When I got out, my father was slumped over with both feet on the floor, glasses still on, one fist balled up on his lap, one hand tucked under his left thigh.

“I wish I had a professor like you when I was in school,” my father said as I covered him in the orange-red quilt you gave me for Christmas. My father didn’t come to Poughkeepsie to tell me something I already knew about the familial impact of racial terror in our nation. He didn’t come to tell me something I suspected about the violation of his mother and his brother. He was running, ducking, deflecting, and he didn’t want to run, duck, or deflect anymore. I felt all of what he told me, but I knew there was more his body needed to say.

That night, I saw in that slumping, sleeping black man the ten-year-old black child who ran away from home because he tired of the beatings his father gave his mother and siblings. I saw the fourteen-year-old black child charged with hiding the money his father made from bootlegging. I saw the sixteen-year-old black child forced to share his valedictorian honor with a white student with a lower GPA. I saw the nineteen-year-old black child who sold weed to make it through college. I saw the twenty-year-old black child who proudly repped the Republic of New Afrika. I saw the twenty-one-year-old black child who loved to have sex but hated talking about love with his wife. I saw the twenty-seven-year-old black child who sent his son and ex-wife postcards every week.

I’d never given much weight to the idea of present black fathers saving black boys. Most of the black boys I grew up with had present black fathers in the home. Sure, some of those fathers taught my friends how to be tough. But I can’t think of one who encouraged his son to be emotionally or even bodily expressive of joy, fear, and love. I respected my father but I never felt that I needed him or any other man in the house to show me how to become a loving man. I knew, truth be told, that a present American man would likely teach me how to be a present American man. And I couldn’t imagine how those teachings would have made me healthier or more generous. What I saw of my father that day didn’t make me miss the father who was rarely present in my childhood, but it made me feel the beautiful black boy you fell in love with. It reaffirmed my belief that you needed a loving partner in our home far more than I needed a present father. I realized you and my father had broken and you’d never tell anyone about the depth of the breaks.

And all of that made me miss you.

Instead of telling you any of that, I asked you why you had so many questions about someone you don’t even know anymore. “We have a child together, Kie. We knew each other. We’ll always know each other.” When I said okay, you asked more about both of his marriages and the young children he had with his third wife.

“It’s all good,” I told you. “Everything with him is all good. I don’t ask questions. I don’t get answers.”

My schedule of running at least six miles during the day and six miles at night didn’t work when you were in Poughkeepsie. You worried too much the police would shoot me, so I couldn’t leave the house after midnight. I told you I ran at night to help process workdays.

“You have to find some way to deal with the stress of doing this job that doesn’t involve the possibility of you getting shot.”

“How is running at night increasing the possibility of my getting shot?”

“Please,” you said. “You are a big black man. Stop running at night.” I asked you if you still thought I was big even though I had hardly any body fat. “To white folk and police, you will always be huge no matter how skinny you are. Get a grip.”

The morning you were scheduled to leave, we took a picture on one of the lawns at Vassar. I didn’t want to take the picture because I felt so fat. I wore a stained red shirt and jeans I wished were looser. You threw on your shades, and I cocked my head back. That red, white, green, blue, and brown picture was the last picture we’d ever take together.

Before I dropped you off at the train station, you took me to the furniture store and bought me a two-thousand-dollar living room set that I begged you not to buy. Then you asked about my father again and congratulated me on my body. “It took a lot of work to get a strong, fine body like that,” you said. “You’ve got the body your father had when I met him. Remember those tiny shorts he would wear?”

I didn’t want to talk to you about my father’s tiny shorts.

“Thanks,” I said instead. “I guess.”

“You love your students so much, Kie. That’s something I think you got from me. I’m glad y’all have each other. It makes me worry about you less up here.”