Heavy: An American Memoir(60)

I got paid on the twenty-fifth of every month. I sent a fifth of my check to Grandmama and spent the rest of that check by the thirtieth at the casino. When my money was gone, I started getting payday loans. Flora had no idea what I was doing. I’d get a loan for thirteen hundred dollars on the fifteenth of every month. They’d take twenty-one hundred out of my account on payday. I sold my truck for sixteen thousand and gambled away every single dime of that money in one weekend. When I got paid, I rented cars and drove two and a half hours to give away my entire paycheck. A few months after gambling away my truck, I sold my leather living room set for two thousand dollars less than what we paid for it, and I gambled that five hundred dollars away in less than three minutes. I was a new kind of sick. I was an old kind of sick. I couldn’t run but I could gamble.

And I could promise.

The Saturday after the cop told me he wanted me to take a polygraph test, I begged Flora to drive me to the casino. She made me promise that I wouldn’t lose all of my money.

I promised.

We were there for half an hour before I lost my paycheck. Before driving home, we found a scratch-off in the back of her Kia worth five dollars. We took money from the scratch-off and went back to the casino. That five dollars turned into ten. Then a hundred. Then twelve hundred. Then thirty-six hundred. We went to bed in the casino that night happy that our persistence paid off, but we weren’t happy enough to touch or leave.

I woke up that Sunday morning and kept gambling. Before I knew it, I had over ten thousand dollars. By this point, we both knew that there were no good gamblers. There were people who left when they were up and never came back, and there were people who did not. We decided that day to be people who left when we were up and never come back. With ten thousand dollars in my camouflage cargo shorts pocket, we got in Flora’s Kia and headed home. A half mile from the casino, with thoughts of being stuck in a tiny apartment across the street from Vassar in our heads, I asked Flora if she thought I could hit again.

“I think you’re hot,” she said.

“You think I’m hot?”

“I think you’re hot.”

We turned around and went back to the casino. You were there. I should have asked you if you wanted to come home with us.

It took one hour to lose every cent of that ten thousand dollars.

I was not hot.

When we got home, I told Flora I was sorry for dragging her into my mess. She asked me to promise I’d never step one foot in that casino again.

I promised.

I apologized.

We hugged.

We cried.

We dried off each other’s cheeks.

I walked into Flora’s office, got ten dollars I’d seen hidden in between her books, and asked her if I could drive her Kia around Poughkeepsie just to clear my head. When she said yes, I got on the Taconic, merged onto Interstate 84, and headed back to the casino.

I texted you and asked if we could meet at the casino. I didn’t tell you I needed help. I didn’t tell you I was scared. I hadn’t spent the night in the same bedroom with you in thirty years. I hadn’t visited you in close to six years. I had no idea how much I weighed.

I walked into the casino with ten dollars in my pocket, wearing wrinkled camouflaged shorts, a thin 3X black hoodie, no socks, and black Adidas. I knew you’d hate my outfit. That’s part of why I wore it every single day to teach the last four years.

I walked onto the casino floor intent on flipping my ten dollars into a few hundred before you got to the casino when I saw you sitting in front of your favorite game. You didn’t know I was watching you. I walked upstairs to a free hotel room I was able to reserve because I was technically a “very important person” at the casino. I wondered how many “very important people” at the casino only had ten stolen dollars to their names.

When I got to the room, I stared at the space between the two queen beds, between the two small bottles of water, between the gigantic television and the massive window, between this huge man-made lake on the other side of the window and me.

You should have been up here thirty minutes ago, I told myself. My stomach hurt at the thought of having the first honest conversation of our lives. I walked out of the room and called to tell you not to come. Halfway down the hall, here you came wearing a thin yellow flowery scarf and toting a white plastic bag under your arm. “I brought you a hat,” you said, and hugged my neck. You smelled like smoke, black soap, and thick hair grease. I asked if you were downstairs gambling before you came up. “You told me you liked the hat I got you for Christmas. Not trying to fight, Kie,” you said, ignoring my question. “You stopped exercising completely, didn’t you? Too much weight on an already heavy body is a recipe for disaster.”

I ignored your statements about my body and asked what you would think if I moved back to Mississippi.

“Would you be moving back without a job?” you asked me. “Has Vassar asked you to leave? Why would you consider going backward after all you’ve been through in Mississippi? Promise me you won’t do that. Can you tell me why you gained so much weight?”

I promised and ignored your question about my body. Without missing a beat, you continued, “Can I ask you a question?”

“You know you can ask me a question.”

“Do you think I talk down to people? I’m asking because this woman at my new job said I make her and the other women in the office feel small. They’re all liberal white women, and I just never thought that’s what I have been doing.”