Heavy: An American Memoir(61)

I told you that I’ve been telling you that for years.

“I just didn’t know that’s how people saw me,” you said. “That’s a horrible way to interact with people. What do you want to say to me, Kie?”

“I guess I just want to know why.”

“Why what?”

“Why?”

I sat on the foot of the bed. You sat at the desk. We looked at each other for minutes without saying a word. I knew you thought I was blaming you for something. I wasn’t. To blame you, I’d have to admit to you how sad I was and how much I failed.

“This is not an excuse,” you said before standing up and grabbing my hand. “When I was your age, you were fifteen years old. Can you imagine going through whatever you’re going through with a fifteen-year-old black child in Jackson, Mississippi?”

“No,” I said. “I can’t.”

“You were a hardheaded child running toward an early death, or prison. I still worry that you’re running toward an early death or prison. I think that’s part of why you’ve gotten so heavy again. The truth is I just didn’t know how to protect you.”

“But why?”

“Why what?”

“Just why?” I asked you.

“We never told the truth, Kie,” you said. “No one in our family has ever told the truth.”

“I told you the truth.”

“Until you started resenting me for what happened with Malachi?”

“That’s not what happened.”

“That is what happened,” you said. “You did not tell me the truth, Kie. Say it.”

“The truth about what?”

“The truth about anything. You haven’t told me the truth about why you gained all your weight back. You haven’t told me the truth about your romantic relationships. You haven’t told me the truth about your job. I think you’ve done that as a way of punishing me. When we do talk on the phone, you raise your voice. You won’t get a grip. Honestly, I think that’s abusive.”

I looked at you and waited for more words to come out of your mouth. When nothing else came out, I told you that I was sorry for lying to you. I lied to you, sometimes because I did not know how to tell you the truth, sometimes because I did not understand the truth, other times because I did not think you could hold the truth. Every time I lied, I wanted to control you, control your memory of us, control your vision of me. I was afraid to talk about being emotionally abusive, about gorging, about starving, about gambling all my money away, about wanting to disappear. I didn’t talk with you about those days at Beulah Beauford’s house, about what my body felt in the bedrooms of our house in Jackson. I didn’t think there was any way you could love me if I really showed you more of who, and what, and where I’d been.

So I did what we do.

I told you the truth about white folks’ treatment of me without being honest about how I treated myself and others close to me while surviving that treatment.

After you hugged my neck, said you were so sorry, and asked questions about what the officers did to me in the interrogation room, I said, “Wait. So I abused you?” just loud enough for the people in the room next door to hear.

“I think so.”

“I abused you by lying to you? Did you abuse me?”

You stood up and walked toward the door. “Do you ever just feel lonely? I feel like I walk around this world raw, Kie. It’s hard to open up when you’re already open, and people just never get tired of sticking their nasty hands into that raw.”

“I hear you,” I said, “but I’m asking if you abused me. How did I stick my hands into your raw? How did I abuse you?”

“You come from that raw, Kie. I think you’re raw, too. I know you love me. I just think you share too much with people who don’t love either of us. You let too many hands into that raw. There are things I want to say to you that white folk do not deserve to hear. I have a heart, Kie. I have a heart and a job. And even though you don’t act like it, you do, too. You’ve got to be much more careful. White folk do not deserve to stick their nasty hands into our raw. Hiding from them and being excellent are actually the only ways for us to survive here.”

I told you that running and hiding from folk who can’t see themselves has fatal consequences. You told me that unnecessarily opening yourself up for folk who can’t see themselves has even more fatal consequences. I asked you why we’re still talking about people not in this room.

“Because they’re listening, Kie,” you said. “They read everything you write. They see how you dress. They are watching. You make it easy for white folk to discredit you. You really think you’re free. It’s one of the most endearing things about you. But every single time they remind you what you really are, you crumble and lie about that crumbling. I just want you to protect yourself.”

“Protect myself from who?”

“You mean ‘from whom.’ I’m still trying to protect you from them, from the world. I failed at that.”

I told you that I never crumbled, and asked if I should have done anything to protect myself from you.

“You did protect yourself from me,” you said, and looked toward the door for the second time in the conversation. “You know what it feels like to have people ask me why my only son never visits me, doesn’t pick up the phone when I call, doesn’t respond to e-mails?”