Heavy: An American Memoir(62)

“No,” I said. “That’s not what I know.”

“Kie,” you finally said. “I’m just asking you to forgive me for whatever I’ve done to make you this resentful.”

Now I’m hunting for the other side of that door. A casino is no place to ask a parent or child drowning in shame why they were abusive. “Can we just not lie?” I asked. “I’m really asking. Can we start there? Can we just promise each other we won’t lie?”

You buried your head in your chest. You picked up your bag and walked toward the door. You turned around, walked back to me. You stood over me while I sat on the edge of the bed. I looked up at your face. My body remembered, but my body did not flinch. My body did not shudder. My body did not brace. I wanted you to kneel down and hold my face in your hands. I wanted you to say let’s please be honest about where we’ve been. I wanted you to be gentle. I wanted to remember being your child.

“Can we just not lie?”

“Yes, we can,” you said. “I promise we can. Just know that I did the best I could, Kie. That’s all I’m trying to say. I didn’t know how to do any better. I did the best I could.”

“But why do you need me to know that? What if you didn’t do the best you could? What if you could have actually done better?”

“What do you mean?”

“I just think sometimes we don’t do the best we could have done, and it’s impossible to know that if we’re scared to remember where we’ve been, and what we actually did. I don’t think either of us did our best. I know I didn’t. Do you really believe you did?”

You ignored my question and asked me why I write instead of paint or sing or dance or cook or sculpt. I told you that I write because you made me, and I write what I write because I am afraid of becoming you or my father. I told you that it took me ten years of teaching to understand that my students loved me, valued our time, but they did not want to become me. I told you that you cared so much for black folk, but couldn’t believe there were some folk in this nation who could love you in the worst minutes of the worst hours of the worst days of your life. I told you that I was one of those folk. And Grandmama was, too.

I told you I imagine you at eleven years old, climbing Grandmama’s pecan tree with A Tale of Two Cities in your hands. I see you reading, but I also see you looking down at Grandmama’s pink shotgun house, watching your brother throw pecans at your two sisters. I see you watching Grandmama rock back and forth alone on that porch. Your eyes meet her eyes and Grandmama tells you to come on down from that tree before you fall and break your arm. You smile because you know Grandmama just wants you and the rest of her children to be careful. You are curious. You are weird. You are loved. You are audacious. You are as safe as you’ll ever be. Tomorrow, you and Grandmama know that you will all be less safe. Today, though, twenty minutes from Sunday school, tucked securely in a pecan tree with a book in your hand, you are free.

“I be seeing you,” I told you, “especially when you think you be doing a great job of hiding. Maybe you be seeing me too.”

You did not correct my English because it could not be corrected. You held my hand and we hugged for longer than we’d hugged in over thirty years. I was a grown man, but I was your child, and I fell in love again that day.

Hand in hand, we walked out of the hotel room. We stepped into an elevator. We walked across the casino lobby and made it outside the casino. You hugged my neck and told me you did not want to let go. I felt so free, so fantastic, so delivered.

“I want you to feel like I’m always home,” you said. “Could you please get control of your weight? Will you go on a diet?”

“I will,” I said.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“I’m sorry for hurting you, Kie. Do you want to say anything else?”

“We all broken,” I said. “Some broken folk do whatever they can not to break other folk. If we’re gone be broken, I wonder if we can be those kind of broken folk from now on. I think it’s possible to be broken and ask for help without breaking other people.”

“I’m sorry for breaking you,” you said.

“You didn’t break me,” I told you. “You helped make me. I helped make you. We can talk more honestly about that making. That’s really all I’m saying. That’s what people can do.”

“I think we turned a page in our relationship today, Kie.”

“You think so?” I asked you.

“I know we did,” you said. “Please come visit me. Please stop eating so much sugar and so many carbs. You have one body. Please value it.”

I watched you get in the taxi. The taxi door closed. You slowly disappeared on the other side of a winding curve. I’d parked Flora’s Kia on the other side of the building, so I had to walk through the casino to get to the car. I did not make eye contact with the blackjack dealers. I did not say fuck you to the twinkling slot machines. I did not suck my teeth at the Johnny Rockets, Ben and Jerry’s, and Krispy Kreme. I simply said bye to them and made it to Flora’s Kia.

I knew this would be my last time in a casino.

Thank you for not giving up on me, you texted four minutes later.

Do not put any of your hard-earned money into those machines. Be better than me. I am going to get help. Please stop and smell the roses. Promise me you will lose weight.