Heavy: An American Memoir(63)

I promise, I texted.

Consider getting married and having kids. You would be a great father. Your children would be so lucky. You are better than your parents’ failures. Promise me you will consider getting married and having children this year.

I wanted to tell you that if I ever have a child, I want to raise that child in the Deep South. I want free land to wrap around that child’s feet. I want that child to know that you do not need to be magical, or mythologize the so-called struggle. I am not at all sure what the child will need, but I want them to figure out the kind of lover of black children they want to be. And I want them to accept that we are all black children. I want them to articulate whether they are capable of being that kind of lover, and I want them to never wall themselves up from the world when they fail at loving themselves or our people.

I know that’s a lot.

I wanted to tell you that I am afraid to bring a child into the world because I do not know how to protect my child from life, from you, from our nation, and from me. I worry about the possibility of our black child feeling my touch was violation. I wondered what our child would see when I was scared. I wondered what they’d hear when I was angry. I learned indirectly from you that we cannot responsibly love anyone, and especially not black children in America, if we insist on making a practice of hiding and running from ourselves. I wonder if a part of me wants to hold on to the possibility of hiding, running, and harming myself. I cannot do that if I have a child.

I did not have the courage to text you any of that. So instead I wrote, I promise. We’ve come too far to turn back.

We really have, you texted back. Promise me you will do what I asked. Promise me you will leave the past where it is and go forward with no regrets. Promise me you will not look back.

I promise, I texted. You are right. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives. I will try to bring a child into this world. I will teach that child to never look back. We cannot live healthy lives in the present if we drown ourselves in the past.

Promise me you mean everything you’re saying, Kie.

I can’t promise that.

Please promise, Kiese. Please.

For a few seconds, I remembered that the most abusive parts of our nation obsessively neglect yesterday while peddling in possibility. I remembered that we got here by refusing to honestly remember together. I remembered that it was easier to promise than it was to reckon or change. But I wanted to continue feeling delivered. I wanted to continue feeling fantastic. I wanted to continue feeling free. And I wanted to feel loved by both of us again.

I promise, I slowly texted. We have come too far to turn back. I promise. We have come way too far to turn back.





BEND


Two miles from all those promises and three minutes from our last cliché, I will understand that no meaningful promises are made or kept in casinos. I will head back to the casino and spend the last ten dollars I stole from Flora’s apartment. I will stop at Vassar College when I leave the casino. I will not know where home is. I will not smell the roses. I will not leave the past in the past. I will teach my students. I will write and revise. I will become a tired teacher and a terrified black writer.

I will take a train to Washington, DC, to talk to the architects of Barack Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative. I will argue, with a group of committed intersectional feminists, that we need effective structural remedies to structural impediments for black children in this country. We will argue that black girls and black women, like black men and boys, cannot wait. I will take the train back to Poughkeepsie with Flora feeling good about fighting for black girls and black women. On the way home, I will lie to Flora, a black woman, who lost her mother when she was a black girl. Flora will not forgive me.

I will continue to hide behind podiums, lecterns, huge camouflage shorts, and black sweatshirts. I will listen to you talk about addiction. I will say no when you ask me to wire you four thousand dollars tomorrow. I will punish myself for saying no by going to a casino and blowing my last four thousand dollars the day after tomorrow.

I will not know where home is.

I will hate going to sleep. I will hate waking up. I will not buy a gun because I know I will use it. I will watch them murder Tamir Rice’s body for using his imagination outside. I will watch them call Toya Graham, a black mother who beat her son upside the head during the Baltimore rebellion, “Mom of the Year.” I will watch them murder Korryn Gaines’s body for using her voice and a gun to defend her five-year-old black child from America. I will watch them murder Philando Castile in front of his partner, Diamond Reynolds, and her child. I will watch, and hear, that black child tell her mother, another black child, “I don’t want you to get shooted. I can keep you safe.”

I can keep you safe.

I will watch them ridicule us and exonerate themselves for terrorizing the bodies of black children they have yet to shoot. I will hear them call themselves innocent, American, and Christian as they call us ungrateful, irresponsible, reckless, thuggish.

I will not buy a gun because I know I will use it.

I will watch Dougie, LaThon, Donnie Gee, Abby, Nzola, Ray Gunn, and scores of my students raise their children. I will avoid them all because I am ashamed of how heavy I’ve become and how childless I am. I will live and sleep alone, just like you. I will want to lie every day of my life, just like you. I will want to starve. I will want to gorge. I will want to punish my black body because fetishizing and punishing black bodies are what we are trained to do well in America.