Heavy: An American Memoir(64)

I will write. I will revise.

When I finally decide to leave Vassar College, I will remember meeting The College Dropout; A Mercy; K.R.I.T. Wuz Here; The Electric Lady; Prophets of the Hood; good kid, m.A.A.d city; and Salvage the Bones. I will remember teaching and learning from the weirdest, most avidly curious students I’d ever imagined. I will apologize for failing them. I will understand that every single one of my colleagues at Vassar College tried to love, serve, and teach the students in front of them. And just like me, they often failed at loving, serving, and teaching the students in front of them.

I will find my way back to Mississippi to finish revising a book I started thirty years ago on Grandmama’s porch. I will drive by Beulah Beauford’s house, Millsaps College, St. Richard, St. Joe, LaThon’s house, Jabari’s house, Ray Gunn’s apartment, Jackson State, Donnie Gee’s house, familiar parking lots, grocery stores, interstates, basketball courts. I will walk slowly through rooms, scenes, smells, and sounds I made myself forget. While sitting on a porch in Oxford, Mississippi, I will hear Grandmama’s voice tell me “Ain’t nothing for you up in there” when I want to give my blessings away.

I will fall to my knees that day and laugh and I will laugh and I will laugh until I cry. I will drive to Forest and read a draft of this book to Grandmama from beginning to end on her porch. She will say, “I think it’s real good, Kie” even though she will periodically fall asleep while I’m reading. “Thank you for all them words,” she will say every time she wakes up. “And thank you for all y’all do for me.”

Grandmama will ask me to wheel her back into the house after I finish reading and find that thirty-year-old raggedy gold and silver contraption she calls her phone book. “Gimme your number again, Jimmy Earl,” Grandmama will say, looking right in my face. “I tried to call you last night but I don’t believe I got the right number in here.”

I will look in the phone book and show Grandmama my number under K, not J.

“Oh, okay,” she will say. “I already got the number, Kie?” She will pick up the phone and start dialing the number she had for Uncle Jimmy. “Jimmy Earl not answering,” she will say. “I reckon I’ll call back in a little while.”

I will not remind Grandmama how she found the body of her first child, Jimmy Earl Alexander, dead on the floor of his kitchen from an overdose a few years earlier. “Me and Jimmy Earl,” she will say, “we love talking to each other on that telephone.”

I will wonder about the memories Grandmama misplaced, forgot, or maybe just lost from the time I started this book until I finished. I will wonder if the memories that remain with age are heavier than the ones we forget because they mean more to us, or if our bodies, like our nation, eventually purge memories we never wanted to be true. I will wonder if at ninety years old, after remembering and carrying so much, Grandmama has any room left in her body for new memories.

Though Grandmama confused me with Uncle Jimmy during our conversation, she will remember that I am forty-three years old, heavy, and childless. “It’s still time for you to be somebody’s daddy and somebody’s husband, Kie,” she will say. “What is it you scared of?”

I will smile and say I do not want to hurt anybody.

Grandmama will say she believes me even when she knows I am lying. I will kneel down, hug her neck, and thank her for responsibly loving all of her children, and never, ever harming me.

“I was just trying to put y’all where I been,” she will say.

“I am just trying to put y’all where I bend,” I will hear.

I will show Grandmama my first stretch mark and talk to her about how it’s changed in thirty years. I will show her these six scratches on my right wrist from years of trying to dunk. I will show her a blotched scar underneath my right eye. I pull my bottom lip down and show her scar tissue from a fall. I will show her these three eyelashes on my left eye that curl downward instead of up. I will show her how my right big toe is so much more callused than my left one since I lost mobility in my left hip. I will show her the holes in my mouth where teeth would be if I thought my health was worth taking care of. I will show her how much softer my thighs have gotten over the years since I stopped trying to disappear. I will show her my wide palms and short fingers. I will show her my navel and the two new stretch marks framing it.

Grandmama will ask me if I am okay. “No,” I will tell her. “I’m not sure any of us are okay.”

Grandmama will hold me longer than she has ever held me and she will wail. She will tell me she hasn’t really looked in the mirror in years because the black body she sees ain’t the black body she remembers.

“It’s your black body, though,” I will tell her. “And you can remember your black body and all it’s been through a whole lot of different ways.”

“I don’t know how to remember but one way,” Grandmama will tell me.

“Now you lying, Grandmama,” I will tell her. “You know you lying, too. You don’t make it this far only knowing how to remember one way. You know I love you, but you lying right now.”

Grandmama will laugh and laugh and laugh until she tells me she is sorry. I will not have the courage to ask her what she is apologizing for.

But I will know.

I will remember that I am your child. And, really, you are mine. And we are Grandmama’s. And Grandmama is ours. You will tell me that you regret ever beating, manipulating, or demeaning me. You will tell me that you regret punishing yourself when you were lonely, shameful, and afraid.