Heavy: An American Memoir(8)

I stood there watching you, feeling a lot about what it meant to be a healthy, safe black boy in Mississippi, and wondering why folk never talked about what was needed to keep black girls healthy and safe. My body knew things my mouth and my mind couldn’t, or maybe wouldn’t, express. It knew that all over my neighborhood, boys were trained to harm girls in ways girls could never harm boys, straight kids were trained to harm queer kids in ways queer kids could never harm straight kids, men were trained to harm women in ways women could never harm men, parents were trained to harm children in ways children would never harm parents, babysitters were trained to harm kids in ways kids could never harm babysitters. My body knew white folk were trained to harm us in ways we could never harm them. I didn’t know how to tell you or anyone else the stories my body told me, but, like you, I knew how to run, deflect, and duck.

“Kiese Laymon, what did you do instead of writing your essay?” you asked me again. “I am going to ask you one more time and I am going to get my belt. Why did you not do the work I told you to do?”

I wanted to tell you I hated when you didn’t use contractions. Instead I said, “I’m sorry. I just got tired of swimming in the deep end at Beulah Beauford’s house, and I wanted to come home. I won’t do it again. Thank you for the new encyclopedias. I know they gone protect my insides from white folk.”

“Going to,” you said. “Don’t say ‘gone’ or ‘gonna,’ Kie. ‘They are going to protect your insides.’ If you know better, do better. Promise me you will do better.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. Do you promise?”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“I promise,” I said. “I promise.”

You didn’t beat me. You made me write ten lines instead. I wrote nine and a half because I was hardheaded.

I promise to read and write as I’m told when I go to Beulah Beauford’s house.

I promise to read and write as I’m told when I go to Beulah Beauford’s house.

I promise to read and write as I’m told when I go to Beulah Beauford’s house.

I promise to read and write as I’m told when I go to Beulah Beauford’s house.

I promise to read and write as I’m told when I go to Beulah Beauford’s house.

I promise to read and write as I’m told when I go to Beulah Beauford’s house.

I promise to read and write as I’m told when I go to Beulah Beauford’s house.

I promise to read and write as I’m told when I go to Beulah Beauford’s house.

I promise to read and write as I’m told when I go to Beulah Beauford’s house.

I promise to read and write as I’m told.





NAN


Later that night, at Jitney Jungle, you filled our cart with cream of mushroom soup, tuna, name-brand wheat bread, and a big bottle of off-brand cranberry juice. I asked you if I could get the latest issue of Right On! magazine because Salt-N-Pepa were on the cover. You told me to just read it while we waited in line. When we walked up to the checkout, I put all the food on the conveyor belt and watched it glide away from us. Behind the cashier, pinned to a board, were a number of checks and Xeroxes of licenses, with the words DO NOT ACCEPT NAN CHECK FROM THESE CUSTOMERS in all caps. A Xerox of your license and one of your checks from Trustmark was in the middle of the board. Your check looked like the undisputed champion of bounced checks at Jitney Jungle.

“Let’s go,” I said as I watched you go in your purse and pull out your checkbook. “I ain’t even hungry.”

“Kie, do not say ‘ain’t.’?”

“Okay. I won’t say ‘ain’t’ again,” I told you. “Can we just go?”

You looked in the direction of the older black woman cashier. She looked like a black version of Vera from the TV show Alice, but she had thicker lips and smaller teeth. “These folk don’t even know when to use ‘nan’ or when to use ‘any,’?” you said. I wasn’t sure if you saw your picture or not, but I watched your shoulders dip as air left your chest. “You’re right, Kie,” you said. “Let’s just go. There’s tuna and crackers at home.”

I told you I thought the person who wrote the sign, just like Grandmama, used “nan” to mean “not any” or “not one.”

“Don’t excuse mediocrity,” you told me.

“So Grandmama is mediocre?”

“Grandmama had to work for white folk instead of going to high school, and she finished high school through correspondence classes. She has an excuse to use the language she uses. What are these people’s excuse?”

“I don’t know. We don’t even know them.”

“Don’t excuse mediocrity, Kie,” you told me again as we walked out of the store hand in hand. You looked toward the sky. “I hope Grandmama is out on her porch looking at the stars tonight. The sky is so clear.”

Every now and then, Grandmama sent these Mason jars of pickles and pear preserves. Or she gave us pounds of government cheese, peanut butter, and crackers near the middle of the month. Grandmama laughed and laughed until she didn’t when I called the cheese Gourmet African American cheese. You tried to act too good to eat Gourmet African American cheese, but sometimes I caught you making these buttery grilled Gourmet African American cheese sandwiches with something ultrabougie like pumpernickel bread. I couldn’t understand why you were so ashamed of eating like we didn’t have much money, so ashamed of demanding my father pay his child support.