Lakewood(65)

And I promised I would never do it again, but deep down I knew I would do anything to take care of her. In the middle of everything else, it’s overwhelming to know truly how much you love someone, how much of yourself you would destroy because of that. I went to the kitchen, searching for some alcohol to drink, but I had to settle for a kombucha.

We talked through the NDA. My mom said we should talk to a lawyer, not rely on internet searches. We put that on our to-do list. We talked about leaving the country. Would that make us both feel safer if we did figure out how to talk about this? I told her about the reporter, thought it was probably worthless because I probably couldn’t go on the record. We talked our way into a labyrinth of possibilities. Around 1 a.m., we decided to go back to Lakewood in the morning to get my grandmother’s shoeboxes, which I had left behind. We decided that based on how we felt—if we felt remotely unsafe—we would just leave and in the morning we would decide again.

There were things I wanted to ask her. Did she have any idea who my father was? Was it possible that somehow my whole existence was because of one of these studies? And if so, why? But she said she didn’t remember the entire year she got pregnant with me. I thought of all the bits and pieces of father I had tried to put together over the years. She had said my dad was taller than her but would not be considered tall. Once, when I was laughing, she said, You sound more like him than me. And then there were all the things I inferred about him: how I was good at math and she wasn’t; the difference in our hair, my ears, my ugly toe; that I like cilantro; and how I liked to be alone because it didn’t make me sad to be in my room, talking to no one for hours. I had built an idea bit by bit, but now there was this. I think I might never want to consider who my father is ever again.

The sun rose as we drove through the outskirts of Lakewood, my mother napping in the passenger seat. Orange, purple, pink reflected on all the windows. The sky was candy. An old woman wearing a gas mask was clipping her hedges. Families were loading up their cars, taking things as if they had all been given notice to be out by noon. There was a wind of panic, growing stronger and stronger. It was shoving around children and grabbing the hair of all the people in Lakewood trying to leave.

There was trash on the sidewalk. Most of the downtown shops were closed. We went to the donut shop. All the old men were still there, eating donuts, drinking coffee. They were all reading different newspapers. On the front of some were headlines that read Small Town Water Emergency. Another: Area Hospitals Apologize for Role in Research Studies.

We bought papers from the woman at the counter. Hello again, she said to me, handing me a chocolate donut with white frosting. In a booth, my mom and I spread the papers out. There was a story about a hospital system across Michigan apologizing for its role in research studies on African Americans in the late 1960s, early 1970s. In one paper there was a letter published next to the official report.

My mama and daddy were some of the most suspicious people on Earth. When my mama saw me smile or look at a boy for what she thought was too long, she would give me a pinch. And then say, This is a reminder of all the pain any man is gonna give you, especially this early in life. She was saying that since I was six.

This was when we were living in Flint. They would tell me about two towns to never go to: Lakewood and Otter Pond. I was never, ever supposed to go to either of those places. My aunt and uncle were farmers and lived near Lakewood. We had heard rumors. They had seen pickup trucks with black boys being brought in. Seen them around town too. Fresh from the South. They felt like they were on another planet because white people were treating them with a hint of manners. My parents said they were studying death. They were killing these boys, loading them up with different diseases, seeing if we died from them slower or faster than white people.

Stories like that had been around my whole life. I wasn’t allowed to visit a friend’s house when it was dark because it was too close to a hospital. My parents said people from the hospitals rounded up black kids to use for their experiments and most never came back. And the ones who did come back, people would say, “They ain’t right.” Those kids were always seeing what happened to them. They couldn’t sleep good. They tended to die young or disappear again or be taken away.

Some people said Lakewood wasn’t about death, it was about making a new kind of slave. They were testing obedience. The men who were brought there were given drugs. The kind that made you feel as if you were in a fairy-tale land. Some of them were kept isolated, or would be hurt in different ways. Electricity on their feet. Water over their heads.

I was 17 and I wanted to feel like myself. To feel important like the adults around me. Some of my friends were already getting married.

So, one weekend, I went to Lakewood with my friends. We were in the town for probably only two minutes when an old white man came over to us. I felt the trouble coming out of his pores. I thought he was going to call the police on us. But instead, he smiled and asked if we wanted to make some money.

Yes, I said.

He told us to go to the hospital and tell them we were there for the vaccine study.

We went, and they sent us to the lower level. We walked past the morgue with the smell of the dead, the chemicals they used to keep them fresh. There was a small room we took turns going into. A doctor gave me two injections in my arm. I was surprised that it didn’t go into my stomach or thigh or butt. But if it had been one of those places, I probably wouldn’t have done it. They gave me 10 dollars. I had to give them my name, my social security number, and a written promise that I would return next month for another injection. I would get 15 more dollars for that one.