Transcendent Kingdom

by Yaa Gyasi

  We spent the rest of our time wide-eyed with fear, looking at the wreckage of this woman and wondering who, what, had wrecked her.

  * * *

  —

  I have made promises I can’t keep, but it took me a while to make them. For years, Miss Cindy’s words were enough to keep me from exploring the “secret world” between my legs lest I destroy my imaginary marriage before it even began. Not too long after my eight-hour session in the abandoned abortion clinic, I started my period. My mother placed her hand on my shoulder and prayed that I’d be a good steward of my womanhood, and then she handed me a box of tampons and sent me on my way.

  It’s ridiculous to me now to think about how limited my understanding of human anatomy was back then. I stared at the tampon applicator. I put it against my outer labia and pushed. I watched the white tail of the tampon slip out of the applicator as both fell to the ground. I repeated this with half of the box before I gave up, decided it was best to keep some things a mystery. It wasn’t until my freshman year in college, in biology class, that I learned what and where a vagina truly was.

  In class that day, I stared at the diagram in wonder, the secret world, an inner world, revealed. I looked around at my classmates and could see in their business-as-usual faces that they already knew all of this. Their bodies had not been kept from them. It was neither the first nor the last time at Harvard that I would feel as though I was starting from behind, trying to make up for an early education that had been full of holes. I went back to my dorm room and tentatively, furtively pulled out a hand mirror and examined myself, wondering all the while how, if I hadn’t left my town, if I hadn’t continued my education, this particular hole, the question of anatomy, of sex, would have been filled. I was tired of learning things the hard way.

  * * *

  —

  “Sorry for being kind of a bitch back there. It’s just weird to hear people talk about Jesus in a science class, you know?”

  Anne from my small group had caught up with me after my outburst in Integrated Science. I didn’t bother telling her that I hadn’t mentioned Jesus at all. I just quickened my pace through the quad, which was eerily empty at that hour. She kept walking with me until we reached my building, and then she stood there and stared at me.

  “Do you live here too?” I asked.

  “No, but I thought we could hang out.”

  I didn’t want to hang out. I wanted her to leave. I wanted that class to end, school to end, the world to end, so that everyone could forget about me and what a fool I had made of myself. I looked at Anne as if for the first time. Her hair was piled up on top of her head in a messy bun pierced through with chopsticks from the dining hall. Her cheeks were red from walking or the weather. She looked tired and a little mean. I let her in.

  That year the two of us became inseparable. I don’t know how it happened, really. Anne was a senior. She and her group of many-gendered, multiracial friends made me feel like maybe there was a place for me in that East Coast tundra. Anne was funny, strange, beautiful, and mordant. She didn’t suffer fools, and sometimes I was the fool.

  “It’s ridiculous. Like do you have to spend the rest of your life flagellating yourself for all the shit you think you’ve done wrong that ‘God’ doesn’t approve of?” she said one day toward the middle of our spring semester, when the winter weather had started to relent and a few flowers were just beginning to break ground, stretch toward the sun. We were sitting on my bed while Anne skipped class and I waited for my next one to start. Sometimes she would spend the whole day in my room. I’d finish all my classes and come back to find her curled up in my bed, laptop warming her stomach as she binge-watched Sex and the City for the millionth time.

  Anne always said “God” with air quotes and an eye roll. Her father was Brazilian and her mother was American. They had met at a Buddhist meditation retreat in Bali before abandoning religion altogether and moving to Oregon to raise their two children godlessly. Anne looked at me as one might look at an alien who had dropped from the sky and needed to be taught how to assimilate into human life.

  “I don’t flagellate myself. I don’t even believe in God anymore,” I said.

  “But you’re so rigid with yourself. You never skip class. You don’t drink. You won’t even try drugs.”

  “That’s not because of my religion,” I said with a look that I hoped said, Drop it.

  “You’re weird about sex.”

  “I’m not weird about sex.”

  “You’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

  “Lots of people are virgins.”

  Anne moved over on the bed so that she was facing me. She leaned in so close to me that I could feel her breath on my lips.

  “Have you ever been kissed?” she asked.

  27

  Basketball season started in November, but for Nana the sport was year-round. He went to basketball camp in the summers, played on his school team during the season, and spent all year long in our driveway or heading over to the outdoor courts in and around Huntsville so that he could play pickup games with the kids there. My mother and I were subjected to hours upon hours of watching basketball on television. When Nana had friends over, all of them would shout at the television loudly and unintelligibly, as though the players on the screen owed them something. Nana joined in when others were there, but when it was just him, he watched silently and with intense concentration. Sometimes, he even took notes.

  It wasn’t long before college recruiters started showing up to his games. Alabama, Auburn, Vanderbilt, UNC. Nana played well regardless of who was watching. My mother and I made more of an effort to learn the rules so that we could better share in his victories, but even as we tried, we knew it didn’t matter. Nana was the triumph. It was only the beginning of his sophomore year’s season, and he had broken records statewide. All the practices and workouts and away games made it easy for Nana to worm his way out of Wednesday-night and Sunday-morning services at First Assemblies. I knew it hurt my mother to see Nana choosing ball over God, so, instead of heading to youth group, I started going to “big church.” I wanted to sit beside her, to have her feel like at least one of her children still cared about what she cared about.

  I was eight, then nine. I was bored. If I fell asleep, as I often did, my mother would pinch my arm and stage-whisper, “Pay attention.”

  I don’t remember the sermons very well, but I remember the altar calls that came at the end of them every Sunday. Pastor John’s speech was always the same. To this day I can recite it from memory:

  “Now, I know someone out there is sitting with a heavy heart. I know someone out there is tired of carrying a cross. And I’m telling you now, you don’t have to leave here the same as when you came in. Amen? God’s got a plan for you. Amen? All you have to do is ask Jesus into your heart. He’ll do the rest.”

  Pastor John would say this, and then the worship leader would rush up to the piano and start to play.

  “Is there anyone who’d like to come down to the altar today?” Pastor John would ask, the music filling up the room. “Is there anyone who’d like to give their life to Christ?”

  After a few months of big church, I noticed my mother sneaking glances at me whenever Pastor John made his altar call. I knew what those glances meant, but I wasn’t ready for that long walk down to the altar, for the entire congregation to train their eyes on me, praying that Jesus take my sins away.

  I still wanted my sins. I still wanted my childhood, my freedom to fall asleep in big church with little consequence. I didn’t know what would become of me once I crossed the line from sinner to saved.

  * * *

  —

  Nana couldn’t decide on a school. He would often talk through his pro/cons list with me while our mother was at work. He wanted to stay in the South but he didn’t want to feel like he had barely left home. He wanted to go pro e
ventually, but he also wanted to have a good, normal college experience.

  “Maybe you should call Daddy and see what he thinks,” I said.

  Nana glared at me. The Chin Chin Man had recently called to tell us that he was remarrying, and since then Nana had stopped talking to him. It hadn’t occurred to either of us that he and my mother had gotten divorced. He was, until that day, our long-distance father, her long-distance husband. Now who would he be?

  On the days when he called, which were fewer and further between, my mother would pass the phone to me and I would spend my requisite two minutes making small talk about the weather and school, until the Chin Chin Man asked if I would put Nana on the line.

  “He has basketball,” I would say, as Nana stared at me, furiously shaking his head. After I hung up the phone, I would wait for our mother to chastise me for lying or Nana for refusing to talk, but she never did.

  She had to work the day of Nana’s game against Ridgewood High. It wasn’t a big game. Ridgewood was ranked second to last in the state, and everyone was expecting an easy win for Nana’s team.

  I made a quick snack for myself and then walked to the game. The stands were nearly empty and so I chose a seat in the middle and pulled out my homework. Nana and his teammates did their warm-ups, and occasionally he and I would make eye contact and shoot each other silly faces.

  The first half of the game went as expected. Ridgewood was down fifteen and Nana’s team was taking it pretty easy, treating the game like it was practice. I finished my math homework right around when the buzzer rang for halftime. I waved at Nana as he and his team went to the locker room, and then I picked up my science homework.

  I was in the fourth grade, and our science unit for that month was on the heart. For homework, we were to draw a picture of the human heart with all its ventricles and valves and pulmonary veins. While I enjoyed science, I was a horrible artist. I had brought along my pack of colored pencils and my textbook. I spread them out on the bleachers next to me and began to draw, staring from my blank sheet of paper to the example heart in my book. I started with the pulmonary veins, then the inferior vena cava. I messed up the right ventricle and started to erase, just as the second half of the game kicked off. I got frustrated with myself easily, even in those days, whenever I felt I wasn’t getting something exactly right. That frustration sometimes led to quitting, but something about being at Nana’s game, watching him and his teammates win so effortlessly, made me feel like I could draw the perfect heart if only I stuck with it.

  I was staring at my heart when I heard a loud shout. I couldn’t see what happened at first, but then I spotted Nana on the ground, hugging his knee to his chest and motioning toward his ankle. I rushed down to the court and paced, unsure of how to make myself useful. The medic came onto the court and started asking Nana some questions, but I couldn’t hear anything. Finally, they decided to take him to the emergency room.

  I rode with him in the back of the ambulance. We weren’t a family who held hands, but we were a family who prayed. I bowed my head and whispered my prayers as Nana stared blankly at the ceiling.

  Our mother met us at the hospital. I didn’t dare ask who was watching Mrs. Palmer, but I remember being as worried about my mother being able to keep her job as I was about Nana. He was still in pain but attempting to be stoic about it. He looked more annoyed than anything else, no doubt already thinking about the games he would have to miss, the time he would have to take off.

  “Nana,” the doctor said when he came into the room. “I’m a big, big fan. My wife and I saw you in the game against Hoover, and you were just on fire.” He looked too young to be a doctor, and he had that thick, slow drawl some southerners have, as though each word has to wade through molasses before it can leave the mouth. Both my mother and I kept looking at him with no small amount of distrust.

  “Thank you, sir,” Nana said.

  “The good news is nothing’s broken. Bad news is you’ve torn some ligaments in your ankle. Now there’s not much we can do for that area, other than have you rest it and ice it. Should heal up on its own. I’ll prescribe you some OxyContin for the pain and then have you follow up with your primary care doctor in a few weeks to see how it’s coming along. We’ll get you back out on the court in no time, all right?”

  He didn’t wait for any of us to speak. He just got up and left the room. A nurse came in behind him with some aftercare instructions, and the three of us made our way to the car. I don’t really remember much else from that day. I don’t remember going to the pharmacy to pick up the pills. I don’t remember if Nana got crutches or a brace, if he spent the rest of the day sprawled out in our living room with his foot elevated, eating ice cream while our mother waited on him as though he were a king. Maybe all of those things happened; maybe none. It was a bad day, but the nature of its badness was utterly ordinary, just regular old shit luck. Ordinary is how I’d always thought of us, our foursome that had turned into a trio. Regular, even if we stuck out like sore thumbs in our tiny corner of Alabama. I wish now, though, that I could remember every detail of that day, because then maybe I could pinpoint the exact moment we shifted away from ordinary.

  28

  I was getting too attached to the mouse with the limp. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for it every time it hobbled toward that lever, ready for punishment and pleasure. I watched its little tongue poke out, lapping up the Ensure. I watched it shake off the foot-shocks, then go back for more.

  “Have you ever tried Ensure?” I asked Han one day at the lab. After nearly a year of working together, we had finally broken the ice. The fire-hydrant-red, telltale discomfort of his ears had become a thing of the past.

  He laughed. “Do I look like an old lady or a mouse to you?”

  “I think I’m going to buy some,” I said.

  “You’re joking.”

  “Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”

  He shook his head, but I’d made up my mind. I left the lab and drove to the nearest Safeway. I bought two of the original, one in chocolate and one in butter pecan just for the novelty of it. I had stopped coming to this Safeway because of the cashier I wanted to sleep with, but I faced her boldly, Ensure in hand. I gave her a look that I hoped said I’m trying to take control of my own health. For a brief second I imagined her thinking, What a strong woman, imagined her getting turned on by my unlikely but empowered choice of beverage and then sneaking me into the storage room to show me more. Instead, she didn’t even make eye contact.

  Afterward, I speeded all the way back to the lab. There were often cops patrolling this little patch of road for speeders, but my Stanford Medical School bumper sticker had gotten me out of at least one ticket. The policeman that day had collected my license and registration, all while making small talk.

  “What do you study?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Your bumper sticker. What kind of doctor are you?”

  I didn’t bother correcting him. Instead I said, “I’m a neurosurgeon.”

  He whistled and handed me back my things. “You must be real smart,” he said. “You should protect that brain of yours. Go slower next time.”

  * * *

  —

  Han started laughing the second he saw me walk in with the bottles.

  “You sure I can’t tempt you?” I asked. “Don’t you want to know what all the fuss is about?”

  “You’re pretty weird,” Han said, as though this was just then occurring to him for the first time, and then he shrugged, resigned himself to my strangeness and the experiment. “You know just as well as I do that even after we drink this, we still won’t understand what the fuss is about. We’re not mice. We can’t get addicted to this stuff.”

  He was right, of course. I wasn’t expecting to get high from drinking fortified chocolate milk. I wasn’t really expecting anything other than a little fun and,
silly as it was, a base point from which I could relate to that limping mouse who had caught my attention.

  I shook the bottle of chocolate and then cracked it open. I gulped down some of it and then handed it to Han, who took a couple of sips.

  “Not bad,” he said, and then, seeing the look on my face, “What’s wrong, Gifty?”

  I swallowed another sip of Ensure. Han was right. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. “My brother was addicted to opioids,” I said. “He died of an overdose.”

  * * *

  —

  The first time I saw Nana high, I didn’t understand what I was seeing. He was slumped down on the couch, his eyes rolled back, a faint smile on his face. I thought he was half asleep, dreaming the sweetest of dreams. Days went by like this, then a week. Finally, I figured it out. No dream could wreak the havoc this wreaked.

  It took me a while to gather the courage, but I once asked Nana if he could describe what it felt like when he took the pills or shot up. He was six months into his addiction, two and a half years away from his death. I don’t know what emboldened me to ask a question like that. Up until that point I had exercised a “don’t dare mention it” kind of policy, figuring that if I avoided any talk of drugs or addiction, then the problem would go away on its own. But it wasn’t just that I avoided mentioning Nana’s addiction because I wanted it to go away; it was that it was so ever-present that mentioning it felt ridiculous, redundant. In just that short amount of time, Nana’s addiction had become the sun around which all of our lives revolved. I didn’t want to stare directly at it.