by Kiese Laymon
LaThon got whupped by a black woman who loved him when he got home. I got beaten by a black woman who loved me the next morning. With every lash you brought down on my body, I was reminded of what I knew, and how I knew it. I knew you didn’t want white folk to judge you if I came to school with visible welts, so you beat me on my back, my ass, my thick thighs instead of my arms, my neck, my hands, and my face like you did when I went to Holy Family. I knew that if my white classmates were getting beaten at home, they were not getting beaten at home because of what any black person on Earth thought of them.
The next day at school, the teachers at St. Richard made sure LaThon and I never shared a classroom again. At St. Richard, the only time we saw each other was during recess, at lunch, or after school. When LaThon and I saw each other, we dapped each other up, held each other close as long as we could.
“It’s still that black abundance?” I asked LaThon.
“You already know,” he said, annunciating every syllable in a voice he’d never used before walking into his homeroom.
After school, in the front seat of our Nova, you told me what white folk demanded of us was never fair, but following their rules was sometimes safer for all the black folk involved and all the black folk coming after us. You kept talking about how amazing it was that Mississippi had just elected its first progressive governor since William Winter. You worked on Governor Mabus’s campaign and kept talking about how much was possible politically in Mississippi because it was the blackest state in the nation.
“A third of white voters in Mississippi came out and did the right thing,” you said. “That’s all you need when thirty-three percent of your electorate is black and we get our folks out to the polls. Do you understand what’s possible if we actually get effective radical politicians in place down here?”
“I understand it now because you’ve told me the same thing every day for the last year. I’m glad Mabus won, but hearing about it every day is just kinda mee-guh.”
“Me what?” you asked me, cocking your hand back. “What did you say to me, Kie?”
“Me nothing,” I said. “Me nothing.”
• • •
Somewhere around our third quarter, Ms. Stockard made us read William Faulkner and Eudora Welty stories and watch Roots for black history month. I was the only Holy Family kid in my English class. Ms. Stockard talked a lot about the work of Eudora Welty all year. She talked a lot about “historical context” when speaking about the “quirky racism” of Welty’s characters and compared quirky racism to the “bad real racism” of most of the white characters in Roots. I didn’t like what “historical context” and “quirky racism” in our English class granted white folk. If we could understand historical context, we could understand how Eudora Welty could create fully developed, unreliable white protagonists who treated partially developed black objects like “niggers.” I felt the weight of “historical context,” “quirky racism,” and “bad real racism” in that eighth-grade classroom, but I also felt something else I was embarrassed to admit. I felt a tug toward the interior of Welty’s stories.
Even though there were bold boundaries between my imagination and Welty’s, when she started “Why I Live at the P.O.” with the sentence “I was getting along fine with Mama, Papa-Daddy and Uncle Rondo until my sister Stella-Rondo just separated from her husband and came back home again,” I didn’t just feel an intimate relationship to Welty’s text; I felt every bit of Jackson, and really every bit of Mississippi you taught me to fear.
Welty didn’t know a lick about Mississippi black folk, but she knew enough about herself to mock white folk in the most ruthlessly petty ways I’d ever read. You and Grandmama taught me white folk were capable of anything and not to be provoked, but Welty reminded me of what my eyes and ears taught me: white folk were scared and scary as all hell, so scared, so scary the words “scared” and “scary” weren’t scared or scary enough to describe them.
I didn’t hate white folk. I didn’t fear white folk. I wasn’t easily impressed or even annoyed by white folk because even before I met actual white folk, I met every protagonist, antagonist, and writer of all the stories I ever read in first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. At the same time, I met Wonder Woman, the narrator on The Wonder Years, Ricky from Silver Spoons, Booger from Revenge of the Nerds, Spock from Star Trek, Mallory from Family Ties, damn near all the coaches and owners of my favorite teams. I met Captain America, Miss America, “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes. I met Luke Skywalker and his white father, even though his white father’s voice, outfit, and mask were blacker than thirty-seven midnights. I met poor white folk, rich white folk, and middle-class white folk. I met all the Jetsons, all the Flintstones, all the Beverly Hillbillies, the entire Full House, damn near everyone in Pee Wee’s Playhouse, all American presidents, the dudes they said were Jesus and Adam, the women they said were the Virgin Mary and Eve, and all the characters on Grandmama’s stories except for Angie and Jessie from All My Children. So even if we didn’t know real white folk, we knew a lot of the characters white folk wanted to be, and we knew who we were to those characters.
That meant we knew white folk.
That meant white folk did not know us.
The next day in English class, we watched the scene where Kizzy, Kunta Kinte’s daughter on Roots, was raped by this white man named Tom Moore. The morning after the rape, a black woman played by Helen from The Jeffersons came by to wash Kizzy’s wounds.
Helen told Kizzy, “You best know about Master Tom Mo’. He’s one of them white mens that likes nigger women . . . Reckon he be bothering you most every night now. Used to bother me, but no mo’.”
I wasn’t sure what to do with what I just heard. The first time I watched that Roots scene, I was eight years old. I remember hearing “rake” instead of “rape” when I asked you what happened to Kizzy. “Raking” someone sounded like the scariest thing that could happen to a person. I didn’t understand why Helen sounded sad that Tom Mo’ wouldn’t be raking her anymore. I asked you why anyone would “rake” another person. “Because some men do not care if they hurt other people’s bodies,” you said. “Some men want to feel what they want to feel when they want to feel it because it hurts other people, not in spite of it hurting people.”
Tom Mo’ was white. But he was a man. I was black. But I was a boy who other black men called li’l man. I didn’t think I would ever do to Kizzy what Tom Mo’ did. But I wondered if I would feel pressure to do that when I grew up. And if I could do what Tom Mo’ did, were Tom Mo’ and me different to Kizzy? I wondered what Layla would have felt if three white random dudes walked her into Daryl’s bedroom that day, and not three black dudes we knew. I didn’t know how to think about it and not knowing how to think about it made my head hurt, and made me want to eat boxes of off-brand strawberry Pop-Tarts.
At recess that day, the St. Richard white boys moved with the same eager stiffness they always moved with during break. A lot of the white girls at St. Richard and all of us Holy Family kids moved like we’d had a burning secret poured into our ears.
LaThon and I found Shalaya Odom, Madra, Baraka, and Hasanati sitting in a circle, quietly looking at each other’s feet. I’d never seen them sit silently at Holy Family. Shalaya Odom didn’t usually cuss much at all, but when I asked her what was wrong, she said, “That Roots shit, I had my ears covered the whole time.”
LaThon said we should go find Jabari and make sure he was okay. Jabari was the best writer at Holy Family. Out of all of us Holy Family kids, Jabari made the easiest transition to St. Richard. He really wanted to sleep in white-folk houses, ride in white-folk cars, and eat white-folk food.
We walked in the building and thought maybe Jabari was talking to Ms. Stockard about writing fiction, since that was something he liked to do during recess. When we walked in her room, Ms. Stockard said she was glad we came to talk to her because she’d been wanting to talk to us for a few weeks.
“Guys, I really want to be respectful,” she said, sipping on a warm Tab cola. “How is Jabari doing?” We both looked at each other without blinking. “Listen, I need you guys to tell Jabari to take a shower or a bath before coming to school. Maybe a bath at night and a shower or wash-up in the morning. Some students and a few teachers came to talk to me about, you know, his odor. It’s really grossing everyone out.”
We laughed out loud at first because there was nothing funnier than hearing your white teacher talk about how stanky one of your boys was.
“Ms. Stockard, are you trying to say Jabari stank?” I asked her. “Because we heard a rumor that white folk don’t use washcloths no way.”
LaThon burst out laughing.
“I’m not saying anything about”—she used her hands to make air quotes—“ ‘stank’ or washcloths. I’m saying some people think Jabari is just gross. You guys can understand how that is not good for any of you, right?”
LaThon and I stood silently next to each other. I wasn’t sure how a teacher could teach a kid they thought was gross.
I didn’t know why Jabari’s stank was okay at Holy Family but somehow gross at St. Richard. I knew Jabari smelled at St. Richard the same way Jabari smelled at Holy Family, the same way he smelled ever since his mother died. It wasn’t his odor, and it wasn’t that he didn’t take showers or use washcloths. Ever since his mother died, there was just a different scent as soon as you walked in Jabari’s house. And if you stayed longer than thirty minutes, you left smelling like Jabari’s house. But all of us were stanky at some point, even Shalaya Odom. When we were stanky, we laughed about it, took a shower, or threw some deodorant, cologne, or perfume on top of the stank and kept it moving.
I understood, swaying there in front of Ms. Stockard, that all of us at Holy Family shared stories with words, word patterns, vocal inflections, and really, bodies that made us feel safe. No one at Holy Family ever used their bodies to say “awesome” or “totally” or “amazing” or “FUBAR” or “like” fifty times a day more than necessary. The narrators of our stories said “fly” and “all that” and “fresh” and “the shit” and “sheiiiit” and “shole” and “shining” and “trippin’ ” and “all-world” and “living foul” and “musty” and “sorry-ass” and “stale” and “ashy” and “getting full” and “cuhrazee” and “nigga” and “you know what I’m saying” fifty times a day more than necessary.
There wasn’t a “gross” or anything approximating a “gross” in our vocabulary, or our stories. Bodies at Holy Family were heavier than the bodies at St. Richard. And none of those heavy bodies were gross. Seventh grade was the first year in our lives when boys started calling girls who wouldn’t give us any attention words like “freak” behind their backs. And when they slapped the taste out our mouth, we apologized. But even in our most brittle whispers, we never thought or talked about any girl’s body as “gross.” Or maybe I wanted that to be true. At the end of seventh grade, the same day we went to sing Club Nouveau songs at the old-folk home, Shalaya Odom stood up and walked out with a dark brown stain on the back of her jean skirt. We thought she’d shit on herself until LaThon explained she might have just started her period. We never called Shalaya Odom gross but we laughed in a way the girls at Holy Family would not have laughed at us if we actually had unexpected chunky shit dripping down our legs.
Worse than any cuss word we could imagine, “gross” existed on the other side of what we considered abundant. And in the world we lived in and loved, everyone black was in some way abundant. We’d all listened to grown-folk spade sessions on Fridays. We’d all dressed in damn near our Easter best to watch the pregame, the game, and, mostly, the halftime show of Jackson State vs. Valley, Valley vs. Alcorn, Alcorn vs. Southern, or Grambling vs. Jackson State on Saturday. Saturday night, we’d all driven back home in the backseats of cars, listening to folk theorize about the game, Mississippi politics, and why somebody’s auntie and uncle were trying to sell their child’s World’s Finest Chocolates in the parking lot after the game. Sunday morning, we’d all been dragged into some black church by our parents and grandparents. And every Sunday, we hoped to watch some older black folk fan that black heathen in tennis shoes who caught the Holy Spirit. But outside of stadiums and churches, and outside of weekends, we were most abundant. While that abundance dictated the shape and movement of bodies, the taste and texture of our food, it was most apparent in the way we dissembled and assembled words, word sounds, and sentences.
LaThon and I loved Jabari too much to tell him Ms. Stockard and some other white kids whose smiles, words, and food he loved thought he was gross. Instead of saying any of what I was really feeling to Ms. Stockard, a white woman who had the power to get us beaten by black women who loved us and distrusted her, I said, “We understand, Ms. Stockard. We will tell Jabari to take more wash-ups before he comes to school.”
• • •
Later that day, near the end of practice, my basketball coach, Coach Gee, the father of Donnie Gee, one of the only black boys at St. Richard, brought out a scale so we could weigh ourselves. We were going to a tournament in Vicksburg and the organizers needed our weight and height for the program.
I hadn’t weighed myself since stepping on the scale at the Mumfords’ earlier in the summer. I hated public scales, but I made myself believe I was under 210 pounds for the first time in three years.
I stepped on the scale.
170.
175.
180.
185.
190.
Shit.
200.
210.
215.
225.
228.
“Damn,” Coach Gee said, looking at the rest of the team. “This big joker weigh two hundred thirty-one pounds!”
I walked away from the scale, faked a smile, and watched the rest of the team laugh. I went to the bathroom, made myself pee twice, and walked back to the scale.
“Two hundred thirty-one,” Coach Gee said again. “It ain’t the scale, Baby Barkley. Shit. It’s you.”
After practice, I tried to hold my stomach in and put dry clothes over my wet musty practice uniform. For the first time in my life, I thought about the sweat and fat between my thighs, the new stretch marks streaking toward my nipples. I felt fat before. I felt husky every day of my life. I’d never felt what I felt in that St. Richard bathroom.
“Damn, nigga,” LaThon said as I walked out of the gym. His grandfather was picking us up and taking us home. “Everybody trippin’ because you weigh like twenty-six more pounds than Michael Jordan, but you like eight inches shorter?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Wait, I know my nigga ain’t acting all sensitive over no scale. You ain’t gross. You know that, right? You ain’t gross. You just a heavy nigga who quicker than most skinny niggas we know. You ain’t gross. You hear me? You you.”
Later that weekend, LaThon and I met Jabari in his backyard over in Presidential Hills. LaThon hyped this soft-ass dunk Jabari did on his younger brother, Stacey. He called the dunk “the Abundance” and I gave Jabari the nickname “Kang Slender.” Jabari tucked his bottom lip under his front teeth and flew through the air doing awkward versions of “the Abundance” until the sun went down. Every time he dunked, LaThon and I laughed and laughed and laughed until we didn’t. Eventually, Jabari laughed with us when LaThon said, “They don’t even know about the Abundance. For real. We can’t even be mad. They don’t even know.”
“We can be mad,” Jabari said. “But we can be other stuff, too.”
We both looked at Jabari and waited for him to say more. I was finally understanding, for all that bouncy talk of ignorance and how they didn’t really know, that white folk, especially grown white folk, knew exactly what they were doing. And if they didn’t, they should have.
But by the end of February of our eighth-grade year, what white folk at St. Richard and the world knew didn’t matter. We were learning how to suck our teeth, shake our
heads, frame a face for all occasions like Richard III, and laugh each other whole. That meant a lot. Mostly, it meant that although some of us had more welts on our bodies than lunch money, light bill money, or money for our discounted tuition, we knew we were not the gross ones.
We were mad, and sometimes sad, but we were other stuff, too.
On the way out of Jabari’s house that day, I grabbed a T-shirt from his dirty clothes. I was well into an XL, while Jabari’s and LaThon’s bird chests barely filled out a smedium. But I was learning from you how to make anything, regardless the size or shape, bend. I came to school the rest of that year with my breasts, my love handles, and my stomach compressed in a T-shirt that smelled so much like Jabari’s house. When white folk at St. Richard looked at me like I was gross, I smiled, shook my head, sucked my teeth, intentionally misused and mispronounced some vocabulary words. Then I dapped LaThon up at lunch and said, “They so meager and we so gross. I’m talking about we so gross. It’s still that black abundance?”
“Yup,” LaThon told me. “And they still don’t even know.”
CONTRACTION
While I was shaking my head, sucking my teeth, and mumbling Ice Cube lyrics on the bench of the junior varsity basketball team at DeMatha Catholic High in Hyattsville, Maryland, you were realizing your academic dream of earning a postdoc fellowship in College Park, Maryland.
On the way home from a basketball game where you went off on Coach Ricks for benching me in the fourth quarter, we stopped to eat at Western Sizzler. I was supposed to be eating salads. “That white boy, your coach,” you said, “what is his name, Kie? Micks?”
“Ricks.”
“Coach Ricks is so intimidated. I’ll take a dumb white boy over a smug, insecure white boy any day of the year.”
“Intimidated by what?”
“What aren’t they intimidated by? I’m a black woman with a PhD and a postdissertation fellowship from a major university.” I told you I didn’t think anyone other than you and four other people even knew what that meant. “At some point, you are going to have to understand that people outside of Mississippi never know what to do with us when we’re excellent. So they do what they can to punish us.”