by Kiese Laymon
“It’s me again,” I say into your voice mail from the floor of my apartment. I am naked, holding my hip with my left hand, and holding my flip phone with my right. “Can you just call me back so I know you’re okay? I’ll be here waiting for you to call when you get ready. I won’t ask what happened to the money. I think something is really wrong with my body. Can you help me?”
PROMISES
You were sitting in front of a slot machine in Connecticut, looking nervously over both shoulders, while I was hiding fifteen feet behind you with ten dollars I’d stolen from Flora Wadley’s apartment in my back pocket. I had no idea how much I weighed. I just knew it felt like well over 320 pounds or well under 165 pounds.
We were both so far from home. You quit your job at Jackson State and moved just three and a half hours from Poughkeepsie and one and a half hours from the casino. Every weekend, you asked me to visit you. Every weekend I said no. I realized four years earlier you weren’t doing with my money what you said you were doing. I didn’t know how to be around you and not give you whatever you wanted. I wasn’t trying to punish you. I was trying to do less harm to myself. I never visited you, but I saw you so many times in that casino playing your same machine, looking nervously over your left and right shoulder the way you did the first time I saw you win in Vegas, the first time I saw you lose in Philadelphia, Mississippi. I didn’t say a word. I just shook my head and felt better believing you were worse off in your addiction than I was. Did you ever see me limping around the casino? Did you ever want to tell me to come home?
When the hollowness of winning and losing at Vassar for a decade got to be too much, and my body would not let me push it hard or far enough, it fell in love with the attention of tired casino dealers who pitied, prodded, and resented.
Always in that order.
After I lost nearly all the money I had on blackjack tables, I usually sat in front of slot machines, looking over both shoulders at folk watching me pray to flirtatious contraptions programmed to pilfer. Slot machines made twinkly promises to me in the language of bonuses, big wins, jackpots, and hits. If they made good on their promises, I loved them. If they did not, I hated them.
I watched strangers frame crooked smiles when I won. I watched strangers frame crooked smiles when I lost. Like you, I did not know how to win. I’m not even sure I came to the casino to win. “You up or down?” was the extent of the conversation with folk I called “my casino friends.” They didn’t know my name. I didn’t know theirs. They knew how I held my body when disgusted with what I’d made it do. I knew the same thing about them. “I’m here because I’m sad, lonely, and addicted to losing,” is a sentence never shared between casino friends.
I kept coming back to the casino because I felt emptier and heavier when I lost than when I won. I couldn’t win, because if I didn’t have enough to begin with, I could never win enough to stop. And if I won, I came back to win more. And if I came back to win more, I would eventually lose. And after I eventually lost, I would remember the thrill of winning. No matter what, I would always come back with the stated intention of winning, and the unstated intention of harming myself. Still, in a place where there were no metal detectors, where liquor was free, where money was being taken in mass quantities, and most people were losing, I wondered why there wasn’t more visible violence.
Flora Wadley never stepped foot in a casino before meeting me. She came to Vassar as an assistant professor four years after I started as an adjunct professor. Flora was brilliant and bold enough to still love Moesha, The Parkers, Girlfriends, Jane Austen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jem and the Holograms. But she never wanted to be the black Hologram. She wanted to be Black Jem. Like me, she grew up with a young, single black mother. Like me, she loved school. Unlike me, she lost her mother at ten years old. One morning Flora went to elementary school in Hartford, Connecticut, forty miles from the casino. A little before noon, someone came to her class and told her that her mother had died. She spent the rest of her life knowing the people you valued most could never abandon you if you always prepared to be abandoned. Flora did not expect to win, but she worked every moment I knew her to make sure losing hurt as little as possible.
The first time Flora and I went to the casino, we didn’t go to get away from work as much as to go somewhere shiny where we could hold hands. We’d put each other through hell and we were really trying to see if the relationship was something we should commit more time and energy to. We got a free hotel. We got free slot play. We didn’t spend a dime of our own money. We went home happy.
But as we stressed about tenure, health, book deals, work, and family, lies between us came more frequently. We thought leaving Vassar was the only way to leave the lies. Instead, we moved onto campus in dorm apartments where we were expected to be available to kids who needed professorial support. Flora lived on one side of the dorm. I lived on the other. We didn’t have to pay rent, bills, or for food. For the first time in our lives, all of our money earned was ours and we could pay off all of our student loans, all of our debts. We didn’t imagine for a second that there would be a price to pay for going to sleep and waking up at work.
One day, on Flora’s birthday, I decided to “really gamble.” That meant I brought three hundred dollars to spend. Before long, that three hundred grew to six hundred. Then that six hundred gradually disappeared. Flora put that last seventy-five-dollar voucher in a machine and pressed three. She thought she was playing three dollars. The machine was a twenty-five-dollar machine and her seventy-five-dollar bet turned into a $6,700 win.
We thought we were rich.
Later that night, we won another four thousand and we left the casino up twelve thousand from when we came. I sent a large bit of my half to you and Grandmama. Flora used her half to pay down her credit card bill and student loans. I came back almost every weekend trying to win twelve thousand again. Once, I won fourteen thousand. Another time I won six thousand.
One Sunday I lost everything we came with. And I took out more money. And I lost that. Then we got a “free” hotel room so we could wait until midnight, when I could take out more money.
And I lost that.
I lost all of my savings and went home hateful of casinos and Flora for not making us leave. Whenever I thought about not going back, I let the casino lure my body back with free slot play or concert tickets or free rooms. Every time they offered me something, I went. And I lost. When I lost, I wanted to leave with something, so I used the “points” or comps I’d accumulated losing money to buy what amounted to free eight-thousand-dollar casino Pumas, free three-thousand-dollar casino dresses, free fourteen-hundred-dollar casino T-shirts, and free two-thousand-dollar seats to see Beyoncé, Kanye, Jigga, Sade, Prince, and Janelle Monáe.
I ate free casino veggie burgers, casino grilled cheeses, casino fries, casino onion rings, casino shakes when we arrived, and a nice dinner of free Mexican or Italian food later. After I lost all our money for the night, I ordered room service and ate free casino omelets and casino pancakes before watching Suze Orman until I fell asleep. This was the life I tried to drag Flora into every weekend after I lost all my savings. Flora mostly said no. Three times, she said yes. Whether I lost every dime I walked in with, or won more than I ever imagined, I always punished myself with casino food as ferociously as I’d punished myself with starving and exercising.
Once, when I was watching you spend your last dollar in a slot, I saw you reach in your purse, get your phone, and start texting. A minute later, I got this text from you:
I am so proud of you and your accomplishments. Some of those terrible people threw everything they could at you and never realized your fight has always been bigger than tenure. Forgive them, son. They know not what they do. It has never been our job to take out the trash. That kind of trash takes care of itself. The family is sorry you’re alone up there. We thank you for your generosity and we wish you lots of love, joy, and health. God is good.
I read the text and realized
there was nothing sadder than knowing we saw each other in a casino fourteen hundred miles from a home we shared, and neither of us had it in us to say hello, I miss you, stop, or let’s go home.
Instead of leaving the casino, I sat next to a Korean American doctor who told me she lost her house, her cars, her children’s tuition. She’d gone to Gamblers Anonymous twice, and tried dealing in the casino just to be around the gaming. She saved a lot of money, then lost it all again. I gave the woman the last hundred dollars in my pocket. She promised she was going home with it. I knew she was lying. After she left, a white man sat down at her machine and hit a jackpot. When he was waiting to be paid out, he said, “I wish they’d give Americans first dibs on these machines. The Asians are taking over the damn place. Seems like they win every other jackpot.”
“Take over deez nuts,” I told the white man, and walked my sad ass out of the casino.
The last time I saw you was the next-to-last time I was at the Connecticut casino with Flora Wadley. On the way home, Flora Wadley said the problem with our relationship was the casino.
I said the problem with us was us.
Flora said even if the problem was us, we could save our money if we stopped going to the casino and traveled somewhere fun every weekend.
I said we could enjoy traveling to those places more if we addressed what in us made us want to go to the casino in the first place. Flora said talking about trauma was traumatizing for her since her mother and grandmother died.
I said okay.
She said our choices have to be more than traumatizing each other at home or driving two hours to be traumatized and broke.
I said okay.
She suggested we go to counseling.
I said okay.
The one time we went to counseling, I didn’t talk about the casino. I didn’t talk about you. I didn’t talk about my lies, my memory, my failed relationships, or my body. I talked about Flora. And Flora talked about Flora. And the counselor talked about Flora. And we got some homework to help us with our relationship to Flora’s supposed deficiencies. And I threw that homework away the next day. And Flora threw that homework away a few days after that.
I got paid on the twenty-fifth of every month. I sent a fifth of my check to Grandmama and spent the rest of that check by the thirtieth at the casino. When my money was gone, I started getting payday loans. Flora had no idea what I was doing. I’d get a loan for thirteen hundred dollars on the fifteenth of every month. They’d take twenty-one hundred out of my account on payday. I sold my truck for sixteen thousand and gambled away every single dime of that money in one weekend. When I got paid, I rented cars and drove two and a half hours to give away my entire paycheck. A few months after gambling away my truck, I sold my leather living room set for two thousand dollars less than what we paid for it, and I gambled that five hundred dollars away in less than three minutes. I was a new kind of sick. I was an old kind of sick. I couldn’t run but I could gamble.
And I could promise.
The Saturday after the cop told me he wanted me to take a polygraph test, I begged Flora to drive me to the casino. She made me promise that I wouldn’t lose all of my money.
I promised.
We were there for half an hour before I lost my paycheck. Before driving home, we found a scratch-off in the back of her Kia worth five dollars. We took money from the scratch-off and went back to the casino. That five dollars turned into ten. Then a hundred. Then twelve hundred. Then thirty-six hundred. We went to bed in the casino that night happy that our persistence paid off, but we weren’t happy enough to touch or leave.
I woke up that Sunday morning and kept gambling. Before I knew it, I had over ten thousand dollars. By this point, we both knew that there were no good gamblers. There were people who left when they were up and never came back, and there were people who did not. We decided that day to be people who left when we were up and never come back. With ten thousand dollars in my camouflage cargo shorts pocket, we got in Flora’s Kia and headed home. A half mile from the casino, with thoughts of being stuck in a tiny apartment across the street from Vassar in our heads, I asked Flora if she thought I could hit again.
“I think you’re hot,” she said.
“You think I’m hot?”
“I think you’re hot.”
We turned around and went back to the casino. You were there. I should have asked you if you wanted to come home with us.
It took one hour to lose every cent of that ten thousand dollars.
I was not hot.
When we got home, I told Flora I was sorry for dragging her into my mess. She asked me to promise I’d never step one foot in that casino again.
I promised.
I apologized.
We hugged.
We cried.
We dried off each other’s cheeks.
I walked into Flora’s office, got ten dollars I’d seen hidden in between her books, and asked her if I could drive her Kia around Poughkeepsie just to clear my head. When she said yes, I got on the Taconic, merged onto Interstate 84, and headed back to the casino.
I texted you and asked if we could meet at the casino. I didn’t tell you I needed help. I didn’t tell you I was scared. I hadn’t spent the night in the same bedroom with you in thirty years. I hadn’t visited you in close to six years. I had no idea how much I weighed.
I walked into the casino with ten dollars in my pocket, wearing wrinkled camouflaged shorts, a thin 3X black hoodie, no socks, and black Adidas. I knew you’d hate my outfit. That’s part of why I wore it every single day to teach the last four years.
I walked onto the casino floor intent on flipping my ten dollars into a few hundred before you got to the casino when I saw you sitting in front of your favorite game. You didn’t know I was watching you. I walked upstairs to a free hotel room I was able to reserve because I was technically a “very important person” at the casino. I wondered how many “very important people” at the casino only had ten stolen dollars to their names.
When I got to the room, I stared at the space between the two queen beds, between the two small bottles of water, between the gigantic television and the massive window, between this huge man-made lake on the other side of the window and me.
You should have been up here thirty minutes ago, I told myself. My stomach hurt at the thought of having the first honest conversation of our lives. I walked out of the room and called to tell you not to come. Halfway down the hall, here you came wearing a thin yellow flowery scarf and toting a white plastic bag under your arm. “I brought you a hat,” you said, and hugged my neck. You smelled like smoke, black soap, and thick hair grease. I asked if you were downstairs gambling before you came up. “You told me you liked the hat I got you for Christmas. Not trying to fight, Kie,” you said, ignoring my question. “You stopped exercising completely, didn’t you? Too much weight on an already heavy body is a recipe for disaster.”
I ignored your statements about my body and asked what you would think if I moved back to Mississippi.
“Would you be moving back without a job?” you asked me. “Has Vassar asked you to leave? Why would you consider going backward after all you’ve been through in Mississippi? Promise me you won’t do that. Can you tell me why you gained so much weight?”
I promised and ignored your question about my body. Without missing a beat, you continued, “Can I ask you a question?”
“You know you can ask me a question.”
“Do you think I talk down to people? I’m asking because this woman at my new job said I make her and the other women in the office feel small. They’re all liberal white women, and I just never thought that’s what I have been doing.”
I told you that I’ve been telling you that for years.
“I just didn’t know that’s how people saw me,” you said. “That’s a horrible way to interact with people. What do you want to say to me, Kie?”
“I guess I just want to know why.”
“Why what
?”
“Why?”
I sat on the foot of the bed. You sat at the desk. We looked at each other for minutes without saying a word. I knew you thought I was blaming you for something. I wasn’t. To blame you, I’d have to admit to you how sad I was and how much I failed.
“This is not an excuse,” you said before standing up and grabbing my hand. “When I was your age, you were fifteen years old. Can you imagine going through whatever you’re going through with a fifteen-year-old black child in Jackson, Mississippi?”
“No,” I said. “I can’t.”
“You were a hardheaded child running toward an early death, or prison. I still worry that you’re running toward an early death or prison. I think that’s part of why you’ve gotten so heavy again. The truth is I just didn’t know how to protect you.”
“But why?”
“Why what?”
“Just why?” I asked you.
“We never told the truth, Kie,” you said. “No one in our family has ever told the truth.”
“I told you the truth.”
“Until you started resenting me for what happened with Malachi?”
“That’s not what happened.”
“That is what happened,” you said. “You did not tell me the truth, Kie. Say it.”
“The truth about what?”
“The truth about anything. You haven’t told me the truth about why you gained all your weight back. You haven’t told me the truth about your romantic relationships. You haven’t told me the truth about your job. I think you’ve done that as a way of punishing me. When we do talk on the phone, you raise your voice. You won’t get a grip. Honestly, I think that’s abusive.”
I looked at you and waited for more words to come out of your mouth. When nothing else came out, I told you that I was sorry for lying to you. I lied to you, sometimes because I did not know how to tell you the truth, sometimes because I did not understand the truth, other times because I did not think you could hold the truth. Every time I lied, I wanted to control you, control your memory of us, control your vision of me. I was afraid to talk about being emotionally abusive, about gorging, about starving, about gambling all my money away, about wanting to disappear. I didn’t talk with you about those days at Beulah Beauford’s house, about what my body felt in the bedrooms of our house in Jackson. I didn’t think there was any way you could love me if I really showed you more of who, and what, and where I’d been.