by Kiese Laymon
Grandmama will ask me if I am okay. “No,” I will tell her. “I’m not sure any of us are okay.”
Grandmama will hold me longer than she has ever held me and she will wail. She will tell me she hasn’t really looked in the mirror in years because the black body she sees ain’t the black body she remembers.
“It’s your black body, though,” I will tell her. “And you can remember your black body and all it’s been through a whole lot of different ways.”
“I don’t know how to remember but one way,” Grandmama will tell me.
“Now you lying, Grandmama,” I will tell her. “You know you lying, too. You don’t make it this far only knowing how to remember one way. You know I love you, but you lying right now.”
Grandmama will laugh and laugh and laugh until she tells me she is sorry. I will not have the courage to ask her what she is apologizing for.
But I will know.
I will remember that I am your child. And, really, you are mine. And we are Grandmama’s. And Grandmama is ours. You will tell me that you regret ever beating, manipulating, or demeaning me. You will tell me that you regret punishing yourself when you were lonely, shameful, and afraid.
I will remind you that I did not write this book to you simply because you are a black woman, or deeply southern, or because you taught me how to read and write. I wrote this book to you because, even though we harmed each other as American parents and children tend to do, you did everything you could to make sure the nation and our state did not harm their most vulnerable children. I will tell you that white folk and white power often helped make me feel gross, criminal, angry, and scared as a child, but they could never make me feel intellectually incapable because I was your child.
You gave your students and me more than the gifts of writing, revision, reading, and rereading. That’s what I want you to know as you close this book. You modeled a rugged love of Mississippi. You insisted our liberation has its bedrock in compassion, organization, imagination, and direct action. You proselytized home training. You demanded that we develop a radical moral imagination. I finally understand revision, rereading, compassion, home training, imagination, and a love of black children are the greatest gifts any American can share with any child in this nation. You taught us to give our lives and work to the liberation of black children in this country. I am working on that, and I finally understand there can be no liberation when our most intimate relationships are built on—and really inflected by—deception, abuse, misdirection, antiblackness, patriarchy, and bald-faced lies. Not teaching me this would have been the gravest kind of abuse.
I will offer you my heart. I will offer you my head. I will offer you my body, my imagination, and my memory. I will ask you to give us a chance at a more meaningful process of healing. If we fall, give us a chance to fall honestly, compassionately together. The nation as it is currently constituted has never dealt with a yesterday or tomorrow where we were radically honest, generous, and tender with each other.
It will, though. It will not be reformed. It will be bent, broken, undone, and rebuilt. The work of bending, breaking, and building the nation we deserve will not start or end with you or me; but that work will necessitate loving black family, however oddly shaped, however many queer, trans, cis, and gender-nonconforming mamas, daddies, aunties, comrades, nieces, nephews, granddaddies, and grandmamas—learning how to talk, listen, organize, imagine, strategize, and fight fight fight for and with black children.
There will always be scars on, and in, my body from where you harmed me. You will always have scars on, and in, your body from where we harmed you. You and I have nothing and everything to be ashamed of, but I am no longer ashamed of this heavy black body you helped create. I know that our beautiful bruised black bodies are where we bend.
I will send a draft of the book to you when I think it’s done. I will take out some of what you say needs to be taken out. I will not ignore your questions about my weight. I will not punish myself. I will not misdirect or manipulate human beings, regardless of their age, especially those human beings who love me enough to risk being misdirected or manipulated. I will not misdirect or manipulate myself. I will not say I am naked when I am fully clothed. I will not say I am sorry when I am resentful. I will not give my blessings away. I will love myself enough to be honest when I fail at loving. I will accept that black children will not recover from economic inequality, housing discrimination, sexual violence, heteropatriarchy, mass incarceration, mass evictions, and parental abuse. I will accept that black children are all worthy of the most abundant, patient, responsible kind of love and liberation this world has ever created. And we are worthy of sharing the most abundant, patient, responsible kind of love and liberation with every vulnerable child on this planet.
We will find churches, synagogues, mosques, and porches committed to the love, liberation, memories, and imagination of black children. We will share. We will find psychologists committed to the love, liberation, memories, and imagination of black children. We will share. We will find teachers committed to the love, liberation, memories, and imagination of black children. We will share. We will find healers committed to the love, liberation, memories, and imagination of black children. We will share. We will find art communities, co-operatives, curriculums, justice and labor organizations committed to the love, memories, and imagination of black children. We will share. We will remember, imagine, and help create what we cannot find.
Or, it is possible we will not remember.
We will not imagine.
We will not share.
We will not swing back.
We will not organize.
We will not be honest.
We will not be tender.
We will not be generous.
We will do what Americans do.
We will abuse like Americans abuse.
We will forget like Americans forget.
We will hunt like Americans hunt.
We will hide like Americans hide.
We will love like Americans love.
We will lie like Americans lie.
We will die like Americans die.
We did not ever have to be this way.
We will not ever have to be this way.
I wanted to write a lie. You wanted to read a lie. I wrote this to you instead because I am your child, and you are mine. You are also my mother and I am your son. Please do not be mad at me, Mama. I am just trying to put you where I bend. I am just trying to put us where we bend.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, KIESE LAYMON, Ottilie Schillig Professor in English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi, is the author of the novel Long Division and the collection of essays How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America.
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ALSO BY KIESE LAYMON
Long Division: A Novel
How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays
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First Scribner hardcover edition October 2018
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018002915
ISBN 978-1-5011-2565-2
ISBN 978-1-5011-2569-0 (ebook)
Most individuals’ names and many identifying details have been changed. Some individuals are composites.
Pieces of this memoir, in different forms, have appeared in Guernica, The Oxford American, The Guardian, Lithub, BuzzFeed, Gawker, and Fader.