Heavy

by Kiese Laymon

My body knew things my mouth and my mind couldn’t, or maybe wouldn’t, express. It knew that all over my neighborhood, boys were trained to harm girls in ways girls could never harm boys, straight kids were trained to harm queer kids in ways queer kids could never harm straight kids, men were trained to harm women in ways women could never harm men, parents were trained to harm children in ways children would never harm parents, babysitters were trained to harm kids in ways kids could never harm babysitters. My body knew white folk were trained to harm us in ways we could never harm them. I didn’t know how to tell you or anyone else the stories my body told me, but, like you, I knew how to run, deflect, and duck.

I realized telling the truth was way different from finding the truth, and finding the truth had everything to do with revisiting and rearranging words. Revisiting and rearranging words didn’t only require vocabulary; it required will, and maybe courage. Revised word patterns were revised thought patterns. Revised thought patterns shaped memory. I knew, looking at all those words, that memories were there. I just had to rearrange, add, subtract, sit, and sift until I found a way to free the memory.

America seems filled with violent people who like causing people pain but hate when those people tell them that pain hurts.

The first sentence of the book showed me first sentences could be roller coasters designed especially for us. I read it again. Then I wrote it. Bambara took what Welty did best and created worlds where no one was sheltered, cloistered, or white, but everyone—in some form or fashion—was weird, wonderful, slightly wack, and all the way black. Blackness, in all its boredom and boom, was the historical and imaginative context in Bambara’s work. I wanted to be that kind of free, on and off the page. I wanted to write something someday with that kind of first sentence and I wanted that kind of first sentence to be written to me every day for the rest of my life.

None of us were the grandchildren of grandparents who passed money or land down to our parents. Even those of us whose parents were part of this shiny black middle class knew those shiny black middle-class parents were one paycheck away from asking grandparents or us for money we didn’t have the week before payday, and two paychecks away from poverty. There was no wealth in our family, you told me more than once. There were only paydays.

For a few seconds, I remembered that the most abusive parts of our nation obsessively neglect yesterday while peddling in possibility. I remembered that we got here by refusing to honestly remember together. I remembered that it was easier to promise than it was to reckon or change.

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.