Heavy

by Kiese Laymon

I wanted white Americans, who have proven themselves even more unwilling to confront their lies, to reconsider how their lies limit our access to good love, healthy choices, and second chances.

But Grandmama is too heavy to blow away or drown in tears made because somebody didn’t see me as a somebody worth respecting. You hear me? Ain’t nothing in the world worse than looking at your children drowning, knowing ain’t nothing you can do because you scared that if you get to trying to save them, they might see that you can’t swim either. But I am okay. You hear me?”

My body knew white folk were trained to harm us in ways we could never harm them.

I wasn’t sure what to write because I wasn’t sure how to live life in a way that didn’t give them a chance to shoot us out of the sky.

I remembered writing down and memorizing tens of thousands of sentences written by rappers and wondering what it would feel like to write sentences black children wanted to memorize.

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

I knew Clarence Thomas was lying because there was no reason in the world for Anita Hill to lie, and because I’d never met one older man who treated women the way he wanted to be treated.

Most groups of men I knew were good at destroying women and girls who would do everything not to destroy them.

There were so many things we needed in those classrooms, in our city, in our state, in our country that our teachers could have provided if they would have gone home and really done their homework. They never once said the words: “economic inequality,” “housing discrimination,” “sexual violence,” “mass incarceration,” “homophobia,” “empire,” “mass eviction,” “post traumatic stress disorder,” “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” “neo-confederacy,” “mental health,” or “parental abuse,” yet every student and teacher at that school lived in a world shaped by those words.

I knew dorms, classrooms, offices, paths, and parties were filled with white students, faculty, and administrators saying in their own way that our presence at their school was proof they were innocent, and could never be racist.

I’d fallen in love with provoking white folk, which really meant I’d fallen in love with begging white folk to free us by demanding

But I knew I never wanted you or Grandmama to live in a world that sounded like the world might sound if I shot a bullet through my skull in your bathtub.

Sometimes I think Mississippi is home to the greatest and the worst people ever created.” “Yeah,” I said. “I think the same thing about America as a whole.”