Heavy

by Kiese Laymon

Before both of us went to sleep, I asked Grandmama if 218 pounds was too fat for twelve years old. “What you weighing yourself for anyway?” she asked me. “Two hundred eighteen pounds is just right, Kie. It’s just heavy enough.” “Heavy enough for what?” “Heavy enough for everything you need to be heavy enough for.”

I’d written, trying to understand what the words meant for my understanding of violence. For the first time in my life, 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 learned you haven’t read anything if you’ve only read something once or twice. Reading things more than twice was the reader version of revision.

I will wonder about the memories Grandmama misplaced, forgot, or maybe just lost from the time I started this book until I finished. I will wonder if the memories that remain with age are heavier than the ones we forget because they mean more to us, or if our bodies, like our nation, eventually purge memories we never wanted to be true. I will wonder if at ninety years old, after remembering and carrying so much, Grandmama has any room left in her body for new memories.

I will remember that I am your child. And, really, you are mine. And we are Grandmama’s. And Grandmama is ours.