rag MAN + NOGNOT* WOK AN oe oo a UVM NAWSSP MIDWSH Y q3dV3u 3M NAW MONLY ang BH Ag.Copyright © 2013 by Jesmyn Ward Allrights reserved. No part ofthis book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written JOSHUA ABAN DEDEAUX. Peemission ftom the publisher except in the case of brief | a ‘ADS WHILE | FOLLOW auotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, For Nenation address Bloomsbury USA, 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018. Some of the names, locations, and deals of event in this i book have been changed to protect the privacy of people volved. Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York Lisnany or Conorsss Caratogine-an-Puscicarioy Dara Ward, Jesmyn, Filer we reaped : memoir / Jenmyn Ward—First US. edition, ages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60819-521-3 (all. paper) Wards Jesmyn, 2. Aftican American women authors — pieetsphy, 3. Rarl poorMistssipni~Biogranhy, + African American men—Mississippi, 1. Tide PS3623.A7323246 2013 8136—~de23, BI 2013013600 First U.S. edition 2013, 3579086420 Typeset by Westchester Book Group Printed and bound in the U.S.A. by Thomson-Shore Inc, Dexter, Michigan908 JESHYW WARD with one of my friends, listening to Tupac, and I'd think: 1 ‘ove being Black; then a few hours later, I'd wrestle with my hair while obsessing over my antiseptic dating and social life ac school, and loathe myself. When my mother picked me up from school one day, I began telling her about a school proj- ect, and she interrupted me, speaking to che pebbly asphalt road, the corridor of trees leading us home to our trailer, and said: “Stop talking like that.” As in: Why are you speaking so properly? Asin: Why do you sound like those White kids you go to school with, that I clean up after? As in: Who are you? I shut my mouth. I wortied about my brother. While I faced a kind of bla- tant, overt, individualized racism at my school that had every thing to do with attending school with kids who were White, ich, and privileged in the American South, Joshua faced a different kind of racism, a systemic kind, the kind that made it hard for school administrators and teachers to see past his casygoing charm and lackluster grades and disdain for rigid learning to the person underneath, Why figure out what will motivate this kid to learn if, statistically, he's just another young Black male destined to drop out anyway? He was never referred to a counselor, never tested for a learning disorder, never given some sort of individual attention that might bet- ter equip him to navigate junior high school and high school. Both my brother and I were coming up against something larger than us, and both of us were failing against it, looking fora seam, a knob, a doorway, an opening through. And both of us were failing. initial WHEW VEREAPED 208 Twas sixteen when I had my first drink. I spent the night with my bestfriend from my high school. She was a tall, gen= erous girl who was unfailingly honest with me, who pulled me through some of my darkest bouts of teenage angst and jion narrowed to a adult depression, those times when m pinpoint and the world as I knew it beat me into hopelessness. ‘We sat om the floor in her family’s living room and took shots of cooking sherry. When the buzz. hit me, I was euphoric. Al the self-loathing, the weight of who T was and where | was in the world, fel away. [lay with her on the sofa, watching tele- vision, and said, “Mariah, I hope this feeling never ends.” “With ag much as you drank, T don’t think its going to end anytime soon,” she said. ‘We ran upstairs when her parents returned home. My euphoria turned to nausea, and T vomited all over her shag carpet. She cleaned up my vomit and helped me to the bath room, where I spent the night with my face on ber cool toilet seat, blacked out. The next day she dropped me off at my father’s house, and I stood out in the road with Joshua. 1 was cold, I wore one of my brother's jackets with my arms pulled into the sleeves to keep my hands warm, and I hugged myself. The skin at the sides of my mouth was dry, but my forehead and chin were dotted with acne. Joshua, who was fourteen, didn't have any acne, He wore 2 puffy Oak- land Raiders coat, and he laughed as I told him about my night, “And then I woke up on the toilet. | feel like shit.” Joshua smiled. He was winter pale, which meant he was @ gold color, and his hair seemed darker than it would, sun- lightened, in the summer. He shoved his hands in his pockets. ta ity nt of ma210 JESHYN WARD “You smoked weed yee” aw.” I woulda’ until I was eighteen ts better. You don’: have a hangover.” A woman was walking toward us, She wore « white long sleeved long john shiee with black basketball shorts, and her calves were skinny and ashy, Her processed hair stuck up in sheaves over her head. T wondered why she wasn’t cold, “liked ie at che beginning,” I said, “Te was just when T ‘and to how ap sharhings goa. Uh", ating Repo fn ouh FE vom olny poses ‘The woman stopped and spoke to my brother “What's up?” She said ehis genially, with a grin. I thought ‘maybe she thought he was handsome, a I did, even though be was a least ten years younger than het “Nothing,” he said. “Just chilling” They spoke as if chey’d had this conversation before, I hugged myself, feling a residual wave of nausea, My brother shook hands with the woman, and then she ambled away from 8, one of her hands swinging loose, the hand she'd shook. with my brocher balled into a fst and held city to her chest, her hips swaying z ; She gotta be cold,” I said. Joshua looked down at me, smiled a small smile, so small I couldn't see his teeth. He let it go and shook his head. “I'm selling crack,” he said. He looked anxious. He thought would judge him, which 1 did, but not in the way he thought I would. The woman disappeared around the bend of the road, clutching what he’ sold her, : cee WEN VE REAPED 211 “How?” I asked. “Why? When did you start?” I shivered, hugged myself tighter. The fear that I'd fele for him grew larger, so great and immediate my back rounded in my broth- ex's cont, my whole body tensing for a bone-breaking blow. “{ need money,” he said. I didn’t dispute him, Our father was straggling to make the mortgage payments on the house, working menial jobs that didn’t pay well, first as 2 casino worker, then back to his adolescence as a gos station attendant ‘There was litle extra money for food and clothes. Joshua was still too young to have a legitimate job. He may have been asking Joshua for money to help with bills; once, when my father was living in New Orleans, he'd asked me to help him pay his rent, I shouldn't have asked my brother wity. My brother had learned: to be a man meant to provide. “My fiends out here,” he said, “they do it. So one day It’s not hard—well, sometimes.” He looked off in the dis- tance after the woman when he said it. “You ain’t scared?” [ asked him. He didn’t answer. 1 looked at the fine down over his top lip and his dark brown eyes and thought for the first time: He knows something I don’t. Perhaps he'd looked into his own mirror and seen my father when I had only seen my father’s absence. Pethaps my father taught my brother what it meant to be a Black man in the South too well: unsteady work, one dead-end job after another, institutions that systematically undervalue him as a worker, a citizen, a human being. My mother had found a way to create opportunity for me, to give me the Kinds of educational and social advantages that both Joshua and 1 might have had access to if we weren't marked by poverty or race, so T was bent on college, Joshua had lesser models and Bape eB212 JESHYN WARD lesser choices, and like many young men his age, he felt that school was not feasible for him. He never envisioned college for himself, a path through education to an upwardly mobile future, the American dream shining like some wishing star in the distance. For me there were hopes: a house of brick and wood, a dream job doing something demanding and worth- while, a new, gleaming car that never ran out of gas. Joshua would hustle. He would do what he had to do to survive while I dreamed a future. My brother was already adept with facts. His world, his life: here and now. Josh is older than me, T thought. More mature. It was as ifhe'd drunk an entire case of Tabasco. JOSHUA ADAM DEDEAUX BORN: O&TORER 27, 1980 DIED: OCTOBER 2, 8000 ‘Tas 1s ware the past and the fature meet. This is after the pit bull attack, after my father left, and after my mother's heare broke. This is after the bullies in the hallway, after the nigger jokes, after my brother told me what he'd done as we stood out on the street. This is after my father had six more children with four different women, which meant he had en children total. This is after my mother stopped working for ‘one White family who lived in a mansion on the beach and began working for another White farnily who lived in a lange house on the bayou. This is after I'd earned two degrees, 2 crippling case of homesickness, and a Inkewarm boyfriend at Stanford. This is before Ronald, before C. J. This is before Demond, before Rog. This is where my two stories come together. This is the summer of the year 2000. This is the last summer that I will spend with my brother. This is the heart, This is. Every day, this is. age Oy