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Family Secrets is the production of I Heart

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Radio. I

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cared about the way you get your teeth when

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you beat me for not being perfect. I

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cared about girls at school seeing my welts.

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I cared about you days

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and often hours before you beat me. You touched

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me so gently. You told me you

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loved me. You called me your best friend. You forgave

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me for losing the Kinnis to the house. You

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codd the ashy cracks in my face with vasiline

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slick palms. You use your

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w thumbs wet with saliva to clean and sleep

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out of my eyes. You

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made me feel like the most beautiful black

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boy in the history of Mississippi

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until you didn't. That's

0:46

Kisa Layman reading a passage from

0:48

his masterful memoir Heavy, a

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memoir that has been receiving just about every

0:52

accolade a book can get. I

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sat down with Kis on a chilly summer

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morning in the mountains at the Aspen

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Ideas for staff. I'm

1:11

Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets.

1:14

The secrets that are kept from us, the secrets

1:16

we keep from others, and the secrets

1:19

we keep from ourselves. Tell

1:23

me about the landscape of your childhood. Whoa

1:26

you start big huh?

1:31

The landscape of my childhood. So that's a great

1:33

question. You know, my my parents were nineteen

1:36

and twenty when I was born on the campus

1:38

of Jackson State University. My mom

1:40

claims the first time she had sexually got pregnant.

1:43

My father claims the first time he had sex, they

1:45

got pregnant, and

1:48

then they went on to go to grad school

1:50

University Wisconsin. When when they went there,

1:52

I was there for a little bit and I want to stay with my grandmother and

1:54

that rule black town majority

1:57

black town called far Ast, Mississippi. And

2:00

then when my mother and my parents my father

2:02

got separated, my mother moved to Jackson,

2:05

and then I came up from Forest,

2:07

Mississippi to stay with her in Jackson

2:10

around eighties, so like six or seven. Um,

2:12

So, like my early early childhood was like partially

2:15

in Jackson, a little Tason, Wisconsin.

2:18

And most of my memories of my childhood are

2:20

in Farest, Mississippi, partially

2:22

because of my grandmother. Mean, the landscape was kind of cool,

2:24

but my grandmother was just you

2:26

know, complicated. She was just really good

2:28

at loving, really good at record

2:31

being, really good at keeping secrets.

2:34

Um. So for me, she is my She is

2:36

the landscape of my childhood. And then

2:38

when when my mom came and got me, moved to Jackson,

2:41

Um, you know, she was very young single,

2:43

so you know, I watched her the young black woman

2:45

in Mississippi go through with a lot of young black

2:47

single women in Mississippi go through, lots

2:49

of heartbreak, lots of economic procarity.

2:53

We moved around a lot. The

2:55

only thing that was actually solid

2:58

was just her pushing book and

3:00

writing on me and disciplined

3:02

me if I didn't do with the books and writing what

3:05

she wanted to. So my landscape is like it's

3:07

filled with Grandma is ms,

3:09

is filled with my mom pushing education.

3:12

I don't really have many memories of my father being there. I

3:14

know he was there, you know. No. One memory I

3:16

do have is that he froze a

3:18

snowball when we lived in Wisconsin

3:20

for a little while and he broke it back out in the summer. We had

3:22

a snowball fight. That's the only member I had with my father

3:24

before I was eight. But he was there. I just don't

3:26

remember him unless pictures trigger

3:29

some memory. But I don't know if that's make believer

3:32

actual. And then the

3:34

rest of my sort of childhood is just living

3:36

with Mama, just trying to watch her go

3:38

from like really a girl to a young

3:41

woman to a to a woman, and watch her teach

3:43

while I was just trying to do it. Most kids are trying to

3:45

do, you know, figure out life, deal with puberty,

3:48

figure out my feelings from my mother. We were so

3:51

tight. I was a big boy. People

3:53

always thought that was my sister. Man

3:55

would always come up to me and asked me for my sister's

3:58

numbers. I would get upset up about

4:00

that, but yeah, we were

4:02

very close. Variants. We slept in

4:04

the same bed for a long time,

4:06

do you know what I'm saying? And I think that sort

4:09

of heightened a lot of the things that came post

4:13

essays. Mother is an academic, a college

4:15

professor. She's consumed with elevating

4:18

Kisa and protecting him. She

4:20

insists that he speaks proper

4:22

English, the King's English,

4:24

because that's how educated people, white

4:27

people speak. She's

4:29

not just Kissa's mom, she's his

4:31

teacher. She gives him assignments

4:34

to write papers, for instance, one

4:36

about the politicians Benjamin Franklin Wade

4:38

and Thaddeus Stevens, and

4:40

another to read the first chapter of

4:42

William Faulkner's Absalom Absalom

4:45

and then imitate Faulkner's style, and

4:47

Kisa knows he'd better complete

4:50

those assignments in a timely manner or

4:52

else that's

4:57

just gonna have to laugh and always

4:59

have to laugh before I talk about that, right,

5:02

Like, it's not even it's just it's

5:04

just bodily. You know. When I was

5:06

really young and she gave me lots of assignments. If I

5:08

got them wrong, she sit down with me and we would revive

5:11

we get it right. Um. But when

5:13

when when she moved back to Jackson for a

5:15

few years and I met a man that

5:17

she would fall in love with, who's a really powerful man in

5:19

my city. Uh, the or

5:21

else is became a lot more physical

5:24

and a lot more emotionally abrasive.

5:26

I think sometimes it made this distinction between physical abuse

5:28

and emotional abuse, but I don't. I've

5:30

got lots of whims in my life, and they were all emotional

5:34

in addition to being physical. And when

5:37

people have emotionally abused me, or if I've been

5:39

emotionally abusive to people have seen the

5:42

physical manifestations of it. So I'm

5:44

saying, yeah, there's a lot of physical abuses, emotional

5:46

abuse, and some of it had to do was because

5:48

she was afraid that if I didn't master

5:51

she called the King's English, the white people, white police,

5:53

white teachers, what whatever, would go harder

5:55

on me. That was definitely something she believed.

5:57

She got that from her grandma. And then it was just a

6:00

lot of like, my life isn't fucking shambles,

6:02

Like this dude is terrorizing

6:04

me. I cannot effectively terrorize

6:07

him. I go home to this big black boy

6:09

who was my son, who I love more than by in the world. He's

6:11

kind of hard head. He's not doing what I wanted to do. And

6:15

you know, I don't want to mythologize. The

6:17

beatings are whippings. I don't have children. Part

6:19

of the reason I don't have children because I'm afraid.

6:21

I don't want to punish my children. Never

6:24

ever, ever would put my hands on my kids. But

6:26

I just noticed a lot of different ways to use people other than

6:28

that, and so my mother she

6:30

just started to, like, you know, beat me a lot

6:33

um for things that she said I was doing wrong. But

6:35

also when she and her partner

6:38

got into it, I just knew I was gonna

6:40

get it, you know. And and sometimes it was because

6:42

I didn't do my homework. Sometimes it would

6:44

be like key, when I was away,

6:47

I noticed that my bed wasn't made

6:49

up. Did you get in my bed? Were you in the bed with

6:51

the babysitter? And this was actually before

6:53

I was in bed with the babysitter, and I was like, no, I wasn't in bed

6:56

with the babysitter. Mama, yes you were. But

6:58

I realized early that my mom had

7:00

a hard time with her partner. I

7:02

was gonna get it somehow or another. She

7:04

was gonna take it out on me. And

7:07

and then after I got it, she was gonna apologize,

7:10

She was gonna hold me tight. We were gonna she

7:12

was gonna, you know, and that I always am. I

7:14

tell her that I said this in a book. That was the confusing

7:16

part, because I loved him more than anything in

7:18

the world. I was my first teacher, my best friend,

7:21

anything you can imagine, you know what I'm saying. And

7:23

I just was like, man, I would never ever

7:25

strike my mother. And at that point

7:28

I was as big as she was. And

7:30

then I was like, I

7:32

don't really want to hurt my mom

7:35

at all. At that point. But when I you know,

7:37

when I got to high school, like most high schoolers,

7:39

I was like, Okay, I'm gonna get you back by doing

7:41

stuff like trying to have sex with my girlfriend

7:44

in her bed when she wasn't there, you know, breaking into

7:46

the house, getting terrible gray like all of these

7:48

things that I know would hurt her without physically,

7:51

And I would never cuss out anything, but you

7:53

know, I was trying to hurt her. I was trying to retaliate

7:55

for what I felt was like unfair

7:58

treatment, and I want be

8:00

held accountable for that tool do you know what I'm saying? Not just

8:02

as I'm not saying it's the same sort

8:04

of abusiveness, but I was definitely trying to

8:06

hurt my mom without touching her.

8:09

Do you think you knew that then or do you know it now?

8:13

I mean I want to say

8:15

I didn't know what I was doing, but I

8:17

knew what I was doing. Do you know what I'm saying?

8:19

Like, there's so many seas,

8:21

you know, there's so many I mean, this is all families.

8:23

There's so many secrets. But my

8:25

mother and I never talked about sex, and

8:28

she had a hard time, like keeping

8:31

money, so we were the type of family who are like, we'd have

8:33

cable TV one month out of

8:35

the year and then she wouldn't pay the bill and

8:38

then the ship would be gone. Right, But when we had

8:40

it, Remember one time she called

8:42

me, I don't know if you remember this, but if you if

8:44

you did not have cinemax and you turn the cinemax,

8:47

it would be all blurry. Do you know

8:49

what I'm skinnamax dudel kind of make out

8:51

Nikki people in there. So one time she saw me watching

8:53

cinemax. Really, I mean, it wasn't you coudn't see anything?

8:56

She said, what are you watching? Keep I'm like nothing,

8:58

And then she kind of a us sort

9:01

of conversation with me about pornography, and

9:03

I was like, oh, my mama doesn't like me to watch

9:06

NIKKEI things so right.

9:08

So we didn't have a VCR. I brought

9:10

my my friends VCR. His father

9:13

had all these porn tapes. I brought him to

9:15

my house, snug him in my room,

9:18

and watched something that night. But I left

9:20

it there in my room. Of course,

9:22

I wanted her to see it, and when I got

9:24

home, I got it. Do you know what I'm saying? Changed

9:29

his schools in middle school and ends up one

9:31

of a small number of black students in a predominantly

9:33

white school. Well we knew,

9:36

I mean, you know, we we're never going to school with white

9:38

kids before and in the Mississippi,

9:40

you know, whiteness, a

9:42

particular kind of whiteness, is pervasive. And

9:45

we all had televisions and we

9:48

went to the movie, so you know, we weren't

9:50

unfamiliar with whiteness and white people.

9:52

We were we were unfamiliar with real white

9:54

people. And because we didn't have any contact

9:56

with real white folks, you know, we knew Jack

10:00

Tripper and Laverne as surely

10:02

and all the cartoons. You can imagine.

10:05

It isn't a happy situation. And k s

10:08

A's grades start falling. His

10:10

mother gets his report card and becomes

10:12

physically abusive, but she only

10:15

strikes him in places on his body where

10:17

bruises won't be seen. This

10:19

is something Kis and his friends the other

10:21

black students have in common. They

10:24

talk openly with each other about the difference

10:26

between getting a whooping, getting

10:28

a beating, and getting beaten

10:31

the funk up. I mean,

10:33

I wasn't the only kid who went

10:35

from getting those beatings, like where

10:38

you could come to school and you can see the wells on people's

10:40

bodies. And again, my culture,

10:42

and I think American culture generally even didn't one

10:44

admitute like we use human to kind of sue. Right.

10:46

So back with other school we would come to school

10:49

and we'll be like, yo, you got a web in his morning,

10:51

you know, like laughing. And

10:53

at St. Richard to school I went to.

10:56

If I acted up and my mom daught I acted up,

10:58

you know, she would get me in play is. It's

11:01

complicated because we also had to wear uniforms,

11:03

so you know there were long sleeve

11:05

shirts and stuff like that. But she definitely would

11:08

not get me on my neck, you know, she

11:11

wouldn't get me anywhere in my face because

11:13

she didn't want those white people to think to pathologize

11:16

her and us, and she didn't want

11:18

them to be like, oh, look at these poor black kids come to school

11:21

with wels on their body. And that happened

11:23

to me, and that was and that happened to a lot

11:25

of people. But what's important is

11:27

that you know, by eighth grade, you know, I played a

11:29

lot of sports. I was like eighth grade, I was like

11:31

five ten, two oh five, five

11:34

eleven, two oh five. My mom was five

11:36

four hundred, So I just think it's something

11:38

very very very unspoken

11:41

and intimate about the ways. I

11:43

don't know how much of it has to do with race either, but like sometimes

11:45

smaller parents, you know, beat

11:48

up on bigger kids, and for me, like

11:50

I was bigger than her partner too, you know, so

11:52

she was part of me. Thinks she thought

11:54

she could not hurt me. That's what I want to believe,

11:57

that she was hitting me like that because she thought it was so big and she couldn't

11:59

hurt me. But actually, no, that's not true, because I

12:02

let her know early on that it did hurt. But then after

12:04

a while it stopped hurting and stopped hurting

12:06

because I was so angry she

12:08

tried to hit me. I just catched a belt. Just

12:11

look at her. She keep on doing I just

12:13

catched the belt, and you know, one

12:15

point, I called her not threw it, and I looked

12:17

at her in a way for the first time my life where I was

12:20

like, nah, it's not gonna happen again.

12:22

I was never gonna touch my mom, but I just

12:24

wanted her to know that, like, you know, I'm You're

12:26

not just gonna beat me I

12:28

mean, I'm done. I'm letting you beat me, right,

12:31

you know you can. You can keep trying to beat me, but it's

12:33

not gonna work anymore. You know, it strikes

12:35

me as you're talking about this that there

12:38

was something that there's like an element

12:40

of it that was like ritual, absolutely,

12:42

because you each had these different

12:45

roles to play and

12:47

and both were controlled. Like

12:50

your mom was controlled in that

12:52

she didn't hit certain parts of your body. She wasn't

12:54

out of control. You know, it's

12:58

so profoundly complicated at it because

13:01

in the dynamic between k. S A and his mom,

13:04

she's acting out of a kind of maternal terror,

13:07

but that maternal terror actually terrorizes

13:10

her son. She knows what

13:12

can happen to young black men, and

13:14

so she tries to teach k. S A to

13:16

write and learn and think his way towards

13:18

protection. But protection

13:21

isn't possible, so she beats

13:23

him. It makes all kinds of sense

13:26

and no kinds of sense, something

13:28

he explores in his book Heavy. I

13:31

think the story is much more complicated. Right then, young

13:34

black mother beats big black son. Big

13:37

Black Son becomes a writer and writes about the beatings.

13:40

Right. The book is about much more than that. But but, but

13:42

the odd part about it is that my mom's

13:44

fear was that that the nation and my state,

13:47

white supremacy, white power manifested

13:49

in my state in the nation, would harm

13:51

me in ways she could never and she

13:54

wanted to protect me. Like I grew

13:56

up in the era where police officers would come to your school.

13:58

They'd be called officer, and they bring

14:01

up sometimes the biggest kid in the school, make

14:03

an example of him. If you don't do right, this

14:05

is how we're gonna treat you. Okay, fine, But

14:08

you know I had a lot of problems in

14:10

high school. I didn't but drinking wasn't

14:12

one of my problems. Smoking wasn't one of my problems. I saw

14:14

how addiction ravaged my family. I wasn't about to do

14:16

that. But cops still

14:19

jack me up saying I had cracked. Cops

14:21

still would be like, I saw you throw crack out of a window.

14:24

You know what I'm saying. Cops would still like have me

14:26

embarrassed outside of the road, handcuffed

14:28

in front of people. And I know how people think

14:30

people dry body said a big black boy in handcuffs,

14:32

They're gonna be like, oh, that mocker there's something wrong. Often

14:36

I never I'm not trying. Ian. I am

14:38

not somebody who bleeds innocent. I'm not innocent,

14:40

but I am definitely innocent of ever doing anything

14:42

or police officers that I did, But that didn't

14:44

stop me from calling them negative and stopped them from

14:46

putting guns to my face guns

14:48

to my head several times before

14:50

I was eighteen years old. This

14:53

reminds me of something kiss mother says

14:55

to him before he starts school at St. Richard's.

14:58

Here's Kisa. I sat

15:00

in the principal's office thinking about what you

15:02

told me the day before we started, saying, Richard,

15:05

be twice as excellent and be twice as careful

15:08

from this point on. You said everything

15:10

you thought your new changes tomorrow. Being

15:13

twice as excellent as white folks will get you half of

15:15

what they get. Being anything less

15:17

will get you hell. I assume

15:19

we were already twice as excellent as the white kids

15:21

at St. Richard's, precisely because

15:24

their library looked like a cathedral and

15:26

ours was an old trailer on cinder blocks.

15:29

I thought you should have told me to be twice as excellent

15:31

as you, my grandmama, since

15:34

y'all were the most excellent people I knew. I

15:38

got kicked out of school for taking a library book out

15:40

of the library. And I just think it's interesting because

15:42

my mom's belief was that, like, if

15:46

you immerse yourself in books, you

15:48

can protect yourself from them. And what I learned,

15:50

like eighteen nineteen, is that sometimes sometimes

15:53

the appearance of being like well read

15:56

or uppity or whatever to police officers

15:58

or white folks don't have your best interests at would

16:00

make them punish you more. You know, I got I

16:02

got kicked out of school, literally for

16:05

taking the library book out of the library that I

16:07

paid to go to and taking it back. It

16:09

was all on the news, so it embarrassed my grandmama because

16:11

it looked like her grandson got kicked out of school for theft.

16:14

That was the most painful thing to happen in my family at the time

16:17

because it was so public and it was and I

16:19

didn't do I didn't I took a library book and I brought

16:21

it back. You know what I'm saying something. My point is

16:23

she was right that these people won't do whatever

16:25

they could to harm and hurt me and

16:27

people who look like me, But

16:29

she was wrong in that, like the meetings would help

16:33

because when that should happen to me, what I wanted to do is

16:35

fight them. I wanted to I wanted

16:37

to physically fight them. When you put

16:39

handcuffs on me, I'm gonna try to. I

16:41

am gonna try to fight back. And that's gonna make it worse.

16:43

Do you see what I'm saying, Because I was talking like you

16:46

do fight? You fight? You fight when people do things

16:48

wrong, do you fight. You can't fight the police

16:50

unless you have guns. I didn't have guns.

16:54

We're going to take a short break. His

17:08

mom tries hard to control the

17:10

unruly son she loves so much,

17:13

pushing him to read right, speak

17:16

quote unquote properly. But

17:18

then there's another way she tries to control

17:20

him, having to do with food, what

17:23

and how much he eats. My

17:26

mama was somebody who just like his adamant

17:29

and she was that I read all these books. She was

17:31

equally admit that I don't eat um,

17:33

not that I start myself, but like I only eat it like

17:35

asparagus, and I mean when I'm like between

17:37

eight and fourteen years old asparagus.

17:40

And she like Brussels sprouts. And her

17:42

money was really weird too, so she would buy like

17:45

all this booty food we really couldn't afford at the beginning

17:47

of the month. I lives in fucking

17:49

pump and nickel brow, Like no twelve

17:52

year old, I didn't know. I didn't know what's over? Who

17:54

want to eat that kind of ship? And I definitely didn't want to eat that

17:56

um. But it's signified

17:59

the same thing as the King's English.

18:01

Absolutely, she really believed

18:03

that if you ate light white people, read light white

18:05

people, walk like white people, you can protect yourself

18:08

a white people. But she raised a kid who

18:10

was like sort of curious, you know, I always just

18:12

I was like, my look at dr King like

18:14

they blew his damn head off, damn near and

18:16

he was. He dressed well, he had like a

18:19

beautiful Southern twine, but he was one

18:21

of the most eloquent speakers ever. Right, look

18:23

at you, Mama, like you do speak to kings

18:25

English in public, and I can see you

18:27

suffering. So this sort

18:30

of like deprivation in the hopes

18:32

that the deprivation will make you less

18:36

scary. I

18:38

don't know. Maybe it works, but it didn't work for me. So

18:41

when I left my mama's house, partially

18:43

because the food she she did have in the house

18:45

if we have food was not it was kind of like not gross,

18:48

it was gross, you know what I'm saying to me? And I go

18:50

to my friend's house yea, and they

18:52

have you know, Golden Graham

18:55

and like all kind of like those little frozen hamburgers

18:58

in the box you can sizzlin and that.

19:00

So I would just I just I

19:02

just eight and eight and eight. Whenever

19:04

I left with my grandmother, who

19:07

cooked a lot of healthy food because she had a massive garden,

19:09

but she also like like to cook cars and cake. Did

19:11

she encourage me to eat? And

19:13

I never heard the word fat in her house from

19:15

her, Do you know what I'm saying. So I'm

19:17

going to say, yes, I was trying to protect myself,

19:20

but also part of me was trying to push back. I

19:22

guess my mom's like I think

19:25

easy mode of discipline, which was

19:27

like a kind of like deprivation.

19:31

There's a way in which I think certain things

19:33

lodge in the body, right, Like I

19:35

have a long time yoga practice, and one of the things that

19:38

the yogis won't say is that certain

19:40

emotional states actually live in the body.

19:42

Like if you do like a a hip opening

19:45

pose eventually, if you stay

19:47

in it long enough, grief will like

19:49

start to rise to the surface. You know, you'll

19:52

actually start to cry. I mean, I've

19:54

experienced like the ways in which

19:56

certain emotional states kind of sit

20:01

dormant, you know, but like their stories, they're

20:03

complete. The Yogis called them some saras

20:05

or, which also translates a scar interestingly,

20:08

like they live within us. And I

20:10

think when we

20:13

are driven or

20:15

there's a kind of undercurrent

20:18

of shame that most

20:20

of us experienced some degree or another, whether we're

20:22

in touch with it or not. That is

20:24

kind of like the river beneath you know, sort

20:26

of our our daily existence.

20:29

It manifests itself in somewhere or another. And

20:31

how we feel about our bodies, and

20:36

in your case, to the becoming bigger

20:40

and the way that on the one hand

20:42

it sort of afforded you a certain kind of weight,

20:45

you know, of protection, and

20:48

on the other hand seemed to also have

20:50

go along with it a not

20:52

feeling great about your body, or feeling like, you

20:55

know, girls wouldn't want to be with

20:57

you because of your

20:59

body, yea, or or that they would

21:01

because they were scared, which was I mean,

21:04

And and there's no there's

21:06

no evidence to substantiate it, but

21:08

that's what I felt, do you know what I mean, Like even

21:11

to this day. I mean I was an interview and

21:13

I said this before, so I guess I can say it here. It's

21:15

just like, you know, I never felt comfortable

21:18

even when we would play like these games when we were

21:20

like eight. It was

21:22

called high talked about this but kind of go getting you go, you

21:25

hide, and then whoever it was a person has has

21:27

to confine people. And the whole point is that like young

21:29

people are in the closets or

21:31

hallways and it's dark and you get to touch

21:33

people. I was just always afraid to touch

21:36

anybody one because I was just bigger, and

21:39

but I wasn't afraid to want to be touched. But you know, when

21:41

I started to get older in hip puberty,

21:44

like most people, like you know, desire was a thing,

21:46

but I just never felt comfortable.

21:49

Um what did they used to call

21:51

it? Making a move or passing

21:53

a note? Did you like me? Circle yes

21:55

or no? Like you know, none of that kind of shif. It was

21:57

just I just thought that people,

22:00

if if particularly if young

22:02

girls you know, who were twelve my

22:05

age liked me at the time, I thought

22:07

it was because they thought I was going to hurt them.

22:09

But there's no reason for me to think that other than I

22:13

mean, there are reasons for me to think that, right, But I

22:15

never had anybody be like I thought you

22:17

would hurt me if you didn't blah blah blah. Well,

22:19

and of course you also equated,

22:22

you know, loving and being hurt. So

22:25

k s A gets kicked out of school for theft

22:27

of a book. Even with his

22:29

complicated academic history, he

22:32

manages to transfer from his first college,

22:34

Millsaps, to Oberlin, a

22:36

school that recognizes his gifts his potential,

22:40

but it's all coming at a high price.

22:43

In his desire to change himself,

22:45

he starts to radically change his body

22:47

in unhealthy ways at

22:52

the highest in Millsaps. In my

22:54

first college, I was like three nine pounds.

22:56

By the time I get to Old Milan, I'm

22:58

two hundred and nine pounds, Like first day of school,

23:02

and nobody looked at me and thought that I could ever

23:04

been. I was like a very athletic two nine pounds,

23:06

and then I started to lose more ways. They're not going to nine

23:09

or one nine nine? What

23:11

was the turning point? What was what

23:13

do you remember about the moment where you're like, I'm

23:16

now going to start eating differently, exercising,

23:20

and I'm gonna I'm gonna lose that weight. I'm gonna go

23:22

in there and be this smaller person. I

23:24

just wanted absolute control over

23:27

my body

23:32

because my body was in Oberland, Ohio, because

23:34

some white man decided that he didn't want me at

23:36

his school. Do you see what I'm saying?

23:39

And there weren't enough people around who

23:41

all saw that the ship was wrong, who fought

23:43

enough to make it happen. That meant, like I had, I needed

23:45

to protect myself somehow. And

23:47

so it wasn't just the eating, but my writing

23:50

ritual kicked up. You know, started writing two

23:52

hours before nine a row, three in the morning, three to night.

23:55

I read. I ran in the morning, I ran at night,

23:57

and then you know, I got sick. I got up.

24:00

That's what Seeing that the number go

24:02

down, it felt so good. I played

24:04

back. You know, it's Captaine the basketball team.

24:06

I weighed myself before the games. I wash myself

24:08

after the game. If I didn't lose eight pounds

24:11

of water weight during the game, I go on the song

24:13

and run more. I just was like, yo, I can

24:15

control, and I was trying to hurt myself, like I'm

24:17

not trying to put this on other people. But you know,

24:19

if you play any sort of athletics

24:23

in college B A, D, three D two or three one,

24:26

they're gonna run you to death. And if you

24:28

run on top of that, it's not gonna be good for your body.

24:30

Do you know what I'm saying? And I

24:33

just I wanted to be smaller.

24:35

And then I just started

24:38

to get all of this crazy attention from

24:40

not just women, but women,

24:43

from queer boys, from supposed

24:45

straight bowl a people were just like,

24:47

oh my god, you look so good, and

24:49

I would I was dysmorphotuld I was

24:51

like, what, you know, I still thought I looked like I looked

24:53

at three pounds. And

24:56

then one day, you know, we're looking

24:58

at tape for basketball, and

25:02

I saw myself on tape, and

25:05

you know, I was like, I'm gonna look good.

25:07

But you know, I was very musculine and very

25:09

lean and very fast. And I

25:12

just remember sitting in that room with those my friends

25:14

and just like crying in your back because

25:17

I was just like, what the like, you just created

25:19

a body without even know

25:21

when you created a body. But at what

25:23

what cost. People just stopped

25:25

treating me like I was fat. That's why I can't

25:27

even imagine what it feels like for women to

25:30

be treated that way, because I think men get treated a lot

25:32

nicer. But I

25:34

just people stopped treating me like I was fat. So they

25:36

stopped treating me like a particular kind of threat,

25:39

which meant that I could do much more harmed

25:41

at people because they weren't. They weren't they

25:43

were disarmed because oh this guy, so you

25:45

know what I'm saying. So that's when I started to realize

25:47

that sometimes those kinds of people could do the most harm

25:50

to different people, like those really attractive,

25:52

supposedly well read people

25:55

who listened. And that's who I was. I was

25:57

a great in a great shape. I read

25:59

a lot books. I love to listen, And

26:02

then no one would have known what was going like

26:04

what was going on, you know, inside

26:06

of you. And there's this there's this line in

26:08

your book right around the time you get to Oberlin, I

26:10

will not tell those friends what my body remembered.

26:13

I will become a handsome, fine together

26:15

brother with lots of secrets.

26:18

There's also this line, flying

26:21

and crashing were what people in our

26:23

family did when we were alone, ashamed

26:25

and scared to death flying

26:27

and crashing. You know, it's kind of what we've

26:29

been talking about too, right, It's like both

26:32

you can't fly, you can't just fly, not

26:34

okay, not possible to just fly, trying

26:38

to find a way to crash. I'm

26:40

trying to embody like. To me, at that point, that

26:42

was like passing judgment on my family

26:45

for being fat and

26:47

for being gambling

26:49

addicted, and for my grandmother like she was a cutter,

26:52

like she used to hurt herself. So at that point in

26:54

the book, I'm saying, I'm so happy I'm

26:56

not like them. While that whole chapter

26:58

is about it's about body is morpha

27:00

is about it and erected about beliemia. There's a recurrent

27:02

line in that chapter, I just love losing weight. So,

27:05

you know, I wanted people to understand that the book

27:08

was not passing judgment on my family,

27:10

But that's how fucked up I was, Like

27:13

I'd gotten out of that. I'm the skinny dude,

27:15

I'm in grad school, I'm about to go to teach Vasser.

27:18

Here, my grandmama is in the hospital, she can't take

27:20

care of herself. Here, my mama is. She can't take care of her

27:22

money. Here, my whole family is are all

27:25

you know, according to doctors, morri Lee obese.

27:27

But here I am in great shape, grad school,

27:30

got everything going on for me. But I'm

27:32

just trying to disappear, you

27:35

know, just trying hard as I can to disappear.

27:37

But I didn't have that language. So

27:40

ks A graduates from Oberlin and

27:42

gets his first teaching job. His

27:45

mother has instilled in him not only a sensitivity

27:47

to words and language, but to teaching

27:50

as a vocation, and he lands a

27:52

great position at Vassar College. Now,

27:55

Vasser is about as far landscape

27:57

wise from Jackson, Mississippi as

28:00

you can get while still staying in the United States.

28:03

It's a culture, I know well, a small

28:05

liberal arts college in New York State's Hudson

28:07

Valley, all red brick buildings,

28:09

white columns, arches, and shady

28:11

paths. It's here at

28:14

Vasser that kas eating disorder

28:16

grows even more dangerous. You're

28:20

six one and you're a d pounds and

28:22

you're running, you know, dozens

28:24

of miles a day, checking

28:27

my body every day, checking your body fat. It's

28:30

at one point, it's two. So

28:34

during those years at Vasser.

28:37

There's a moment where your mother comes visits you. She's

28:39

very proud of you, you know, And which

28:41

is interesting too, because it's so much about what

28:44

do we see when we see other people. What she

28:46

sees when she sees you at

28:48

Vasser is that it

28:51

all, It all works. Everything she ever wanted,

28:53

It all works. Institution

28:58

and all that disciplining and reading

29:00

that she did. What your mother sees

29:02

when she sees you in Poughkeepsie

29:04

is that. But of course that's

29:07

not what it is at all. Oh No, I

29:10

mean the hard part about all of that is that some

29:12

of that coincides with the Obama ascensionvention.

29:15

Thing about Obama is that, like there was no imadinitive

29:18

template for him before he becomes president,

29:21

right, nobody's like that, or we want

29:23

this guy with his African name from Chicago,

29:26

used to be community organized and married, beautiful

29:28

black woman, um to be president.

29:30

Nobody's talking about that ship, right, But

29:32

that's what she wanted. She wanted she I mean when

29:34

I say that, she wanted in terms of his

29:37

body, in terms of how he speaks, in

29:39

terms of how he manages white people,

29:42

like we've rarely seen Obama. I

29:45

think honestly respond to some

29:47

of the white terret it has been put on his back,

29:50

right. And as soon as O, Mamma gota like that, she starts

29:52

crying because she's like, they're gonna kill him. But I'm

29:54

like, Mama, that's who you wanted me to be. You wanted

29:56

me to be this dude, so like something doesn't

29:59

make sense, Okay, just

30:01

be safe, do you see what I'm saying. So

30:04

life was incredible at Vaster because

30:07

of my relationship with my students. You know, I get

30:09

the job at Vaster when I'm almost

30:11

twenty six. Most of my colleagues

30:13

are older than my grandmama.

30:16

That's no distourd that that I'm trying

30:19

to dis the grandmama age people. What I'm saying

30:21

when you're twenty six and you come in, you know, you're talking

30:23

about isolation and a loneness. I went there

30:25

alone, and the people

30:27

I had the most uncommon with were

30:30

my students, right, And lots of those

30:32

students had never been taught by a

30:34

professor who was not white, and they definitely have been taught

30:37

by like a young black person. So they,

30:40

I mean, lots of the white ones

30:42

did, but lots of the folks of color, particularly black

30:44

students like found safety

30:46

and me right. And I was teaching James Harlan,

30:48

which is ironic because bad one is always talk about teaching

30:51

us we need to record with our past. Our past has

30:53

never passed. It is always in us talking about

30:55

love and all my classes. Meanwhile,

30:57

I'm like, I'm literally trying to disappear.

31:00

I'm literally trying to kill myself right, And

31:02

the only reason I did not it's because of my body

31:05

stopped working by like my legs stopped.

31:07

I could not run anymore because if I could

31:09

have run, I would have run myself into nothingness.

31:14

But my legs stopped. But the

31:17

most shameful part of it to me is that

31:19

while I'm teaching these creative writing courses

31:21

and teaching these English lit courses, teach the African American led

31:24

courses to these students who would listen

31:26

and believe anything I say,

31:29

I'm being wholly dishonest to them, coolly

31:32

dishonest to them. And I

31:35

just if I could do it over again, I

31:38

would doubts what I would do over again. I don't think

31:40

I was fair to those kids. I know

31:42

those kids love me, and like I wanted,

31:44

I'm not saying they wanted me to sit down and give him my whole

31:46

life story. But I was just lying

31:48

to them all the time. I just lied every I

31:50

mean just teaches that a lot of teaches a lot of kids. But but

31:53

they expected more for me. And you know, those students love me,

31:55

they care for me. Um. But I didn't do right

31:57

by them, partially because

32:01

personally, because I was sick and I needed them

32:03

a lot more than I let on. I didn't want

32:05

to be hanging with the fucking sixty

32:08

five year old white dudes with the beards and

32:10

ship talking about what kind of

32:12

new vest they were gonna wear next week. That wasn't

32:14

what I was interested in. As

32:18

I listened to k S, I can't help

32:20

but think he's being too hard on himself. I've

32:22

been teaching all my writing life as well, and

32:25

it's a complex dance we teachers do, modeling

32:28

what you can impart as a teacher. It's

32:30

not as simple as you're either walking the walk

32:33

or you're not. Sometimes you're

32:35

trying to impart something to your students from a place

32:37

of your own longing, a place of be

32:40

better, be better than I am. Right now, let

32:43

me be clear about they want to because I'm

32:46

kind of talking around what I what I really want

32:48

to say. They would want to hear

32:50

me say I

32:53

know what you're feeling because I've

32:55

been there, and I would

32:58

not. I would talk to them about a lot of things that at them in

33:00

the parts of who I was. But

33:02

when they started talking about like their relationships

33:05

with eating disorders, their relationships

33:07

with sexual violence, their relationships

33:09

with parental abuse, and they

33:11

would ask me, I literally would

33:13

say, you know, I don't have that experience,

33:16

but I definitely hear you. I would literally lie.

33:18

And part of that as big pedog, actually, I wasn't

33:20

sure what you you know, like do you give

33:22

that or do you But what you don't do is lie.

33:25

And what I should have done is been like, you know, I've

33:27

experienced that kind of stuff too, but

33:29

I'm not sure that this relationship can hold

33:31

my giving that to you, so if you want to continue, and what I

33:33

really should have done, it's like there's a counselor center

33:35

right over there. Let me hold your hand, let's walk over

33:37

there together. My students would

33:39

come be like, you know, like I did this, you

33:42

know, And because I wanted to be everything to them,

33:44

I never was like I don't know how

33:46

to help you now, but these people do. So that's

33:48

what I'm trying to say when I'm saying they were open to me

33:50

partially because of my age, because of how I look, because

33:52

I'm a race, because I did care,

33:56

but they gave me opportunity after

33:58

opportunity to talk about the stuff. I talked about.

34:00

It heavy, and I'm not saying I should have put that on them, but

34:02

I don't know if I should lie. This

34:05

is one of the things I hear again and again

34:08

when it comes to family secrets, whether

34:10

it's the people who have been coming to my events for Inheritance

34:13

or my guests on this podcast. So

34:16

often folks who have been part of a secret

34:18

end up becoming secret keepers too.

34:21

So Key say is keeping his own secret,

34:24

which is that he's not okay. I

34:27

mean, he's really not okay. There's

34:31

this way in which all

34:33

of these things were tied

34:35

up together for you in this really complicated stew

34:38

and then it becomes like the work of a lifetime.

34:40

I mean, that's the way that I think of it is.

34:43

We like Hollywood endings, we

34:45

like fairytale endings. Um, we

34:47

like the whole idea that there's like some kind

34:49

of bright line between you

34:52

know, before and after. And and that's

34:54

something you were trying to do with your body too, righte Like

34:56

now pounds, nothing's going to touch

34:58

me. And meanwhile, you're mean the same exact

35:00

thing, it just looked different on the outside. We're

35:05

going to take a quick break. So

35:22

when Kisa's mom makes that visit to vass

35:24

her, it ought to be a triumphant

35:27

moment, a transcendent moment. He's

35:30

done it right. Her son is

35:32

an accomplished, tenured professor, a

35:34

published writer, a thin, elegant

35:37

black man who speaks the King's English,

35:39

all of which makes him untouchable, right

35:43

right, kiss mother

35:45

takes him shopping and insists on buying

35:47

him expensive furniture for his home. He

35:50

doesn't want her to do it, but she does. And

35:53

then when she returns home to Jackson, she

35:55

starts asking him for money, more

35:58

and more money. And he'd be ends to

36:00

wonder if she has a gambling problem.

36:03

I mean, it wouldn't surprise him. He

36:05

could imagine anyone in his family being

36:07

an addict, crashing and flying,

36:10

crashing and flying. What

36:12

he couldn't imagine was that his

36:15

mother might be stealing from him. But

36:17

then she asks him for money for house

36:19

repairs and something doesn't seem

36:21

quite right. Nothing in the world

36:24

she could ask me for it that I would say, no, nothing.

36:26

She could ask me for fifty g s if I had forty

36:28

nine, I go get the other g from somebody and give it

36:31

to it. And when that situation

36:33

happened at the house, when she was asking me for

36:36

some money to fix the foundation and to fix

36:39

a chimney, uh, the first

36:41

time in my life, I questioned. I was like, Okay, well, can

36:43

I just talk to the contractor guy so I can try

36:45

to get the price down? And she hung up the phone.

36:48

And then she calls back and she's like, hey, I need the money.

36:50

You don't give it to me not And I was like, uh, Mama,

36:53

can I just talk to the person to see where the money is

36:55

going? She hung up the phone again, so I called

36:57

Grandma. Grandma. Mama said that

36:59

the needs breaking in the foundations messed up.

37:01

Grandma was like, no, I'm just over there. Ain't not going

37:04

on all day. I mean, thank goodness,

37:06

children can be this sort of like, I

37:09

don't believe in innocence, but I think sometimes

37:11

we can really believe that our parents would not attempt

37:13

to do financial harm to us.

37:16

And I don't know how to explain it, but like, ain't

37:20

nothing in my heart broke like

37:22

that in my life when I realized, Oh, my

37:25

mom, for for reasons

37:27

that are beyond her, is still in for

37:30

me, and still in from my Grandma,

37:33

the two people on earth who would never ever,

37:36

ever ever still from her, who would

37:38

do anything possible to give to her.

37:41

I didn't understand gambling addiction at the time.

37:45

He s A has no idea how long his

37:47

mother's gambling has been going on, but

37:50

as he thinks back through their history, it

37:52

starts to make sense that it's been there

37:54

for a long time, in the background. After

37:57

the whoopings, the beatings, the various

38:00

minds of abuse, this realization

38:02

that his mother had been stealing from him makes

38:05

him crazy his word, that's

38:08

how he describes it. He rethinks

38:10

some of his history with her, and at the same

38:13

time, his body is breaking down. He

38:15

has herniated discs from all the punishing

38:17

physical exertion, and an abnormal

38:20

growth on his left hip. But still

38:22

he tries to burn calories, moving

38:24

his arms, trying to sweat, trying

38:27

to control the life that's burning all

38:29

around him. So

38:31

one of the reasons I wrote that book was because

38:34

I think my mother and my father have had,

38:36

like lots of parents in this country have had different relationships

38:39

with addiction, but most

38:41

of the ones I know have never attempted to publicly

38:43

articulate that journey,

38:46

not just for readers, but two people

38:48

they love. I

38:51

told I was writing it too. She told me she

38:54

didn't think that was a good idea. Asked lots

38:56

of questions that we never talked

38:58

about. She answered some she dinna answer some, I'll

39:01

talk to my grandmother, And my grandmother pretty much answered

39:03

all the questions that I add that I had the nerve to

39:05

ask. And then I just had all

39:08

this stuff, and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna trying to create a piece of art,

39:10

not like a tell all, because there's

39:12

so much, like the most dramatic stuff in that that

39:14

that I think happened in that time period. The

39:17

three most dramatic things are not in that book. But

39:19

you know, it's just like an artful rendering, but

39:22

also an artful attempt to

39:25

get us to love each other, to save each

39:27

other, to not give our money away, to

39:29

know that we're valuable enough to at least talk through

39:31

pain, which is something I just think

39:33

we are not good at. We don't

39:36

know how to talk through pain. You

39:39

alluded to it, but when when you realize

39:41

that you're you think your mother was trying

39:43

to just basically steal from you. That

39:46

coincided with your body falling

39:48

apart around that same time, and

39:50

then you began putting weight back

39:52

on. Yeah,

39:54

I mean yes, that struck me

39:57

as actually a good thing

39:59

for you. When I got to that part, it is like, oh, he's

40:02

gonna let this go now, like this form

40:05

of masochistic you

40:08

know, self destructive body punishing.

40:11

Um. Did it feel that way to you? No,

40:15

In a moment, it felt just shameful because

40:17

everybody because only people, because the people who

40:20

knew me there, they only knew me as a skinny person.

40:22

So they were just like, what's wrong

40:24

with you? Do you know what I mean? And

40:27

this is when like they this is when I went from one fifty nine,

40:29

one eight nine or one seventy nine, they'd be like, are

40:32

you okay? And I'm like, I'm

40:34

good. What that literally,

40:36

I'm not gonna this is not hyperboly. That's just say

40:38

my life by

40:40

that ship means the

40:43

one to punch of his body breaking

40:45

down, and his discovery that his mom

40:47

had been stealing from him. This

40:50

was the lowest point at which it

40:52

became possible to begin

40:54

again. If

40:56

my legs allowed me to, I would have run myself

40:59

into disappearing, is no doubt.

41:02

And and so I did not get healthy because I started

41:04

to like just try to punish myself with food.

41:07

But I mean should I wouldn't

41:09

have been here right now had that not happened.

41:13

I just want my mother to be better at loving one another,

41:15

and I want us supposed to be better at talking sincerely.

41:18

I don't think sincerity is something that we don't talk about enough

41:20

in his college Sincerely about joy, sincerely

41:23

about pain. The

41:26

day before K. S. A And I had this conversation,

41:29

he received the Andrew Carnegie Medal

41:31

for Excellence in Nonfiction. This

41:34

award is a big deal in the literary world,

41:37

and kiss Mom was in the audience. As

41:39

he accepted the award, he asked

41:42

her to join him on stage. I

41:44

wish I could have seen it. This remarkable

41:47

mother and son who continue,

41:49

because of everything, despite

41:52

everything, to stumble toward

41:54

one another in all their humanness. I

41:57

wrote this book as offering being Mama, can we

42:00

talk? And sometimes she says

42:02

yes, and most of the times she says no. But at least

42:04

Lease is out there and we've got opportunity. Now. I'd

42:16

like to thank my guest K. S A. Lehman for

42:18

telling his story. You can find

42:20

out more about his book Heavy at

42:23

K. S A. Lehman dot com. That's

42:26

Key I E S E l

42:28

A Y m O N dot com.

42:31

I'd also like to thank the Aspen Institute Arts

42:34

Program and Aspen Words, where this interview

42:36

was recorded. Family Secrets

42:39

is an I Heart Media production. Dylan

42:41

Fagin is the supervising producer, Lowell

42:44

Bolante is the audio engineer, and

42:46

Julie Douglas is the executive producer. If

42:49

you have a family secret you'd like to share, you

42:51

can get in touch with us at listener mail

42:54

at Family Secrets podcast dot

42:56

com, and you can also find us on Instagram

42:59

at Danny Right, and Facebook

43:01

at Family Secrets Pod and Twitter

43:03

at fami Secrets Pod. For

43:06

more about my book Inheritance, visit

43:08

Danny Shapiro dot com. For

43:23

more podcasts. For my Heart Radio, visit the

43:25

I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or

43:27

wherever you listen to your favorite shows.