Saeed Jones - How We Fight for Our Lives: a memoir

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ALSO BY SAEED JONES

Prelude to Bruise

Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2019 by Saeed Jones

Elegy with Grown Folks Music by Saeed Jones first appeared in Tin House #69

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition October 2019

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Interior design by Carly Loman

Jacket design by David Litman

Jacket image by Serzh/Shut Terstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jones, Saeed, author.

Title: How we fight for our lives : a memoir / Saeed Jones.

Description: First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019002515 (print) | LCCN 2019007222 (ebook) |

ISBN 9781501132759 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781501132735 |

ISBN 9781501132735(hardcover :alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501132742(paperback:

alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501132759(ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Jones, Saeed. | African American authorsBiography. | Gay

authorsUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC PS3610.O6279 (ebook) | LCC PS3610.O6279 Z46 2019

(print) | DDC 811/.6 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019002515

ISBN 978-1-5011-3273-5

ISBN 978-1-5011-3275-9 (ebook)

For Carol Jean Sweet-Jones

Elegy with Grown Folks Music

• I Wanna Be Your Lover comes on the kitchen radio
• and briefly, your mother isnt your mother
• just like, if the falsetto is just right, a black man in black
• lace panties isnt a faggot, but a prince,
• a prodigyand the woman with your hometown
• between her hips shimmies past the eviction notice
• burning on the counter and her body moves like she never
• even birthed you. The voice on the radio pleads
• I wanna be the only one that makes you come
• running. Some songs take women places men cannot
• follow. Spinning, she looks at but doesnt see you,
• spinning, she sings lyrics too fast for you to pursue,
• spinning, she doesnt have time for questions like:
• What is this nasty song and where did she learn
• to dance like that and why, and who is this high-pitched
• bitch of a man who can sing like a woman and turn
• your mother not into your mother but a woman,
• not even a woman, but a box-braided black girl, a fast
• girl, a chick, a Vanity 6 and how far away she is from you
• right here in the same living room, dancing
• with the songs hook in her throat. And you hate
• the voice coming through the radio because another
• sissy has snatched your dreams and run off with them
• and because youre young and dont know the difference
• between abandoned and alone just like your mothers
• heart wont know the difference between beat
• and attack. Shell be dead in a decade and maybe
• you already know what youre losing without knowing
• how, but youre just a boy for now and your mother
• is just a woman, just a girl, body swaying, fingers
• snapping and snakes in her blood.

Since no one has talked to him about such feelings, he does not know what they are. And yet he is drawn to them, to the dream-like quality of doing something he has never done before, yet knowing, somehow, how to do it.

DAVID MURA

The waxy-faced weatherman on Channel 8 said we had been above 90 degrees for ten days in a row. Day after day of my T-shirt sticking to the sweat on my lower back, the smell of insect repellant gone slick with sunscreen, the air droning with the hum of cicadas, dead yellow grass cracking under every footstep, asphalt bubbling on the roads. It didnt occur to me to be nervous about the occasional wall of white smoke on the horizon that summer. Everything already looked like it was scorched, dead, or well on its way.

I was twelve years old and I had just finished the sixth grade. Most days, after Mom headed to her job at the airport, I would stay inside our apartment, stationed by the window. Cody and his younger brother, Sam, two white boys who lived a few apartment buildings over from us, were always playing catch in the parking lot, though I never joined them. I wasnt good at throwing the ball and it was too hot for me to go out and pretend.

When I wasnt at my perch, acting like I wasnt watching them, I would flip through Moms old paperback books. So far, I had tried out Tar Baby and The Color Purple, both unsuccessfully. Toni Morrisons sentences were like rivers with murky bottoms. They didnt obey the rules I was learning in school. When I stepped in, I couldnt see my feet; I retreated back to the shore. Alice Walker lost me because, a few pages in, some girl was talking about the color of her pussy. I figured the book didnt have much more to offer me after that.

Today I tried again. I picked up a worn copy of Another Country by James Baldwin, sat down cross-legged on the floor, and started reading. A sad man walks through the streets of New York City late one winter night. He goes into a jazz club looking for someone or something but doesnt say why.

Minutes pooled into hours. Black people sleeping with white people. Men kissing men, then kissing women, then kissing men again. Every few pages, I would look up from the book and peek at our apartments front door. Mom wasnt home from work yet and I felt like I would get in trouble if she saw me reading this book. I went into my bedroom, with our cocker spaniel, Kingsley, trailing behind me, and I closed the door.