Bathtub Wisdom: Forgetting and Surviving

Author: Laila, Aminata, Emmanuel, Daequan

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Black people often cope with trauma by suppressing their feelings, a tactic that can be exhausting and difficult. While in the bathtub, City’s Grandma tells him a serious life lesson that’ll stick with him for the rest of the book.

Long Division, Kiese Laymon, Copyright 2021, Chapter BOOM BOOM BOOM., 345 - 358

When Grandma finally came into the house two hours later, she made me sit on the toilet in the bathroom while she took a bath. The suds in the tub were brownish and pink from the dirt and blood on Grandma’s hands. I tried to only look at this little pinkish-brown moat of suds near the back of the tub the whole time she bathed, but I kept catching her long nipples out of the corner of my eye.

We didn’t say one word to each other until I asked her, “What happened today, Grandma?”

“Nothing, City. That man, he gone far away from here.”

“What man? Gone where?”

“Ain’t nothing in that work shed for you, you hear me?”

“Did somebody mess with you? ‘Cause I never seen you just…”

“That man is gone home, I reckon,” Grandma interrupted. “You got to be a special kind of evil to spend your whole life getting more than you deserve, then turn right around and hate on folks for getting half of what you was born into. Just evil.”

“Who is a special kind of evil?” I asked her.

“Listen.” She reached out of the bathtub and her hands touched my knee. 1“That man, that truck, this day, ain’t none of it even real as you think. Treat it like it never happened, you hear me? You are a smart child, an educated young man. You try to act grown in front of them cameras? Well, grown Black folks forget what they need to forget. That’s what grown Black folks do. Can you do that for Grandma?”

“Yeah, I can do that, Grandma, but you might want to ease up talking to me like this is fifth-grade special ed.”

Grandma’s eyes got to twitching. I looked at the ground, trying my hardest not to get whupped again. “Can you do what I asked you, City?”

“Yeah, Grandma.” | had no choice. “I can do what you asked me.”

“Okay,” Grandma said, and got out of the bathtub. She dried off while I looked at the floor. While she was looking at herself in the mirror, she said, “They always expecting us to forget. I’m tired of forgetting. You and that baby didn’t do nothing to nobody.”

I couldn’t completely understand how Grandma could go from telling me that grown folks forget what they need to saying she was tired of forgetting. I knew not to ask any more questions, but, in a way, it was all starting to make a little more sense.

DMU Timestamp: January 21, 2025 22:02

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