Heavy

Now a graduate student, and suffering from full-blown anorexia, Laymon visits his Uncle Jimmy. Uncle and nephew are worried about each other: Jimmy is dubious about Laymon’s new fondness for weight loss, and Laymon can see that Jimmy has developed a serious addiction problem. While the two are talking, Laymon’s mother calls from the hospital. Laymon’s grandmother has passed out, and his mother has discovered a badly infected head wound concealed under her wig.

Laymon is appalled by what he finds at the hospital: his stalwart grandmother screaming and begging for God’s mercy, while a doctor carves out the terrible wound. “Folk always assumed black women would recover but never really cared if black women recovered,” Laymon writes (169). Laymon’s grandmother makes it through the surgery, and Laymon and Jimmy sit by her bed. As she recovers, she quizzes Jimmy about his health; Laymon ducks out so he doesn’t have to support Jimmy’s lies. On the way, he weighs himself. He’s alarmingly thin now but believes he can get even skinnier if he “works harder.”

More family comes to visit, and Laymon’s mother goes out gambling with his aunts. He gives her all the money he has on him, and she gambles it away.