by Kekla Magoon
The night, the march, the melee. It all comes rushing back. The baton. Falling down. Someone knocking the cop off me. Who?
“Ow,” I repeat. The pain is blinding, stabbing. I let my eyes close.
“Nurse!” Brick calls. “We need some pain meds in here!”
“It’s not time yet,” a woman’s voice says. “Stop yelling, please.”
“Look at her face,” Brick thunders. “It’s time.”
Ow.
They argue. Brick is fierce. You wouldn’t expect it of someone in his line of work, but he’s fiercest when he’s fighting for someone else. I wonder if he knows that about himself. Or if he’d want to know. It’s probably not great for his street cred. I laugh to myself.
The pain is less now. I’m floating.
Brick’s hands are on mine. “You’re okay,” he says. “You’re okay.”
I’m not, though, am I? My shoulder is on fire. Even as the pain dulls from the meds, it still smolders. Is it broken? Am I broken?
“How’s the other girl?” I ask. The one I was running with. We tried to get away.
“What other girl?”
“I don’t know. There was a girl.”
Brick shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
Sadness floods me. I don’t know who she is. I’ll never know how the night turned out for her.
My hand relaxes under Brick’s. It’s hard to hold the bar anymore. I don’t see the reason to try. He places my fingers gently on my stomach. “Rest,” he says. “I’ll come see you again later.”
Brick’s here. He’s here for me. Things are okay even though they’re not okay. I can sleep.
I wonder what this medicine is. I can feel it getting all up in my veins, softening my body into sleep. Whatever it is, it’s the good stuff. Lucky my job comes with health insurance. This is going to be expensive.
OFFICER YOUNG
“They can’t keep this up,” O’Donnell says. “They’re gonna wear themselves out.”
“Not before we drown in paperwork,” says the desk sergeant. “Christ, look at all these arrest reports.”
O’Donnell throws a pen at him. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, for God’s sake.” They laugh.
I laugh along with them—some things are automatic. Some things come easy. Some things, you don’t think about until after.
My mind is crammed with images from last night. Adrenaline does that. Makes you remember every tiny moment of stress. Particularly the moment—Crack!—when my baton came down, shattering the girl’s shoulder.
A girl. Small as anything. A hundred pounds soaking wet, as they say. Unarmed. In the light of day, I think, she couldn’t have hurt me. There and then, I wasn’t so sure.
It shakes me.
It shakes me, not being sure. You have to be sure. To lash out is a last resort. Always.
Always.
“They can’t keep it up,” O’Donnell says again. “Twenty bucks says it’s all over after tonight.”
A flare-up, we call it. A small dose of civil unrest. It never lasts. Look at the history. The worst offenders get arrested and the crowd loses momentum. Loses interest. When there’s no one to follow, everybody goes home. We crack down hard, to ensure it.
Crack!
I consider the unbridled rage it must take for a girl that small to come at a guy like me, someone armed and in uniform. She had nothing, and still she came at me. I think about how it feels to fight for your life. What it looks like when you have nothing to lose.
It isn’t over. We’ll be right back out there tonight. And the next night. And the next.
“I’ll take that action,” I tell O’Donnell. He raises his brows. I pull two tens out of my wallet, toss them on the desk. “They can keep it up at least a few more days. They don’t see any other choice.”
DEVANTE
“I’m sorry,” I tell Uncle Steve on the drive to the precinct. “You must blame me for dragging Will into this.”
Steve’s hands are on the wheel, but he turns to look at me. “Not at all,” he says. “Not even a little bit.”
I blame me, I guess. I ran. I got out. When the ship was going down, I took the only lifeboat.
They all got arrested. Will. Robb. Even Tyrell, which seems so absurd to me that I don’t even know what to do with it.
But not me. I ran.
It’s not like I thought it through. I didn’t make a choice. It just happened. I saw an opening and I took it. I thought they were all right behind me. Why weren’t they? If I’d known they were getting caught, I would have tried to help. I think. I hope. But, I mean, what could I really have done? Get arrested alongside them? Why should I feel this bad for saving myself?
If last night proves anything, it’s that there is no actual justice. There is only getting lucky, or not.
“It’s not your fault,” Steve says. “Try to get out from under that.”
I can’t. I can’t. “I know. I will.”
“We should blame the system,” Steve says. “This broken justice system. That’s the truth. But I don’t. I blame myself, too.”
“What? How is it your fault? You weren’t even there.”
Steve shakes his head. “For not stopping you from going. For not going with you. I feel like I could have stopped it.”
The car rolls along through the refuse-strewn streets of Underhill. There’s nothing left to say. The system is broken. The scales are tipped. No balance. All the fault slides one way. We are two black men, carrying the weight of the world.
Black men. We are always guilty. Always to blame.
STEVE CONNERS
We park in front of the precinct. “Wait here,” I tell DeVante. I don’t want to complicate matters inside.
My cell vibrates as I’m walking toward the door I was instructed to use. JOHN LANSBURY.
“John.” I answer, against my better judgment.
“The verdict is going to complicate our lives. We expected this, but not the extent of the rioting. We need a meeting.”
“I’m taking half a sick day,” I tell him. “I called into the office this morning.”
“Let’s meet in the conference room at ten,” he suggests.
“I won’t be in until one,” I tell him.
“Today? Why would you make a doctor’s appointment today of all days? We have to turn this plan around ASAP. Anything we can do to counteract the impression that the police department is racist.”
To counteract the impression … I stare up at the cold, grungy facade of the building in front of me. To counteract the impression …
“Steve?” John barks. “We need you.”
“Take me off the account,” I say. “I’m not doing it anymore.”
John starts to respond but I don’t know with what.
I’ve hung up.
ZEKE
“Get off your butt and go talk to the girl, Ezekiel!” My sister busts out my full name for emphasis. I’m curled up on the couch trying to watch reruns of Jeopardy! Except I’m not trying to beat them to answer. I’m not even keeping score. Monae sits in the armchair, eyeing me with annoying perception.
“Leave me alone, Mom,” I grumble.
Monae squeals in outrage. “Oh, no, he didn’t!”
My eyes are closed, but I sense her coming at me. “Oof. Monae…”
She’s sitting on me. Her bony butt right square on top of my hip. She punches me lightly in the stomach. “You. Take. That. Back.” Now she’s tickling me.
“Monae!” I squirm out from under her, but she’s pinned me good. “I’m not in the mood for—ahhh. Ahhh!” We scrabble for control.
“Take it back!” she shouts.
“I take it back! Uncle.”
Monae smacks my butt. “Go talk to her.”
“Not now.” I rearrange my blanket. “I think we broke up.”
“You ‘think’?” Monae settles on the coffee table.
“I’m pretty sure, yeah.”
“Zeke, honestly.” She sips a gl
ass of water that came from I don’t know where. Tormenting me is thirsty work, apparently. “That’s the kind of thing you want to be sure about before you get this committed to wallowing.”
“What are you talking about?” I shift so I can see the TV past her.
Monae reaches for the remote control and powers the whole set off.
“Hey. I was watching that.”
“You should be at SCORE,” she says. “It’s kind of a big day over there. And instead, you’re here.”
“Shut up.” As if I don’t feel guilty enough about all the ways I’m failing. I bit off more than I could chew. Everything got out of hand. My protest was a disaster. Almost a hundred people arrested. Twenty hospitalized, not even including all the folks who got gassed and showed up at the clinic. What kind of organizer am I ever going to be, with this track record? I bury my face in the throw pillows. “I screwed it all up. Kimberly hates me.”
“That girl is gaga for you.” Monae leans forward and squeezes my shoulder. “Did she actually say the words ‘I want to break up’?”
“No,” I moan. It was so much worse.
“Or, ‘I don’t think we should see each other anymore’?”
“No.” The tiniest stirring of hope flutters inside me.
“Seriously, bro,” Monae insists. “You’re not being yourself. What’s it going to take to get you off my couch and back to work?”
The pillow absorbs the brunt of my guttural protest. Monae yanks it out from under me. My teeth click as my face bounces off the couch cushion. “Hey.”
“You need to tell me what happened. Tell me everything. You are in desperate need of a girlfriend whisperer.”
KIMBERLY
Zeke texts me.
I have to be in the office all day. Can I come over later? We should talk.
My heart is exploding. Yes! Of course. I want to talk. I attempt several versions of a response. Exclamation point, or no exclamation point? Multiple exclamation points? I end up with:
Okay. Can I help at the office?
There is a pause.
Don’t you have to work? I can’t get into our thing yet.
I want to see him. I want to see him so bad that I’m tempted to just show up anyway. Work can just be work, right? Instead I say:
I can help from here. What do you need?
I spend the morning working on press materials and placing calls to legal aid. Zeke arrives before dinnertime. Jennica’s still at work, so we have the apartment to ourselves.
“Hi.” He gives me a little pecking kiss.
“Hi,” I say. Then I blurt out, “We had a fight.”
“Yeah.” Zeke shrugs out of his coat. “Our first fight. It’s kind of a landmark.”
Our first fight. The way he says it makes it sound romantic. Some of the awkwardness is stripped away. Not all of it.
“Wine?” I offer. “Or tea?”
“Tea is good,” he says. “Wine later?” His voice sounds hopeful, like he wants us to be talking for a while.
“That sounds good. We have all night.” I set the kettle on and he hovers near the counter.
“I’m sorry, Kimberly,” Zeke says, as I pull out the mugs. “I am the sort of person who gets pretty upset when I feel like I have failed at something. Sometimes I take my feelings out on other people.”
The way he says it is funny. Stilted, or something. It sounds like he’s repeating something someone told him about himself.
“You haven’t failed,” I assure him. “Why do you think you failed?”
“The protest,” he says. “And then I was mean and you ran away. So, double fail.” He shrugs self-deprecatingly. “I didn’t handle it well.”
“I didn’t, either,” I admit. “We were too stressed. That part was my fault. I brought up … things I shouldn’t have.”
“I’m taking the job in DC,” Zeke says.
“I know,” I answer. “I’m happy for you. And I don’t want you to go.”
“I know,” he says. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
The teakettle whistles. Zeke loves me! I feel like we should kiss or something, but instead I fuss with the water and the tea bags. We sit on the couch.
Zeke pauses. “Kimberly, could you tell me more about your relationship with Senator Sloan?”
That stilted voice again. Is he working from a script?
“It’s a little hard to talk about that.” There’s so much I want to tell him, and so much I’m scared to say out loud.
Zeke puts down his tea and takes mine, too. He holds my hands tightly. “You can talk to me about anything.”
I stare at our hands. “I know.”
“It seems like … maybe there’s some history there?” he says. “Did he hurt you somehow?”
I can’t look at Zeke. “He was nice to me in a time when a lot of people weren’t. He made me believe…” I let my voice trail off. “I owe him a lot, I guess.”
“I don’t want to work for someone bad.”
Oh. He was listening. He believed me.
“It’s complicated,” I admit. “The things he’s famous for, I mean, he did those things. He makes a difference.”
Zeke takes my hands. “Then what is it?” He’s gentle. “I know you. You don’t lash out at people for no reason.”
“I—” I lower my head. “The truth is, I’m mad at him because he’s taking you away.” It is a deep truth and a huge lie all at once. It shatters the scale.
“Kimberly—”
“We just got started. I don’t want to lose you.” My voice gets all clogged and annoying.
Zeke frowns. “Nothing happens immediately. It’s not until the summer. Not until I graduate. The job would start after that. That’s a lot of time to figure out what we want to do.”
We. The tiniest glimmer of hope flares, then fades. The reality of what is to come is too big, too heavy.
“In other words,” Zeke says, leaning toward me. “I have four months to convince you that you should come with me.”
EVA
In the end, it is just Mommy and me who get to enjoy the amenities. Daddy has to pass a test with a doctor so that he can go back to work.
Mommy lounges in a stretchy rubber chair while I splash in the big swimming pool until all of me is a prune. We eat fancy food that I don’t know how to say the names of. Some of it is yum. Some of it is yuck. (Snails? Ewww.)
“We should call Daddy on the phone,” I say.
“No, I don’t think we should,” Mommy answers.
JENNICA
Kimberly is leaving. She says she hasn’t decided, but I know her. Maybe better than she knows herself.
We snuggle in my bed, for the first time in weeks, while she tells me all about it. Her body is warm against my back and she has her arms around me. It’s perfect. It’s lovely. I could forget all of it, I could pretend that this is how it will be forever. But she won’t stop talking.
She promises to find me another roommate. One of the SCORE girls, or something. If she goes, that is.
She and Zeke will pack a U-Haul and tow his car behind it. If she goes, that is.
She says I can keep some of her furniture, partly because she doesn’t want to leave me in the lurch, and partly because it will be exciting for them to pick things out together for their new place, which will be small, of course. She has been looking at DC rental listings online for days. If she goes, that is.
It is a lot of talking about “ifs” for someone who hasn’t made up her mind.
I want to tell her, Don’t go. I even know what to say to convince her. I know her better than she knows herself.
But I don’t say those things. In the back of my mind, in between all the “ifs,” I know what my dear friend is trying to say. She wants me to know that I am strong, that I have always been strong, that I can be strong even without her.
So I stay still, and quiet, soaking up Kimberly’s smell and her touch. I remind myself that everything is fleeting. I remind my
self that this place we are in, these moments together are what made me strong. I haven’t always been that way.
We lie together for a long time, and eventually she does grow quiet. When all the “ifs” have been spoken, they spread over us like a blanket.
“You’re going,” I whisper.
“Maybe.” Her voice is sleepy now. But I won’t send her to her own bed. Another night or two of comfort may be all I ever get. She sighs. “It’s such a big decision. Scary.”
“He’s so good,” I remind her. “You love him. And he can take you everywhere.”
For some of us, going anywhere is impossible. Kimberly is not one of those people. She never has been. Zeke knows and I know. And I love her enough to make sure she knows it, too.
WILL/EMZEE
My room is too warm today, but it’s where I want to be. I pace between the beds, over to the window and back. Frost has formed on the outside corners of the window, and when I press my hands to the glass it feels nicely cool.
Like every day now, I think about going out. I pack my bag and in the end it remains on my rug. Sitting ready.
When Tariq Johnson died, it was about who we are. Every black boy. Are we the faceless, hoodie-clad punks? Are we the honor students, or the gang members? Are we so flawed that we deserve this fate?
When Shae Tatum died, it was different. It was about how they treat us, no matter how good or innocent we are. It was about how a black face is a black face is a black face. A threat no matter how you slice it.
Steve knocks at my door. I can tell his knock from my mother’s, because he raps, then waits. Mom raps with one hand while the other is already turning the door handle.
“What do you want?”
Steve takes that as an invitation, which it isn’t. He comes in, carrying a few plastic shopping bags. He lays them on my second bed, and I can tell what they are by their shape, by the way they settle. Art supplies.
He tugs at the butts of the bags, spilling them out. Notebooks and canvases, paints and pencils and charcoal. A cornucopia.
