Resistance

by Nia Forrester

  Resistance: A Love Story

  The ‘Shorts’ Series

  Nia Forrester

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Kai

  Chapter 2

  Lila

  Chapter 3

  Kai

  Chapter 4

  Lila

  Chapter 5

  Kai

  Chapter 6

  Lila

  Chapter 7

  Kai

  Chapter 8

  Lila

  About the Author

  Also by Nia Forrester

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Stiletto Press

  Philadelphia PA 19109

  www.niaforrester.com

  Copyright 2020

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Resistance: A Love Story/ Nia Forrester -- 1st edition

  For the young warriors.

  Chapter One

  Kai

  I met my wife in jail today. I know it sounds crazy but for real, I’ma marry this girl.

  First time I saw her was out there by the statue. The crowd was thick, and there was already smoke in the air because some fool set fire to a police car and after that, we just went off. Everybody was getting hype, not because we were looking for shit to tear up (okay, maybe some of us were) but because the energy in the air just … snapped.

  I don’t know how else to explain it. One minute, the crowd was taut and wound up tight and the next, we smelled smoke and the tightness pulled … extending itself until everything broke free. Once that happened, the march turned into an all-out melee with folks running this way and that way and yelling and screaming. Some of the organizers were trying to get the situation under control, but by then it was too late, and things had jumped all the way off. One minute I was walking next to my boy, Lamar, and the next everyone had splintered off into little satellites of chaos.

  Most of the action was over where this one skinny white dude looked like he came out of nowhere and just started whacking the hell out of the statue that had long stood, like an enduring insult to the city’s Black population. The white kid mounted its back, trying to tear it down. And it looked like he might do it, too. It started rocking on its base, just with the weight of this skinny kid who had the determination of ten men ten times his size. I mean, he seemed to want that sucker down way more than any of us Black folks did.

  Everybody was cheering him on, and I was doing the same.

  That phrase—mob mentality—that’s some real shit. It’s its own kind of high, giving over your will to the will and energy of the mass of bodies pressing around you, your mind as blank as a sheet of white paper.

  So everybody was distracted, watching this kid, right? Just chanting and egging him on. Didn’t even spot this whole wall of cops coming down 15th Street, all suited-up like they were going to war, helmets in place, batons in hand, the whole nine.

  I don’t care what nobody tell you. You see that, and the only impulse you have is to flee. That flight-or-fight impulse kicks in like a motherfucker. And if you got a lick of sense, seeing them looking the way they did, you’d better choose ‘flight’ over fight. Even me, a kid from the DC suburbs who never until this week had too many face-to-face interactions with law enforcement, negative or otherwise. You see all those dudes in blue, grimacing behind their face-shields and something inside you just activates and says, ‘run!’

  Except, it wasn’t a voice inside me, it was a real voice. A female voice.

  Somehow, I heard her over all the other voices, and I wasn’t the only one. It was like we all turned in unison to see the cops headed our way and then we scattered, stumbling over each other and looking for a pathway to escape. But the cops weren’t just ahead of us, they had been approaching for a while and were fanned out in a semi-circular formation, virtually surrounding us.

  It looked like they had pretty early on focused in on the group that I was part of, the group that was preoccupied with tearing down that statue. Before I started booking like everyone else, I spared one glance in the direction of the girl whose voice sounded the alarm.

  She was wearing a black tank top, black jeans and a grey sweatshirt knotted around her waist. She carried a backpack, and her long braids, a few of them bearing cowrie shells draped long, down her back and over her shoulders. Her expression was one of pure, animal panic. Just as she turned to follow her own advice and run, someone bumped her shoulder and she spun, almost in a complete circle, looking dazed and disoriented for a moment.

  Only about fifty feet away from her, I thought about going to help her out, but then someone was jostling me, and it was like a jolt back to reality.

  Run!

  Every cell in my body seemed to be screaming that word, except not the word, but the instinct.

  Run! Run!

  So, I did.

  I could feel my heart beating hard, the blood pounding in my temples and smell the smoke. It entered my nostrils, burning as it went down, blazing a path into my overworked lungs. There was a weird odor in the air like vinegar and an acrid smoke that within a fraction of a second caused my eyes to tear and grow hot and cloudy. Soon the heat turned to stinging and then the stinging turned to an inferno and I had the almost uncontrollable urge to claw my own eyes out of my head.

  And here’s the weirdest part of all. I couldn’t see, but I was still running! I felt damn near every sensation in my body at once—heart pumping, lungs expanding, and even blood coursing through my veins. But I didn’t feel the pavement beneath my feet. The only reason I knew I was running was because through the clouds of bitter smoke, the scenery and faces changed, and I was running with a herd, as mindless as a zebra escaping a determined hunting lion.

  Remembering the instructions of the march organizers, I somehow managed to grab the hem of my t-shirt and pull it up to cover my nose and mouth. But it was too late. I was running practically blind and knew, just knew that any second now I would trip over something, or someone, and fall to my knees.

  I didn’t.

  What happened was much worse. A pair of meaty arms grabbed me from behind, wrapping themselves around me like some kind of fucking anaconda, and I went down, hard and face first, about to crash into the pavement or the street—I honestly didn’t even know which by then—with no way to break my fall.

  The only thing that stopped me from cracking my face open, ironically, was the forearm of whoever it was that grabbed me. He fell atop me, something hard, pressing into my spine so I winced, or maybe howled. My elbow slammed into the ground, shooting a sharp pain up my arm, followed by my chin. I felt the skin scrape, and break, and the blood and sting that came shortly after.

  “C’mere, motherfucker!” the person on top of me gritted out.

  My head was spinning from the impact, my teeth felt loose in my head and my arm hurt like a bitch. I was like a rag-doll by the time the person holding me lifted his weight off my back then dragged me to my feet by the waistband of my jeans.

  He lifted me up so hard and so high, the crotch of my jeans bit into my nuts, which of course only made me grimace more, or maybe I yelped like a puppy getting beat. Either way, that shit hurt, and if there had been any fight left in me after the fall, it was gone.

  Nagin! I heard the cop yell. Where’s it at?

  Nagin, or someone, yelled something back and then I was being dragged, stumbling backwa
rd over my feet, to what turned out to be a van. It was the kind I sometimes saw pull into the courthouse building, no windows on the side, just two on the back, small, cloudy, and covered in chicken-wire.

  I never even got a good look at the cop’s face before he spun me around and shoved me face forward into the back of the van.

  You’re under arrest, you piece of shit.

  Getting arrested in a protest march hadn’t been part of my plans. I was behind on my reading for class because I spent the better part of the night before having yet another fight with Brittainy.

  Brittainy is the girl I was kind of kicking it with before school shut down. She had long gone home to Miami to ride out the national crisis with her parents and I stayed in the city because I had my own apartment and me and my folks decided that if it came to that, driving back to DC wouldn’t be a big deal.

  I think you’ll be more of a mind to study if you’re not back here with all your friends, my mother said. Because you know everyone’s treating this like it’s some extended vacation, and you cannot afford to let your grades slip, Kai.

  Nah, you’re right, I told her.

  And my dad concurred. It’s probably good to keep as close to your routine as possible, he said. Until the semester is done. Then you come home as scheduled.

  I mean, nothing about what was happening was ‘routine’ but there was still a tinge of denial in the way folks were dealing with it, and my folks were no exception. And the truth was, I liked my apartment. It was comfortable, and I did need to keep my grades up going into senior year. Just like my moms said, if I went back to DC, it would be too tempting not to hit up my boys, Coe and Jason and go play some ball, maintaining the appropriate CDC-recommended distance.

  I spent my days attending virtual classes and studying and submitting my assignments electronically, which was how we generally did it anyway. And once a day or so, I had a video-call with Brittainy.

  At first, it was cool, both of us making jokes about wanting to have FaceTime sex and making suggestive comments. One time she flashed me a little of her nipple and another, lifted her skirt to show me she had nothing underneath, but her heart wasn’t in it and I wasn’t about to force her into anything she didn’t feel one-hundred-percent comfortable with.

  Problem was, once the promise of getting busy—even in our imaginations—was not an option, I realized how much of Brittainy’s appeal was and had always been the sex or anticipation of sex. We didn’t have much to talk about, that was the bottom line. And since she was basically a very social creature, my long pauses, and inability to think of a single interesting thing to say to her rubbed her the wrong way. She could probably see my eyes glazing over when we talked, so she got testy with me.

  I started calling her by phone instead of using FaceTime since it was less painful to look at each other blankly as well as endure the long silences. And that’s when the bickering started. She wanted to know why I never offered to have her stay with me through everything. She asked whether I was talking to other girls. And the determining fight, the one that made me know for sure we were done was when she asked if I was watching pornos.

  Of course I was watching pornos! The hell she think?

  So I told her that, and she started talking about how it made her feel insecure.

  Brittainy, I told her. I can’t do anything about your insecurity. And I especially can’t do anything about it from a thousand miles away.

  Yes, you can, she said. You can reassure me.

  Of what? That I won’t think about sex while you’re gone?

  No, she said. That you won’t think about sex with anyone but me.

  I laughed, and she hung up on me.

  And then the other crisis hit. The one that had always been there and kept on hitting. But this time, it hit different. Because there was a graphic, stomach-churning, rage-inducing tape of how things went down. There were a couple days, a few of pure, sickening shock. It was like the collective of Black people in the entire country, maybe even the world, was holding their hands to their throats and hoping it wasn’t real, even while they knew it was.

  We were all waiting, right? Ever hopeful people that we are … we were hoping that this time, what we saw with our own eyes would be viewed in exactly the same way by even people who didn’t look like us. But nah. What we got was an official scolding, a warning not to expect too much, that we were being too impatient …

  So, all hell broke loose.

  Lamar hit me up about the same time my parents did, him calling on one line, my folks on the other.

  I picked up Lamar first. I already knew what my parents were going to say.

  You believe this bullshit? he said without greeting.

  Yeah, bruh. I believe it. That’s the fucked up part. I completely believe it.

  Lamar sucked his teeth and I heard the beep of my parents trying me again.

  I’m come scoop you, Lamar said. We ‘bout to make a move.

  Who’s ‘we’? I asked. And what kinda move you talkin’ ‘bout?

  Lamar, being who he is, could mean anything from a prayer vigil to robbing a bank, so clarification was necessary.

  Kai, he said, placing weight on his pronunciation of my name. After the bullshit we seein’ is there any move you wouldn’t be down for right now?

  I thought for a second. There were a few. But I weighed the odds. Lamar wasn’t stupid. Whatever he had in mind …

  Nah, I said. Whatever it is, I’m down.

  Good.

  When I hung up from Lamar, I called my parents back. I could hear CNN in the background, Wolf Blitzer’s voice—though I couldn’t quite make out his words—conveying the momentousness of what was occurring around the country, along with a very subtle note that sounded almost like approval.

  For the occasion, my father was the designated spokesperson as I had known he would be. He has a weighty, dense baritone that could make the ordering a Popeye’s chicken sandwich sound as significant as the Gettysburg Address. That is, if my father was ever the type of dude to go to, let alone eat from a Popeye’s.

  Kai, he told me. I don’t have to imagine with you’re feeling right now. Because I’m feeling all the same things. Your mother and I both are. Last night …

  He went on to talk about how my mother cried when she finally made herself watch the video; and continued to cry on and off all through the night.

  Now I understand the urge to take to the streets … Because the cause is a righteous one, but your mother and I are not willing to sacrifice your life to it. And tonight, the stakes are that high. You could lose your life out there, Kai. If your mother sheds tears, please don’t let them be tears for you.

  He almost convinced me. Almost. Because as my parents’ only son, doing something to harm myself is like doing something to harm them. But the thing is … I know my father.

  You know how some Black men, when they’re tall, when their voices are deep, when they know they look imposing … how they sometimes make themselves smaller around white folks? My pops is six-four. A big dude with a barrel chest and thick strong arms. He scared the piss outta my friends when I was a kid. And outta some of their parents too.

  But he never shrunk himself for anyone. He walks with his head high, shoulders square, chest out. He doesn’t fall back to let the world adjust and accommodate him, he claims his place and space in the world.

  So, fuck that. I was ready for whatever Lamar had in mind. Black people have been accommodating for far too long, constantly waiting for the world to make way. It was time for us to claim our place and space.

  I hear you, I told my pops. I don’t want her crying either.

  There was a pause. Then he said, Lemme let you talk to her.

  I think there was permission in that pause. A message between us as men. He wasn’t saying ‘don’t go’ he was saying, ‘be careful when you do.’

  I told my mother I was good, and that no, I didn’t see anything happening near my apartment. She told me she loved me, and
I said it back.

  I hung up and went to change into loose, comfortable clothes. Sneakers.

  And then I waited for Lamar.

  The back of the van was smelly and crowded. There were about fifteen of us, crouched and sitting on the floor and on the hard benches on the sides. No one was cuffed. Everyone looked dazed. In one corner, a white girl was sobbing while another girl, poured water from a water bottle into her eyes. A kid who looked about sixteen yelled and pounded on the side of the van, making it rock back and forth.

  Chill out with that shit, homie! another guy shouted at him. They already got us! Damn!

  Shut the fuck up! the young kid, shouted back. And then he kept pounding on the side of the van.

  I sunk down, allowing myself to fall on my ass. My legs felt rubbery and uncertain and my eyes were so hot, I could almost believe that what was streaming down my face was them melting out of my head. The urge to rub the pain away was still there, but we’d been told that that was the worst thing you could do, that it could result in serious damage and even loss of sight.

  Here, someone said.

  And then I felt a cool liquid coursing over my face. It was milk.

  My cloudy vision was cloudier still for a few moments, and then cleared a little. My eyes felt slightly better.

  Stings like a motherfucker, don’t it?

  I nodded, and the person poured more milk on my face. Just as my eyes started to feel better, my arms and chest began itching.

  Don’t scratch, the same voice said.