Hell of a Book

by Jason Mott

  “I don’t feel like arguing this point with you, Kid. I’m too tired. I’ve lost too much. I just want to be here and to wallow in all of this without feeling bad about it. And that’s all you really do, Kid. You make me feel bad about things. You make me feel bad about the world.”

  The Kid finally looks away and I hate myself for making him do it. I hate myself for not having room enough in my head for him and all the other kids like him. I hate myself for scrolling past news articles about dead kids, and dead mothers, and dead fathers. I hate myself for ignoring everything that has to do with people in pain, for spending all this time running. But what can I do? It’s the only way that I know to live.

  “Will you do it?” The Kid asks. For the first time in a long time, there’s an edge of sharpness in his voice.

  “Do what?” I say, pretending that I don’t know what he wants. Even though the truth of the matter is, I’ve known what this kid wanted from the moment I met him. It was always there, no matter how hard I tried to deny it.

  “I want you to talk about me.”

  I cluck a laugh. “You want me to tell your story.”

  “Yeah,” The Kid says. “That’s what everybody wants.”

  “But you’re not everybody. You’re a cop-killed Black kid who’s become a figment of my imagination.”

  “No,” The Kid says. “I’m the person next to you. And I just want you to talk about me. I want you to stop ignoring me. It’s like I told you in the beginning: I just want you to see me.”

  “I see you, Kid. Now go away. Leave me alone.”

  “No, to see me. To know me, to not push me away. To tell my story.”

  “I don’t know how to tell your story. It’s too big. It’s too much. What happened to you—what happened to people like you—it’s too big for anybody to ever really get behind. It’s too big of a story to tell. It hurts too fucking much. Haven’t you seen what you’ve done to me? Haven’t you already done enough? I can’t sleep. I can’t even mourn my own pain because I’m worried about yours. Pain makes people selfish. We only have so much so I can’t take yours too. I can’t carry your water, Kid.”

  “I’m not asking you to carry it,” The Kid says. “I just want you to see it. I just want you to see it the way it really is. Just stop ignoring it and look at it. Stop pretending I don’t exist. No more jokes. No more looking the other way. No avoidance. See me!”

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

  Somewhere, a Black boy walks along a street alone at night. Perhaps it is a country road. Perhaps beneath the glaring light of a bustling city. Perhaps in a small suburban village where most people do not look like him and he has been aware of that for all of his life.

  He walks along this road for no reason other than he wants to. Perhaps he has been bullied at school that day about the dark nature of his skin. Perhaps he walks because it helps him clear his head when the worry that has followed him through his life begins to get too big and clouds over everything that he sees and feels. Perhaps the late hours of the night are the time when he is finally able to be free. Perhaps crowds of people make him nervous because he has been picked on or simply felt like an outsider for all of his life and being alone takes away those feelings.

  Or, perhaps, his father was killed in front of his home years ago and he does not remember that anymore because it is simpler to not remember than to live with that memory each and every day, so he has created a world in which his father is not dead. He has created a world in which he has no father. He has created a world in which his father has simply moved away. He has created a world in which his father is simply in prison. He has created a world in which his father is off adventuring. His father is off chasing dragons and outsmarting sirens. His father is climbing great mountains, defying death again and again. His father is living on a beach in the Caribbean, basking in sunlight and sleeping until noon. His father is in Wakanda, surrounded by people who look like him and the son that has been left behind, and, one day, that father will come back for him. One day, his father will come to take him home. One day, his father will return and take away all of the pain. One day, his father will come and take him to a place where he is not afraid, a place where he does not feel like an outsider, a place where his skin is not a curse or an affliction . . . a place where no one calls him “Soot.”

  He has created a world in which, one day, his father will come and take him to a place where he has a name.

  He has created a world in which his father has died of cancer. The boy has created all of those worlds because they are easier than the world in which his father was shot and killed in front of him by the long arms of a system that he is powerless to overcome.

  So this boy, who lives in all of these imaginary worlds solely because the real world around him is more than he can bear, goes out for a walk one evening. In one iteration of this, he is a boy who goes on to become a writer who tours and drinks and dreams. In another iteration, he is a child who dies and, yet, somehow finds a way to go on. In another still, he is a child who goes on to become a writer who hides so deeply in his characters that the stories he tells of them become muddled in the story he fears to tell of himself, so he throws in dashes of truth among the lies, until even he cannot tell which is which.

  This child, he is in the country and the sky above him is littered with stars. He stares upward as he walks, like all children should, dreaming of life on those stars and imagining the stories that could occur between them. He imagines spaceships and aliens, fantastic worlds where the ills of this one do not apply. In one moment, he imagines traveling the expanse of space alone, only the hum of the meager electronics of some small spaceship to keep him company. In another moment, he imagines all of humanity surrounding him on his journey. Millions of people cluster together beneath a great window aboard the ship and they all stare out at a gas cloud being pulled into a star. The swirling trail of glimmering particles are pulled downward into the gravity of a glowing star, and everyone stands aboard the ship watching in awe. And in this particular world, on this ship, Soot stands above the crowd, watching them and watching the spectacle of the star at the same time, and he feels as though he is part of them. He feels no fear. He feels no shame. He does not feel as though he does not belong. He feels as though he is mired in with them as they make the journey through this life, even as he stands outside of the masses, watching and hoping that they will all come to love and care about him the way that, as a child, he cannot help but love and care about them.

  All of these visions and dreams go through the boy’s head as he walks alone and stares up at the stars. He is wearing a pair of old, familiar jeans and a hoodie because it is the early arm of fall that has come and wrapped itself around the earth and he loves the feeling that it has given him.

  As he walks, the world around him sings. There are night owls and crickets, a peacock, and somewhere off in the distance, the low hum of traffic as people make their way through this world. The boy imagines that the sound of traffic is the sound of a great ocean that lies just beyond the length of his vision. The ocean glimmers in the dim starlight, reflecting the universe upon its glassy surface. The ocean stretches out and reaches every place in this world and Soot dreams, briefly, of sailing across that ocean.

  Travel, the boy always dreams of travel. And why wouldn’t he? Somewhere else in this world, there has to be a better place than the one in which he finds himself. Somewhere else in this world, he cannot be afraid. Somewhere else in this world, he cannot be sad. Somewhere else in this world, he is accepted and loved and his father is not dead. It is only a matter of finding that place. It is only a matter of going out far enough into the length and breadth of the earth and that place will appear. All of the things that he wants will be made manifest if he can simply go out far enough. If he can walk long enough. If he can jump in a car or board a plane and disappear into the horizon, there will be the place where all of these fea
rs no longer live. The place where his mother is happy.

  Again, and again, and again he imagines happiness. And it is because he is so deep in his imagination that he does not see the man standing in the street ahead of him. It is because of his imagination that he does not see the blue lights flashing. It is because of his imagination that he believes that he will be okay.

  “Hands in the air.” The words go up like fireworks, and so do his hands. He has been taught this since before he can remember. “Hands in the air,” his father would tell him when he was so young that he still had to learn how to get dressed. It was a game that the two of them would play. “Hands in the air,” his father would say. And Soot—who had not yet been named “Soot” by the world—would raise his hands over his head and smile as his father pulled his shirt off. “Good job,” his father would say.

  “Hands in the air.” The words rise up like rockets. The blue lights blot out the night, blinding Soot, and, instinctively, before he knows what is happening, he looks up to see his hands in the air. His body knows how to keep him safe better than his mind does. Perhaps his father was not just dressing him on those days. Perhaps it was training.

  “What did I do?” Soot says. Again his body tries to keep him safe. His body says to him: Be quiet. Silence keeps you safe. Just do what you’re told. But as his body speaks to him, his mind says, Silence has never kept us safe. So what do we do?

  “What are you doing out here?” the figure ahead of him calls out.

  “N-nothing,” Soot says, his heart beating in his ears. “Just out for a walk.”

  “Where you walking to?”

  “Nowhere,” Soot says. “Just . . . just walking. Not really going anywhere. Just walking, that’s all.”

  “Let me see some ID.”

  “I don’t have any,” Soot says. He can feel the fear in his body as it tells him to run. It tells him to run and it tells him to hide. It tells him to fall down on his knees and beg not to be killed like his father was killed. It tells him to beg not to have a gun put in his back like his uncle had. It begs him not to be shot down like so many other boys and men that looked like him and then went on in life to become nothing more than hashtags and names on shirts instead of living out the lives that they were on course to live. All Soot wanted right then and there was to disappear. To disappear utterly and completely. Disappearing was a way out of everything in his life. Disappearing was a way out of the cycle of violence. Disappearing was a way to not hate himself when he saw that skin of his in the mirror. Disappearing was a way for him not to hate everyone else that had skin like his. Disappearing was a way out of everything and he knew that was the reason his mother had taught it to him. It was the reason she and his father had tried so hard to teach him how to disappear. If he could disappear, he could be free from fear. If he could disappear, he would not have to worry about bullies. He would not have to worry about cops. He would not have to worry about legislation aimed at his skin. He would not have to worry about the history of slavery that led him to here. He would not have to worry about feeling inferior. He would not have to worry about being angry, and afraid, and never sure which was better to feel because they both hurt in different ways but they seemed to be all that he had left. He would not have to worry about not knowing what to feel when he watched video footage of people that looked like him being sprayed with fire hoses. He would not have to worry when he saw old, grainy footage of a man standing on the steps of a school shouting “Segregation now! Segregation forever!” He would not have to worry when he saw men with torches marching in Virginia. He would not have to worry when a boy about his age in South Carolina was found hanging from a tree. He would not have to worry about watching movies and TV shows in which people who looked like him always died or, if they lived, were good only for dancing and talking about prison life and the lack of fathers. He would not have to worry about a world in which those were the only boxes he could live in. He would not have to worry about all of the kids who didn’t think he was Black enough. He would not have to worry about liking hip-hop and Dungeons & Dragons at the same time. He would not have to worry about his skin being too dark or too light. He would not have to worry about his hair being the wrong texture. He would not have to worry about his lips being too big. He would not have to worry about all of the things his mother and father had both been afraid of.

  No. He could be free of all of those things. That was the reason his parents had taught him to be invisible. That was the reason for the gift they gave him.

  Soot closed his eyes.

  “What are you doing?” the voice called out from the darkness.

  Soot said nothing. He only focused on disappearing. He took in a deep breath and held it and focused on slipping away into that other place where he was safe and unseen.

  “Answer me!” the cop yelled.

  Soot heard what sounded like a gun being drawn. It was a sound he’d heard a thousand times before in movies and on television. That slip of steel against leather. A shudder of fear ran through him, and broke his concentration briefly. He opened his eyes and, sure enough, there was the barrel of the gun aimed at him. The cop holding the gun took a step forward and, finally, Soot could see his face. He was young-looking, with thin, brown hair and a square face. Even though his face was tight, Soot could imagine him being a kind man. If he had a family, he was the type of dad who made shadow puppets in the late hours of the night. He was the type of dad who was hard on the outside but gentle on the inside. The type of dad who lectured you about doing something wrong and then, moments later, tried to think of a prank that the two of you could do on Mom.

  He was not the type of person who would shoot a boy.

  Soot closed his eyes again. He could hear the music that came with his invisibility. He could feel the warmth of that place. The freedom. The safety.

  “Hands up!” came the command, then came the gunshots.

  Soot felt nothing before the darkness swept over him. No pain, no fear. He only heard the voices of his parents, each of them calling his name, each of them screaming out for him, moaning and wailing, trying to save his life, just as they had been trying to do every day since he was born.

  But, in the end, as it is with all of us, he could not be protected from the world.

  This was supposed to be a love story. The kind of story that started off serious and mixed in some funny and stayed both ways from beginning to end. The typical format: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. But here we are. It’s all fallen apart and I don’t know what to do with it.

  “Man . . . so what?”

  You don’t get it, Kid. This is bigger than all of that. This isn’t just about the fact that I didn’t find anybody to love. It’s not about the fact that I didn’t get my new novel written in time. It’s not even about the way that my mother died.

  I know why your mom taught you to be invisible. She wanted to protect you. Being who we are . . . it’s hard. We get shot or put in jail. It’s all we see. It’s all we know. Our whole story is about pain and loss, slavery and oppression. It defines us. It seeps into our skin. We bleed it even as we’re covered by it. All we want is to be something other than the pain that we have been born into. All we want is to be known for something else. We want the great history we see in others. And all we’re ever given is the story of being in pain and being forced to overcome.

  Your mama, she wanted to protect you. Protect you from bullets. Protect you from cops. Protect you from judges. Protect you from mirrors that you would look into and see something less than beautiful. She wanted to protect you from the black skin that you should adore and be proud of, but that you’re going to spend your whole life trying not to hate. You’ll hate it in yourself and in anyone who looks like you. You’ll secretly see other Black people and hate them for not solving the riddle of the self-loathing you’ve been taught. It’ll follow you through everything in your life. You’l
l be angry and not know why. And the anger won’t ever go away, not really. It’ll hang in the back of your mind. It’ll hang in the back of your world, haunting you, guiding all of your decisions. And when you get tired of being angry, it still won’t go away. It’ll just change into something even worse. You’ll take that anger and turn it on yourself and it’ll call itself depression. And, just like anger, it’ll take over your life. It’ll live with you every day. You’ll look in the mirror and hate what you see. You’ll tell that person in the mirror—with that skin that looks so dark—that it’s broken. You’ll tell that person that they deserve less. You’ll tell that person that the good things in this world are not for them.

  And then, rarely, you’ll try to break out of that. The pendulum will swing in the other direction. Maybe you’ll take a stab at being an optimist. You’ll say that race doesn’t matter. You’ll say that everyone is treated equally and you’ll try to live that life. You might even say that you don’t see color. You’ll hide in not being as Black as some other Black people. You’ll look at Black people who don’t behave the way you do as doing it wrong. You’ll divide yourself up. You’ll make fun of the way they talk, the way they dress.

  But all you’ll really be doing is making fun of yourself.

  But, for a little while, it’ll feel good.

  And then, when you’ve been optimistic for long enough, you’ll turn on the news and someone who looks just like you will have been shot and killed. And maybe the optimism will hold for a while. Maybe you’ll be able to say to yourself, “Well, that’s just one case. A freak accident. It doesn’t mean that the world is like that.”

  And then—and this part won’t take long—you’ll see another case. You’ll see another person who looks like you that’s been shot. And then you’ll see another. And another. And another. And maybe you’ll stop reading the news. You’ll retreat into books or movies. But then you won’t see anyone who looks like you. Or, if they do, they don’t act like you. They act like those stereotypes. They act like those Black people that you always thought you were better than, those people who use the language you don’t. Those people that dress the way you don’t.