by Jason Mott
And then, eventually, you’ll come to understand that you’re all the same person. You’ll finally come to understand that you’re a part of it all. That they’re you. And that’ll break your heart and make you proud at the same time. And the anger and depression will cycle back through again and again and the only way to escape them is to pretend that you don’t see how broken the world is. It’ll be that way every single day of your life.
And then, you’ll have kids one day, and you’ll want desperately to protect them from all of that.
That’s what your mama wanted. She wanted to protect you. She wanted to have a son that she could keep safe from all of this. She wanted to have a child that could exist beyond it all. She wanted a child that could be free from it. A child that could never get shot. A child that didn’t have to be afraid. A child that she didn’t have to be afraid for because, at any moment, they could just disappear.
They could hide from the gun. From the cops. From the judges. From the mirror.
That’s all she wanted for you.
And she made it happen. She gave that to you. She made you able to be free . . . but it didn’t work forever. It never does. You still died. You still got shot because the truth is that we can never get away from this. None of us.
And I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know what to do with what happened to you, with what happened to all the other kids like you, with what happened to me. To all the kids like you who got shot and maybe even lived through it and grew up to be people like me: Black and broken and trying to remember that they are beautiful.
Trying and trying and trying, day in and day out. Through song, through dance, through pants hung low and bass beats. But we’re all fractured and I’m not sure if we’ll ever be made whole. I know I won’t. I don’t know if I’ll ever really be okay.
God knows we’re all trying. But maybe you can be a little better than I was.
* * *
—
“Can I ask you something?”
After all we’ve been through, Kid? You can ask me anything.
“Am I real?”
You’re as real as I am, Soot.
“I never told you my name.”
I know. And I never told you mine. But that’s what they used to call me back when I was a kid. So that’s what they called you.
“Did your daddy get shot like my daddy did?”
What you’re really asking is whether or not you and I are the same person. And I’m not really sure that it matters. No. What matters here with me and you, Kid, is what we do with it all. What matters is how we feel about it, about one another, about ourselves. What matters is the fact that if it wasn’t my dad that got shot and killed it was somebody else’s dad. What matters is that if it wasn’t you or me that got shot and killed, it was another kid.
And it’s always been someone in this world. That’s the catch.
I know I told you that people weren’t real, but at some point, a person can’t just keep getting by like that. At some point, a person has to be seen. You told me that. You asked me for that. At some point, we have to turn on the news and see people and have them follow us home. We have to be able to sit around in our house and see them there. We have to be able to talk to them just the same as we would if they were sitting right in front of us.
“Is that what I am?”
I guess. And that’s what I am too. I’m not real to anybody. I’m just someone they see on the dust jacket of a book. Or maybe they see my face on my website, but not likely. Sharon used to tell me how few people visited author websites. Mostly, I’m just as unreal as you are. And yet, if you asked me, I’d say that I was totally and completely real. I’d say that the story I’ve told you about my life was a real one. I’d say that it all happened to me just the way I described it, just like you’d say that the things that happened to you happened just the way you described them.
You and me, Kid, we’re the same person in that sense. And maybe in a bigger sense than that. You know how I told you that this was going to be a love story?
“Yeah.”
Maybe that’s still true, just not in the way that I expected. Maybe the love story here is more reflective, you know? Like maybe Narcissus had spent his whole life hating himself before that one day when he saw his own beauty, his own worth.
“Ha ha! Geez, that’s lame.”
Laugh all you want, but I think learning to love yourself in a country where you’re told that you’re a plague on the economy, that you’re nothing but a prisoner in the making, that your life can be taken away from you at any moment and there’s nothing you can do about it—learning to love yourself in the middle of all that? Hell, that’s a goddamn miracle.
* * *
—
I walk over to The Kid and open my arms and he looks frightened for a second, like he doesn’t know what I’m doing. But he knows exactly what I’m doing and he’s afraid of it. Hell, so am I. But I’m also tired of being afraid. My whole life I’ve lived afraid. My whole life I’ve been afraid. I’ve been running. I can’t remember anything else. Same goes for him. And I know it because he and I are the same. Me and everyone who looks like me are the same. We all carry that same weight. We all live lives under the hanging sword of fear. We’re buried under the terror that our children will come into all of the same burden and be trapped, just like we were. So we stay put, running in place. Most of all, people like me fear that we can’t do anything to break the cycle.
And I don’t know if we can or not. I just know that we have to try.
That I have to try.
The Kid knows it too. I can see it in his eyes. Finally, he wraps his arms around me and I hug him tighter than I’ve ever hugged anyone in my life. Hugging him is hugging myself. Finally, after a lifetime, I am the unseen and the undeniable all at once.
I’m sorry, I tell The Kid.
“Are we gonna be okay?” The Kid asks.
Quick as a whip and honest as a dollar, I say to him: Never can tell, Kid. But we’re gonna damn sure take a shot at it.
“So that’s it. Everything’s fixed now, right?”
“That’s a dangerous word.”
“. . . But isn’t that what we all want?
To believe that everything’s fixed?”
“What if it wasn’t ‘fixed’? What if you could only hope to help?”
“Well, that’s anticlimactic.”
“But it’s real. And reality is something you continue to struggle with.”
“. . . What if it doesn’t help? None of it. What if I screamed and shook my fists at the heavens, only to have my voice swallowed up? Only to still be invisible.”
“Then at least you said something. Even if you had to use someone else’s voice to do it.”
“. . .”
“Have you noticed that, throughout all of this, you still haven’t used his name? His real name,
I mean. Or your own, for that matter.”
“Maybe next time.”
“Why?”
“Names would just make it true. All of it. Not just true, but real. I’m not sure we can let it be real.
I’m not sure we could face that reality.”
“‘. . . We?’ What else could we do?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to all those who picked me up each time I fell down. My family: Sonya, Sweetie, Angela Jeter, Justin, Jeremy, Diamond, Aja, Zion, and the infinity of aunts, uncles, and cousins who made me. To my friends: Cara, Justin, Randy, Dan, Carrie, Maurice, Zach, Bill, Ramm, Will Dean (I still hope Chun breaks an ankle), Shannon, Kiki, Kristen, Paul, Terah and Aiden, Michelle White (strongest person I know), Natasha Nunez, Michelle Brower, and Sean Daily. Every day I am indebted to you all. I apologize that there is not enough space for me to list everyone. That fact is perhaps the greatest blessing of my life.
&nb
sp; Thank you to everyone who has ever learned to sing in a world that does not want to hear your voice.
Lastly, a message to the Black boy that was: You are beautiful. Be kind to yourself, even when this country is not.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jason Mott has published three previous novels. His first novel, The Returned, was a New York Times bestseller and was turned into a TV series that ran for two seasons. He has a BFA in Fiction and an MFA in Poetry, both from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His poetry and fiction have appeared in various literary journals.
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