And I’m like, ‘What kind of stuff,’ because I had thought the older you got the more stuff you can do, not can’t.
He said, ‘You can’t be running around the playground with that water gun, for one. Or that Nerf gun, or that little light-up key-ring gun thing you got from your aunt last year? You can’t even carry that in your pocket anymore.’
Then my dad goes, ‘You get me, right, Mar?’
And I just nodded. I was so mad, I didn’t even look at him.
Amari looked around at us. I knew what he was talking about. I’d seen the papers and heard Holly’s mom and dad talking about a boy who got killed for playing with a toy gun. Holly’s mom said that it wouldn’t have happened if the boy was white, and Holly’s dad had nodded.
The cops who shot that kid in the park didn’t even ask him any questions, Amari said. Just came in the park and shot him right away. And then when his big sister tried to run to him, they didn’t even let her go to him.
How come they didn’t let her? Ashton looked surprised, like maybe this was his first time hearing the story.
Amari shrugged. I don’t even know, he said. It’s crazy. My sister’s seventeen, she would lose her mind if anyone ever even looked at me funny. That’s how crazy she is about me. When I heard about that boy and his sister, it made something in me twist up. Made me want to punch a wall or even worse. That boy could have been me or Esteban or Tiago . . .
Or me, Ashton said.
Amari didn’t say anything to Ashton. He acted like he hadn’t heard him and kept talking.
My mom never liked me playing with guns anyway, Amari continued. So I knew my days of playing with them were numbered. But I didn’t know it would all come this quick. You know, like with the hugs. Felt like I woke up one day and it was just corny to do. But playing with my guns wasn’t corny yet. A water-gun fight on a hot day is still the best thing ever.
Facts, Tiago said. When you’re all hot and somebody comes out of nowhere and starts squirting you? You act mad, but son, I gotta say, that’s the best, bro.
For real. Amari pounded Tiago’s fist.
And that Nerf gun you got, A? Amari said. The one that shoots, like, fifty feet. That’s power.
Yeah, Ashton said. Remember when we were shooting the dead leaves off the trees?
Amari nodded. We were like, powpowpow!
Some serious sharpshooting, Ashton said.
They both got quiet. I could tell by their faces that they were back in the park with their Nerf guns, aiming them at the trees.
No disrespect to you, Ashton, but it sort of sucks that you can still go to the park with that gun and not have to worry about getting killed.
It’s okay, Ashton said. But he started biting on his bottom lip.
I can’t stand guns, Holly said. I never saw one in real life and never want to.
Nobody’s talking about real guns! Amari said. Then he looked at Ashton. Ashton, you’re, like, one of my best friends, you know that, right?
Ashton nodded. Same.
But that kid getting killed and then my dad saying I couldn’t play with guns anymore? That made me hate you.
But I didn’t do—
Not YOU, I mean, I didn’t hate you. I don’t know how to say it.
I do, I said. It’s not fair. It’s not fair that you’re a boy and Ashton’s a boy and he can do something you can’t do anymore. That’s not freedom.
Amari nodded. Yeah to what Red’s saying. You can just play with your Nerf gun all you want, anywhere you want, and no cop is gonna run up and shoot you.
Amari stopped talking. He got up and walked over to the window, taking the recorder with him. Then, in slow motion, he made the hand that wasn’t holding it into a gun, straightened his arm and aimed outside.
The cops shot that boy in the stomach, he said. With real bullets. Not soft ones that bounce off. And the boy fell in the playground. And then he died.
Amari kept his gun hand pointed at the window, his voice dropping down low. And maybe if it was a windy day, the swings just kept on swinging. Making that sad, whiny sound that swings make when they’re still moving and nobody’s on them. And that boy should have been running and playing and jumping off those swings. Whenever I jump off a swing, it feels like I’m flying. It feels like I’m more free than anything. That boy should have been having that feeling. He shouldn’t have been feeling like he was dying. He should have been feeling like he was free.
16
It was 3:15 and we could hear the kids moving through the hall and leaving school, but none of us moved. Then the halls got quiet. It felt like we were the only ones left in the building.
Ashton was looking down at his hands.
Amari gave me back the recorder and started putting his drawing pad and pens back into his knapsack. I slid the recorder into mine.
The door squealed open and Ms. Laverne came in. She had this small smile—that grown-up smile that says, See, I knew this was the right thing. But then she saw that none of us were smiling.
All okay? she asked.
We didn’t say anything at first. Then Amari said, We’re good. We were just finishing up. He sounded like a grown-up.
Okay . . . Ms. Laverne looked a little confused. Be out of here by three thirty at the latest and have a great weekend.
We all said goodbye to her and waited until the door clicked shut.
I think your dad’s being unfair, Ashton said. It’s just playing. And plus, the Nerf guns are orange, so it’s not like they look real or anything.
The kid that got killed had a toy gun, Amari said. My pops said it’s like we’re suspects from the day we’re born.
Amari and Ashton looked at each other, both of them mad.
Yeah, Holly said. And what about all the other kids we don’t even see on the news. Like my cousin who got stopped on his bike and handcuffed. And he’s only thirteen. He was just riding his bike. But the cops said he fit the description of another kid on a bike. How many black kids ride bikes? Lots!
Something like that happened to my cousin Jonathan, Tiago said. He lives in the Bronx and this cop just pushed him when he was hanging out with his boys. They were hanging by those mansions up by Van Cortlandt Park. And the cop said they didn’t live there, but one of his friends did. Plus that cop said they were being loud, but they’re teenagers, so duh.
Yeah, Holly said. Show me some quiet teenagers.
And what about that guy with asthma that they choked, Amari said. And that other guy who got beat up by a bunch of cops and nobody would have known about it if somebody hadn’t recorded it on their phone.
It could happen to anybody, Ashton said. Not just . . . like black guys and Puerto Rican guys.
Amari stood there looking at Ashton for a minute. Then he just shook his head and put his backpack on his shoulder.
Show me one time when it was somebody who looked like you, Ashton.
I still think—, Ashton started to say. Amari didn’t wait for him to finish, though. Just left without even waving goodbye.
17
The Familiar. You walk the land you’ve always known. The river, the ocean, the deep forest belong to you. This is Lenapehoking. This is your home. You know the print of every animal moving through the dirt—deer, raccoon, rabbit, bear. You know the scent of pine and the many ways root bark can heal.
Then one day, there’s a ship on the water. And then another. And another. You learn quickly that the men on board aren’t kind. Behind you, children play a game involving small stones. Behind you, your mother and your grandmother scrape an animal hide clean, then hang it to dry in the sun. A baby sleeps shaded inside his cradleboard, hanging from a tree.
You watch, listen to the stories the women tell each other, the way their gossip lifts up into the wind and moves through this land. This land that’s your land.
Then me
n come closer. And raise their guns. For a long time, these people’s stories will bury yours.
Would you harbor me?
Who would you have harbored? Ms. Laverne asked us.
I thought of this as Amari left the classroom with his knapsack on his shoulder and Ashton looked down at his hands.
18
That afternoon, Holly’s mom, Kira, picked us up from school. She was talking on her phone as we climbed into the car, her braids hanging down over the back of her seat.
Did you get—? Holly started asking, and her mom held up my sleepover bag, then put her finger to her lips.
So many times, I’d stared at Kira, wondering if my own mom had looked like her. The one picture I had of her showed my mom and dad walking away from someone’s car. My mother in a long white coat and hat, and my father in a T-shirt and jeans. Her hand was trailing back behind her and I could see her fingers—long and dark brown, the nails painted bright red.
How many times had me and Holly painted our nails? A hundred? A thousand? And each time I held my hand out, I wanted it to transform into the bright red and brown of my mother’s hand. Every. Single. Time.
But I never could. In the fall, my skin started fading back to a lighter brown, blue veins showing on the inside of my arms. But in the summer, it darkened so much that strangers asked, What are you? A question I hated. Tell them you’re a human, Holly always said. And then ask them what are they?
What good happened today? Kira asked when she finally hung up her cell and got ready to drive.
Nothing, Holly said before I could even open my mouth. Can we get pizza?
Out the window, I saw Ashton walking by himself, his hands shoved way down in his pockets. An older boy approached him and slapped the back of Ashton’s neck. Then another boy did the same thing. And another. All of them were laughing. I watched Ashton sink further down into himself, his eyebrows furrowing as he tried to swat the hands away. I wanted to jump out of the car and run over, but we were already pulling away from the curb. When he got to the corner, Ashton started running. Maybe he ran all the way home.
Did you see that, I asked Holly.
See what?
Nothing.
And can we get the pizza from the place on Nostrand? Holly said to her mom. I don’t like that other place. You and Dad do, but I don’t. After a minute she said, Haley doesn’t either.
I’m good either way, I said, still looking out the window.
It’s called necking. In the olden days, necking meant “kissing,” but not anymore. Now it meant running up to someone and slapping their neck. Hard. How did the same word that described two people in love become a word that described something so mean?
Now I remembered some mornings when Ashton came into class, his neck so red, it looked like sunburn.
And I get to choose the movie, Holly was saying. Something good this time.
No R ratings, her mother said. And no trying to sneak in an R rating after I’m asleep.
The Familiar. You plan what movie you’re going to watch. You pull your collar up to hide the pain showing on your neck. You sit staring out a window, remembering your papi. You pack your Nerf guns away—maybe forever. You walk into the Unfamiliar.
We drove by brownstones and apartment buildings. Signs in the corner bodega window said WE ACCEPT EBT and ATM INSIDE. The Familiar.
There weren’t a lot of white kids at our school. There were some little ones in kindergarten and first and second grade, but not in fifth and sixth. Ashton was the only white kid in our room. Unless you counted half of me.
I’m cooking tonight, Kira said. And we need to get to work on Haley’s hair.
I looked up in time to see Holly roll her eyes. Her hair looks fine to me, Ma.
But we both knew she was lying just so we could get to the movie part of the night faster. The one thing my uncle never mastered was my hair. Even though the red came from my father, the curls and kink came from my mom. My uncle had watched videos about kinky hair and bought products that were supposed to make it easy to comb through. He’d learned that a fine-tooth comb was never going to make its way through my hair and that a wide-toothed one really only worked when my hair was wet. When I was five he had a black girlfriend for about three months, and I swear they broke up because she couldn’t help him with my hair. Looking back on that, I remember the woman had a nearly shaved head, which should have been a sign to him that hair wasn’t her specialty.
Then one day, after me and Holly had become friends, Kira walked over to my uncle in the school yard.
I can help you with your daughter’s hair, she said. Holly was standing beside her, her hair neatly braided into cornrows.
That’s her uncle, Ma, Holly said. Not her dad.
And that was the beginning of me spending most Friday nights at Holly’s house. Sometimes my uncle went out on dates those nights. When I was little, I was so afraid he’d fall in love with someone and leave me. Or worse, move them in and they’d try to become my mother. But that never happened. And now I don’t feel that way. Some days, seeing the loneliness in my uncle’s face, hearing him play his sad love songs on the guitar, watching the way he looked at other couples on the street, I wanted him to fall in love. I wanted him to find a happy ending.
You okay? Kira asked me through the rearview mirror. She looked worried.
I’m good. I smiled at her.
Why wouldn’t you be? Holly said, suddenly reaching over and hugging me hard. It’s Friday!
Yassssss! we said together. Like we’d done so many Fridays before.
I got a new nail polish for us to try, Holly said. It’s called Royal Ruby.
Cool, I said. Maybe that would be the one.
19
The day my uncle told me how my mother died, I was six years old.
It was winter and we were in a park. There was a covered slide that wound around like a snake, sending kids flying through a dark tunnel. Lots of kids landed so hard, their parents carried them away in tears. But not me. I loved everything about that slide—the steep metal stairs that led to the top of it. The way you had to stand above it so that you could slip yourself in legs first. The way your body seemed to get snatched away, pulled through the darkness, then back into the bright light of winter.
My uncle calls it the One Time—the way you can do something again and again and again, and then the One Time, something goes all kinds of wrong. I had climbed to the top of the slide and slid my legs through. The tunnel sucked me into its darkness and I happy-screamed my way to the bottom. The park was nearly empty, but that day, as I sailed through the tunnel, another kid raced toward the slide on a scooter. He was a big kid and thick as a wall. My uncle saw it before I did—the kid coming toward the slide, me speeding through, then coming out into the light just as the kid sped past. We landed in a pile of banging heads, cracking bone and blood. Through the pain, dizziness and my own screaming, I could hear my uncle calling my name, telling me to stay awake. His voice was deep and ragged and filled with so much sadness, it registered through my pain. But then my uncle wasn’t calling my name. He was calling out to Berry. Berry, he said. Berry. Please be okay.
Berry was my mother’s name. Short for Beryl. Short for Beryl Lee. Then my uncle was untangling me from the mess of screaming boy and spinning wheels. Through the haze of everything, I could see surprised looks on people’s faces. I could hear the boy crying. Could see a woman kneeling down to hug him.
You’re good, Berry, my uncle said again and again. You’re going to live. You’re going to be okay. It was my first and only time in an ambulance. I don’t know how it got there, but I was inside of it, the sirens blaring, my uncle’s ragged voice, the bright lights and someone else—a paramedic maybe—moving around us. On the way to the hospital, I tried to tell him I wasn’t Berry, but the pain in my arm and head made it too hard to form words, and somewhere between the
park and the hospital, I must have passed out.
When I woke up, I was in a hospital room and it was dark out. My arm was in a cast from shoulder to wrist and there was a thick bandage over my ear.
Sixteen stitches behind your ear, my uncle said, bending forward to kiss the top of my head. You’re a soldier in the army of sliding board catastrophes.
I’m not Berry, I said. It hurt to talk. The words pounded against my head.
My uncle leaned closer. You’re not very what, sweetie?
No, I said, my words coming quiet and slow. I’m not Berry. You. You called me Berry before. The cast was heavy and tight. There were lights flashing on the wall and doctors being paged over an intercom. The room smelled like the alcohol prep pads my uncle kept in the medicine cabinet. You called me Berry, I said. But I’m Haley.
My uncle was sitting in a chair right next to me. He leaned back and blinked until tears appeared. He wiped them away with his other hand, then blinked again.
Beryl, he said. That’s what we called Beryl.
My mom? I tried to sit up but it felt like somebody’s huge hand was pushing me back down.
He kissed the top of my head again, then leaned his cheek against it. I was so scared, he said. I was scared like I was the night she died.
My uncle and I had two rules. No lying. No dodging. If either one of us asked a question, the rule was the other person had to answer it. They couldn’t try to dodge around it or change the subject. That’s how wars happen, my uncle said. And family wars too.
How did she die? I asked.
A car accident, my uncle said. When you were three. You don’t remember any of it? He sounded surprised.
I remember she would sing to me, I said. A song about summertime.
My uncle got quiet. He had been gently rubbing my head, but he stopped. I wanted him to keep doing it.
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