We Are Not Like Them

by Christine Pride

  We laugh for a minute before we remember that Gigi is in the hospital, and our worries catch up to us.

  “Anyway, it’s my fault if they lose the house. If they hadn’t had to help me…” He takes an aggressive bite of a drumstick, working his stress out on the chicken.

  Hearing the pain and guilt in his voice makes my heart hurt. “It’s not your fault, Shaun. It was always only a matter of time before they’d have to sell.”

  Never mind Shaun’s legal bills—property taxes were skyrocketing with all the white people who’d fled for the suburbs fifty years ago wanting back into the city. Even with me helping as much as I can, their modest salaries as a janitor and nursing home manager, with all they’d borrowed against the mortgage, mean it’s a lost cause, the coming heartbreak inevitable.

  The weight of Shaun’s struggle is obvious, like he’s carrying a backpack of bricks. Every time I ask him how he’s really doing, he says the same thing. “It is what it is.” But it’s clearly taken its toll. I hurry to change the subject. “Did you and Staci meet up last night?”

  Staci, with an i, and Shaun have been off and on since high school. I give her credit for sticking by him when he had to leave college, but that’s about it.

  “Nah, we broke up… again.” He becomes all too focused on slathering butter on every square inch of a biscuit.

  “Oh, man, that’s too bad.” This pitiful attempt at sympathy isn’t winning me any Oscars.

  “Ah, come on, you’ve never liked her. You think she’s a ditzy white girl who’s not good enough for your little brother.”

  Truer words had never been spoken. Staci’s always gotten on my last nerve with her skimpy crochet crop tops and her insistence on endlessly discussing her vegan diet. But it’s not really about Staci so much as it’s about the fact that Shaun almost exclusively dates white women, has preferred them since he was little. When he was five years old he told me about his first crush—a girl named Hannah, a wispy blond thing in his kindergarten class.

  “Why don’t you like one of the Black girls in your class?” I asked him.

  “White girls are prettier,” he said, like it was a fact of life, or common sense, an obvious conclusion everyone agreed with.

  At twelve years old, this hit way too close to home. It was hard enough having braces and that stubborn patch of acne across my forehead, but on top of that, bushy hair and dark skin? How could I argue with him, when everything around me, including the mirror, whispered that he was right? It took many years and a lot of hard work before I could understand and argue confidently about the influence of patriarchy, false standards of beauty, and how centuries of toxic history have conditioned Black men to see white women as the ultimate prize—angles I’ve tried on Shaun over the years, but never the one that cut me the deepest: If Black women aren’t good enough for my brother, then what does that say about me?

  “Y’all need to stay away from these white girls, ya hear?” Gigi told Shaun over and over when we were growing up.

  Shaun being Shaun, he always tried to turn it into a joke, only Gigi never laughed.

  “I mean it. You be careful,” she’d say.

  “Well, maybe you can find a nice Black girl,” I say to him now, my glare countering the sarcastic tone. “How about that?”

  “You sound like Grandma. And you kill me with all your little lectures about finding a nice Black girl. I mean, hypocrite much? Like you never dipped in the cream.” He snickers. “Whatever happened to that dude, anyway? We all thought you were gonna marry him.”

  Two mentions of Corey in four days is two too many.

  “Not going there.”

  Shaun has no idea the role he played in the end of my relationship with Corey, and I’ll never tell him. Momma’s not the only one who doesn’t air her dirty laundry.

  “Fine, fine. You talked to Jen yet?”

  “No. I have to call her back. I don’t know what to say.”

  “I mean, it’s crazy we actually know this dude. All those other cops who do that terrible shit all the time are strangers, but I know Kevin.”

  Kevin. He’s Kevin, not Officer Murphy. And we do know him. In fact, I know intimate details about him, ones that would horrify him if he realized. Like how he makes a noise like a yeti when he comes, or that he can only poop if he removes his pants completely, or that his low sperm count was the reason they couldn’t get pregnant and that he punched a hole in their bedroom wall when he found out. Kevin and I may not be close, but there’s still an intimacy by proxy.

  “I don’t know how you’re ever going to talk to him again, Rye. I mean, he killed a kid. A Black kid. How do you get past that?”

  “Justin’s not dead. He’s in a coma.”

  “That kid ain’t waking up. I’m sorry, but he ain’t. We can march and pray and march again, but it won’t make a difference. Also, he didn’t have a gun. Imagine fucking up in any other job like this. Imagine you work in McDonald’s and you serve someone fries you’ve accidentally covered with rat poison instead of salt and that person dies right in front of you. No one’s gonna say that ain’t murder. But this… these cops murder someone and their bosses just go, ‘Ooops, we did it again.’ Every single time.” He accentuates his point by waving a chicken bone in the air.

  Shaun’s voice is loud, but so is Mark Morrison’s on the speakers and the baby crying at the next table over, and no one seems to be listening. All the same, my head swivels like an owl’s to see who can hear him. Momma always got on us for being too loud in public.

  I start to shush him, and then remember all my promises to never turn into my mother and stop myself. I bite my tongue even as my brother gets louder, more riled up.

  “If you shoot a Black kid and that Black kid doesn’t have a gun, then that police officer should go to jail. Screw you. You have failed in your job as a cop. You remember when I got fired from Kinko’s in high school for putting the wrong toner in the color printer. Sure, the printer broke, but no one died. I swear some of these dudes decide to be cops just so they can bust heads—Black and brown heads—and be on a power trip. I mean, maybe that’s not Kevin necessarily, but it’s a lot of them. You hear about their text messages with nigger this and that and leaving nooses in locker rooms and whatnot and people have to wonder why we’re suspicious of the police? They need a racism-screening test before people join any police force, man. Like, if we’re going to find on your Facebook that you’ve been posting jokes about Black people being monkeys, or describing us as ‘savages’ or ‘filthy animals,’ do not apply.”

  “You’re right. Everything you said. It’s messed up.”

  “I mean, it could’ve been me.”

  We’re both quiet for a beat; we’ve cut close to the bone, too close.

  “You gotta interview Justin’s mom. Tamara Dwyer,” Shaun says. “She needs her story told. We gotta keep the mothers of the movement in the spotlight. The mothers are what hit people. He killed someone’s child.”

  Shaun’s militant fire never fails to focus me. “Exactly, I have to get to her. I need to talk to Tamara.”

  “I can connect you.”

  “Really?” I’m relieved to hear that I may have a way in that doesn’t involve Pastor Price.

  “Bet, my boy Derek lives over in Strawberry Mansion. He knows her people. He used to mess with Justin’s cousin Deja. Her dad, Wes, is one of Tamara’s brothers. She’s got a slew of them.”

  Justin was shot only a few blocks from his row house in that neighborhood.

  “You’ll ask for me?” This is why I love being back on my hometown turf, a network of sources I can easily tap.

  “Yeah, I got you, sis. She ain’t gonna wanna talk to any of those white people anyway. Quinn Taylor? No way is Nancy Newscaster doing this interview. You got this. Now I gotta go tear up some more of this mac.”

  Shaun’s got the same chip on his shoulder that I have about Quinn, ever since I told him what she said on Halloween.

  “You should all come to my ho
use in Society Hill,” she offered the news team. “Our whole street is decorated, and we get kids from all over the city. Their parents drive them in from the ghetto. It’s cute.”

  Shaun gets up to grab seconds from the buffet. He’s a grown man, but he eats like a teenage boy in the middle of a growth spurt. He looks like one too, with the carriage of a gangly adolescent, a puppy who hasn’t quite grown into his paws and ears. It’s why the girls have always flocked to him: he looks like someone you want to save. Gigi always calls him tenderhearted, and it’s true.

  Someone approaches from behind me, and I reach for my purse, assuming it’s the waitress coming to fill our iced teas. I want to pay for our meal while Shaun’s at the buffet.

  “Hi?”

  It’s not the waitress.

  I turn around and I’m face-to-face with Jenny, who, once again for a disconcerting split second, seems like a complete stranger. She’s wearing an extra-large Phillies sweatshirt commemorating their World Series win. It’s peeking out of a puffy coat that doesn’t quite fit around her middle. Her glow has been replaced by scarlet splotches.

  “Sundays is church and Monty’s.” She offers a tentative smile.

  An unfamiliar awkwardness charges the air between us.

  “I haven’t come here in forever.”

  Jen’s face flushes pink. The redness of her eyes makes me think she’s been crying, only Jen never cries.

  “Shaun posted on Facebook that he was taking his sister to Monty’s. I had to see you. You didn’t answer my calls.”

  I can’t explain why my heart is racing. I take a deep breath, but before I can respond, Shaun returns and, when he sees Jenny, almost drops his slice of apple pie.

  “Oh… hey, Jenny.”

  “Hey, Shaun.” She tentatively steps forward to hug him, and he lets her, even though he stiffens up, a contrast to his usual bear hug.

  He clearly doesn’t know what to do or say once they’re apart. He reaches out like he’s about to touch her stomach, then thinks better of it. “You’re so big. You having triplets or something?”

  No one even attempts to laugh, not that it was particularly funny, or maybe even meant to be. Instead, there’s a beat where we all stare at one another like actors who’ve forgotten their lines.

  Shaun breaks the spell by doing what I wish I could do: he leaves.

  “I’mma let y’all do this. I’ll catch an Uber back, sis.” He leans down and kisses the top of my head like a dad sending his daughter off to school and then nods at Jen. He’s a few feet from the table when he turns back. “Kevin fucked up, Jenny.” He says it loud enough that heads swivel toward us. And then he’s out the door.

  Jenny visibly cringes at Shaun’s words, and I do too. But what else was he supposed to say or do right now? Flirt with Jenny like he normally does, or make some lame joke about her haircut? She looks like she’s going to call out to Shaun, and then she stops herself; instead, she turns to me, helpless. I want to reach for her, but my hand doesn’t move.

  “Can we please talk?” Jenny’s not asking, she’s pleading.

  And whatever tornado of emotions is swirling through me right now, about what Kevin’s done or the things she may have said or not said, there’s only one answer to her question. I motion for her to sit.

  Chapter Four JEN

  Shaun’s words are a sucker punch to my gut. It takes everything I have not to turn and bolt out the door. Coming here was a mistake, I see that now, but I can’t leave. I can’t do anything except slink into the booth across from Riley, who stares at me like I’m a stranger. She’s waiting for me to say something, face as blank as an empty canvas. I have no idea what to say. I’m sorry? But what am I sorry for exactly, and why am I apologizing to Riley?

  Finally, almost like she’s taking pity on me, she says, “How are you?”

  I didn’t know what to expect; she hasn’t returned any of my calls this weekend, but her concern is such a mercy that I feel a flicker of hope.

  “I’m okay, I guess. But… it doesn’t matter how I feel.” I sound like a martyr, but there are more important things I want to explain. I plant my damp palms on the table, ready to launch into the speech I practiced a thousand times on the way over.

  “Listen, Rye, Kevin thought he was chasing a guy who had just shot someone. He thought there was a gun. He feared for his life.” I stop short of saying it was Cameron’s fault, even though I’m completely convinced of that. He shot first, so Kevin had to open fire. Cameron was inexperienced; he made the bad call. If Kevin had been with Ramirez, this never would have happened. Maybe I’m being overly defensive, but it’s just that I want—I need—Riley to know.

  I search her expression for any trace of understanding, trying to gauge the likelihood that she’ll say what I so desperately need her to say: I’m here for you. There’s a hard glint in her eyes—it passes in a blink, but it’s enough for me to know that I’m probably not going to hear those words.

  “This is all so awful, Rye,” I manage. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “The doctors say they’re going to operate tomorrow and try to dislodge the last bullet, to stop the bleeding.”

  Shame burns my cheeks. I pretend that’s what—who—I meant.

  “Yes, he’s going to be okay,” I say with conviction, or, more truthfully, desperation. I can’t get the boy’s picture out of my head, can’t stop thinking about his mother, sitting next to his hospital bed, waiting for him to open his eyes. I haven’t even seen or touched my baby, and I already know I’d die for him or her.

  “Let’s hope,” Riley says. “There are a lot of prayers for him, that’s for sure.”

  She looks at me as she says this, really looks at me—and I slide my hands forward on the greasy table, close enough that she could grab them. She doesn’t.

  There’s no graceful way to change the subject, to turn it back to Kevin and me, but I don’t have a choice. It’s the reason I came here to Monty’s in the first place. “So you saw that I called last night?”

  “Yeah, I did. You didn’t leave a message.”

  “Since when do I have to leave a message for you to call me back?”

  Riley doesn’t answer. It’s suddenly like I’m at a job interview or in the principal’s office—formal and furtive. I’m at the mercy of her judgment, and it makes me feel like I’m trying to run on solid ice.

  “Well, I wanted to ask you in person. For a favor.” I clench my fists, gather my nerve. “I was wondering… you know how the media can be. No offense.” I was trying to go for a joke, at least I thought I was, but it doesn’t land that way. I quickly continue on. “I was hoping that maybe you could do a piece about Kevin, his side, you know? I saw that you’re covering the story. You could talk to him and he could tell the viewers what really happened?”

  Kevin and I came up with the plan over the weekend, or rather I did. He was still wary of Riley as “media,” and didn’t think there was any way the department would let him talk publicly, but I convinced him that maybe she could actually help us. It was worth a try. But Riley’s mouth twists like she drank something sour. She shakes her head even before she answers. “I can’t… I can’t interview Kevin. It wouldn’t be… right. What I mean is, I couldn’t be objective, and that’s my job. Professional objectivity.” The words she mutters are white noise; it’s the tone that hurts, so distant, robotic. She’s wearing the Riley mask—that’s what I call it when she shuts down her emotions like this. She’s an expert at it. After Corey dumped her, or whatever happened between them last year, she acted like she was a-okay. Same responses every time I asked about it: “I’m fine.” “It wasn’t meant to be.” “We were never that serious.” The mask. But I know better. Corey was good for Riley. He made her way less uptight. She loved him in a way that I’d never seen her love anyone, and as much as she may think she has people fooled, she’s never fooled me.

  “It’s just… I get it. I don’t want you to do something you’re not comfortable with, Riley,
but it’s already starting, everyone saying terrible things about Kevin. We need his side of the story out there. It was a mistake, an awful mistake. It would help for people to understand that he isn’t a bad guy, which he isn’t. I mean, you know that.”

  But the way Riley is looking at me, it seems she doesn’t know that. It seems like I have to allow for the possibility that she thinks my husband is a bad cop or, worse, a racist. Surely she can’t think that? It’s dawning on me that she expects me to be ashamed of my husband. And that, more than anything, starts to piss me off.

  “Well, let me ask you this: Would you do the interview if Kevin shot a white kid?”

  “Jen… I don’t… it isn’t just…”

  I’ve seen Riley lock words away and hide behind silence; I’ve never seen her at a loss for them though. Why did I have to bring up race? It’s never mattered between the two of us.

  Finally, she meets my eyes. “I don’t know, maybe, Jen. Maybe.” It was like admitting that cost her something. “And, well, it’s not usually white kids being accidentally shot by police, is it?” This time there’s no stammering: the question glides out of her mouth and slices like a knife.

  “Look, I don’t want to turn this into a conversation about what kind of lives matter. This isn’t even about race, Riley. It’s about Kevin.”

  “How can you even think this isn’t about—”

  I cut her off. I hate where this conversation is going. The anger that’s been simmering beneath the surface since I sat down is building into a furious blaze. It’s the only reason I say what I do next. “You never liked Kevin. That’s the real reason you won’t do the interview. Admit it.”

  I don’t even know if I believe that. It’s more like an idea I’m trying out in the moment, and the accusation, being on the offensive, it feels good. Or maybe it is true. Maybe Riley tolerated Kevin all these years but never really liked him, and that’s why she won’t help us. I’ll always have to wonder, because I’m out the door before she can even open her mouth.