White lives matter.
Unbelievable.
White people weren’t being killed in the streets without consequences. No one had to tell them their lives mattered, because their worth was baked into the very foundations of this country. I wanted to throw the remote across the room at the TV. Swirling in rage, I buried my face in my hands and screamed, louder than the protesters on the TV. When I looked up, the creases on Pops’s forehead were severe.
“I can’t...” It was too much to handle. My head spun, and I backed away from the TV and went straight to my room, where I pulled the covers over my body.
My thoughts clouded with images of Brad pelting the crowd with Dante Maynard posters, with the screams of Gabby lying pinned to the ground, my helplessness in the face of it all. Every passing minute replayed the same images, and I could feel the hope seeping from my body.
What was the point of protest if it blew up in our faces every single time?
There was never any hope of changing the system. And the sooner I accepted that, the better.
* * *
The sunset was starting to blink through my blinds by the time I heard the sounds of pans clanking against the stove. Mama was making dinner, but I wasn’t hungry. I curled up in bed, tucking my knees close to my chest. A soft knock at my door stirred me, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t have any words to offer anyone. The door hinges creaked, and a few short footsteps later, my bed dipped to the side as Pops sat on the edge of the mattress. I buried my face in my pillow.
“Just got off the phone with Mr. Dupre.” He cleared his throat.
My body stiffened at the mention of Gabby’s dad, and a spike of adrenaline surged through my veins. My face felt cold. I couldn’t take any more bad news—especially where Gabby was concerned.
“Please tell me she’s okay.” I turned over and propped my head on my pillow so I could see his face. The circles under his eyes were darker, more severe than they looked after he pulled a long day on the job.
“He’s got her home safe.” My dad’s voice wobbled. “Looks like her shoulder was dislocated, but the ER doc was able to...pop it back into place.”
I cringed into the pillow, imagining exactly how much pain Gabby was in. When Marion had dislocated his shoulder last year, he said the pain was excruciating—like it was on fire until the medic popped it back into place. And even then, it was still painful.
Pops’s lip twitched as he watched me. He opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but he turned away. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped down a tear, but one escaped down his cheek. Seeing Pops cry was a rare sight—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it. He was always so buttoned-up about his emotions. I drew my legs to my chest, trying to hold myself together. But I was gutted.
I’d brought this on. I was the cause of the pain behind his eyes. So many people laid their hopes and dreams at my feet, and in the course of a few weeks, I’d trampled them. I was glad Pops couldn’t look me in the eyes. I wouldn’t have been able to meet his gaze.
“I thought things would be different for you kids. I really did.” He continued looking at the wall instead of at me. “Thought things would be different for me too. The nineties were—that was another time. I helped bring my team to the state championships my junior year. The Black, left-handed quarterback from Nowhere, Louisiana. And then senior year, when I’d earned my starting spot on the team, people started showing up to games with bananas. Every time I walked across the field, they threw them from the stands. I remember when my coach told me to warm the bench, I needed to do it for the other players. I was a distraction.”
I thought about how demeaning it must have been to have bananas thrown on the field, to have white people hollering like monkeys, dehumanizing Pops. Then I thought about Brad splattering our truck with eggs and toilet paper, scrawling the word garbage across the window. Both were public forms of humiliation and racist as hell. How much had really changed?
Pops turned his head slowly, the shame pooling in his eyes as a few more tears scurried down his cheek. “Can you believe that? I was the distraction. Not them people throwing bananas in the stands.” He pursed his lips with a sigh.
I could believe it because it had just happened to me and Marion. I bet the league thought Marion was a distraction too. Maybe that’s why they swiftly pushed him off the field instead of dealing with the troubling inequities happening on their watch: kids slinging racial slurs and referees pretending not to see violence.
“I tell you, I wanted to mouth off to my coach. I wanted to tell him he should try playing under the same conditions, see how distracted he was. I wanted to call those people racists, but I—” he brought a fist to his mouth and coughed a cry away “—I didn’t say anything. And I warmed the bench for the rest of my final season. Maybe if I hadn’t sat quietly on the bench—if I’d pushed back on my coach, I might have played more, might have caught the attention of a college scout. Maybe I’d have gone to school and spent my time bending over books instead of toilets—although ain’t nothing wrong with it. It’s a good livin.’ But I think about what coulda been sometimes.”
I’d never heard this version of events before. Pops always blamed his fall from grace on an old weight-lifting injury he couldn’t shake. But to hear that his football career was taken away from him because of racism—it changed the way I viewed him.
“You’re a good kid, Rus. Real good.” He rested his hands on my leg. “And you did something I couldn’t do. You spoke up for yourself and for Marion.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but he held his hand up.
“I wasn’t brave enough to do that in my day.” His lip trembled. He leaned forward and gripped my leg tighter. “You did the right thing, okay? And I couldn’t be prouder.”
I’d been waiting all season to hear those words come out of his mouth, to get my dad’s approval. He’d withheld it for so long, I’d forgotten what unconditional love and support felt like. When he stood up and opened his arms, I scrambled off my bed and hugged him—tight, leaving no room for any lingering bitterness.
After a while I pulled away, feeling that familiar pit of doubt in my stomach.
“But protesting didn’t do anything.” The weight of guilt felt heavy on my shoulders, and I dropped my head, sniffling into my knees. “Nothing good came from it.”
Right now, Gabby was probably in a sling—in pain. I’d felt a degree of responsibility to keep her safe, and I’d failed.
“The police response—that ain’t got nothing to do with you, understand? Nothing. But here...” He brought his fist to his chest, right over his heart. “A person’s gotta be able to live with their choices. I guess what I’m saying is, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and you made the right choice.”
My breath hitched. I’d made the right choice? It was the validation I’d been craving for weeks. My chest loosened as I exhaled with satisfaction.
Kneeling was a risk, but staying silent would have been just as risky. If I was screwed either way, at least with kneeling, I’d tried.
Unable to hold back the tears, I wept into my hands. Pops wrapped his arm around my shoulder and whispered, “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“But everything’s still such a mess. How can I fix things?” I asked.
“You’ll think of something. And I will support you.”
* * *
Bared raw, I lay in bed another hour. By nine o’clock Mama worried that I hadn’t eaten, but I really wasn’t hungry—for food or for company. When I finally got up, I texted Marion, telling him that I needed to be alone, then sank to my desk.
Chuck Wallace’s business card stared up at me, daring me to call the number embossed across the middle. I thought about taking him up on his offer to do another interview, but I quickly dismissed that option. Every attempt at speaking up for myself had landed me in a dead end.
Or worse—almost in jail. I had no reason to believe Chuck Wallace would be any different from the other reporters who had distorted our story.
I peeked through a crack in my door, rubbernecking to see the TV in the living room, where Mama and Marion were still watching the news. The crowd numbers had swelled until thousands of people flooded the parking lot of the Westmond Mall. There were more White Lives Matter signs, more racist chants. My pulse quickened, and I closed the door. I promised myself I wouldn’t look at the news anymore. It only served to enrage me—the reporters always seemed to miss the point.
I turned off the internet, then sat at my desk, crammed in the corner of my room. Chuck’s business card taunted me. I slid open the top drawer and tossed it in there so that I could forget about it. I had so much homework to do.
I struggled through precalculus, then moved to English, where I had to complete the presentation essay for the Beale Street project I’d been working on with Gabby. Of course, in true Ms. J fashion, the story and the assignment were probing reflections of real life.
Just when I thought I was finished with activism, it sucked me back in.
I stared at the page a long time, unsure what to say. My fingers grazed the keyboard over and over again until I wrote my first words.
This is an indictment.
What began as a trickle soon became a deluge. I poured myself onto the page, filling it with details of Dante Maynard’s shooting, Marion’s unfair arrest, Gabby’s dislocated shoulder, Ms. Jabbar’s curriculum. And the white silence that surrounded it all.
From all angles, I’d been boxed in by violence and injustice, and still every fiber of my being bucked at the notion that I should accept it. My protest had been mangled into something that it wasn’t. My spoken words had been distorted beyond recognition. But there could be no interference from words on paper. No noise. No biased reporter twisting my words. No angry fans spewing hate. There was just me and the certainty of the page.
Writing became the balm that soothed my hopelessness. There was nowhere to hide from words in my notebook.
I was tired of people telling me to stay in my lane, calling me to focus on the game instead of the injustice closing in around me. I was suffocating from the confines of racism, trapped. I couldn’t focus on anything else.
Get them back on the field.
That’s what Marion and I always said to each other. That was why I had to spit truth where it would really hit home. I had to go big. I had to turn the heat up, as Gabby would say.
A plan brewed in my belly as I poured myself onto the page, my eyes stinging from angry tears and frustration.
I thought of Gabby screaming at the top of her voice in the Shreveport stadium, calling their fans hypocrites when I’d knelt. Her face flushed as she emptied her lungs in her shouts—the picture of unabashed defiance.
A person’s gotta be able to live with their choices.
That’s what Pops had reminded me to do. I needed to stop second-guessing myself, stop internalizing all this guilt I had for using my own voice. That was my right. I chiseled away the self-doubt I’d allowed to calcify around my decision to kneel.
I funneled my convictions onto the page—my call to arms against apathy. I was well beyond six pages by the time I wrote the final sentence, well beyond the scope of the assignment. But Ms. J wouldn’t mind. I emailed her the submission just after midnight. But I was still restless.
I needed to send it to one other person.
Feeling bold, I pulled open my desk drawer and retrieved Chuck Wallace’s business card. I hastily typed his email address into the top of a message and pasted my indictment onto the blank page. Then I attached the video of the whole Westmond-Jackson fight—the one that the prosecutor was sitting on. For a moment, I hesitated with my finger hovering over the button, unsure whether this was a good idea...
Click.
It was in Wallace’s inbox now, and that sent an unexpected surge of relief through me.
As the churning in my stomach subsided, I fell into a fitful doze, still unsure if justice would be served and if my voice would truly be heard.
30
My eyelids fluttered open at the sound of firm knocks at the front door. After a poor night’s sleep, my eyesight took a while to adjust to the thin light poking through my curtains. It was still early—really early.
Who’s knocking this early in the morning?
I heard my parents’ bedroom door open and the tired shuffling of my mom’s slippers on the way to the front door. Blinking rapidly, I tried to wash the sleep out of my eyes. I grabbed my phone off my nightstand, squinting to see the time. It was just before 6:00 a.m.
I slipped on fresh clothes and followed the sounds of low chatter coming from the front of the house, wincing as my feet padded against the cold linoleum. When I passed the kitchen island, Marion set two plastic cups in front of him. He opened a two-liter bottle of cola, sending a hiss through the house.
He poured a full glass, then slid it across the counter. “Drink up.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, rubbing my forehead groggily.
“You’re gonna need caffeine.”
His hair was dewy like he’d just taken a shower, and he was already fully dressed in a tracksuit. I frowned down at the soda, which was not exactly the ideal breakfast beverage, but a familiar voice snapped my attention to the door.
“Thank you, Mrs. Boudreaux,” Darrell said from the other side of the screen door. “We appreciate you being so cool.”
“It’s all right, boys.” Mama nodded at him. She gripped her beige robe tighter and stepped to the side so that Marion could squeeze beside her. More footsteps pounded up the porch—solid, heavy ones that could only belong to more football players. I scooted closer, curious to see what was going on.
“Morning, ma’am,” Bobby said from over Darrell’s shoulder.
“Ma’am.” Terrance yawned sleepily from the top step.
“Sorry to disturb you like this,” Ricky said shyly. “We’re ready when you guys are.”
“What are you guys doing here?” I poked my head out of the door to find the team standing on my front lawn. And not just the offensive line—the entire Jackson Jackals looking back at me expectantly.
“Marion called a team meeting,” Darrell said over his shoulder as he hopped down the stairs.
“When?” I turned to Marion, a sleepy eyebrow raised.
“Last night, when you shut out the world and wouldn’t get out of bed.” His eyes tightened, and I could tell he was worried. “I’m still co-captain of this team. Am I right?”
I nodded. Of course he was still part of the team. Hell, Marion pretty much was the team. We’d been suffering from his absence. I’d been trying to drill that into his head since he got suspended from league play. My gaze swept across the lawn, taking in every loyal team member, then back to Marion, who had a familiar mischief in his eyes.
I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and turned it off airplane mode. A flurry of message notifications popped up from our team text thread, buzzing my phone excitedly. I had missed a lot since I’d locked myself in my room. But one thing I still didn’t have was a text or call from Gabby.
I gulped, uncomfortable with her silence and worried that she was in pain. What if her shoulder had popped out of place again? Would she need surgery?
I thought about calling her, but it was ridiculously early. She needed all the rest she could get. I shot off a quick text, letting her know I was thinking about her and that I was sorry. I ended it with a plea.
Call me back when you wake up? Please??
Coach Fontenot’s old Chevy pulled up. He opened his car door, nodding to the nearest players before loudly clearing his throat. He wrung his hands while he crunched across our gravel driveway, looking at the ground instead of at the crammed doorway. He seemed nervous.
; “Hello, Cheryl,” he said, wringing his hat in his hands. “We need to talk to your boy.”
Mama tilted her head and pursed her lips. “Which one?”
“Sorry, Cheryl. I need to talk to both of your boys.” He flicked his head toward me to come outside, then nodded toward Marion, stepping aside to give him room to lead the way. “We have some team business to discuss.”
* * *
Behind my backyard, just beyond the tree line, the team settled in for our emergency team meeting. Bobby’s feet dangled from the tree house above, while Darrell leaned against the rope ladder. Terrance sat nearby on a protruding rock, biding his time for his turn to go up to the tree house. It was a meeting I’d never imagined would happen here.
The whole team was assembled, and it was all because of Marion. I scratched my head, looking at his squared shoulders and his raised chin. He looked strong and confident, unlike his frazzled appearance the other day. I didn’t know what had caused this shift in him, but I wanted whatever he’d had.
Coach walked up the gentle hill to where Marion stood. He took off his hat and smoothed his thinning hair, a solemn gesture.
“I know it’s unusual for me to be at one of your meetings. But I thought that, under the circumstances, it was the right thing to do. First off, I wanted to apologize to y’all for not providing leadership off the field, especially when y’all needed it the most. And I guarantee you, I’m not gonna make that mistake again.” He bent his head in an awkward bow, then gestured to Marion. He was, after all, the reason we were here, and Coach was ceding the floor to him. “Marion...your meeting.”
“I think I can speak for everyone when I say this season has sucked,” Marion said, stepping forward. Strained laughter rippled through the team. Sucked didn’t even begin to describe our senior season. Marion grinned as he continued. “Okay, it’s been terrible. And not just because we lost a couple games—although that never feels great. But because of all the other shit we’ve had thrown at us.”
Kneel Page 23
