by Jay Coles
She clears her throat, looking a little nervous. “I just want to say… I’m sorry,” she says. “I would’ve stopped by sooner, but I didn’t want to barge in while you’re grieving.” There’s a pause and then she adds, “I wish I could say I don’t know how you feel.”
I still can’t say anything back. I look down at the floor.
“I lost my cousin to police violence,” she says. Mama stands at the kitchen doorway, staying quiet—so quiet, hands folded in front of her.
I just stand here like a deer in headlights, counting the length of my breaths. In my head, I tell her I’m sorry, but I can’t say any words out loud. And it’s like she understands.
Daphne starts walking closer to me, her arms falling to her sides. “Her name was Jasmine. She was only sixteen.” She pauses and her fists clench. “We grew up together, y’know? And our mamas was just as close as us. Always smoking and gossiping together. Like all the other black kids in our hood, we grew up hearing the horror stories, but it always seemed like just a nightmare—not something real. But when we lost Jaz, that was when it finally hit me that it’s all real.”
I nod at her, swallowing the lump in my throat.
She keeps talking. “My pops used to warn us about the police. He used to say, like all things in the world, there are good ones and bad ones. He used to say get a good look at the cop’s face ’cause that makes all the difference. He used to say memorize the badge number or the license plate number. That’s why I recorded what I saw after the party. Video footage seems like the only way people will even hear us sometimes.”
I nod once again, almost whispering, Yeah. The only thing I can bring myself to say back is “How did you find me?”
And she replies, “You’re famous. Not the good kind of famous, of course, but it wasn’t that hard to find you.”
Mama invites Daphne to stay awhile and then makes us dinner—and I mean a real dinner. Ever since Tyler died, there’ve been donations coming in from all over. Enough money, Mama says, to even send me to school. It won’t bring him back, but it helps. We have fried catfish with hot sauce and macaroni and cheese. But the whole time, Mama and I keep exchanging looks as if we’re reading each other’s thoughts, because the seat where Tyler often sat is filled for at least a little while. And I’m not so sure whether that little while comforts Mama or breaks her on the inside.
Just last week, we had a vigil for Tyler. Faith, Ivy, and G-mo helped set everything up. It was in the park, and it had just stopped raining for the first time in three days, and it looked like the sky had literally fallen onto the earth. Everything was pitch-black, but scattered in random places were little lights—candles. On one of the benches, we had flowers and pictures of Tyler. It looked like the whole community showed up—strangers with Black Lives Matter posters, strangers with the thoughts of buried relatives weighing heavily on their shoulders. Strangers holding signs with names of black victims on them, and Tyler’s in big fat letters. There were people from Sojo High there, too.
Auntie Nicola even called me up because she knew I was taking everything particularly hard, and reminded me that vigils are sort of like funerals, but they’re to celebrate life, not death.
That whole night, until the sun slipped out from some hidden crack, we all prayed. We prayed for grace, we prayed for mercy, we prayed for change, we prayed for guidance, we prayed for one another, we prayed for protection, and we prayed for justice.
Every damn day for what feels like forever, I check the mail, hoping to find something about the judge’s decision from the hearing. And then one day, there’s a letter waiting with Mama’s name on it in the mailbox. The yellow envelope has big red print and was sent from the hearing’s judge and the state. The letter shocks the shit out of me, and I call Mama over. She tears it open, hands trembling, and I know her heart’s probably beating just as hard as mine. We read the letter together, and the judge writes that they’re going to take the case further so that there’ll be a trial.
Mama puts the letter on the fridge, a Bo-Bo’s gas station magnet holding it in place. And we keep carrying on as best we can with fake smiles. Maybe they’re not even smiles. Imagine being sucker punched in the face every morning and smiling about it. I guess it’s not a smile at all. It’s just that you force all the muscles in your face to create the illusion of happiness.
• 28 •
Today, I’m helping Faith study for her college exams. After we run through all the major historic events in the United States, attempting some geography of the world and geography of each other, we turn to economics. An hour or so after we finish studying, I read her the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, my favorite poet of all time.
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
Faith exhales. “You know,” she goes, leaning back against the headboard on her bed, “with as much reading as you do, you should try writing your own poem. Maybe even a book.”
I attempt a laugh. And I just study her for a second, trying to figure out if she’s making fun of me or not.
“I’m serious,” she says. “I bet you could write a book about your life that’d sell a million damn copies.”
I slide my pencil in the space behind my ear, and it stays in place. I inch a bit closer to her and say very softly, “I never thought about it, but maybe you’re right. Maybe I should.” My smile feels like it gets bigger. “And you’ll be in the dedication.”
“Nah,” she says, “that’ll just drive me wild.”
“Why?”
“It just will,” she says. I watch her glimmer.
“Yeah,” I say. I am beginning to notice that my ye-ahs are almost like two separate syllables, like I’ve invented my own dialect to detach myself from the world. One syllable for yes and the other for but everything may fall through in the end.
She nods at me, her head to the side, just gazing and cheesing her cheesy smile.
“What do you want to be in the future?” I ask.
She flickers her eyes. “I want to be a designer.” Her eyes move to scan her room, and I follow them, looking at the cutouts from magazines and newspapers plastered on her walls—things that she has stitched, glued, and taped together into her own creations.
And as she tells the stories behind all of the designs, it hits me: This is how she escapes. She runs away to Teen Vogue and Ebony magazines to disappear into the outside world, far, far away from Sterling Point. Making cutouts.
Right as she starts to explain one of the creations—a man wearing a tinfoil dress, a pair of white Jordans, and an alligator-skin hat—a scratchy voice calls out from one of the other rooms.
“Faith! Girl. Faiiiiith! Come here!”
“It’s my mom,” she says. “She’s home early.” Her shoulders slump and she rises from the bed, a surprised look on her face.
I sink into the bed.
“I’ll be right back,” she says, and winks.
“All right.” I nod, stretching out and admiring the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling. I keep quiet and listen to the back and forth between her and her mother.
When she gets back, she has laundry in her hands. She walks across her room and puts it on her bright pink beanbag chair. “I forgot to take my laundry out of the dryer,” she sighs, brushing her hair back with her shoulder. “She gets super mad about that. It’s old age. I swear.” We share a quick laugh. She comes back over to the bed.
I turn my head slowly, and our lips lock. On impact, we ignite. One thought in mind: This feels a thousand times better than any word either of us could say. And I’m trying my best to kiss her good enough that she forgets where she is, good enough that I forget everything, good enough that I fill with hope.
But I pull back. She puts a hand on mine.
“I know,” she says quietly. “You don’t have to feel guilty. It’s okay to live. If you don’t—then that cop took both your lives.”
I nod, and she kisses me again, and the two of us lie down in her bed, side by side,
and slowly tell each other embarrassing stories and then name the plastic stars on her ceiling.
“That one’s Adelina,” she says. “No, Artisha.”
“There’s Marcus,” I say, pointing to a tiny one in the corner.
She laughs. “It looks more like a Devin.” There’s a pause and we’re paying attention to each other’s eyes. Then she breaks our gaze, pointing over our heads. “See those two together right there?”
“Mm-hmm,” I answer.
“They’re twins, and I’m naming them Marvin and Tyler.” She smiles, still looking at the plastic stars on her ceiling.
Faith’s mom, Ms. Gladys, walks in, offering some homemade trail mix. We both take handfuls, and Ms. Gladys does a double take with her eyes before walking out. “No shutting doors if you don’t pay bills, Faith. You know that,” she says.
Faith rolls her eyes and looks back at me with a grin.
“And leave some room for Jesus between y’all.”
Faith and I chill for a little while longer, feeding each other trail mix, and then she drops me off at my place, the sun still on the verge of setting, like it’s confused and indecisive.
• 29 •
Did she let you do it without a condom?” is the first thing G-mo says as he climbs through my window with Ivy. For all the years we’ve been friends, I still don’t know why they don’t just use the door, but I don’t mind it. G-mo has this huge, sneaky grin on his face, like I am full of dirty little details and he’s about to get an earful.
But all I say is “Shush, keep your voice down. Mama is trying to get some rest. And Faith and I did not have sex.”
“Why not?” Ivy asks, not looking at me as she tosses her skateboard down with a clatter.
“I just get the feeling she’ll want to wait.”
“Or maybe not. Maybe she’s just waiting for you to bust a move,” Ivy says back, but when she sees the look on my face, she throws her hands up like she’ll lay off.
I turn on my lamp, and we change focus. My application is due soon.
But I think about what Faith told me. Think about the fact that maybe I don’t even want to go to MIT at all. That’s just what I’ve been told I should want, so it was what I told myself I wanted, too.
Now I don’t even know what I want anymore.
If I even want to go on living my life without Tyler. Why do I get to live while he’s gone?
So instead of putting myself through that, the three of us play some NBA 2K Blacktop for a couple hours.
When I walk into the kitchen, I see Mama sitting at the table, and my nose gets a huge whiff of macaroni and cheese that might be on the verge of burning.
“Hey, honeybunches,” she says to me. She seems distracted.
I slide into the seat across from her. “What’s going on?”
“I got a call from a man today,” she says. She looks at the stove, like she suddenly realizes the mac and cheese is burning. She gets up, turns off the stove, stirs the pot.
“Yeah? Who was it?”
She turns to face me, confusion on her face. “Someone from MIT.”
My heart sinks. I haven’t told her about any of this with MIT, because I could already tell how she’d react. She’d say I was crazy for applying to a place like that, a place that’s so out of my league, a place where black boys don’t belong.
I nod. “Oh. Yeah. What’d he want?”
“He asked for an update on your application. What’s going on, Marvin?”
I take a deep breath. “I interviewed with him at the college fair, and he told me he’d recommend me as long as I send in my application, and I haven’t done it yet. A part of me feels like I just can’t even physically do it. Like I don’t deserve to go after my dreams after everything, y’know?”
“You interviewed with MIT?”
“Yeah,” I say, and wait for her yelling to start—but she just slips on a small smile and sits at the table, putting a hand on mine.
“That’s great, honey.”
“Really?”
She nods.
I swallow. “I don’t even know if I want to go anymore. I mean, I feel like I’ve been told all my life that MIT’s the best school if you’re serious about science, but I don’t know if that’s just a lie I’ve been forced to believe. I’ve been thinking of applying to an HBCU instead, if they’re even still taking applications.”
“Really? Which one?”
I feel the weight being taken off my shoulders. “Howard.”
Her smile makes me think she’s excited for me, and we both stay quiet for a moment, just looking at each other, and then she gets up from the table and walks around to me and hugs me tight and tells me that she’s proud of me.
And then she goes back to finishing up dinner, but I know that deep down she’s probably feeling a hundred different things. Like how Tyler will never be able to apply to college now.
• 30 •
DATE: JANUARY 15, 2019
TO: MARVIN D. JOHNSON (MY SON)
FROM: JAMAL P. JOHNSON
PRISON NUMBER: 2076-14-5555
MESSAGE:
Son,
I’ve been thinking a lot about freedom.
What does freedom mean?
Who gets to be free?
Is someone free when they don’t have to think about the way people look at them or treat them because of the color of their skin?
Is someone free when they don’t have to spend time on this earth with people who have hearts made of hate?
Or is someone only really free when they’re no longer a part of this world?
I don’t know the answers. But I can only hope that Tyler is free, wherever he is, and that you can find your freedom, too.
I know you’re hurting. Hell. I’m hurting, but never forget that I love you.
Daddy
I’ve started a social media page for Tyler on just about every site possible. The Facebook page has over five thousand likes. The Twitter page has over two thousand followers. Even Lance Anderson is following the Tumblr.
I check each page every day, monitoring what everyone’s saying about Tyler, in an attempt to preserve his legacy. He was a good kid and he wanted things out of life—even things that he never told anyone. That’s part of being a person. He wasn’t a thug who deserved to die, and I make sure everyone remembers that every day.
I’ll never forget Tyler.
I don’t want the world to either.
I’ve already missed the MIT deadline, and I guess Mr. Ross has figured out that I’m not the right fit after all, because he stops calling, stops e-mailing. I check the Howard University website. The deadline is February 15—one month from now. One month to get my shit together. One month to get into the new school of my dreams.
I grab the box of Oatmeal Creme Pies and get started.
I text Ivy and G-mo that I’m going to the park with Faith. For today to be this nice out, the park is pretty empty. I sniff. The air smells like burnt rubber or fresh asphalt and paint. I look down to see that they’ve painted new lines on the court.
“Look, somebody left their ball,” Faith says, pointing at a basketball on the court. She runs over to grab it. She dribbles the ball through her legs and around her body.
I follow her. “You play?” I ask.
“I love basketball,” she answers. “When I was in school, I was on the team. Varsity all the way since the seventh grade.” Every day I learn something new about her. I just hope I can keep up.
“Wanna play a game real quick?”
She swoops past me and lays it up, her fingertips almost touching the rim when she jumps. “Sure,” she says, and winks.
We’re the same height, and I can’t even do what she just did. Damn.
She chucks me the ball.
I just dribble, standing still in my red basketball shorts and matching T-shirt. I stare at her, looking her up and down, like I’m challenging her. She looks hella beautiful in her white basketball shorts. I almost forget I’m dri
bbling, and she goes in for the steal.
“Hey, that wasn’t fair!” I play-shout. “Foul!”
“Don’t get distracted,” she yells with a laugh as she goes in for another layup.
G-mo and Ivy arrive, hopping off their bike and skateboard.
“Yo, yo, yo,” G-mo shouts. “’Sup, Faith. ’Sup, Marvin.”
“’Sup, G,” I say. “’Sup, Ivy.”
They both hug me and it feels warm and amazing and I didn’t know I needed them, but it clears my mind.
“Yo. I brought liquid oxygen,” G-mo says, setting down bottles of cheap spring water.
Ivy puts down her water bottle and takes off her gray beanie, and I see her head is shaved. It looks like she went into the barbershop and asked for a straight-up low fade.
“Oh my God!” I say. “You shaved your head?”
She laughs. “It was a bet from a girl I’m talking to,” Ivy says. “I clearly lost it.”
Faith walks up to Ivy, examining her new haircut. “I love it,” Faith tells her. “It’s cute.”
Ivy smiles like she’s going to blush. “Thanks, guys.” She takes off her jacket but keeps her sweatpants on.
“Who’s ready to get their butt beat in some two on two?” G-mo goes, pulling his black shorts down out of his crotch area.
“Whatever,” Ivy says.
“You’re about to take this L,” I say.
“Hell yeah,” Faith goes.
“A’ight, let’s do me and you, Faith, versus Marvin and Ivy?”
Faith says, “I’m down.”
“Let’s do it,” Ivy yells. “Our ball!”
After a few games, the four of us sit down on the hot asphalt, stretching our legs, G-mo to my right and Faith at my left, Ivy on the other side of G-mo.
Ivy starts to sing the theme song of A Different World. G-mo and I join in.
“Okay. Literal LOL. What the hell was that?” Faith laughs, giving us the side-eye.
The three of us just laugh. And I didn’t even realize how much I needed this moment.
