“He was facing you,” my father said. “He was just standing there with his hands up.”
Then Officer Dennis’s voice drops just the tiniest bit. His eyes narrow. I swallow. I’ve known Officer Dennis all my life, but in this moment, I don’t know him at all.
“We thought he had a gun!”
5
THE PHONE CALLS STARTED COMING A DAY after the shooting.
If Green says a word, a raspy voice said, we’ll kill him. I held the phone away from my ear, then closer again, pressing it hard against my head. The voice went away then. A minute later, there was a dial tone. Then the loud beep and another voice telling me that the phone was off the hook. I couldn’t hang up though. Even though the beep pounded into my ear and my hand hurt from holding the phone too tight, I couldn’t hang up.
When Mama came into the living room a little while later, she found me standing there, my face twisted up in horror, tears streaming down my nose and into my mouth.
The second time the raspy voice called, my mother snatched the phone out of the wall and screamed. I was sitting at the kitchen table eating a jelly sandwich.
Cameron was at cheerleading practice. When she came home that night, she threw her blue and gold pom-poms on the floor and said Everyone at school is acting so weird. I hate my stupid life!
Joseph had started it. After the shooting, he began spreading the word around school that our father was a liar. That he was trying to ruin Joseph’s life. Joseph was tall like his father, gray-eyed, too. He played guard on the basketball team and was a running back on the football team. Girls followed him and giggled. Boys held up their hands, feeling important when he slapped them five. Cameron had gone to the movies with him, had let him walk her home, had kissed him beneath the bleachers at the football field. She said the first time he took her hand, his was so sweaty, she wanted to laugh out loud. Said Maybe that’s when I started falling in love.
And when Joseph chose Cameron, the other cheer-leaders, who she knew had always called her The Only behind her back, frowned. One even asked, “But why you?”
I wanted to slap her, Cameron told me. I wanted to die. Then softer, she said Sometimes I hate being black. Don’t you?
And I didn’t answer. Because, back then, I couldn’t imagine being anything else. I loved Mama’s skin, loved the way it smelled and felt. I loved looking in the mirror and seeing my own brown face staring back at me. Even if there weren’t a whole lot of black people in Denver, the mayor was black and I was black and Lulu was, too. And my family and Grandma. The thought of waking up anything or anybody else scared me.
I thought white people weren’t mean to black people about race stuff. I thought Denver wasn’t that kind of place. But the morning Joseph walked into the school and said my father was a liar, only a few kids doubted him. Only a few kids, who had heard their own parents saying White cops, black kid dead, turned away. When the paper ran a story about Raymond Taylor, only a few kids thought to themselves It could’ve been me.
There’s this thing called the Blue Wall of Silence in the police world. It means all cops are brothers and sisters and should never betray one another. You swear to it in your heart when you become a cop. It’s not written anywhere, you just know it. You know that cops are there for you no matter what. My father told me you believe hard in it because you have to. You have to be able to trust your fellow cop. No matter what. There had always been cops in my life—hanging at our barbecues and parties, coming to my class to speak about crime, taking me and Cameron along with their kids to trick-or-treat, bringing over armfuls of Christmas presents. There were undercover cops, too—who, if we begged enough, lifted their pants’ legs to show us the guns concealed there, or made us squeal by telling us cops-and-robbers stories where the bad guy almost got away but was caught at the last minute because of one daredevil feat or another. There were beat cops walking our neighborhood, calling us by name, and traffic cops coming up to our car to say hello.
SIX DAYS AFTER THE SHOOTING, INSPECTOR Albert Oliver showed up at our house just before we sat down to dinner. When Mama asked him to join us, he shook his head and said he needed to talk to Daddy outside. Inspector Oliver was tall and white-haired, even though he wasn’t old. I didn’t know him as well as I knew other cops, but I liked what I knew of him. He was always shy and polite around Mama, Cameron and me, speaking softly and taking each of our hands in both of his to say hello.
It was a Monday night in April. Denver was just starting to get warm. Mama had opened the French doors leading from the kitchen to the back deck, but the air coming in was still more cold than warm. When Cameron got up to close the door, Mama gave her a fierce look and shook her head. Cameron frowned and sat down again. My father stood on our deck in his police uniform. He had taken his holster off and laid it on a chair. Without it, he looked smaller. He put his hands on the porch railing and sighed.
We sat around the kitchen table, each of us leaning toward the door to listen. I could just barely hear Inspector Oliver’s voice.
“Think hard, Green. Randall and Dennis might be the wrong people to go after. I’m not saying they didn’t do it—I’m not saying they did, either,” he said slowly. “It’s just that cophood’s all those men have. Who knows what they’ll do?”
I stared at my plate, feeling sick. Mama had made lasagna with spinach and roasted red peppers. Beside my piece of lasagna, there was salad. Any other time, it would have been one of my favorite meals. But that night, my stomach was turning over and over again. When had Randall, with his silly laugh, and Dennis, whose face broke into the biggest grin when he saw me and Cameron, become the wrong people? They were our friends.
“I know what I’m doing,” my father said, his voice shaking. “That boy getting killed was wrong. You know it, Al. I can’t let them go back to work knowing what I know.”
He got quiet for a minute.
“What about next time?” my father said. “What about Raymond Taylor’s family?”
“They thought it was gang related—”
“Because he was black. That boy was standing, facing them, with his hands raised. And they shot him. Both of them. Bullets came from both guns. We both know that. We all know that.”
Inspector Oliver didn’t say anything. Maybe he was staring at my father like he was seeing him for the first time, like he was just realizing my father was the same color as Raymond Taylor. And the same color as the mayor of Denver.
After a moment he said, “Officer Dennis said he was reaching for—”
“He wasn’t reaching for anything, Albert. Anything. He was shot standing! I saw it.”
“You guys’ve been friends for a long time. You three—”
“Officer Randall had called for backup because he thought it was gang related, thought it was a lot more than one. When I pulled up, that boy—he was a boy— came out from behind those cars with his hands raised and stopped. He was stopped.” My father’s voice broke.
I got up suddenly and walked quickly to the door. Behind me, Mama called my name, but I ignored her. I hated the sound in my father’s voice. Hated it.
I moved across the deck to the patio swing. Both Daddy and Inspector Oliver were staring out into the darkness. My father turned then, looked at me like he was starting to tell me to go inside. But he didn’t.
“He was standing, Albert. He was standing and now he’s dead.”
Wind blew, rustling the plastic covering the barbecue grill. Otherwise, it was stone-cold quiet.
The inspector fussed with a cuticle while he spoke. “Officer Dennis and Officer Randall’ve been cops for a long time. Their daddies were cops, and their daddies’ daddies. Something must have scared them bad to just shoot—”
“And what about the things that scare me? I’m sick of this. Gang talk and everybody looks my way.” Daddy looked hard at Inspector Oliver. “Anyone stop to think that there aren’t even enough black boys in Denver to make up an all-black gang?”
When Inspector Oliver
didn’t say anything, Daddy went on.
“He was standing, Al. He was standing and he was black. And you know and I know and everyone on the force knows those gangs everyone is so afraid of are not made up of black boys.”
“You’d be taking their dreams away, Green. The only thing these men have.”
I folded my arms across my chest and shivered. The raspy voice came into my head again. Felt like it had grown hands and wrapped them around my throat. I looked at Daddy and swallowed hard.
“What about the only thing I have? You think I know how to be anything else but a cop? A cop who’s a father, that’s all that I am.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes and sighed. “I know how to protect, Al. You know why?”
Inspector Oliver raised his eyebrows slightly, like he knew Daddy would go on whether he said anything or not.
“Because I’ve got two daughters. Two. You think I brought them into this world to turn around and watch them get killed for no reason at all? That could have been Toswiah with a hat on standing there. They could have seen her and saw something threatening.” Daddy raised his voice then quickly lowered it again. “That could have been my girl. It could have been my wife at the other end of that phone line being told her daughter had been shot!”
I stared down at my hands, trying to imagine Mama getting a call that I’d been killed. I saw my own house collapsing in on itself, the roof and walls crumbling.
“What makes you think the D.A.’s going to believe you?” Inspector Oliver said.
My father looked at him but didn’t say anything. Matt Cat pushed the screen door open and jumped into my lap. He circled once then lay across it.
“I’m playing devil’s advocate here. You’re making it about race, so I’m—”
“I’m not making it.” My father shook his head. I could feel his exasperation across the deck. “It is about race. If Raymond Taylor was white, I don’t think he’d be dead now.”
Inspector Oliver shrugged. “We don’t know that, and we’ll probably never know that. What I’m saying is, two white cops against a black cop,” he said slowly, counting off on his fingers. He raised his other hand. “A black kid dead.”
After a moment, Daddy turned and looked over at me again. Something caught in his eyes. We stared at each other without saying anything for a long time, then Daddy shook his head and turned back to the inspector.
“I believe in the law, Albert,” Daddy said quietly. “I wouldn’t be a cop if I didn’t. My father was a lawyer and his father was a judge. And here I am—a cop. You say it’s in Randall’s and Dennis’s blood—well, it’s in mine, too. They shouldn’t have killed Taylor. I’m going to stand by that.” He looked out into the darkness. When he started talking again, his voice was low and scratchy. “I’m going to stand by that no matter what, because the way I see it, the way I’ve taught my girls to see it—blood’s the same color no matter who it’s flowing through.”
YOU CAN PAUSE A VIDEO, REWIND IT, PRESS stop and power and make it disappear. Right there, that evening with Inspector Albert Oliver standing on our porch biting on his cuticle, is the point where I’d pause. Then I’d press stop and my father would still be a cop in Denver, his uniform pressed, his shoes shined, his face calm and smiling.
6
THERE WEREN’T MANY BLACK PEOPLE IN DENVER, but the ones who lived there were angry. There was a protest. And a rally. There was a small riot in downtown Denver. Two black ministers gave sermons about injustice that made the local paper. We weren’t church-going and we didn’t march. But the rage was in the air all around us. And in the center of it, there was Daddy, the only black cop in his precinct, coming home from work after a day with not a single white cop speaking to him. The white cops who had been our friends became strangers. Me and Cameron walked from the bus stop and no cop car slowed down to ask if we were Green’s copper pennies. The white cops made believe they didn’t know us; the black ones from other precincts acknowledged my father but stayed clear of him. At night, my father would sit at the dining room table and tell us of the phone calls he’d gotten—anonymous calls from men who identified themselves as cops. “You’re doing the right thing, Green,” they’d whisper
“They know what I know,” my father said softly, staring down at his plate without touching his food.“All my life I’ve walked into the precinct as a black cop. But I was a cop first, so when the racist jokes were flying, I let them slap me on the back and sometimes laughed right along with them—even had my own to tell about white folks. It was like that—black, white, we were all cops, that’s all. Cops first.” He balled his hand into a fist and stared at it. Then stared at me, his eyes starting to water. I swallowed, hating Randall and Dennis and every cop that had brought us to this moment. “Cops first. That’s always been the rule. No matter what. When I saw that boy falling, I wasn’t a cop anymore.”
Seven days after the shooting, the mayor called for a full investigation. A few days after that, Daddy met with the district attorney.
We can protect you, the D.A. said. But it might mean having to leave here. Ask yourself if it’s worth it.
That night at dinner, Daddy said I’m a man, I can testify. He walked slowly through every room of the house, touching the walls, picking up pictures and putting them down again, fluffing pillows and pressing them to his face. When he got back to the kitchen, he sat down at the table and said We can leave here. Then he leaned into his fists and cried.
TWO DAYS AFTER MY FATHER MET WITH THE DISTRICT attorney, he sat me and Cameron down at the kitchen table to tell us we’d be leaving. By then, I had known this was coming. I had been listening to him and Mama go back and forth about the consequences. The night before, I had walked in on Mama sitting at the kitchen table, marking spelling exams and crying. But Cameron had gone on like nothing was happening, even though every radio station in Colorado was telling the story.
“I can’t believe you’re gonna screw up our lives like this,” Cameron yelled.
“I’d want someone to do this if it was one of you,” my father said.
“They didn’t kill us,” Cameron said. “Don’t do this to us, Daddy.”
At dusk, someone fired three shots through our kitchen window. I was upstairs in my room, spying on my father. I could see him from my window, standing on the back deck, staring out at the trees, every now and then his shoulders rising and falling. Cameron was in the basement. Mama had just walked out of the kitchen to set the table for dinner.
Outside, a few birds were making noise. When I ran downstairs, Mama was slumped against the dining room wall, her head in her hands. Daddy was beside her, his arms around her shoulders. Cameron stood in the corner of the dining room, hugging herself hard. Glass covered the kitchen table and floor. The bullet holes were like small black caves against the white kitchen wall. I stared at them without blinking. I was not afraid. Some part of us that had been the same way forever was gone. The holes in the walls proved it. The dead boy, his mother in his room at night calling and calling his name. I thought of dead people in the movies. How their eyes flutter open like magazines. I thought This part of my life is over now.
7
MAYBE SOMEWHERE IN HIS HEAD MY FATHER imagined Raymond Taylor as his own son. Maybe he looked at us in that moment and saw two daughters—his copper pennies—safe, but not safe. Girls. But black girls. And me, tall and skinny and always running and climbing trees and, even at thirteen, still coming home with skinned knees and jammed fingers. Me, who was always begging to have my braid chopped off so I didn’t have to deal with my hair every day, closer to a boy in some ways than a girl. Maybe he looked at me, his youngest copper penny, and thought It could happen like this.
Me and Cameron sat there, my love for Daddy blossoming into something deeper, Cameron’s disgust growing fast as a weed.
Later that night, I walked into the den to find him holding a picture of himself with the cops in his precinct.
“I don’t feel safe anymore,” he said. He put down the p
icture and left the room.
I looked at the picture for a long time after he left. I had known everyone in that picture my whole life. Twenty-two officers, all in blue. Look again, though. Blue and white. Blue and white. Blue and white. Then Daddy. Blue and black. Look again. Harder. Longer.
That night, the men came for us.
8
MY MOTHER USED TO LISTEN TO HER OLD records all the time. She’d put the album on our old turntable and set the needle down gently. Then the music would lift up around the room. Sad, cloudy-sounding music. Songs about people going off to look for America and hearts being broken. Songs where the men sounded like they were singing with the last breaths they had in the world and the women sang low and gravelly about men coming and going. Now the songs come to me—bits of phrases, pieces of tunes. They come to me late at night when I’m not expecting them. Words and words and words. You know us, they whisper. You know us.
When the men came, the moon was out, hanging down close outside my window. I’d never seen it that way before—full and yellow and looking close enough to touch. The men came in the night with guns under their coats and the moon saying its own good-bye. Their coming surprised me. And then it didn’t. They’d always been coming. From the day I was born they’d been coming. Lulu used to say that we’re just paper dolls made at one of God’s play dates. He knows the scene, she’d say. From start to finish already. Even if we don’t have a clue. When the men came, something stepped outside of me and watched with its arms folded. Nodding. As the men drove us away, that something lifted its hand and waved. I watched it. I was it. It’s gone now.
Lulu lived five doors down from us. Earlier that evening, before the bullets came through the kitchen window, she had tiptoed up to my room and hugged me the way she had done so many nights before.
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