Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil

by Lezley McSpadden

  I never finished high school. It was once one of the most uncomfortable and embarrassing facts about my life. Of course, I wanted my high school diploma. I even thought about going to college, but at the time, it was about providing and surviving—and I didn’t know how to do that and finish school. It was a hard choice, but life is hard sometimes, right?

  I was raised in a single-parent house and watched my mother work hard on jobs she should have been paid more for doing, making sure my brother, me, and my sister had clothes on our backs and food on the table. I knew what her struggle had been.

  I’ve worked for years barely making minimum wage, sometimes at two jobs, to put clothes on my children’s backs and shoes on their feet, even Mike Mike’s size 13 feet. I’ve even received public assistance, because a mother will put her pride to the side and accept help from others to make ends meet and care for her children.

  As my firstborn, Mike Mike saw my struggles the most, and I know that motivated him to accomplish the dream I had of finishing school. Same for my other three kids who came after Mike Mike. I know they can go farther and do better than me and be successful in this life. So on May 23, 2014, when Mike Mike received his high school diploma, just a few months before he was gunned down, I was able to live my dream through him.

  Every day is rough for me, but like Maya Angelou said, “Still I rise!” Amen! I find a way to smile because my baby had aspirations and dreams. That really gives me comfort on the low days. That’s why I got to clear things up, because folks out here got it twisted: Mike Mike wasn’t a criminal who deserved to be shot like a dangerous animal. He was a good boy who cared about the right things, and family and friends were at the top of his list. He didn’t have a police record. He never got in trouble. He was a techie, in love with computers. He loved his mama and was proud to be headed to college and of the things he knew. The whole family was proud of him, too.

  When my son was killed, everybody had his or her own version of how everything went down. Cops with their version of the facts. People living in the Canfield Apartments with another. The television and newspaper people, EMTs, firemen, old people, young people, black, white, you name it—everyone with a different story that was supposed to be the truth about my son’s last minutes on earth.

  My son was dead on the street in front of the world, and everybody except Mike Mike was busy telling his story. Even in the months since that horrible day, people still haven’t stopped talking, from Twitter to Facebook to Instagram, in the beauty shop and coffee shop, everywhere.

  Well, let me just say this: I wasn’t there when Mike Mike was shot. I didn’t see him fall or take his last breath, but as his mother, I do know one thing better than anyone, and that’s how to tell my son’s story, and the journey we shared together as mother and son. So I’m about to give it to you.

  This is the truth of it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  FOUR AND A HALF HOURS TOO LONG

  The deli at Straub’s where I worked had been jumping since I got there. Straub’s is a kind of cozy gourmet market. It’s in a suburb called Clayton, where you got mini glass skyscrapers; little cafes with that chichi, froufrou food, you know those kind of restaurants where the menu be making basic stuff like a house salad sound like a foreign language; and boutiques that be selling a T-shirt for fifty dollars just because it’s got some high-end designer’s name on it, and I could go right over to Dots or Rainbow and get a shirt that look just as good for fifteen.

  The county court was just down the block, so we got a lot of lawyers, judges, and businesspeople coming in to buy lunch. But we also got some of the regular, everyday folks that worked in the offices around there, like county clerks, DMV workers, secretaries, basically the people who do all the work for those high-paid people.

  Then you had your white soccer moms and a lot of rich old white people who came in to do their weekly shopping. Mixed in, there are a handful of black professionals. I was so proud when I saw a brotha come up to my counter, representing with his Brooks Brothers suit on, showing them white folks that we had it going on too.

  One of my best customers was Mrs. Hirschfield, a little Jewish lady who was real cool and always came directly to me. One day I saw her coming in the door and figured I’d make her my last customer before my break.

  “Hi, my favorite customer!” I called out, giving her a warm smile.

  “Good morning, Lezley! I just love you!” She smiled back. She was a petite woman in her sixties, a little homely, she wore large glasses, and her hair was curled and poufy.

  A few of my coworkers rolled their eyes. Everybody said she was annoying, probably because she couldn’t always make up her mind about what she wanted, but I thought she was sweet.

  The first time I met her, I was working one of the store’s private tasting parties upstairs. As I was roaming the room with my serving tray, I kept making eye contact with this plain-dressed woman. Each time I passed by with a reloaded tray, she eagerly tapped me and whispered, “Can I please have another?”

  My coworker joked, “Damn, she asking for more?” I got a kick out of it. Hell, I encouraged her to take two and three at a time. Why not? They were free! To this day, Mrs. Hirschfield will sample the whole deli display if you let her. And I always do.

  So, even though I was anxious to dip out, I didn’t mind squeezing her in at all.

  “I’ll take some artichoke dip and a pint of chicken salad,” she said, smiling.

  “No problem, I’ll have everything right up for you. You made it just in time before my break.”

  “In that case, I’ll take a Lezley too!” She gave me a wink.

  Customers be begging for a Lezley. That’s a sandwich they named after me. It isn’t anything but roast beef, but I guess it’s how I make it.

  I laid out two pieces of soft wheat bread like I was about to perform surgery, smeared some brown mustard on, and gently placed the roast beef on it, sliced not too thick, not too thin. Then I laid the Swiss cheese on it, then topped it off with pickles, banana peppers, and onions.

  To me that sandwich isn’t anything special, but like all the food I make—eggplant Parmesan, grilled artichoke, all that chichi, froufrou stuff we sell there, to good old down-home soul food—I make it with love. When you have a gift to “burn,” as my granny said, you can make any and everything.

  I checked the time and quickly took my apron off before the stiff-looking man standing behind Mrs. Hirschfield could order. Break time! Before anybody could blink, I had slipped out and walked across the broiling parking lot to sit in my car, determined to make my few moments of peace matter.

  I lit a cigarette, inhaled deep, and let my breath out slowly. Another hot-ass day in the Lou. I turned my key in the ignition and felt the whoosh of warm air from the car’s vents before the AC started to cool it down.

  I took another puff from my cigarette, closed my eyes, and started to have one of them good old Calgon take-me-away moments. But right then my cell phone rang. Dang, so much for gettin’ a moment to myself.

  “Hello,” I answered, half interested, letting out a cloud of smoke. I didn’t even look at the caller ID.

  “Lezley, somebody been shot on Canfield, and he just laying here,” the man’s voice on the other end said in a panic. His voice was quivering and didn’t sound right.

  I quickly straightened up. It was Mario, a coworker who lived in the Canfield Apartments in Ferguson, Missouri, a mostly black area in the suburbs a few miles away. That was the same complex my mother lived in. My son Mike Mike had been visiting her for the summer.

  I took a nervous puff. “Mario, please describe him to me,” I said, beginning to shake all over. I took another puff and got out of the car, my hands trembling now.

  “I’m trying to get near, but it’s so many people out here,” he said.

  I swallowed, my mouth was all of a sudden dry, and I felt a dull thud fill my chest. It got faster and faster as I got out the car and began to pace the Straub’s parking lot, back an
d forth.

  Just then my call-waiting clicked.

  “Hold on! Hold on!” I shouted, trying to stay in control, but my hand holding the cigarette was now shaking uncontrollably.

  “Nette . . . Nette Pooh!” It was my sister, Brittanie. Let me just say this: She isn’t really a frantic person. It’s like something could be bad, but she always stays calm. She’s the kind who holds it together enough to tell you what’s going on in a crisis. But her words were choppy, and she couldn’t get nothing else out before she broke down moaning and sobbing. It was weird she wasn’t screaming or nothing. Her crying was different than I’d ever heard it before.

  Between her sobs, she was able to get out eight words: “Nette Pooh, the police just shot Mike Mike.”

  I heard her, but my mind wasn’t trying to understand nothing like that. I quietly started gasping for air. What she had just said was trapped between my ears like some muddy standing water.

  I didn’t ask her if he was still alive. I didn’t even want to think about that. A gust of wind shot through my body, and then like lightning, I just started running back toward Straub’s. I don’t even know if I said bye to Brittanie and Mario or not. All I could think was, Oh God, I gotta get to my son, make sure he all right.

  Tears exploded from my eyes as I burst through the narrow front doors of the store.

  “I need to get to my son! The police just shot my son!” I frantically shouted.

  Everyone in the store turned around. I didn’t care who heard my screams. I just needed somebody to help me. Erica, one of my coworkers, came running out the bathroom and burst into tears, her screams as loud as mine. I grabbed hold of her.

  “Get me to Ferguson, please!” I yelled, collapsing in her arms.

  Moments later, we were on our way, racing down Clayton Road onto Interstate 170 toward Ferguson. I wrapped my arms around myself and kept rocking, trying to hold it together as Erica drove. Now I was trembling all over, my stomach churning. I blinked several times, trying to clear up my vision. I was crying so hard everything was cloudy and out of focus. I took a deep breath in and then slowly let it out. Deep breath in, slowly out. In, slowly out.

  This is a bad dream, I was thinking, and when I wake up, everything’s gonna be back to normal, all good again. I tried to imagine Mike Mike’s smiling baby face and him leaning down to me, giving me one of his cuddly hugs. My son was big for his age, six-four and barely eighteen, but still just a kid. Here I was just five-five, and I swear I don’t know how my baby grew up to be that tall. He had even outgrown his daddy.

  I took another deep breath, exhaled slowly again, and kept rocking back and forth. I rubbed my stomach, trying to calm all the flip-flopping it was doing. I needed to get there, and it was taking too damn long.

  I closed my eyes real tight, and as the tears gushed out, my mind flashed back to Mike Mike as a newborn. It was the first time I laid eyes on him. A mother never forgets that day, that moment. I looked into Mike Mike’s little brown eyes, barely open, thinking, Wow, I’ve been waiting all these months to see, kiss, hug, smell, and take you around to show off, little man. This is what everybody wanted me to leave behind and get rid of? No, you here now, and I got you forever.

  A slight forward jerk of the car snapped me back into the moment. Traffic ahead was bumper-to-bumper and at a standstill in one of the lanes. My friend’s car was creeping along at a stop-and-go pace. My nerves kicked into overdrive. I began wringing my hands. Normally, it’s a short twenty-minute ride between Clayton, where I work, and Ferguson, where my mama lives. Why the hell was it taking so long? Where was all this traffic coming from? It felt like all of St. Louis was sitting in they cars. I was getting so worked up I wanted to bust out the car, leap over all the traffic, and run to where my son was.

  I spotted a female highway patrol officer and flagged her down. “Please, Officer, help us get through. I gotta get to my son,” I begged.

  “You’re just gonna have to make it through the best way you can,” she replied in one of them flat, authoritative tones. Before I could think to tell her that I had to get to Mike Mike because he had been shot, she had moved on, and got into her car.

  Beads of sweat formed on my forehead, my heart racing, pounding through my chest. I was shaking all over. I could feel myself about to go off, and I didn’t care about her being the police. The officer must’ve known it had to be something serious, maybe even felt a little bit of sympathy. I don’t know, but whatever it was, she suddenly blared her sirens and horn. The cars in front of us gave us a small clearing, and we started moving again. It all got foggy at that point. I lost track of everything, and the world felt like it was whizzing by. I just stayed focused on getting to Mike Mike. I knew he was scared and needed me.

  We finally got to the corner of West Florissant and Canfield Drive, a few blocks from my mama’s apartment complex. The local traffic was just as thick and congested as the highway was. The streets were cluttered with what seemed like a sea of police cars. We pulled to a stop, and I saw my son’s father, Big Mike, getting out of his car a few cars away. We were on opposite sides of the narrow, two-lane street. I couldn’t think about saying nothing because I could feel that gust of wind shoot through me again. I took off running. Me and Big Mike were both running across from each other, in between the lanes, on the sidewalks, wherever we could get through, neck and neck, in sync. Something we hadn’t been in a long time.

  The street was thick with people, and I fought my way through the big blur of everybody. I caught a glimpse of Brittanie and my brother, Bernard, standing in a small grassy area about six feet away. Suddenly, there wasn’t any sound, just the hard pounding of my heart. I had tunnel vision on one thing: getting to my son.

  I slowed to catch my breath, tears streaming down my face, my chest heaving, like I was going to hyperventilate. Brittanie rushed over, trying her best to console me, but she was tore up herself, tears pouring out of her bloodshot eyes.

  “Naw, man, not Mike Mike! Not my nephew!” I could hear Bernard shouting. I saw him in my peripheral vision, pacing, shaking his head.

  Everyone else around kept fading in and out. I rushed toward the yellow tape the police use to mark crime scenes but was stopped in my tracks by the chest of a towering white officer. I looked around him, and what seemed like the whole damn Ferguson police force had formed a human wall, keeping everybody back.

  I started pushing my way past him. Somebody behind me grabbed me to hold me back, but I was still shoving, kicking, and yelling, “Somebody! Somebody! I need to get to my son!” I couldn’t get through. As far as my eyes could see, white men dressed in blue uniforms were standing in my way.

  I caught a glimpse of a blood-covered white sheet laying over the form of a motionless body stretched out on the ground and screamed, throwing my arms into the air, “Naw, naw, naw, that ain’t my child! It can’t be!”

  I was sweating and lightheaded. Brittanie had been so certain on the phone that the police had shot Mike Mike, but she had to be wrong.

  I could kind of see a hand and one foot wearing what looked like a yellow sock on it. Mike Mike had a pair of yellow socks, but still, that didn’t prove it was him, did it? Then I saw a red Cardinals baseball cap resting on the ground several feet away. Mike Mike had that same red baseball cap.

  I tried pushing my way past the wall of cops again, but they pushed me back. “Oh, God, please!” I pleaded. I just wanted to run over there, lift up that sheet, and hold my son, comfort him, then he’d be all right. I could get him to wake up. He needed his mama.

  “Let me see my son! Why ain’t he off the ground yet? Do anybody hear me?” I begged, frantically running from officer to officer. Didn’t these fucking police understand? I said, “Do anybody hear me?”

  They just stood there like a stone wall. None of them would speak to me.

  I felt like I was being swallowed up, my feet sinking into the pavement like it was quicksand. My head was pounding. More people had gathered and filled in a row in
front of the police. I mustered the little strength left in my body to push through the crowd to find a closer view. It looked like a finger poking from underneath the bloody sheet. Mike Mike was trying to point something out to me, tell me something about what happened. Who had done this?

  I closed my eyes. “Mama, I need you, I’m scared.” I could hear his voice.

  It was my son under that sheet, my son’s yellow sock sticking out, my son’s red Cardinals hat, my son’s finger. All at once, it hit me that what Brittanie had said was true. Mike Mike was dead. I tried to open my mouth, but my words were stuck, trapped in my throat.

  My husband, Louis, suddenly appeared at my side and held me up as my knees gave way. I tried to reach for Mike Mike, but it was like trying to grab air. I opened my mouth, and a moan broke loose.

  “Who the hell did this? Who did this to my son?” I demanded, sweat pouring over my body. I could taste the salt of my tears flowing into my mouth.

  “The police,” Brittanie gasped, putting her shaking hand over her mouth like she was trying to stop the words.

  Anger shot through my body. “The police? They ’posed to be protectin’ us, protectin’ my kids, my son. How they do some shit like this?” I stormed up and down the sidewalk. “Where is he? Where’s the one who did this to my child?” I got closer to one of them whose face had a permanent scowl carved into it. He stood over me. “Y’all muthafuckas gonna have to answer to this,” I challenged, looking up at him, square in the eye like I was every bit of the giant he was.

  “Well, we some good motherfuckers,” he growled, then threw up his middle finger.

  What he did knocked out the last bit of wind I had in my lungs. My heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to jump out of my chest.

  I stared him down, trying to cut him up with my eyes, and the harder I looked, the redder his face got. It was like I was daring him to come at me, and he was doing the same. So what, was he going to shoot me like the other one had done to my son?