God Must Have Forgotten About Me

by Jason Lee

  For a while, I enjoyed our secret romance. It was intoxicating to steal moments together and to have something that was so precious and special that the two of us were the only ones who could experience it. It was great being affirmed and free; it was great to have my heart love so relentlessly and passionately. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want to feel like a side piece or option. I wanted Calvin to be mine. We were sneaking around so much, and I was completely over it. I was over my girl, and I decided to break up with her. The next time I saw Nikki, I let her know that we were done:

  “Hey Nikki, I think we should end things.”

  “What? Why?” she scrunched her nose and gave me a side-eye.

  “I just think we should go our separate ways. It’s been kinda different between us for a while.”

  “So are you fucking somebody else or something?” she asked.

  I lied and just told her that I wished her well. Breaking up with Nikki was a huge weight off my shoulders, and I couldn’t wait to tell Calvin the news:

  “You’ll never guess what I did today!” I was trying so hard to keep cool, but Calvin noticed how hard I was trying not to grin.

  “Whatever it is, you real geeked about it!” he smirked.

  “I broke up with Nikki.” Calvin’s reaction wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, and he kind of just left me hanging on my words without much enthusiasm on his end.

  “Forreal,” he took what felt like an hour to respond. “Why you do that?”

  “The fuck you mean, ‘Why I do that?’ I want us to be serious with each other. I want to be with you, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get there.”

  “Forreal?” He kissed me and hugged me tight, but I could feel that something wasn’t right. I didn’t know how to address his lackluster response to me, so I just put it all out on the table.

  “I love you, and you love me. Are you going to get rid of your girl, too?” I really thought he was going to break up with his girl, but he didn't.

  “I don't think I can give you what you want.”

  “Why not?” I trembled.

  “You want me to leave my girl, and I just can't do that.”

  “Why not?” I asked again more forcefully. I was fuming at this point. “We spend all our time together! We make love! We get each other, and you’re my best friend. What the fuck does she even mean to you?” I was devastated because I really felt like we were at a point in our relationship where he would have left his girl for me. Our relationship was deeper than us just messing around, but he didn’t feel the same way. He didn’t want to leave her, but he was still cool with messing around.

  I was crying. He was crying. We both knew it was over, but he begged me not to end it.

  “You can't have your cake and eat it, too. We're not gonna do—I can't do this anymore. I can't mess around. I thought we were moving towards something serious. You don't want to commit.”

  I knew that was it, but I was still in love with him. It was harder than I thought to end everything cold turkey, so I struggled for the next few months trying to choose between my heart and my head.

  6 Rodney

  Here I was this kid who had all the potential in the world and the opportunity to do what the hell I wanted in life. I had my world in my own hands, and I had been on my own since I was in single digits, and I had lived life how I saw fit. I had decided that the time was right to move to LA; in fact, I was moving the next morning. I decided to have a going-away party at the Eldorado Bowl, and I invited all my cousins, siblings, Calvin, and my friends. I had already told my mom and everybody else in my family that I was moving, so it was a special night. I appreciated how they showed up for me: everybody was there, including my brother, Rodney.

  That night there were also some girls there—one of whom used to be my neighbor. Her name was Samima; I lived in apartment 70, and she lived in apartment 63. She was a Samoan girl with long, black hair, and she was there with her boyfriend, Phillip, who they called “Filthy Phil.” He and I were friends. Samima got into an altercation with another girl who I knew from the southside; the argument got so heated that security took her outside. Rodney kind of shrugged off the spat, but at this point, I was done for the night.

  The girls fought a little more, and Rodney was sitting at the bar. The funny thing is that Rodney was 6'5" and 230 pounds, but he didn’t drink.

  “Ah, nigga you know damn well ain’t nothing in there but some water!” I hollered.

  “Nah, it’s a Sprite,” he laughed.

  People thought that Rodney was this tough guy because it looked like he was mean mugging all the time. The truth is that he couldn’t see for shit, so he was always squinting and staring really hard. We laughed a little more, and then I was on my way.

  “Alright, I'm about to go home, I announced.

  “Okay, I'll talk to you later.”

  I told him, “I love you.”

  The thing about it that stood out the most was that I had never told him the words “I love you” before that night. Even in a letter when I was writing him in prison, I never said, “I love you.” I told him that this night, and honestly, I’m glad I did.

  He said, “I love you too,” and then I walked away.

  ***

  I was probably about 7-10 steps away when Samima came back into the club. I stood to the side a little bit because she looked like she wanted to fight. Phillip grabbed her from behind and picked her up, and she was screaming and fighting to get down, and then she pulled out a gun and started shooting.

  It felt like everybody in the room fell on top of me, and then I saw her fall down right in front of me. Eldorado Bowl was a small venue, and there was only one way in and one way out. There was another door out, but it had chains around so it was useless as an exit. The only way to get out was to get past where she was standing—where she was with the gun.

  Everybody who was in the club was ducking and scrambling to get out; I could hear the frantic screams and panic of the people around me. There was nowhere to run. There were people on top of me, and I was fighting like hell to get out of there. Eventually, Phillip dragged her out of the club, so Samima was gone. After the madness settled a bit, I ran out and stood outside waiting for Rodney to come out. It seemed like a thousand people came out that building, and none of them were him. He didn't come out. I didn't know what was going on, but I wasn't going to go back in.

  I was still standing outside pissed that somebody spilled a drink on me when I heard more gunshots—this time they were outside. Samima was outside shooting at somebody else now.

  “Bitch, I will fucking kill you!” Samima shrieked. She had put her hand in the car window and tried to shoot a girl in the van, but she missed.

  Everybody was running back into the bowling alley with guns. There were guns coming in, shooting outside, and everybody was running around like fucking maniacs. I wasn’t going to take my chances with Samima’s crazy ass, so I ran back inside. I saw an easy enough escape route by way of an employee exit, and I ran down the side lane that led to the back of the alley. Once I got to the back, I kicked open the locked door, and I ran behind the bowling pins toward the emergency exit. I opened that door, got out of there, and found myself on the other side of a chain-link fence with circular barbed wire on the top.

  Okay, shit! I was trapped. My next obstacle was making it over the barbed wire. Calvin’s car was right over the fence, so I knew that if I got over, I’d be able to leave. I started climbing up the fence and was spotted by two ladies who were also running to their cars.

  “Hey, ain't you Rodney's brother?” one of them shouted.

  “Yeah,” I replied, still not quite over the fence yet.

  “I think he just got hit.”

  “What do you mean?” My heart started thumping hard and strong.

  “I think he got shot, and it doesn't look good.”

  “What do you mean he got shot?” I was totally confused. I had just left him at the bar drinking his Spr
ite mocktail.

  I leaped down off the fence, scratches and all, and ran back into the bowling alley from the front. Everything was in slow motion. All types of shit was going on around me, but I couldn't even process it because the adrenalin had kicked in so strong. I couldn't really hear everything happening around me, but I could see it. People running. The police showing up. I remember all of that. When I got to the bar, I saw a guy with two long braids standing over a body that was laying on the ground. There were other people standing around screaming and crying. Someone was giving him CPR. When I walked up close enough, my throat began to tighten, and I could feel myself get weaker. It was my brother, Rodney, but he had a hole right above his eye. There was blood everywhere. Even while they were giving him CPR, blood was coming out of his mouth and spilling down his cheeks. My brothers, Kris and Christopher, were standing there looking just as broken as me.

  It felt like an out-of-body experience. I was watching everyone, including myself, over his body. It wasn't real to me. I wasn't crying, but my brothers were. Then the police, firemen, and paramedics came in. They took the lock off the exit door and put my brother on a stretcher. I’m sure they put him in an ambulance, but I was so far out of it, I barely remember him leaving that bowling alley.

  Rodney’s brain matter was on the ground, and people were stepping in it.

  “What the fuck?” I thought to myself, “I can't even believe this is happening.”

  ***

  My friends and I got into Calvin’s car and raced to the hospital. We pulled up, and I sat in the car watching people coming to see about Rodney. I saw my aunt. Then my cousin came. My father walked in, and then my uncles, and cousins…

  “Get out the car, y’all,” I stoically requested. Everybody started piling out the car and I sat in the back seat and begged. “God, please don't ... God, please don't let this happen. This cannot be happening right now.”

  I sat in the car in complete silence hoping that this was all a nightmare. I finally found the courage to go in, and someone asked, “Did anybody call his baby mom?”

  Rodney had just had a baby who was seven weeks old, and he lived with his child’s mother.

  I asked again, “Has anybody called her?”

  I didn’t think that anybody did, so I volunteered. “I’ll call her.”

  I went over to the payphone and called her, not knowing what the hell I was going to say to her.

  When she answered, I said, “Tanya.”

  “Yes?” she responded.

  I took a deep breath and had a slight tremble in my voice, “Tanya…”

  “Yes!”

  I tried again. “I got to tell you something.” She immediately broke down crying. Nobody had called her, but she just sensed in my voice that something was terribly wrong.

  “I don’t want to hear shit you gotta say!” she wept.

  “You need to get to the hospital.” The last thing I heard was her screaming and crying.

  I hung up and went back to find Rodney. I ran into a nurse and asked, “Can you tell me what's going on with my brother?”

  She looked over her glasses and responded, “Who's your brother?”

  “Rodney Townsend.”

  “Oh, ok. He’s in surgery.”

  It was a sigh of relief. I was thinking, Oh well, shit, if he's in surgery then he's alive. I still wasn’t crying, but I was still in shock. Through my mixed emotions, I still felt a tinge of hope. Surgery. It was the thread of hope that I was holding onto with all my might. I kept telling myself that he was going to be okay.

  Okay, he's in surgery. He's good. Why's everybody tripping?

  I even got a little bold and went to everybody else like, “Why y'all crying? What y'all tripping for? He's going to be okay!”

  A little bit later, I saw another nurse walking by, and I asked about Rodney’s progress again.

  “Hey, I've been waiting. What's going on with my brother?”

  “Who's your brother?” she asked. By now this shit was getting frustrating as hell.

  “Rodney Townsend!”

  “Oh baby, he passed away.”

  She just said it matter-of-factly. No sympathy. She told me about my brother’s death in passing. There was no build-up to it, she just said it. It was like she sliced my throat. I used to mock death scenes in movies—people falling on the ground, and they're like, “Oh my God,” and they're crying and this and that. I was always like, “That's so dramatic,” but it's so entertaining. This was no movie. I fell to the ground. I could not stand up. All I had the strength to do was cry.

  ***

  Though Calvin and I broke up, we found it hard to let go of each other. He was trying to comfort me, but I couldn't even let him. He fought with me to let him hold me because I was inconsolable.

  I eventually calmed down and started to walk toward the back where Rodney was. A police officer stopped me.

  “You can't go back there.”

  My face was still fresh with tears. “I need to see my brother. There's just no way that he died. It's impossible.”

  The officer softened his gaze and said, “You don't want to see him like that. It's not pretty.”

  “No,” I insisted, “I want to see him.”

  Calvin stood beside me and declared, "I'm going with you."

  "No!" I starkly reproached.

  “No,” he insisted, “I'm going back there with you."

  We headed toward the back to the room and the nurse stopped us abruptly. “Before we go in the room, let me explain to you what he looks like and what's going on. We did try to revive him. There's a hole above his eye, and his eyes are open. There's a tube in his mouth, and his hands are in plastic bags because we had to run a test for gunshot residue. There's also some discoloration. He doesn't have a shirt on, and there's blood everywhere.”

  I completely dismissed her. “Okay, open the door. I need to see my brother.”

  They opened the door, and I went in. I saw him. That was it. His death was finite, and there wasn’t any more hoping or praying that I could do.

  Why did this girl kill my brother? Apparently, the other girl who Samima was arguing with stole her jacket. They were friends at first, but when Samima saw her with the jacket, she got mad. She confronted the girl and then the argument escalated, and they fought. After the fight, Samima decided that she wanted to kill the girl, so she went outside and got the gun. She came back in the bowling alley with intentions of shooting the other girl, but instead, she missed and shot Rodney. My brother lost his life over a fucking jacket.

  I got home at about 4 am. My mom leaped as soon as she saw me, and barked, “What the fuck are you coming in so late for? Who the fuck you think you are?”

  I tuned out the rest of the cursing and yelling she was doing. I was 19, but I was still living at her house.

  I was red and sniffling. “You know what? Not today. Tonight's not the night. You're not about to do that tonight,” I snapped at her.

  My mom looked at me incredulously. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you crying?”

  I hesitated, but I answered her anyway, “Because Rodney got killed tonight.”

  Her mood didn’t change, and she didn’t offer an ounce of sympathy. She folded her arms, shifted her hips, and said, “They should have killed your Black ass.”

  ***

  Rodney’s funeral was one to remember; it was a true gangsta funeral. There were red rags everywhere—obviously in reverence of Rodney’s gang affiliation. His casket was elaborate and decked out, and there were Hennessy bottles used as décor around the sanctuary. We were in a church, yet people were cussing and throwing up gang signs. My brother, Kris, was playing Tupac’s “I Ain't Mad at You” and Richie Rich’s “Do G’s Get to Go to Heaven?” on the speaker. I was so pissed at him for that. We may have lived our lives a little crazy and had some fucked up ways of going about things, but I had respect for the house of God. It is a sacred place. I learned this while living with the Easters during foster ca
re. I had invited all these church people, my former foster parents, the pastor, and first lady. All my church family from back when I was in the foster home were there. I was so embarrassed because it was the most disrespectful thing in the world. I sat there listening to the songs until I couldn’t take it any longer. I got up and had a woman who attended my church come up and sing a gospel song. I had asked my foster father to preside over the service, and I didn’t want him to feel out of place. Pastor Easter prayed and preached, and it was a good way to send my brother home.

  “It’s ok to be sad,” he began. “Everyone in here loved Rodney, and everyone will miss him.”

  I sank down in my seat. “But one thing we have to understand is that, if nothing else, God is in control. God is a comforter, and we will make it through this.”

  I looked down at my hands and saw them shaking violently.

  “What can we learn from the senseless premature death of this young brother…father…son? We know for sure that we need to spread more love in this world. We need to stop being so quick to resolve our differences with violence and ignorance. We need to value life.”

  The rest of the funeral was hazy. I do remember random people telling me that they were sorry for my loss. I remember the wailing of my brother’s baby mama. I remember the cloud of darkness that hovered over us. I don’t remember all of Pastor Easter’s words, but I do know that he did his best to eulogize my brother.

  Pastor Easter died a week later. I couldn’t understand how. He was just preaching and now he’s dead? I internalized the grief of his loss and tried my best to be inspired to wake up the next day.

  7 Death And Destruction

  I wasn’t the same after Rodney died. I got heavy into alcohol and tried my best to stay extremely busy so that I didn’t have to be alone with my grief. If ever I was alone too long, I’d think about Rodney, and when I thought about Rodney, I couldn’t function. Flashes of his dead body haunted me. Sometimes I made myself sick to my stomach thinking about what he looked like. I wondered if I didn’t have that party that night if he’d still be alive. I wanted to redo that night so many times, and the fact that I couldn’t was too much for me.