The Black Kids(84)
“But what about what happened with Reggie?” my mother repeated like she was refusing to listen.
Reggie briefly glanced up from looking at himself at the sound of his name. “That was, like, barely an ounce of coke, and I really was holding it for a friend.”
Reggie is the kind of boy who likes to brag about fucking up the curve in his classes. I honestly don’t know how he gets invited to parties at all, much less has friends. Auntie Carol glared at him to shut up.
My aunt paced the room like somebody who didn’t know its edges, only that she was taking tentative steps away and toward her sister, my sister.
“That was different. This is a big deal. I can’t make this disappear.” My aunt stood across from Jo. “I promise I’ve tried.”
“So, what does that mean?” Jo said, and Auntie Carol looked away like she didn’t want to be the one to tell her.
* * *
This is what happened, according to Jo:
When Harrison dozed off on the couch, tired from his long shift, Jo snuck out with her spray can. She started walking without knowing where it was she was heading, exactly—just that she was here and she needed to be there. As she walked, she saw a small crowd gathered in the distance in front of a run-down strip mall. An older man walked toward her, a little unsteady on his feet and weighed down by two small grocery bags. He looked her up and down and said, “You’re walking the wrong way, girl. You don’t want no part of that.” But she could feel the crowd pulsing, feel their vibrations from blocks away. Her friends had stopped protesting. It wasn’t productive, they said; it was madness. Fuck that, Jo thought. The rebellion was on its last legs, but it wasn’t dead, not yet. That was exactly where she needed to be, she thought.
The crowd gathered like a bee swarm, swirling and concentrating, dissipating, and then gathering together again to sting. Jo stayed on the edges, not sure what to do. She suddenly felt very silly with her spray can in her hand, ineffectual. By contrast, several of the young men carried glass bottles. They had torn up an old T-shirt and distributed the strips among themselves, and somebody poured the kerosene. All that was needed was a match or a lighter. They searched between them, and a brown hand emerged victorious, holding a small flame up to the sky like at a concert, or a vigil. The first young man had long, sinewy arms and pants that fell in small puddles at his feet. He lurched forth and nearly tripped over his pants, messing up his momentum. He grabbed up his waistband in one hand while he tossed the bottle with the other. The bottle bounced and landed in a small fire on the concrete parking lot.
Several of the young men jumped back under a hail of expletives, and a few began to run away. Still others bounced on their toes with energy like Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh, their sneakers like springs, their swooshes egging them on to Just Do It.
“Let me do it.” The youngest was clearly somebody’s kid brother, whom they’d barely let tag along.
“Yo, let him have it.” The boy in charge, as far as Jo could tell, looked almost exactly like the youngest one, but a little lighter and older, with his hair in two French braids that hung to his shoulders, a small but noticeable scar across his left cheek.
She watched as the younger boy wound his arm back like he was on a baseball field and released, a winning pitch. The bottle burst right through the window, the shattered glass fell like rain, and then there was fire. Jo felt the flame grow warm as the summer sun across her face.
There were more of them than there were of the police, but it didn’t matter. The police swept through the swarm of people, cracking across backs and limbs and heads with their batons, grabbing limbs, rifles pointed, yelling, “Get down, stay down.”
Stay down.
The police dogs barked.
“But I didn’t do anything,” Jo said as she felt her body thud to the ground, felt the bitter of blood in her mouth, saw most of her front tooth fall onto the sidewalk.
In the courtroom, Lucia sits next to me, her legs crossed at her ankles, eyes closed like she’s reliving something she’s never told me about. Harrison wears a suit that my parents bought him, navy and tailored and court-respectable. Jo stares straight ahead for most of it.
My mother grips my hand so tight I think she might sprain a finger as my sister enters a plea: “Not guilty.”
Then they usher us out and move on to the next case.
* * *
We twist and turn our way back home in relative silence, except when we have to pull over for Jo to throw up. When we get inside, Jo goes upstairs to lie down, Harrison has to head out to work, and my father retreats into his office. My parents asked Jo to stay at our house for the duration of the trial, and surprisingly enough, she agreed. Honestly, I think they’re a little afraid of her hurting herself, of her ending up like Grandma Shirley. In any case, my father has now hidden his pellet gun. Harrison goes to his construction jobs, then comes to our house to visit his wife, smelling of sweat, covered in dirt, looking like he’s ready to build or rebuild Jo as needed. Lucia disappears into the kitchen to make dinner, and then it’s me and my mother walking around the living room, kicking off our heels and peeling off our stockings. My mother throws her fancy tweed suit jacket on the couch.
“Did you know about what happened to Grandma Shirley?”
My mother pauses for a second. “Not all of it, but some. I thought it was your dad’s story to tell you when he was ready. Not mine.”