Tyler Johnson Was Here(39)

My tongue presses up against my cheek, and I look at the ceiling, thinking about Principal Dodson telling me not to embarrass him. I tell him the truth. “Dad is in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, because our justice system is corrupt, and sometimes it feels like I don’t even have a dad anymore because of that.”

I watch his eyebrows furrow and he gives me a side-smile, like he feels sorry for me.

“What about your mother?”

“Mama doesn’t know much about this interview,” I answer him. Really, she doesn’t know about it, period.

“Why?” He leans back, chewing on the cap of his pen. “Why doesn’t your mother know?”

“Her mind is somewhere else.” I sigh. And now I’m realizing that mine is also.

“Where, Mr. Johnson? Where is her mind? Is it drugs?”

I sort of roll my eyes, a bad taste in my mouth. “No. Sir.” My chest feels tight, my throat is numb, and it’s so fucking hard to breathe right now.

“Then what is it, Mr. Johnson?” He squints at me, a small frown that passes quickly. I close my eyes for a few seconds, inhaling and exhaling hard.

I see Tyler lying on that metal table. The video plays back in my head. Tyler’s voice swishes around the room like the blood in my veins, and I squeeze my eyes shut.

Pop!

Pop!

Pop!

I blink back the tears.

“Her mind is on my brother. He die—no—he was murdered,” I say.

“I’m so sorry to hear that, Mr. Johnson.” Silence takes over the room again.

I nod, trying so hard to ignore the sourness in my stomach.

“Your brother is dead, and you’re here?” He closes his files and points at me with his pen. “That says a lot about your character, Mr. Johnson. Very courageous of you.”

Fuck that. Fuck courage. Fuck it all. And now I feel so shitty because he’s right. I’m here in a fucking interview and my brother is fucking dead.

“Would you like to reschedule the interview? For an African-American male with your record—strong grades, glowing recommendations, and nearly perfect SAT scores—I’d love to give this a second chance. We need more students like you, Mr. Johnson.”

I try to ignore his you-are-smart-for-a-black-kid suggestion. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea after all.”

He leans back in his seat. “I see. How about this?” He drops his pen on the desk in front of him. “The first part of the application is due January first. How about you send your application in, and if everything is as impressive as we’ve been led to expect, I’ll be happy to recommend you. I wouldn’t normally tell a student that before seeing his formal application, but I think you’re potentially the right fit for MIT, and you’d help diversify our student body. How does that sound?”

I brush my face with the palms of my hands, feeling my eyes blink one, two, three times. “Yes, I’ll have it ready by then.” My heart thuds and my ears ring, but there’s a blanket of calmness that suddenly wraps around me.

“Very well, Mr. Johnson.” We shake hands again.

As I leave the room, my phone buzzes in my pocket.

I silently wish for it to be Mama, or maybe Ivy and G-mo asking how everything went down with my interview, but it’s just a Twitter notification that Faith is now following me.





? 19 ?



DATE: NOVEMBER 16, 2018

TO: MARVIN D. JOHNSON (MY SON)

FROM: JAMAL P. JOHNSON

PRISON NUMBER: 2076-14-5555

MESSAGE:

Son,

I don’t have the words to express my pain. I know it’s a pain you’re feeling, too.

People will try to convince you that you don’t deserve to live.

That you don’t deserve to exist.

They’ll ignore your voice. Lock you up.

They’ll even kill you to take you out of this world.

And through it all, you have to fight. Fight to remind yourself that you do matter. That you do deserve to exist. That you do deserve to have your voice heard.

When the whole world’s trying to convince you that you don’t matter, it can be a constant struggle—day in, day out—to remember that you do.

But you have to. Because if you don’t, then that’s really when you’ve lost yourself.

Tyler is gone, and as his and your father I should’ve been there, should’ve protected him. I’m sorry, Marvin. But I want to do better by you.

I know you’re feeling anger. You’re feeling hatred for the man who took Tyler away from us. But don’t let that anger and hatred consume you, or that man’s taken your life, too.

I love you.

Stay strong,

Daddy



If you have a brother, and he dies, what do you do? Do you suddenly stop saying that you have one? Do you pretend he was just a piece of your past that you’ll slowly start to forget?

I remember the huge protests after other shootings of black and brown kids. I need to do that, too. I need to make people aware of what happened to Tyler. I have to lift my voice, and I can’t keep being quiet, sitting around as if I’m waiting for things to fix themselves.

I stay home to be with Mama the next day, laptop turned away so that she doesn’t know I’m scrolling through pages and pages of Google searches on how to begin protests. I can’t just sit at home and cry and grieve because that ain’t going to do shit, and it ain’t going to bring Tyler back either.