Tyler Johnson Was Here(47)

The Tyler Johnson I knew, not the one the world is trying to make him out to be, was not violent. It doesn’t matter if he wore his pants below his waist, had weed, or had all Ds and Fs on his sixth-grade report card—none of that gives a police officer the right to kill a kid.

And Daphne says it for me: “If in this country we want to justify murder for white people, for cops, I don’t want to be here.”

“Let’s back up. Didn’t you say it was dark?”

“Yes.” She blinks real slow.

“How do you know what you saw, then?”

“It wasn’t that dark. There was a streetlight. It’s in the video. You can see for yourself, if you’d just open your damn eyes.”

“If you’re so sure that what you saw was murder, why did you stay, pull out your phone, and attempt to record what was going on instead of getting help?”

“I didn’t stay.” Daphne sighs before giving me a sad look. “When I heard the shots, I ran. I told no one about what I saw at first.” And I can’t exactly blame her for recording and not running to get help first. Because what help could she have gotten, if the people we go to for help are the very ones doing the harm? We’re too familiar with shit like this. Tyler wasn’t the first, and all the cases before him ended in the same way: no justice.

“You didn’t tell anyone?”

“No,” she says, taking a deep breath, her purple dress expanding at her stomach. “I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to be next.”

The entire room almost seems to freeze over. It gets so bitterly quiet.

“How did you know Mr. Tyler Johnson?”

“I didn’t,” she says. “Not until word got back to me from my friend’s boyfriend about who it was in the video.”

“Is that why you leaked the video anonymously?”

“I was scared,” she replies. “And I didn’t know what to do.”

“So, apparently, you took it upon yourself to keep Mr. Tyler Johnson’s death your little secret.”

Each time they say his name, my heart beats faster.

“That’s not what I said,” Daphne goes. She flips her hair and sighs so angrily, so annoyed.

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

As Daphne leaves the stand, she turns to Mama and me and mouths the words I’m sorry before going to find her seat.

I feel like I’m suffocating, taking my final gasp of air over and over again. I just want to scream for the world to listen closely, to listen carefully, to finally hear me. But I shake my head, unable to form any words. Everything in my mind is like a whirlpool, a free-for-all.

Mama starts sobbing into her Kleenex again. I spend the rest of the hearing focused on Mama or trapped in my own head, unable to concentrate on what the lawyers are discussing. Unable to trust that justice is coming our way.





? 23 ?


Mama and I practically have to be wheeled out of the room by bailiffs and security guards. And when their hands are on me, I flinch and cringe, a loud pang of disgust and anger inside. It takes a herculean effort for me to breathe, to remember that this is standard procedure, to remember that they mean me no harm.

As we exit the courthouse, there are reporters on the sidewalk asking Mama for a comment. She slides me behind her and starts talking into their microphones, telling the world about the boy she raised. How he was a good kid. Never in trouble with the law. How he deserved better than to be shot and taken away from us. She tells everybody some of her fondest memories of Tyler as a child, some memories that I don’t even remember myself.

“The entire city of Sterling Point is divided because of this man. Because of this broken system. Because of the hate Officer Meredith’s brought onto us all. There are bad people in the world. That means there are bad cops. But there’s also so much good. I just lost a son. My son just lost his brother. We’ve been living with the pain of his absence for what already feels like years. That man took something from me that I can never have back. All I’m asking is for some justice, and for help getting this officer off the street, because so many other kids are in danger. That’s all.”

I don’t care what these reporters say or what the judge says or what anyone else thinks. I know that Tyler didn’t deserve to die, no matter what. I’m going to do whatever I have to do to make sure that there’s justice for Tyler.





The very moment we pull into the driveway, rain starts falling from clouds in the sky—the clouds that kind of resemble the hurt in my heart—and when we get out, Mama stumbles into the house.

I stand in the rain. Mama believes that when it rains, family members who have crossed over to the other side use the drops to tell us things, and I’m left thinking maybe Tyler’s in heaven, whispering things to the drops of rain as they trip on their tiny tails and splatter onto the earth, and I imagine that they know how it is to be black in America, to have a destiny of falling, to have a fate of dying on impact.

It’s in this moment that I’m reminded of something Auntie Nicola told me—that life’s not about waiting for the storm to pass, because sometimes it never does—and all of a sudden, I feel waves of emotion engulfing me. Life is about wading in the rain, in all the storm’s fury, holding on to hope, and also becoming one and the same with the storm—getting angry, getting heated, and being the change you want.