Tyler Johnson Was Here(54)

I feel my eyebrows furrow. “Who is it?”

She places a hand on her hip.

I minimize my tabs and lift myself up to go check, walking down the hall and into the kitchen. A girl is sitting at the table, but she stands as soon as I walk in, chair scraping back against the tile. It’s the girl from the hearing, Daphne, with a sweet potato pie in her hands.

She has a look in her eyes like she’s hugging me in her head.

“What’re you doing here?” I say, and immediately regret how rude I sound—but I don’t like reminders of Tyler, don’t like reminders of the hearing. And a part of me is pissed at Daphne, too—for being there, for being the last person to see Tyler alive besides his murderer, for just filming and not doing anything to stop it.

But I know it wasn’t her fault. If she’d tried to stop the officer, she might’ve gotten killed, too, and no one would’ve ever seen the video. Mama and I might still not have any idea what happened to Tyler.

She clears her throat, looking a little nervous. “I just want to say… I’m sorry,” she says. “I would’ve stopped by sooner, but I didn’t want to barge in while you’re grieving.” There’s a pause and then she adds, “I wish I could say I don’t know how you feel.”

I still can’t say anything back. I look down at the floor.

“I lost my cousin to police violence,” she says. Mama stands at the kitchen doorway, staying quiet—so quiet, hands folded in front of her.

I just stand here like a deer in headlights, counting the length of my breaths. In my head, I tell her I’m sorry, but I can’t say any words out loud. And it’s like she understands.

Daphne starts walking closer to me, her arms falling to her sides. “Her name was Jasmine. She was only sixteen.” She pauses and her fists clench. “We grew up together, y’know? And our mamas was just as close as us. Always smoking and gossiping together. Like all the other black kids in our hood, we grew up hearing the horror stories, but it always seemed like just a nightmare—not something real. But when we lost Jaz, that was when it finally hit me that it’s all real.”

I nod at her, swallowing the lump in my throat.

She keeps talking. “My pops used to warn us about the police. He used to say, like all things in the world, there are good ones and bad ones. He used to say get a good look at the cop’s face ’cause that makes all the difference. He used to say memorize the badge number or the license plate number. That’s why I recorded what I saw after the party. Video footage seems like the only way people will even hear us sometimes.”

I nod once again, almost whispering, Yeah. The only thing I can bring myself to say back is “How did you find me?”

And she replies, “You’re famous. Not the good kind of famous, of course, but it wasn’t that hard to find you.”

Mama invites Daphne to stay awhile and then makes us dinner—and I mean a real dinner. Ever since Tyler died, there’ve been donations coming in from all over. Enough money, Mama says, to even send me to school. It won’t bring him back, but it helps. We have fried catfish with hot sauce and macaroni and cheese. But the whole time, Mama and I keep exchanging looks as if we’re reading each other’s thoughts, because the seat where Tyler often sat is filled for at least a little while. And I’m not so sure whether that little while comforts Mama or breaks her on the inside.

Just last week, we had a vigil for Tyler. Faith, Ivy, and G-mo helped set everything up. It was in the park, and it had just stopped raining for the first time in three days, and it looked like the sky had literally fallen onto the earth. Everything was pitch-black, but scattered in random places were little lights—candles. On one of the benches, we had flowers and pictures of Tyler. It looked like the whole community showed up—strangers with Black Lives Matter posters, strangers with the thoughts of buried relatives weighing heavily on their shoulders. Strangers holding signs with names of black victims on them, and Tyler’s in big fat letters. There were people from Sojo High there, too.

Auntie Nicola even called me up because she knew I was taking everything particularly hard, and reminded me that vigils are sort of like funerals, but they’re to celebrate life, not death.

That whole night, until the sun slipped out from some hidden crack, we all prayed. We prayed for grace, we prayed for mercy, we prayed for change, we prayed for guidance, we prayed for one another, we prayed for protection, and we prayed for justice.





Every damn day for what feels like forever, I check the mail, hoping to find something about the judge’s decision from the hearing. And then one day, there’s a letter waiting with Mama’s name on it in the mailbox. The yellow envelope has big red print and was sent from the hearing’s judge and the state. The letter shocks the shit out of me, and I call Mama over. She tears it open, hands trembling, and I know her heart’s probably beating just as hard as mine. We read the letter together, and the judge writes that they’re going to take the case further so that there’ll be a trial.

Mama puts the letter on the fridge, a Bo-Bo’s gas station magnet holding it in place. And we keep carrying on as best we can with fake smiles. Maybe they’re not even smiles. Imagine being sucker punched in the face every morning and smiling about it. I guess it’s not a smile at all. It’s just that you force all the muscles in your face to create the illusion of happiness.