All American Boys (29 page)

Once
I made sure it was safe to leave the toilet, I needed to go lie down. Who knew that lying down for a week could make you so tired? But before climbing back in the bed, I got on my knees and reached underneath it, trying to grab a shoe box that I had pushed way too far back. Argghkk—that hurt. Once I'd finally swatted it close enough to grip, I pulled the raggedy box from under the bed frame and set it on the mattress. I popped the top off and started digging through the hundreds of pieces of torn newspaper. My
Family Circus
tear-outs. I don't really know why I suddenly had to see them now, except maybe they were a distraction I could really, really count on. I mean, I could've drawn something myself, but whatever was inside was what was going to come out, so it would've probably been another picture of someone getting slammed, or something like that. So
The Family Circus
was better. Easier.

It had been a few years since I had looked at any of them, and leafing through them transported me back to sitting across from my father, licking marshmallows off the top of hot chocolate, reading them for the first time. Man, that seemed like a lifetime ago. Even thinking about it was like thinking about someone else's life, not my own. I mean, the innocence of it all seemed almost silly now. To think that life could always be as good as breakfast with your family and sharing the newspaper with your dad, looking up to him, imagining
that one day you'd read the whole entire paper and drink coffee too. To think that my life could be as perfect as Billy's.

I flipped through a dozen tear-outs, then another, and then I froze. Between my fingers was the one of Billy talking to his mother. It read,
First thing you need to know is, I didn't do it
. I put it to the side and pulled out another. This one showed the little boy standing at his father's bed. His father is just waking up, and the little boy says,
Put your glasses on, Daddy, so I can remember who you are.
And another that simply said,
Mommy, when am I gonna reach my full potential?
They were still boring. Still not funny at all. But I kept reading them, a simple and safe white family framed in a circle, like looking into their lives through a telescope or binoculars from the other side of the street. From a different place. From a place . . . not always so sweet. I laid back in the bed and continued pulling them from the box, one by one, until finally I drifted off to sleep.

But it was only a short nap because before I knew it, Spoony was knocking on my door.

“Li'l bruh, you gotta get up, man. It's almost time to go,” he said, cracking the door, peeking in before pushing it wide open, just as everyone had done at the hospital. He was dressed in all black. Black hoodie. Black jeans. Black boots. A megaphone in his hand. Damn. “Get dressed,” he said, followed by, “What in the world were you doing?”

I looked around at all the scraps of comic strips littering the
bed. “Nothing, man,” I said, sitting up. “I'll be ready in a sec.”

I put on all black too—just seemed like the right thing to do—and met Ma, Spoony, and Berry in the kitchen. Berry was also dressed in black. My mother, she had on her usual mom jeans, sweater, a light jacket, and sneakers. Oh, and a fanny pack. She was ready. They all were. But I needed to go to the bathroom, one more time.

“Get it out, baby,” my mother said, explaining to Spoony that I had been sick all day, like that was any of his business. But that's moms for you. Funny thing is, I didn't even have to go. There was something else I wanted to do.

In the bathroom, I stood at the sink, staring at my reflection. I brought my hands to my face and slowly peeled the tape and bandage back, revealing my nose. Still swollen. There was a knot on the top—a lump that changed the way my whole face looked. I turned my head sideways—bump looked even worse. I hated that damn bump, but I didn't want people to see me all bandaged up like that. Not because I was embarrassed. Well, I was, a little. But more importantly, I wanted people to see me. See what happened. I wanted people to know that no matter the outcome, no matter if this day ended up as just another protest and Officer Galluzzo got off scot-free, that I would never be the same person. I looked different and I would be different, forever.

When I returned to the kitchen, my mother instantly began
to tear up. My brother nodded, balled his right hand into a fist, and extended it toward me. “You ready?”

I bumped my fist to his. “Yeah, I'm ready.”

I couldn't believe it. We couldn't even get all the way to Fourth Street because of all the people. So Ma parked on Eighth and we walked down to join the crowd, English, Carlos, and Shannon all texting me telling me that they were in front of Jerry's. We wove in and out of the herd—so many people, mostly strangers, but everyone there for the same reason. It was unreal. Lots of people held up signs. Police officers lined the streets, creating a kind of wall, containing us. There were these huge trucks, like road tanks, blocking us at either end, locking us into a seven- or eight-block rectangle. The newspeople were there as well, men in gray suits and blue ties, holding microphones in front of some kids I recognized from school.

“Stay close,” Spoony said as we pushed down Fourth Street. He held my mother's hand, and I kept a hand on her shoulder as he and Berry led the way. I was glad they had done this before, because my heart felt like it had grown feet and was trying to run away from my body. As we moved through, eventually people started to recognize me, and the crowd began to split open, making a clearer path for us.

“I see Carlos!” I said to Spoony, raising my voice to be heard.

“There's English over there!” Berry shouted back, pointing to the right. And there they were, my friends—my brothers—standing in front of Jerry's, holding big white poster boards,
RASHAD IS ABSENT AGAIN TODAY
written in bold black marker. They went crazy when they saw us—Shannon waving us forward like we were the royal family or something, making sure to let people know to let us through. When we finally got to them, they each hugged me, then my mom. I looked out at the crowd. People, young, old, black, white, Asian, Latino, more people than I could count. It was straight out of an Aaron Douglas painting, except there were faces. Faces everywhere. My teachers, Mr. Fisher and Mrs. Tracey. Tiffany, who gave me a look, both happy and sad. Latrice Wilkes. Oh! My comrades from ROTC, and because it was Friday, uniform day, they were dressed head to toe. Some of the basketball players. Football players. Neighborhood people. Pastor Johnson, in a suit, but this time, instead of a Bible, he held a sign up that said,
RASHAD IS ABSENT AGAIN TODAY, BUT GOD IS NEVER ABSENT
. Katie Lansing was there. I didn't see Mrs. Fitzgerald, but I wouldn't have wanted her out there, even though I was sure she was tough enough to handle it. Even Clarissa was there, which was amazing. I waved to her, but the crowd seemed to think that I was waving to everybody, and so they all cheered for me, which was overwhelming. I
knew it wasn't just about me. I did. But it felt good to feel like I had support. That people could see me.

The chant was a simple one. I'm not sure exactly who came up with it. It just sort of started in the middle and rippled through the crowd. “Spring-field P-D, we don't want brutality! Spring-field P-D, we don't want brutality!” We chanted it, no, we screamed it, at the top of our lungs, over and over again as we started marching toward Police Plaza 1. Spoony shouted it into the megaphone, and he wasn't the only one. Everyone was on the same page, chanting the same thing as we moved down Main Street. Me, Spoony, Carlos, English, Berry, and Shannon were in the front of the crowd, and all of a sudden, our arms locked and we were leading the way like—the image came to me of raging water crashing against the walls of a police dam. Marching. But it wasn't like I was used to. It wasn't military style.
Your left! Your left! Your left-right-left!
It wasn't like that at all. It was an uncounted step, yet we were all in sync. We were on a mission.

And as we approached the police station, standing on the steps outside Police Plaza 1 was my father. Spoony slapped my arm and nodded toward Dad, totally surprised. My brother raised an eyebrow at me. I raised one at him. “Whatttttt?” Then we both grinned at the exact same time. Ma, of course, was crying. Instantly. She had been doing a pretty good job at keeping it together, but seeing my father standing there
waiting for us broke her. He jogged down the steps and met us with hugs. He didn't say anything. Just hugged and locked arms with us as we turned around and faced the crowd, still chanting, “Spring-field P-D, we don't want brutality!”

Spoony gave Berry the megaphone and she started chanting through the speaker, even louder than he had. He dug in his backpack and pulled out the papers, the same papers he'd showed us the night before at the kitchen table, as Berry slowly got down on the ground. She lay flat on her back, the megaphone still to her mouth, still chanting. Spoony followed suit. He nodded to me. My father looked on, uneasy, as me, Carlos, Shannon, and English all laid down. My mother leaned in to him and whispered something. The confusion slowly slid from his face, and he took his wife's hand and helped her lower herself to the ground. Then he joined us as well. And the people in front of the crowd followed suit, realizing what was happening. The die-in was beginning, and like dominoes, the crowd began to drop, each person, young and old, lying flat on the dirty pavement, the police officers all around us in riot gear, their hands on their weapons, afraid and perplexed.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Berry shouted through the megaphone. “Ladies and gentlemen!” The chanting died down. “We are here, not for Rashad, but for all of us! We are here to say, enough is enough! We are here to say, no more! No more!”
Spoony gave the first paper to her. And into the megaphone, she began.

“This is a roll call! Sean Bell!” Then she followed with “Absent again today! Oscar Grant! Absent again today! Rekia Boyd! Absent again today! Ramarley Graham!” She paused, and at that point the rest of us knew exactly what to do.

“Absent again today!”

“Aiyana Jones!”

“Absent again today!”

“Freddie Gray!”

“Absent again today!”

“Michael Brown!”

“Absent again today!”

“Tamir Rice!”

“Absent again today!”

“Eric Garner!”

“Absent again today!”

“Tarika Wilson!”

“Absent again today!”

And Spoony kept feeding Berry the papers, one after another, as she continued to read down the list of unarmed black people killed by the police. And I laid there on the hard concrete, for the second time in a week, tears flowing down my cheeks, thinking about each one of those names.

O
h my God!
He was right over there! Closer than I'd been to him when Paul laid into him. Much closer. And Rashad was looking at me, too.

I locked eyes with a kid I didn't know, but felt like I did. A white guy, who I could tell was thinking about those names too.

All I wanted to do was see the guy I hadn't seen one week earlier. The guy beneath all the bullshit too many of us see first—especially white guys like me who just haven't worked hard enough to look behind it all.

Those people. I hadn't known any of them, and he probably hadn't either. But I was connected to those names now, because of what happened to me. We all were. I was sad. I was angry. But I was also proud. Proud that I was there. Proud that I could represent Darnell Shackleford. Proud that I could represent Mrs. Fitzgerald—her brother who was beaten in Selma.

I wanted him to know that I saw him, a guy who, even with a tear-streaked face, seemed to have two tiny smiles framing his eyes like parentheses, a guy on the ground pantomiming his death to remind the world he was alive.

For all the people who came before us, fighting this fight, I was here, screaming at the top of my lungs.