I want to reach out to touch him, this man sitting here like God has forsaken him and helpless to help his baby sister. But I keep my hands folded on my lap. Sitting here hip to hip is intimate enough already.
“I was just at the hospital with my Gigi, my grandmother—she’s dying of kidney disease. She told me her cousin was lynched when she was a kid. I had no idea.” I’m not sure why I blurt this out.
Wes turns to face me. “Damn, man, that’s awful. I’m so sorry, Riley.”
“I don’t know why—I didn’t know him. Didn’t even know of him. But it hit me pretty hard.”
“Of course it did. It just never seems to end, does it?”
It’s more a statement than a question, so I don’t answer. Instead, I reach into my bag and fiddle with my phone. I’m risking rudeness, but this will be worth it. Wes is lost in thought for the moment anyway, until he hears Justin’s voice. I’ve pulled up the video of their rap. I found it in my research about Justin. I’ve spent hours on his social media in the last week, a haunting rabbit hole. That’s how I already knew about the hamster named after Neil DeGrasse Tyson and how he died last year after escaping from his cage and getting stuck under the fridge.
“Is that…？” He grabs for my phone like it’s offering the gift of life, which it is, in a tiny way.
The phone’s reflection captures the tears that have pooled along his lower lids. I worry I’ve made a mistake, but he’s smiling too. Nodding along, remembering. He watches the whole three-minute video, rapt.
“This is why I want to do the interview with Tamara,” I say when the song finishes. “So that we can reinforce that Justin was a sweet, gentle young man who loved his pets and Hamilton and his favorite uncle.
“People need to see what she’s—what you all have—lost, and what’s at stake for everyone in the community.”
“Well, if anyone, we’d want it to be you. You’re different from all these other reporters and producers hounding us. White folks offering us hotel rooms and trips to New York City like we won the damn lottery. Telling us they can feel our pain. Yeah, Charlotte, yeah, Becky, I bet you know exactly what this is like. They have no idea what ‘our pain’ feels like and they never will.”
The anger in his voice, I recognize. It’s an anger that’s been bubbling up in me these last few days, an anger I haven’t really experienced before and don’t know quite what to do with. I prefer my emotions predictable and tucked away. Right now, it’s too personal, too raw. How can I be objective when I’m this upset? I have to channel these emotions, allow them to fuel me and my work. I want the world to be better, baby girl. Gigi’s words linger. “I want to give your sister a chance to talk about all of that. I want her to get to talk about the real Justin. I just want the world to know about her son and to see her pain, to share it.”
There’s a long pause, and Wes closes his eyes like I’m not there. I don’t know what to do with myself but wait.
“You know, he would have been fifteen next week. I managed to get us tickets for the Sixers—third row, cost me a fortune. He’ll never go. He didn’t even know he was going to go. It was gonna be a surprise. I don’t know what’s worse—that he didn’t know he was going or if he did. I’m not making sense; I’m just wondering, should I have told him? He would have had something to look forward to.”
Wes’s hands turn to two tight balls in his lap. This time I do reach over and drape my palm over one of his fists, which gives slightly in my hand.
“He was lucky to have such a great uncle.”
“I tried, man. I tried to always be there for him. Teach him how to survive in this world. Step up when his own pops died.”
“You did. You did.” I squeeze his fist now. I don’t even care about the interview anymore; in this moment, I just want Wes’s pain to ease.
“You’re a good woman, Riley Wilson. I feel that. Come by today. Let’s do the interview. I can convince her to do it. I think it’s the right move. But you be careful with her, okay?”
Instead of feeling relief and excitement that I saved the interview, I’m flattened by weariness. I tell Wes how grateful I am and that I will see him in a few hours, and then I stand up, leaving him to go inside and pick out a casket.
* * *
At every stoplight on the drive to Strawberry Mansion, I look in the rearview mirror, tug at my bangs. I shift in my seat, smooth the wrinkles out of my dress. I’d planned to wear a dress that was a deep gold. I’d bought it earlier this week, especially for the interview. But when Justin died, it no longer felt right. Instead, when I got home from meeting with Wes, I changed into this black dress that I’ve owned forever. I wouldn’t normally wear black on camera, but it felt right.
The leafy streets of Kelly Drive give way to seedy corner stores and abandoned lots overgrown with weeds and strewn with trash the closer I get to Tamara’s neighborhood. I pass more than a few abandoned synagogues, strange in this predominantly Black section of town. They’re vestiges from when this area was a wealthy Jewish enclave, before white flight took off and urban decay followed. On one of the crumbling brick walls, a mural is in process, a portrait of a Black mother holding her newborn baby. I slow down to take it in. The woman has been filled in with vibrant colors; the baby remains a faint outline, like a thought waiting to enter the world.
At the next light, I check my phone for video of the march taking place across town. KYX has a crew covering it live online, and I asked them to send the footage we’ll be using as b-roll for tonight’s package. I load the clips they’ve sent over, and it’s as though the screen itself shakes with the energy of the crowd. We have three cameras at various points on location. The clips offer snatches of footage from each of them—a close-up of the front of the march, where Pastor Price, bald head gleaming in the sunlight, walks, arms linked, with several community leaders and a woman. It takes me a moment to place her: Rashanda Montgomery. Her mentally ill daughter was shot by a police officer in North Carolina last year. She’s wearing a sweatshirt that reads, “M.O.M., Mothers of the Movement,” with her daughter’s face below it.
There’s an aerial shot of the crowd behind Pastor Price, a mass of people, young, old, white, Black, snaking down Broad Street, at least ten blocks deep. I’d suspected the turnout would be strong—local activists have been beating the drum all week, putting up stickers and flyers all over town. And no doubt more decided to come out after hearing Justin died last night. The perfect weather helps too: activism is easier when it’s cloudless and fifty-five degrees.
I search for my family, though I know it’s pointless given the sheer number of people. Shaun and I got into an argument at my parents’ dinner table last night about him attending today. Sure, it’s supposed to be a peaceful protest, but plenty of events are peaceful until they aren’t. If things get out of hand, the first person the police are going to go after is the six-foot-two Black guy wearing a T-shirt with Colin Kaepernick taking a knee.
“It’s not worth the risk. You get arrested and you’re screwed,” I’d told him.