I was the only reporter allowed inside, along with Bart to film. Scotty actually high-fived me when I told him the news, and Candace Dyson offered a “Good job, girl,” in our meeting with more warmth than she’d mustered since I’d joined KYX. It was pretty unseemly to celebrate entry into a little boy’s funeral, but in this business, professional wins are too often tied up in someone else’s tragedy. The get was the get, and you grow used to the blurry lines. I had an old boss who would joke, “Behind every Peabody, there’s a genocide.”
To accommodate the crowd, the family moved the service from a small funeral home in the neighborhood to the gymnasium at Strawberry Mansion High School, where Justin had started ninth grade in September. It’s a Saturday, and the varsity basketball team will play a home game here tonight, sneakers squeaking on the waxed floor, the bleachers filled with cheering fans, the smell of popcorn and Cherry Coke in the air. It will seem like a different place entirely, no longer the spot where a boy lay in a coffin right over the mascot’s seal at half-court.
The school band, in which Justin had played the trombone, assembles on the stage. They begin an instrumental of Andra Day’s “Rise Up.” Three teenage boys, self-conscious and serious, line up on one side of the coffin, and Malik, Wes, and another man on the other. The coffin lists toward the boys. They aren’t strong enough to hold it level as the procession moves down the red carpet that’s been laid across the shiny gym floor, forming an aisle between rows of folding chairs. The boys are almost as tall as the men, right on the cusp of manhood, like Justin, Black boys about to become Black men, a rite of passage rife with danger. All too soon these sweet boys will be seen as menacing and scary, as trespassers in places that certain people don’t feel they belong, as people who deserve to be questioned or confronted, or even killed because of the color of their skin.
No one asks the crowd to stand; we rise to our feet on our own, watch the coffin move down the makeshift aisle to the hearse waiting outside. When the glossy box passes a few feet from me, I fight the urge to reach out and touch the wood. Wes catches my eye and gives me a solemn nod. I nod back and hope that with just a second of eye contact I communicate everything in my heavy heart.
Tamara follows behind the casket, head bowed low, as if it requires all of her strength to place one foot in front of the other. A small group of close friends and family will go to bury Justin in a private ceremony at Laurel Hill Cemetery—away from the spotlight and media glare, a quiet moment to say their goodbyes.
Bart comes up behind me, thirty-pound camera resting on his beefy shoulder. “Where do you want me next?”
“Let’s get b-roll of the crowds and close-ups of some faces if you can. That should do it.”
The package plays in my mind—opening shot of Malik, then a pan to the audience to show the sizable turnout, the casket being lifted by six pairs of hands. Cut to a close-up of Tamara. As I mentally go through the scenes, ensuring we’ve covered everything, I look up and into the thinning crowd, a sea of backs slowly streaming toward the two sets of double doors at the gym’s exit.
A white woman in big dark sunglasses walks quickly along the back wall. Her hair is slicked back in a wet ponytail.
It can’t be. It can’t be her. I blink a few times to clear my vision. It is her. I know that walk. There’s no mistaking, it’s Jen. How long has she been here? Did she see me during the service?
A lifetime of habit makes me start after her. I stop myself. What if Bart saw me talking to Jen and started asking questions? Or worse, what would Tamara think?
I knew neither Kevin nor Travis would have the nerve to come, but Jen? It didn’t even occur to me. Beyond the initial shock, I don’t know what to make of it. On one hand, I suppose it’s reasonable, nice even, that she wants to pay her respects. It’s also brave as hell—if the crowd of mostly, but not all, brown faces had any idea she was here, it could easily “break bad,” as Gigi would put it. On the other hand, I can’t shake this nagging sense that Jen is trespassing. I try to bat the thought away before it takes root, but there it is: You don’t belong here.
I fixate on her back as she makes her way down the aisle. Right as she’s about to reach the doors, she turns around, pushes her sunglasses on top of her head, and meets my eyes, as if she knew exactly where to find me all along. Her eyes are red and sunken, vacant. We stare at each other for a moment that stretches and stretches. Finally, she raises a hand in the air, something like a wave. She’s out the door before I can decide whether to wave back.
* * *
Two days later, the image of Jen at the funeral—her naked anguish—still haunts me. It flickers between images of the coffin and dark hands gripping bronze handles, Tamara’s fingers shredding a tattered tissue. But I’ve got to shake it off, I’ve got to get my head in the game.
When I see the house—the enormous mansion, rather—I remember it. The bright white stone facade and the two iron lions flanking the front door. They scared me as a kid when we came here to trick-or-treat. My parents drove us over here to Rittenhouse after Shaun and I begged them because we’d heard that this neighborhood had the best candy—full-size Snickers. There was even a rumor people over here were giving out actual cash.
All these years later, I’m passing the lions and climbing the marble stairs dressed not in a costume of a news reporter but as one. I didn’t know the family who lived here before or if it’s the same one now; I just know it’s the home of an obscenely rich person.
“Excuse me, miss, could you take my jacket?”
I’m barely two feet into the foyer and am too distracted by the wallpaper that appears to be made of real pony fur, not to mention the Basquiat that looms at the end of the entrance hall, to register what the man is saying.
I turn, and a white guy, my age, wearing a bright pink T-shirt under a suit jacket, is thrusting his coat at me. It clicks.
“Excuse me?” I glare at him, forcing him to admit his mistake.
“Sorry. I thought you were working here. I didn’t mean… Shit. I’m really sorry. It’s the outfit.”
Yes, I’d slipped off my coat and I’m wearing black pants and a black sweater. But no, it isn’t the outfit.
“It’s fine,” I say to him. “I’m a reporter.” Why am I telling him that it’s fine? Why am I justifying why I’m in this room? Because I want him to go away. I want this awkward moment to be over so I can do what I came here to do. He apologizes again and rushes into the well-heeled crowd convened in a living room that’s four times bigger than my entire apartment, and infinitely more opulent. I grab a glass of sparkling water from one of the servers. Champagne would be better—to stop myself from turning around and walking right back out the door, back to my house, and crawling into bed—but I don’t drink on the job. It would sure take the edge off though, and lately I’m on edge about everything, so close to the abyss, the dark thoughts like hands reaching out to pull me down into the quicksand. This is always the scariest part of depression, the panicked edge where you think, If I can hold it at bay, stay out of its grip, I’ll be okay. The fear of the fall is so much worse than the bottom, because once you’ve let go, once you’re in the darkness, there’s comfort in the dull surrender. It’s easier than the fight. But I still feel like I can push myself back from the brink. It’s the reason I’ve been forcing myself to run every morning, why I went to church this weekend again—last week too, much to Momma’s surprise and delight.