“Nice to meet you, Riley Wilson. Why’d you want to talk tonight?” Her brisk officiousness is intimidating. So much for the girlfriend-to-girlfriend vibe I’d hope we’d cultivate, hashtag BlackGirlMagic.
“Well, I’m new to KYX—”
“I know who you are, Riley. I watch you. You’re a good reporter. But what exactly can I do for you?”
“I’m glad you think so. Then you know that I’ve been front and center on the Justin Dwyer story.” When she nods, I say, “I want to interview you.” I can get straight to the point too. “It would be a special segment like I did with Tamara Dwyer.”
“I saw that. It was compelling.”
“Her story, Justin’s story, the shooting—it’s showing the deep divisions in our community. I don’t want it to get lost in the news cycle. This is an important moment. Things have to change.”
Sabrina nods in agreement. “Well, I’m with you there. As you just heard, I’m all about reform. And you know how these white folks just love to be chastised, like it’s their racial penance or something. Makes them feel like they’re learning. All they want to do is stay learning…” Her eyes roll with the word. “Like that does a damn thing. Let’s just hope it gets them to open their checkbooks though…” She trails off, then turns to look at me. “Before I decide one way or another about this interview, I have a question for you.”
“Yes?”
“How long have you been friends with Jennifer Murphy?”
I should have been more prepared for this, that someone would figure out our connection. The most cursory Internet search reveals it. Before I reached out to Tamara, I’d googled, “Jennifer Murphy AND Riley Wilson” to see what came up. There was one old picture of the two of us holding our medals at Penn Relays. But Facebook was a different story. Jen’s profile had a lot of pictures of the two of us, more than mine, because I mostly use it for work. It was a relief when she deactivated her Facebook account a few days later. Then I’d felt gross about being so relieved. The guilt hits like I’ve been caught red-handed doing something wrong. And if Sabrina found out this easily, Scotty could too. Even with my exceptional talent for denial, I can see it’s probably only a matter of time, and then what?
Thinking fast, I shrug like it’s no big deal, like everyone knows everyone in Philadelphia, which is a little bit true. It’s a city, after all, where people ask where you went to high school before they ask what you do. “Jen and I grew up in the same neighborhood,” I offer carefully.
Before the shooting I would have said, “We’ve known each other since we were babies. We grew up together in the Northeast.” But that was before. Before. Before. Before.
“Hmm, well, with you working on this story, it must be…” Sabrina raises a perfectly sculpted eyebrow as she searches for the right word. “Tricky?”
I almost laugh. Tricky, that’s one way to describe it.
“Well, I haven’t really spoken to Jenny since… since the incident.”
“Since Justin was murdered?”
“Yes,” I say; even though her word choice is meant to be a pointed provocation, it’s also true.
Amina appears in the doorway, looks at her watch, and puts up five fingers. I’m sure she’s been instructed to give Sabrina an escape.
“I think it’s pretty clear that you’re going to be the next mayor.” I don’t have much time to seal the deal, so I go with flattery, a shameless tactic. “That crowd loved you. And the time is right. The city needs you to shake things up.”
“From your lips. Isn’t it something that we are out here, still chasing firsts? The city’s first Black woman DA and first mayor.”
“It would be amazing, a game-changer. But I know it’s tough, too. Your DA campaign was brutal. All those op-eds that said you were unhinged and unqualified, that questioned your ‘electability.’？”
“You don’t even know the half of it. They kept calling me angry and power hungry. As if that’s an insult! Hell yes, I’m angry! Yes, I’m power hungry! That’s supposed to be a bad thing? Do they not realize I can’t change anything without power, the power to rethink, hell, to upend, our tired policies, our practices, and our policing if we are going to get anywhere close to where we need to be? If I were a man, they’d be celebrating me for that. That’s why my philosophy is WWWMD.”
“I’m not even going to try to guess.”
“What would a white man do?”
“Ha-ha, love that.”
“Seriously though, a white man would come into this office, or a boardroom or whatever, and believe he had the duty—the power—to change things, make history, lead a charge. Well, I do too.”
If I had half of Sabrina’s confidence, I’d already be on the Today show. Forget the white man; I was going to start asking myself, What would Sabrina do?
“Real talk, it’s time for a new day. We can’t have the same old, same old. Not anymore. Not on my watch. It’s a dangerous combination when we have officers with weapons and all the power, who also feel superior to the people they serve, when they look at our communities as places to control and police rather than protect and serve. The white officers approach white people one way and Black people another way, often with less humanity, less concern, less humility. That’s just a fact, whether they even realize it or not. We know how it goes. On my watch, I want our justice system to have a culture of humanity, and that means weeding out the officers who don’t and reallocating funds to departments that can provide services our communities need.”
I think of the officer in New York who made headlines six months ago for the text he sent his supervisor letting him know that a Black suspect had died at their hands during an arrest. Not a big deal, he’d written. Talk about a lack of humanity.
“You can’t shoot an unarmed teenager and expect zero consequences. Until people understand that fundamentally, we will have cops that are too cavalier out on our streets. We can’t let officers continue to kill innocent kids, or men, or women. Period. The price is too high.” Sabrina pauses. “I know we’re talking about your friend here. Have you figured out whose side you’re on, Riley?”
“I’m on the side of justice. And that’s exactly why you should do an interview with me. Will you?”
“Your phone is buzzing,” Sabrina says. When I go to switch it off, I see it’s Shaun, who rarely calls over texting. Something’s wrong. I fumble to press the green button. As soon as I hear his voice, quivering with anguish, I have a childlike fantasy that if I hang up now, the words he’s saying won’t be true.
Chapter Eight JEN
Snow falls in sheets as thick as paste, coating my windshield, hopeless against the wipers. After days of increasingly manic weather reports, the first storm of the season is here. Action News meteorologist Hurricane Schwartz started calling it “Snowmageddon” in his frenzied forecasts, advising the greater Philadelphia area to hunker down and stay off the roads. Everyone seems to have listened. Everyone but me.