Riley reaches over and touches his foot as if it’s made of glass. “Look at these tiny toes.”
Seeing the way she looks at him brings me just as much joy as I thought it would. More actually, much more.
“Toes that I made in my stomach!” I look up at Riley, watch her watch Chase. “You made this happen, Riley… without you, we wouldn’t have tried again and we wouldn’t…”
I can’t even finish the sentence. It will never be possible for Riley to understand how much her part in this miracle has meant to me.
“I was happy to help. But you did this, Jenny. You made a baby!” She moves closer and rubs her finger along Chase’s veiny scalp.
“I didn’t know how much I would love him. It’s like…” I don’t know how to explain this to Riley, the sheer force of this love. It’s something that she won’t understand until she becomes a mother, like all those women who’d told me, “Just wait.”
“He looks so much like Kevin,” Riley observes. I know Cookie will say the same thing as soon as she arrives, likely with a stack of Kevin’s baby pictures in hand as proof.
“How’s Kevin doing… with everything?” Riley asks tentatively.
What should I say? What can I say? That I had to hide the sleeping pills and lock up the knives at Cookie’s? That I watch him through the bedroom window pacing the backyard in the middle of the night?
“Today was a good day. You should have seen him in the delivery room. He cried, Rye. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him cry before.”
“I’m so happy for you… for you both.”
I can tell she means it. It’s a bone-deep truth and it chases away the bad feelings of the last few weeks. Almost.
“Thank you for being here, Riley. It means a lot.”
“Oh, Jenny, of course I would be here.”
“I didn’t know…” I wish Riley would acknowledge this, the feeling that we are slipping away from each other. That I’m not imagining it. That’s it’s real, and if it’s real, then we can fix it.
Riley shakes her head. “Shhhh. Not now. Not right now. It’s not the time. We don’t have anything to talk about except for you and this little man. Can I get you anything? Does anything hurt? What do you need?”
I reach out for Riley’s hand and squeeze.
“I’m okay, I don’t need anything.”
What more could I need? For one single moment, I have everything.
Chapter Thirteen RILEY
A news story is like a fire. It has to be fed, nurtured in order to stay alive. It can be stoked with meager bits, pieces of kindling, small developments that turn a puff of smoke into a spark. Or sometimes it’s doused with an entire bottle of lighter fluid and surges into an inferno. That’s what happens when the video of Justin Dwyer’s shooting is released to the public. A fresh wave of visceral outrage.
This is becoming a grim ritual—the video release of a racist encounter or worse, a murder. Granted, I understand why they go viral, why the media plays them on a constant loop. There’s a prurient, clickbait quality that people can’t turn away from. But sometimes it gets to be too much. You’re buying a pair of shoes online and, boom, you’re seeing someone get brutally Tasered at a traffic stop while his toddler waits in the car, all because he didn’t signal properly. You’re catching up on your friend’s wedding photos on Facebook and, with one click, there’s cops savagely slamming a teenage girl in a swimsuit to the ground and punching her while she cries for someone to please call her mom. It’s all a relentless reminder that there will always be people who see you, and people who look like you, as dangerous, or unwelcome, or inferior. The hurt that comes with watching these videos accumulates, a scab breaking open again and again. Then comes the paranoia: after all, these are only the incidents caught on camera; you have to wonder what people are doing or saying beyond the reach of the lens—a lot worse, probably. So it’s hard, harder every day, harder with every video, to stuff down the humiliation and anger to simply get on with breakfast, bedtime… life. But still, however painful, I recognize the power these videos have to say, Look, this happens, this is real, please do not turn away. It’s the same reason I do my job: People need to see this.
I could only bring myself to watch the video of Justin dying a few times, and it already felt like too many. It’s vivid in its shock even if it’s grainy and soundless. In the first frame a figure runs through the alley in a flash and then it’s gone. When Justin appears on the screen seconds later, he’s sauntering along, minding his own business, head bopping up and down as if he’s listening to a song he really likes. He’s nearly at the end of the alleyway, about to turn right, about to walk two blocks east, back to his house. He’s nearly there, and for a split second, I think it could end differently. He might keep walking, turn that corner and continue on home, grab himself a Coke out of the fridge, and sit down to play some video games.
That’s not what happens.
Justin stops in his tracks. What unfolds next occurs so quickly that many of the news outlets, including KYX, have shown a slow-motion version, which is somehow more disturbing, drawing the scene out even longer. Justin stops walking, reaches into his right coat pocket. He pulls out a dark object, about the size of his hand. He takes an earbud from his ear as he turns. The footage is too grainy to make out his expression. I see it in my mind anyway, the curiosity morphing into shock as he jerks one way, then the other, and then falls to the ground. How quickly he collapses, like something in a cartoon.
But what stands out about the video beyond Justin’s tragic death are two things. Justin doesn’t match the description of the guy they were looking for—Rick Sargent. Even in the black-and-white video it’s clear that Justin is wearing a bright green North Face jacket, not the black coat Rick was reported as wearing. He’s also a good six inches shorter. I know all this from the incident report I finally got from my police source. It underscores that Cameron shouldn’t have shot. And that’s the other thing about the video. You can see Cameron charge around the corner a split second before Kevin. This is why I watched the video the second and third time, in slow motion. Kevin didn’t shoot first. In the video Kevin follows Cameron, sees his partner shooting, raises his gun, and fires. Then, while Cameron just stands there, Kevin runs over, drops down to his knees like he’s whispering something to Justin.
“What the hell did that cop say to the kid after he shot him?” a pundit shouts on WHYY. As I drive, morning talk radio is on fire dissecting the shooting. Everyone and their cousin has an opinion.
“You saw him reach into his pocket. He could have been reaching for a gun. Those officers had a reason to shoot. These youngsters need to listen.”
“That’s what he was trying to do—taking out his headphones. He was dead before he got a chance to listen!”
“That guy who ran across the shot. I bet that’s who they was really after, but we all look alike, right?”
“You shouldn’t be a police officer if you’re that afraid.”
“No one goes to work saying, ‘I’m going to kill someone today.’？”