Light It Up

by Kekla Magoon

  “I have an opening in my congressional office staff,” he says. “Legislative Aide.”

  “Legislative Aide?” I echo. My ears ring with it. Legislative Aide Aide Aide Aide.… Is this really happening?

  “That’s the title,” Senator Sloan says. “In terms of role, you’d function as a community liaison, between my office and my constituents, particularly around organizing.”

  I don’t entirely know what that means, but it sounds amazing.

  “Wow. Senator. Thank you, I—” I have no words. Thunderstruck doesn’t begin to cover it. But— “I don’t graduate until end of May.”

  “You’d start in August. Plenty of time to transition leadership for SCORE and get settled in Washington.”

  Right. SCORE. This thing I’ve given my time and life to for the past two and a half years. Right. Washington, DC. The congressional offices.

  “Um…”

  Sloan chuckles. “You don’t have to decide now. Let me know next week.”

  Right. I don’t have to decide now. “Sure, of course. Thank you for the opportunity. I’ll let you know by then.”

  My ears are still ringing. Is there a decision to be made?

  Senator Sloan sips his Diet Coke. As we settle into silence again, the SCORE office grows more cluttered and cramped by the second. I imagine myself in a classy suit. Strolling through the US Capitol. Casual, like I belong.

  EVA

  It’s hard to sleep. My knuckles ache. It hurts a whole lot to punch someone.

  But maybe it hurts more not to punch them.

  Daddy cries through the night. I put my hand on the wall and listen.

  There is nothing I can do.

  In the morning, when I say, “I’m sorry you’re sad,” he pretends he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

  “It’s complicated,” Mommy says.

  @KelvinX_: Have you seen these mofos with the torches? #HelloLynchburg

  @WhitePowerCord: You can hate on us all you want. But you can’t touch us. We have a right to be here.

  @KelvinX_: *scratches head* Huh. That sentiment sounds awfully familiar …

  @WhitePowerCord: We are taking this country BACK.

  @KelvinX_: We are taking this country BLACK.

  @BrownMamaBear: #TodayForShae barely scratches the surface. When are black people gonna get serious about taking care of our communities?

  @TroubleInRiverCty: Keep on coming, Underhill PD. You can’t arrest and kill all of us. The whole world is watching.

  @WesSteeleStudio: The press refuses to mention Henderson’s impeccable service record. Why? Could it be BIAS AGAINST WHITE AMERICANS? Racism is alive and well in Underhill. #SteeleStudioExclusive

  @Viana_Brown: Told a white friend about Shae Tatum. She said “That doesn’t happen.” #DifferentWorlds

  PEACH STREET

  There is something worse than spilled blood. The poison in their voices ricochets for days. People travel the sidewalks wary, wondering what is in each other’s minds.

  Two black men pass a white man in front of the hardware store. Their eyes ask, Was it you, with the torches?

  His eyes say, You’ll never really know.

  WITNESS

  It is not enough to watch the coverage. Pacing the living room carpet, you are stuck in the middle. Too close and yet too far.

  What you’ve seen surges to the forefront, again and again.

  The past is not past. The future is cast in shadow. The present—this moment, now—bears its own kind of peril.

  You wade through the helplessness of all you know and all you cannot say.

  STEVE CONNERS

  “Will’s out again,” my wife says. She stands at the kitchen window of our condo, looking down at the street. From my spot at the kitchen table, my view is the twists in her hair, the curves of her back, the hasty bow on her apron. Chicken sizzles on the stovetop. The rice lid pops and clatters as it simmers in the background. Greens in a bowl wait to get tossed in the chicken grease.

  “He’s supposed to be home for dinner,” I remind her. “We’ve talked about this.”

  “He won’t be,” she says. “He’s out there. I can feel it.”

  Sigh. Far be it from me to question mother’s intuition. “He’s angry. You—I mean, I can’t blame him for that.”

  “I don’t—I can’t rest—” She clutches at her chest and fumbles over the words. I get up, to go to her.

  My cell vibrates, gliding across the kitchen tabletop. The screen glows, JOHN LANSBURY. Impeccable timing, as ever.

  “Hi, John?”

  My wife turns back to the window. I go over and put my hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs away from me, returning to tend the chicken.

  “You watching the news?” John asks.

  “Not yet. We’re making dinner.” My wife shoots me a glance. Okay, “we” is a stretch. I chopped the greens. And since then I’ve been sitting here. I shrug an apology at her. She sticks her tongue out.

  “They’re pushing toward a verdict,” John says. “Tomorrow or the next day.”

  “The grand jury?”

  My wife stops stirring and turns. I look away, because I have to.

  “Yes,” he says. “We’ll need to be ready when they come back. Whichever way it goes.”

  “We will be.” And now it’s me at the window, staring down into the dusk. The chicken smell, rich and amazing, wafts up stronger behind me. She’s taking it off the pan, putting in the greens. Dinner soon, and Will’s not home.

  John is on a roll. “We need talking points, press releases, and a revised media plan for the commissioner and the union reps. Henderson should continue in silence, don’t you think?”

  “Of course. It helps nothing to hear from him.” This conversation is pointless. All of this could wait until tomorrow. I’ve already worked up the talking points. I don’t know why he even called.

  “Right, right. Anyway…” John rambles loosely about our agenda. My wife absently stirs the greens. She glances over her shoulder at me. Our eyes meet and it’s everything at once. Why we hate my job right now, what we fear for our son. She stretches her free hand toward me and I take it. A lifeline.

  The front door lock clicks and the door opens. Relief floods me. I squeeze my wife’s hand gently. He’s home. We’re okay. Another day behind us, clean and safe, with all three of us home together for dinner. Nothing we take for granted anymore.

  “Will, baby?” my wife calls to him. “Wash up for dinner.”

  There’s no answer but the shuffle of sneakers in the hallway, the slamming of a bedroom door. My wife’s face crumples. Her relief drains away, replaced by annoyance.

  Will’s such a good kid. Loving and cheerful, artistic and brave. But lately there’s no reaching him. He’s pulled so far away from us.

  John’s still talking. “Steve? What do you think?”

  “Um—many thoughts. Let me reflect on things and give you a report in the late morning tomorrow.”

  “Which way do you think it will break?” John’s voice goes energetic. I have nothing left for him. Nothing left for any of it tonight.

  I press my palm more firmly against my wife’s. She looks at me. Everything at once.

  “The way it always breaks,” I answer.

  Our job only gets harder from here.

  EVA

  Tomorrow or the next day, we find out if Daddy has to go to court.

  Today, we have new clothes, new toys, and the promise of a family vacation. “You’re still on leave,” Mommy says. “We could get away for a while.”

  “I can’t leave the state,” Daddy says. “It will look like I’m running.”

  “There’s plenty to do nearby.”

  “You’re pushing it,” Daddy says. “Give it a rest.”

  “Can we move? I’m never, ever going back to school.” I sit with my arms crossed. I’m suspended for a week for fighting. It won’t be long enough.

  “Well, aren’t you two in a mood.” Mommy huffs over to the comp
uter. For a while there is no sound except a lot of clicking.

  “Look,” Mommy says. We look. She shows us some websites. Museums. Restaurants. “And this is where we could stay.”

  A tall, shiny hotel with room service, movies on the TV, and a nice swimming pool.

  “Jesus Christ,” Daddy says. “It’s how much per night?”

  Mommy turns away from the computer. “I will not let you punish yourself for the rest of your life. Not for one tragic accident.” The words drop like anvils. Tragic. Accident. I picture them falling off a cliff, like in a Road Runner cartoon. Mommy is like the coyote, trying to kill the bad feelings that are running all over the house.

  Mommy spins back to the computer. “I’m booking it.”

  “No.” Daddy drops onto the couch, head in his hands. “How am I supposed to just…” His voice zips off, leaving a cloud of dust. The Road Runner is alive and well.

  More clicking.

  Mommy doesn’t stop me when I slide into her lap. She types in our address and credit card numbers. All the while, the images of the hotel blink by, all shiny and clean. I learn a new word.

  “What is ‘amenities’?”

  “What are amenities,” Mommy corrects. “It means good things.”

  We will have amenities. The worst thing that ever happened to us has turned into something not so bad. Every cloud has a silver lining, Mommy always says.

  ZEKE

  Even the old, boring day-to-day work feels different with Kimberly around now. I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I just want to make out with her all day, I feel like, even though making out is kind of exhausting after a while. We wouldn’t even have to make out the whole time. Just spend the day lounging in the same space, so that we could be touching. But who has time to lounge?

  “You okay?” Kimberly smiles at me. It’s been quiet between us for a while, which is unusual.

  “Sure, yeah.” Nothing to do but smile back. What will she think when I tell her about Senator Sloan’s offer? Washington, DC, feels distant and exciting. My whole self comes alive in a different way, thinking about it. But it also means the end of this thing that I’ve built. Saying goodbye to SCORE.

  SCORE would be fine in Kimberly’s capable hands, of course. It’s not totally about the work, it’s … something different. If Kimberly’s here, and I’m there …

  I don’t want to think about it. My hands cap and uncap the colorful markers before me.

  The grand jury has been hearing the Darren Henderson/Shae Tatum case. Their pronouncement is due any day now. Maybe tomorrow, but probably the day after. That’s what they’ve told us, anyway. When it comes, we’ll be there. Kimberly and me, and a whole lot of others.

  Look at her now, punching out UNARMED buttons on the button maker. She makes mundane things seem incredibly sexy. How does she do that? I peek at her out the corner of my eye, occasionally bumping her knee with mine.

  I’m hand-lettering yet another poster with her catchphrase on it. “‘Today for Shae, Tomorrow for All’ was a stroke of genius,” I tell her.

  She grins. “So you’ve said.”

  For the thousandth time, probably. “What can I say? I’m a fanboy for your brain.”

  Kimberly tosses a finished button in the box, flexes her wrist, then reaches for a poster board. “What other signs do you want?”

  “No Justice, No Peace.”

  “I don’t know if we should use that,” she says.

  “No justice, no peace?” But it’s so simple, so powerful. Easy to chant.

  “Yeah. We’re supposed to be advocating nonviolence.”

  “That’s not what it means.”

  Kimberly frowns. “No justice, no peace. As in, if we don’t get justice, we won’t be peaceful?”

  I shake my head, lean into it. This is exactly the kind of discussion I love. “No, no. It’s a much more complicated idea of peace. It’s drawn from a quote from the Reverend Dr. King.”

  “Really?” I swear to God, she leans in and bats her eyes at me. I totally thought that was some made-up thing from fiction. But it’s super hot.

  “Yeah. He has this quote about the relationship between justice and peace, that you can’t have one without the other. It’s—” I pause. “Well, you know?” I don’t want to be the guy who always explains things. I know I get overly detailed about stuff like this. Other people get bored with it.

  “I don’t know that quote,” she says. “I guess Dr. King said a lot of important things, huh?”

  I smile. “The thing is, they do go hand in hand. Justice and peace. In reality, if we don’t have justice, we already don’t have peace.”

  Kimberly frowns, mulling over it. “How so?”

  “Well, think about what the justice system is supposed to do. It’s supposed to uphold the moral ideals of our society, right?”

  “Thou shalt not kill, and such.”

  “Right, so when you break the social code, there are consequences.”

  She nods. “I mean, I get that. We send people to jail for murder.”

  “So, to look deeper, what happens when the system is built to uphold a moral code that is skewed from actual fairness? Or, when people have different ideas about what is fair?”

  “Isn’t that why we have courts in the first place, to keep everyone honest?”

  “Sure, but it requires integrity of the system.” I tap my fingers against my lips. Is this making sense to her? Does she think I’m a giant nerd?

  “And the system is broken.”

  “But also, in a sense, if there is no justice for us, what is our obligation to create peace?” I’m super excited now. No one ever wants to get this far into this. I love her.

  Um.

  Swallow that thought.

  Try again. “What I mean is, black people basically live outside the law already, because the law doesn’t serve us fairly.”

  “And so…?” She’s clicking through the pieces of the puzzle in her mind. I can tell.

  “So, it’s possible that the only way to achieve actual justice, the only way to change the system that is acting against us, is to act outside the law.”

  “But that would be illegal.” She blushes. “I know that sounds super obvious. I don’t understand.”

  “It’s hard stuff. Think back to the 1960s. Organizers used civil disobedience to great effect.”

  “All the sit-ins and marches.”

  “Yeah, technically they were breaking the law. Black people would go sit in at Whites-Only lunch counters, knowing that they’d be arrested.”

  “And the laws eventually changed.”

  I nod. “In part because black people proved to lawmakers that the laws were unjust.”

  Kimberly shakes her head. “Well, but more so because we disrupted the economic structures of those businesses. They couldn’t sell lunches to white people while black people—who they refused to serve—were occupying the counters. They couldn’t make money.”

  I’m totally impressed. Hardly anybody knows that. Is it weird that it makes me want to jump her bones? Yup, totally weird. I’m hopeless.

  Kimberly goes on. “Not only was it bad PR, it was damaging the actual business. So, really, we never had a moral awakening on race. There was no great change of heart in America after the 1960s.”

  Ding-ding! Jackpot! “And that’s why we’re still stuck making signs and marching. In the twenty-first century.” I hold up the NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE poster board. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  Kimberly’s quiet for a minute. She traces her finger along the bottom of the words. “Does everybody know that’s not what it means?” she asks softly. “Was it just me?”

  Crud. I’ve accidentally made her feel stupid. I rush to correct it. “Oh, gosh, no. Most people don’t fully get it. It’s a really good question. And you really know your history. I’m so impressed. You’re really smart.” And now I’m a babbling idiot. Perfect.

  “It’s just…” She hesitates. “I still don’t understand why we shou
ld use it. Isn’t the point of slogans to be really clear?”

  “It’s clear enough.”

  “But it’s not,” she argues. “We just had a whole conversation about how it isn’t.”

  And you know what, she’s right.

  DEVANTE

  Robb’s left their door open. I know from history that Tyrell hates when he does that. I knock at the jamb. Tyrell pulls out his earbuds and turns around.

  “Hey, man,” he says.

  “Hey.”

  Tyrell is not enamored by throw pillows. He’s the only guy in our suite, one of the only guys on the whole floor, who’s never been by to see Doc DeVante and lie on my “couch.” Maybe he’s shy. Maybe he doesn’t have any problems. He doesn’t seem to have any friends, either.

  A shot of guilt pierces me. Maybe I should be making more of an effort.

  “So I’m going with Robb down to the Black House. You wanna come?”

  Tyrell shakes his head. “I need to focus on my studies.”

  “We’re talking about protest responses after the White Out march.”

  “Not interested, thanks.”

  He barely has the time of day for me. I don’t get it.

  “Doesn’t it upset you?”

  He looks at me, full on, for one long second. “What?”

  Is he kidding? My fingers spring out wide. “White supremacists marching in the streets of an American city.”

  “Oh.” Back to his math books. “Yeah.”

  Forget it.

  This punk comes from some entitled place. He doesn’t know what it’s like to live the streets. Bro lives his life according to some spreadsheet. I want to shake him. Get out in the world. Know what we’re up against.

  How do I make him understand?

  ROBB

  “SCORE is planning a demonstration at the courthouse, during the grand jury deliberations.” I scroll through my phone as DeVante and I walk along the campus path toward the black student union. “We should go to that.”