Back at home, I added the $150 to the $820 I had already banked from sellin’ the silhouetted student-athlete’s shoes and the shoes that the basketball coach had gave me. When winter break came and the schools let out, that number stopped still, no new revenue. Then the holidays and the flu showed back up and I had to pay for presents and flowers, and ’fore I knew it that number dropped like a dead body, decomposing one dollar and dime at a time.
*
When the spring outdoor season commenced, I was barefoot in track terms. No running shoes. That begged a basic question: What happened to the shoes? Old Irish Spring wanted to know. Without even really trying to be believable, I mumbled that I lost them. I was staring at my feet, my shoes, but I looked up at him after I said it cuz I had heard from somewhere that white men like it when you stare straight into they eyes. I could see Irish Spring’s eyes didn’t believe me and neither did the rest of his body. He usually held hisself kinda stiff, but now he was a damn dead man listening to me lie, ready for the pallbearers. He heard me out and ordered another pair of shoes, which took a couple weeks to arrive, which spared me from running in a couple more meets.
Me and him never did get along after that, not even after I came back as a senior in better shape, with somethin’ more on my mind besides flippin’ shoes and the system. I always sensed that stiffness in him, and he felt however he felt about me, I ain’t finna climb into his mind. I knew not to sell my second pair and press my luck with him even though the student-athlete who shall remain nameless tore up his knee that spring and the billboard came down in Rockwood, re-placed by an ad for summer vacation in Venice. I was shoe poor and money poor then, which maybe Irish Spring understood, seen it as welfare or whatever, cuz he never did press me about exactly how I went and lost somethin’ that was supposed to be worn on my feet. I cain’t call it, but that unpressed silence between us was our agreement, and that’s about all I can say about that.
*
Despite that shit, I was winning. By the time the spring semester got under way, I knew I could hold down the prep school academics. I had dipped out on every coach but the one who wanted nothin’ to do with me, which meant I wouldn’t need to take anything for the team. And best of all, I had told my social justice story, whatever that meant. It meant game over as far as I was concerned. Gimme the Grammy, or whatever it is they do for writers when someone notices them.
Mrs. Greenberg disagreed. In her expectation, my columnist career was just starting. She wrote me an email in which I was invited to enroll in the journalism class in spring on the condition that I meet deadlines this time. I thought to email her back and point out that I hadn’t actually missed the drop deadline, only all the others. Mrs. Greenberg was not one to fuss with details like that, though. Her email was a whole soliloquy on how journalists have to always be on point, how they have to keep a calendar in mind all the time and that they must communicate with they editor in an informative and efficient manner no matter what.
On the first day of classes in spring, she kept me after the computer system closed the class period, the monitors went blank, the school anthem started to play from the intercom, and the other students filed out. She nodded silently at me to stay just in case I had any bright ideas ’bout leaving out with my peers.
Wadn’t never no small talk with Mrs. Greenberg. “Good afternoon, Cope. How are you?” she said from her desk at the front of the room. I could tell she didn’t care, was just asking cuz it’s what you’re supposed to do. “You seem like you’re doing quite well. I will say, whatever you’re doing, however you’re feeling, you wrote a fine article, so you should feel proud about that. It’s more of a literary accomplishment than most people will ever experience. You are so young, but already you have a voice as a writer that’s all yours, totally unique. You truly are talented. You could be quite a writer. But to whom much is given, much is required. I think you can do more than tell the tried-and-true and well-worn story of a black man brutalized by the police.”
I wanted to catch her and say that didn’t nobody brutalize me, they just pulled guns on me, had Daddy prayin’ on his knees, but wadn’t no punches thrown or windpipes crushed, no brutality—but she kept talkin’.
“The way I see it, Cope, the police are but the butt of the spear. Or, rather, they’re the tip of the spear. That makes more sense as an analogy. Here’s a better, more historically grounded analogy: Mao Zedong said that power flows from the barrel of the gun, but he never said that power was the gun. There’s a difference. The police typically deployed by city police departments are on the streets, armed, so they are the visible expression of state repression, but individual police officers hold very little power except for the right to arrest and the practical right to kill.” Seemed like hella power to me, especially compared to me, cuz I didn’t have a lick of power— but she kept talkin’. “*8:46 dealt powerfully with the problem that the police posed to black and brown bodies—or, rather, to black and brown people. Not to say that those issues are wholly eradicated, but I think it’s important to look at the bigger picture. After all, it is more complicated than firing and prosecuting the ‘bad apples’ on the force, no matter how many rotten ones there prove to be. If the only thing we can argue for is the right of the oppressed not to be unjustly murdered in the street in view of the entire world, then this is a terribly primitive nation, don’t you agree? And what about these police? Who are they now? Nearly twenty percent of police officers today in America are privately employed, oftentimes by companies that have ties to white supremacist organizations. Every policeman in Piedmontagne is privately employed. Many of these officers came to their private sector posts after the protest years. Now they aren’t bound by the same regulations that regular police are, and sometimes when you look at an officer, you don’t know if he or she is employed by the local PD or by a private company. Their uniforms are just a mess, with all those confusing insignia. The lines have blurred between public and private policing. Why is that?” she asked.
I shrugged.
She kept talkin’: “The fault lies in the manipulation of our legislators. Our government, which creates the laws that the police enforce, has become increasingly repressive as a reaction to the protests of the recent past. They used the White House insurrection to pass new laws that mostly impact black and brown people even though there weren’t any black and brown people in that rebellion. It’s part and parcel of a cynical design. They used to deny that a deadly respiratory virus even existed; now the same people use it as a pretext to deny issuance of permits to protest in public space, which of course makes arresting protestors socially acceptable and politically palatable—and Soclear constantly propagandizes its viewers that all this somehow makes sense. It’s a terrible era that we find ourselves in, Cope. We need our students and subscribers to think about how phenomena that may not be the most hot-button issue (like a man being killed in broad daylight by police) still severely affect life, and in particular the lives of the least fortunate, the same people who are most likely to be killed by that police officer in broad daylight. Obscure legislation is passed, the planet warms, sea levels rise, fires become more frequent, our water is polluted with new contaminants all the time. You are the student best suited to write about these things. You can become the conscience of our campus community. Let me send you some articles that will serve as inspiration.”
*
Mrs. Greenberg was not asking my permission to inspire me. That evening I received an email from her entitled “Major National Newspapers and Journals: Back Issues.” It was a gang of stuff, oceans of literature, and the first thing I thought was that the lady must be out her mind to think that I, a mediocre student, was finna read all this shit, do all my other homework, and wake up early as hell tomorrow, catch the buses, sprint my ass into Pied-montay city limits, into the school, and somehow stay awake in my classes. Luckily her email to me contained specific instructions about which articles I should pay attention to. I read them that she reco
mmended, and in doing that I came to see for myself, from facts piled upon researched, verified facts and more facts, all the issues Mrs. Greenberg had spoke to me about after class. I could see that she had a point about how the government and the lawmakers moved slicker’n rainwater, gettin’ things like the changes made to the adolescent incarceration system done on the low without the public noticing it or paying it any mind. I could see what she meant when it came to private po-lice. Shit, I didn’t even know if the jump-outs who vamped on hustlers and prostitutes and homeless folks outside Rockwood and Ravenscourt was PD or private cops, come to think of it. I also read about the environmental issues she had raised. It wadn’t anything in there about radiation, but the articles did inform me about all the lead in the water and its destructive effects, which disproportionately impact complected kids due to us being fucked over in general in society. I seen the big picture that she was talkin’ about, a big ol’ spinnin’ globe full of nothin’ but our troubles.
I also seen that *8:46 and all the other back-in-the-day protest actions had not solved all our issues with law enforcement. Like Mrs. Greenberg told me, when an officer did occasionally get brought up on battery or crookedness or even murder charges, it was often found that they had connections to some underground-militia-type stuff. If the fools didn’t get locked up, they would leave the force, walk across the street, and go into private security work. The private cops worked with the regular cops and wadn’t no way to tell who was who when they patrolled your hood, with the only difference being regular cops in California had to have that body camera on them and the private security don’t. But filmed or unfilmed, black bodies and brown bodies kept stackin’ in ’22 and ’23 and ’24 and ’25 and ’26 and ’27. And now the cases get lost in the sauce a lot easier without a po-lice chief and the mayor accountable and made to do press conferences about the shit. People who purchase private po-lice protection for they compound or company or whatever ain’t tryna be hella public about every little killing and beating, after all.
Meanwhile, them bodies—a cop’s bullet or choke hold seemed to hand some brother his walking papers every month, and as the dates of the articles came more current, closer to my present-tense presence in the world, the incidences came more like every week, every few days, some man or woman somewhere in America took ghost courtesy of the cops. But what really got to me was how the spokespeople for the security agencies and such would discuss the incidents on the Soclear broadcasts. The security agency spokesperson always started by announcing that the officer had been placed on administrative leave, whatever that means. Then they would talk about the need for improved community relations between they officers and the people, and they would call for charity events in the black community, basketball tournaments and shit. They would pledge a thousand dollars to a community center. They would cite one of these rich rappers whose mansion in the hills they protect like a head of state, like that’s evidence of how they feel about our people in general. When pressed to speak on the case in question, though, them spokesperson jokers turnt into English teachers, wanting us to know all the context, the history of the site of the incident, the history of the company securitizing the site, then the backstory of each and every participant in the drama, the relationship that the officer had had with they parents, they relationship with they supervisor, who invariably vouched for they ass. They wanted us to know that the officer was married and had children and dogs and cats, they hobbies and interests and where this joker went to high school and what sports this joker played. They also wanted you to know the arrest history, psych evals, toxicology report, education level, and social media activity of the dead muhfucka. Then it was film school time: The spokesperson would analyze the width and depth of the camera angle of the incident, even if it was up close and personal on a body cam. The spokesperson would go into detail about the color contrasts and how that mighta fucked up the footage or some shit, whatever’s clever, the darkness and the light and the sound quality and the reverb and the feedback, the this and the that, the mise-en-scène and shit, and in the end they always concluded the same way, which was wadn’t no conclusion to come to but to remain calm and to trust the ongoing internal investigation.
**✦
“I don’t think I’m ready to be the conscience of the campus community,” I emailed Mrs. Greenberg in the morning. It was all too much, too big, too crazy, too dangerous. And it also wadn’t me: I was just a kid at a prep school doing his thing. Just because I’m black don’t make me the spokesman for my community. It don’t make me anything. I didn’t know what I was, but I knew that I was more than the madness of the po-lice.
Mrs. Greenberg never did respond to my refusal. In class that day, she ain’t speak to me not a once.
*
Instead of becoming everybody and they momma’s conscience, I was assigned a smaller story: I would interview and profile sophomore sensation Sherrod St. James, the smartest kid in East Oakland. Sherrod was an academic star, much like yourself, Jacq, except hood heritaged. This boy clocked 4.0 grade point averages like the cops clock bodies. More impressive, he had finished second in a regional robotics championship, building some kinda vehicle I cain’t even begin to explain so don’t ask. Boy was Tristan Walker mixed with that man who discovered how to do everything with a peanut sprinkled with homegirl from Hidden Figures compared to my academically mediocre ass. He also was opposite me in another way. He lived right across the street in Ravenscourt.
Ravenscourt was one of the most infamous neighborhoods, or projects, in all East Oakland. It was mostly known for being the home of Felix Mitchell, who died ’fore I was born yet his name still rings out, still has old heads reminiscing on the ’80s, still has criminal-minded youngsters studying how he ran Ravenscourt and most of East Oakland. It was from the fear of shadows like his that I had never actually touched turf on those grounds.
Word was that if you was from the Rock, you needed to watch your back, front, and both sides if (not when) you went to Ravenscourt. Dudes who met girls from across the street had to check they nuts and consider carrying a weapon when they went over there. I don’t carry guns—don’t like them things at all. I can handle myself decent in a scrap, but that wouldn’t help me if I got lost up in there looking for St. James and got jumped for my shoes by three, four dudes. It’s things like this that people in Pied-montay don’t think about when they ask you to talk to a kid across the street, and it’s things like this that you ain’t really tryna confess to them if you live in a place that’s the exact opposite of Pied-montay, because either it’s gonna make the place where you live seem scarier’n hell, or it’s gonna make you look like a swaggerless punk for not checkin’ your nuts and gettin’ a gun to go see your girl, take your pick, neither one is good for the image of Black Americans that you’re projecting to the people of Pied-montay.
I figured I would need protection, but I didn’t have no weapons and didn’t want none, so on the morning that I was to do my interview, I found the next best thing to a gun: DeMichael. It might seem hella strange and slightly suspect of me to show up out the clear blue, given that we hadn’t exchanged a single word since freedom, but I needed his help.
“Bruh, you askin’ me for what now?” he asked from his apartment doorway.
“I need you to go over to Ravenscourt with me. Like, as protection.”
“I know why you want me to go with you, family. That’s not what I’m askin’. I wanna know why yo’ ass tryna squad over to where all them wild niggas be at. Do you miss the Youth Control? You got a girl you tryna get with or somethin’? Pussy ain’t worth gettin’ jumped, fam. What about that tall, light-skinneded girl you be talkin’ to in the courtyard? Her body hittin’. And she cute.”
“She’s too old for me. She’s about to leave at the end of the school year and go off to college. I’m solo dolo, always have been.”
“Then what’s the deal? Why the field trip?”
“I need to talk to someone in Ravenscourt. This k
id Sherrod St. James.”
“I never heard of him. I doubt he’s dangerous.”
“He’s not.”
“So why do you need me? You his guest. That nigga should give you the hood pass.”
I held my tongue. DeMichael was hard to argue with. I heard a fan whirring behind him real loud and a show on what sounded like an old-ass television with the volume turnt high enough to be heard over the fan. DeMichael filled the small doorway so totally I couldn’t see nothin’ behind him, almost like his body was a curtain between me and his home.
“What’s up?” he pressed.
So I told him about Pied-montay and the article I was to write about Sherrod.
“Why they care what grades this crosstown nigga make?” I shrugged. I didn’t know. “It’s a journalism assignment. That’s all I know.”
“Seems like they jus’ want him for they school and they sendin’ you there to help recruit him. Damn, I didn’t know Pied-montay loved niggas like that!” he hooted.
“D-Michael Quantavius Chesnutt Bradley!” A thin, damaged, but powerful voice sprang like a rose rising from concrete. “Don’t be cursin’ inside this home!”
“Sorry, Granny.” He lowered his voice, and I remembered DeMichael’s granny picking him up from school all the way back to elementary. She was old back then. “Damn,” he said under his breath, “it’s like sometimes you can be standin’ right next to her and she don’t hear you. Other times she hear aye’thing.”
The Confession of Copeland Cane Page 18