In the Silences

by Rachel Gold

  I’d scanned down the article fast. Philando Castile was driving home with his girlfriend and her kid. The police had pulled him over for a broken taillight. He was doing what they said. He had a gun that he was registered to carry and he told them that. When he reached for his license, the cop started shooting. His girlfriend took video of it as she was praying that he wasn’t dying, but he was. He died at the hospital.

  I’d searched for the video, but Facebook had already taken it down, so I found a transcript. When I got to his girlfriend saying, “Please don’t tell me my boyfriend just went like that,” tears dripped down my face.

  I’d thought stuff like that only happened on the coasts, maybe in the South, for sure not in Minnesota. We had to be careful, sure, but Aisha was supposed to be safe here.

  I’d stared at a photo of Philando for a long time. He had a sweet smile and big nerd glasses. His skin wasn’t any darker than Aisha’s.

  She wasn’t safe here.

  Everyone who’d gone into or come out of the drugstore was white. The cops were white. One got out of the car and took three steps toward the drugstore, then paused, waiting for his partner.

  I got my phone out and texted Aisha: Where are you!!

  Checking out now, she wrote back.

  The air was nearly eighty, Wolvie’s tongue lolling out from the walk over, but I went freezing cold. I tied Wolvie and Pickles’ leashes to the bike rack in front of the store, but to be safe, I put Wolvie in a down-stay. Then I sprinted into the drugstore ahead of the cops. What could I do? All I knew was to put my body between Aisha and them.

  She stood at the counter with a small mountain of candy and four bottles of coconut water, because we had to get two for her dad. Her headband matched the purple in her purple and white sundress and the laces of her blue sneakers. She was basically the cutest human on the planet; my paranoia couldn’t be real.

  Her gaze flicked to me, forehead wrinkling with confusion, and then seeing past me, her eyes went wide. I watched her body freeze like a deer on the highway in front of a semi’s headlights.

  One cop was the size of Pops, not quite six feet, bulky in his uniform. The other was taller and thinner, and he looked so big with that massive belt and his gun.

  “We got a call about a woman shoplifting,” the tall cop said.

  “My manager asked me to call,” the cashier told him. “Should I get her?”

  I couldn’t remember ever being this scared, not this shock of immediate terror. I knew about being scared of the kids at elementary school, being scared of my mom the years after dad left, but those were slow fears over days. This was being hit in the gut by ten pounds of ice.

  I’d never felt like this around cops. Our great-grandfather had been a police officer and the whole family had a deep respect bordering on awe.

  But I hadn’t been around cops since I’d met Aisha.

  I forced words out of my mouth. “I saw someone suspicious,” I said. “I was outside with my dogs. Dishwater blond with a fake tan. Gray cargo pants with big pockets.” I looked at the cashier, “Right?”

  “Uh, I don’t know, another employee heard someone putting things into a bag or, I guess, maybe, pockets.”

  “Miss,” the shorter cop said to Aisha. “Can we check your bag?”

  She nodded slowly. Her voice quavering, she said, “I’m going to put it on the counter and take a step back from it, okay?”

  “That’d be fine.”

  She moved like underwater, slow motion horror movie, pulling the strap over her head. The buckle caught her headband and pulled it loose. It fell to the floor and she didn’t reach for it. She put her bag on the counter and stepped back.

  I fumbled my phone out of my pocket and opened the camera app. I moved to where I could have Aisha and both cops in the frame and started recording even though I was shaking so hard the video wasn’t going to come out well.

  “Put that away,” the shorter cop told me and I felt like I was going to pee myself, but I shook my head at him. He sighed and rolled his eyes at me.

  The tall one shrugged and opened Aisha’s bag. It wasn’t big, just enough for her wallet, phone, keys and a few necessities. He pawed through it, flinching when he came across a tampon and dropping that on the counter like it was a mouse.

  Mrs. Branch had come to the end of an aisle and stood there, staring at all of us, staring at the cop dropping that tampon like it had bit him. I heard the sharp rustle of someone putting a hand on a chip bag and pulling it back fast. I knew the tall girl was behind me, watching. Probably the other employee had come up too and the manager. Everybody in the store except Aisha was white.

  The old guy stood behind Aisha in line and he’d started clicking his tongue, like “shame, shame, shame.”

  The tall cop opened Aisha’s wallet and pulled out her school ID, looked from it to her and back.

  “We’re fourteen,” I said. “We’re both fourteen.”

  The guy’s tongue clicking got louder, a metronome of recrimination. Like being kids made it worse, like here we were, criminals already, when we hadn’t done anything. But not “we,” just Aisha.

  “Mrs. Branch knows us.” I jerked my chin in her direction. “She sees us at the library all the time. We didn’t take anything. We wouldn’t.”

  I looked to Mrs. Branch for help and she took a step back. She stepped away from us, even though she’d seen us at least twice a week all summer. Even though she ordered books for us and talked about what we’d read. Now she turned her face away and down, lips pressed together. Disapproving, not of these cops, not of their pristine authority, but of us.

  The tall cop looked Aisha up and down in the sundress. There wasn’t any place she could’ve hidden more than a pack of gum.

  “You can go,” that cop said, pushing her bag toward her.

  Aisha took it by reflex. Hands shaking, she got her phone and keys back inside it. She stared at the candy on the counter like it was a puzzle.

  “Hey,” I said softly. “The dogs are outside alone. Please, check on them?”

  “Yeah.”

  She went out through the door. I put my phone in my pocket, stepped to the counter, and picked up the errant tampon and the twenty she’d gotten out to pay for the candy. I didn’t touch the candy. I shoved the cash and tampon into my pocket, bent down and got Aisha’s hairband. We’d buy our snacks somewhere else from now on.

  “You said you saw someone leaving?” the tall cop asked me.

  “Yeah I did, but you went through my friend’s bag anyway, why?”

  “Procedure. Can you describe the person you saw?”

  I spun on my heel and confirmed that the lanky white girl was hiding behind the end of the chip aisle. “Why didn’t you check her bag?”

  “Um, could you move?” the cashier asked, pointing at the old guy now behind me.

  He’d stopped clicking his tongue now that Aisha was outside, and had moved on to sighs of increasing volume. I leaned back against the counter and crossed my arms.

  “Who did you see?” the cop asked.

  “A white woman. Five-seven, closer to my mom’s age, blond-brown hair, skinny, wearing tan cargo pants. The pockets looked really full. She had her head down but looking around fast, arms close to her body, defensive.”

  “You noticed all that?” the cop asked, doubtful, like I was making up stuff to protect Aisha.

  I raised my chin, pulled my shoulders back. “I train dogs. I see what people’s bodies are saying.” Like I’d seen the eight adults here stand around Aisha in a circle of blame, seen how their eyes and hands and shoulders said how easy it would be for them to hurt her or turn away while someone else did.

  “Did you recognize this woman?” the cop asked.

  “No. Haven’t seen her around here before. Is that all?”

  He nodded and I fled through the double doors into the hot air. My shirt was soaked with sweat despite the air conditioning of the store.

  Aisha stood near the corner, holding W
olvie and Pickles’ leashes, staring into the distance. Wolvie had backed into her legs, facing the police car, a ridge of fur standing up on her back. She had one ear flat to her head, one to the side, listening for danger because she could feel how upset Aisha was.

  Aisha held the leashes out to me and, as soon as I took them, walked across the street, away from the drugstore. I ran to catch up and offered my hand. She took it and didn’t let go.

  We walked along the downtown storefronts. Past the fancy salon where mom always wanted me to get my hair done—Aisha’s mom drove herself and Aisha into Saint Paul to get theirs done—past the Perkins and the German place and the Chinese place, past the butcher shop where Pops got his brats. We crossed a street and walked by the building for sale that used to be a local bank, its parking lot currently the site for Thursdays’ farmer’s markets, and then the big, new vape store.

  I’d keep going as long as Aisha wanted, but she stopped in front of the ice cream store across from the Great Clips where I got my hair cut.

  “Chocolate chip and pistachio,” she said, her voice catching but making it through the words.

  “Okay, you stay with the dogs and I’ll get us pints?”

  She nodded.

  I got in and out with ice cream in under a minute. On the walk home, she took my hand again.

  I said, “I’m sorry. I was so scared, you…?”

  She nodded, took in a long breath and let it out. “We’re okay.”

  “Yeah. We’re better than okay.”

  But she didn’t let go of my hand.

  At her house, her mom was still reading at the kitchen table. It felt like we’d been gone for days, but the clock told me we’d left fifty-two minutes ago.

  “It’s too early for—” Her mom stopped mid-sentence and focused on Aisha’s face. “What happened?”

  “We’re okay,” she said. “Cops checked my bag because someone reported a shoplifter. I didn’t move. I kept my hands where they could see. I did what you said. And we’re okay.”

  Her mom surged up and opened her arms. Aisha folded herself against her mom’s body. I put the ice cream in the freezer, then stood with my hand on the refrigerator handle because we hadn’t gotten the coconut water and I wanted to cry. When I turned around, Aisha’s mom held a hand out to me and drew me into the hug.

  She said, “I’m so proud of both of you.”

  Nobody had been arrested or shot, but that wasn’t the only way to do harm to a person. How long would it be before Aisha went back to the library? Would she ever? From now on, every time she saw Mrs. Branch she’d remember cops with their gun belts and all those accusing eyes on her. She’d hear that awful man behind her clicking his tongue, shaming her.

  Every time I saw Mrs. Branch, I’d remember that too.

  I knew what to do for cops: get badge numbers, take video, call an adult. But they weren’t the whole problem, not even most of it. What could I do about everyone else? How could I fight something that vast and invisible and embedded in the brains of people around me? People I’d grown up with and liked and needed on my and Aisha’s side?

  Chapter Three

  Mid September 2016

  After the drugstore, my plan for asking Aisha out was cursed by association. I’d wanted to ask while we sat outside the ice cream place with the dogs at our feet. Now I stalled out until the second week of school.

  Our junior high included ninth grade, so we didn’t have to deal with a new school until next year. Start of the year still put me in a daze—like when I’d take Wolvie to the dog park at a busy time and she’d run back and forth because she couldn’t figure out which humans to greet and which dogs to play with. I had to figure out my schedule, plus what each teacher wanted, which homework was going to be easy, what was going to suck, what I probably wouldn’t get done and how to avoid the worst consequences of that.

  Ask-Aisha-out plan B slowly formed in my mind: comic books. Last spring, Aisha had started saying how certain people in our comic books were cute, and I’d agree. Unless it was Kate Bishop, the new Hawkeye. I could not get into her. But then I got to thinking that Kate Bishop kind of looked like me. Not exactly, but if you needed to pick a not-yet-tall, skinny white girl with some boobs and more hip than I wanted, Kate Bishop was your go-to.

  I could ask Aisha why she liked Kate Bishop, point out how I had those characteristics too, and then ask if she’d be my girlfriend.

  Of course on the day I picked for this super smooth girlfriend conversation, we came in the back door of Aisha’s house and nearly walked into her dad’s butt. He was all downward dog on the back porch.

  Aisha yelped, “Oh Dad!” and threw her hands over her eyes.

  I should’ve expected this. Truth was, I kind of loved Aisha’s dad, even though he was awkward as anything. He had no idea that dads do not wear yoga pants and stick their butts up in the air because nobody ever wants to see that much detail about their dad’s butt. That said, his downward dog was impressive for a guy the shape of a thick bookcase with a belly.

  Aisha held her hands over her eyes, fingers spread so she could rush into the living room without running into the door frame. I kept my eyes on the taupe, all-weather carpet and muttered, “Hey Mr. Warren.”

  His job was super technical, engineering for 3M; this was not my mental picture of an engineer. Aisha’s mom was a pharmacist and she actually looked like someone you’d trust to dispense prescriptions. I’d never seen her with her butt up in the air.

  “Do they teach yoga at your school?” Mr. Warren asked over his shoulder, flashing me a grin. “They should.”

  Mr. Warren had a big, effortless grin, but no dimples unless they were hiding under his close-cropped beard. He had more hair on his face than on his head. When Mrs. Warren tried to grin like her husband, she appeared to be clenching her teeth. But when I’d seen her just smiling, not trying, she had this thoughtful, “I know something” joyful half-smile. Aisha had gotten her mom’s dimples and her dad’s grin, but she could also do her mom’s smile: lips parted, corners of her mouth turning up and in.

  “Uh yeah, we should definitely have Yoga in PE,” I told Mr. Warren and followed Aisha, smirking hard.

  We hung out at Aisha’s house most of the time. A bigger house meant she had a bigger bedroom. Plus Tariq was more fun than my brother.

  As we stepped into the living room, Tariq paused his Xbox game to laugh at Aisha’s look of horror and asked, “Is Dad being all yin-yang again?”

  Tariq lived in sweatshirts and baggy board shorts. He was a few inches taller than Aisha, broader in the shoulders, a warmer brown color. His smile echoed her grin, even though he didn’t have the dimples. His broad nose balanced his round face. He kept his hair in tight curls on top and a high fade that I’d heard Aisha call “so nineties.”

  When he wasn’t working—off saving the world as an EMT—he planted himself in front of the Xbox, headphones on, yelling commands to people scattered around the world as they got fragged in Destiny or Call of Duty.

  From the back porch, Mr. Warren yelled, “It’s yin in the yang, yang in the yin. It’s complex.”

  “I’m getting a complex all right,” Aisha groaned.

  “Hey, at least it’s yoga and not camping,” Tariq told her.

  “Camping?” I asked.

  “That was Dad’s thing the year before we moved here,” Aisha said.

  “Black people do not camp,” Tariq told me.

  “Hush you, don’t give Kaz tired stereotypes. Some do, just we don’t. And I mean we really do not. Riq went to pee in the woods, came back screaming.”

  “Did not,” he grumbled. “Darius punked me.” Darius was their older brother, off at Berkeley. I’d met him last winter break when he came to visit for two weeks; he’d gotten their dad’s height and weight, like he’d used up the family’s allotment, so Tariq and Aisha both ended up shorter and thinner.

  “You’re contradicting yourself,” Aisha pointed out. “Either he punked you and you did screa
m, or you did not scream, in which case what’s that punking assertion about?”

  “Why did I get you for a sister? Can I trade you? Kaz, how’s your current brother working out?”

  “Honestly, you’re more fun and nicer, but, I mean, if I had to switch families, that would be my dad out there in yoga pants, so…”

  “Oooh burn,” Aisha declared and we ran up to her room.

  Aisha had scored the bigger of the kids’ rooms in her house; she had a desk wide enough to put a computer on and still have space for two open books and a notebook. To the left of the door, her bed stretched along the wall with a bookcase headboard. The big desk was across from that, with her dresser and closet on the right. Desk, headboard and dresser all matched: cream-colored and modern, bright against the light brown walls. She kept her comics in a storage trunk by her closet. A robin’s egg blue cushion on top matched her pillows and comforter.

  Nothing in my room matched anything else. My three pillows all had cases from different sheet sets. My top sheet didn’t match my bottom sheet. I’d started that way out of necessity, but it had become my style. Mom kept wanting to “do my colors” and update the room. Last month, I’d made sure to get a burgundy-and-gold dog bed for Wolvie that clashed with everything else in my room.

  Aisha’s room smelled like her, coconut and sweet almond and girl—which reminded me how much I wanted her to say “yes” to dating—but also reminded me how people always saw me as a girl. Today, once again, I’d forgotten how my body should feel. A few days ago, I’d been fine having soft skin and slight curves but now I only felt angles and bones and not enough muscle.

  Aisha put her school backpack by her desk and leaned against it to take off her sneakers. I kicked mine off and settled in the middle of her bed, leaning back against the wall. Mr. Pickles jumped onto the bed and dove head-first into my lap. Propping one blue pillow against her headboard, Aisha sat and tapped my knee with her toes.