Because

by Jack A. Langedijk

  Troy kept his face pushed against the window.

  Just as the ambulance closed its back doors, a police officer hit the van with his hand, indicating they could drive off. Robert put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Troy turned to him. Robert looked into the huge, scared and unblinking eyes.

  “Don’t worry, Troy. I’ll come with you to tell your mother.”

  Troy spoke his first words—the very first words since that time he had told Robert that his brother couldn’t read, five months ago.

  “Shut it down!” Troy’s young voice eerily echoed his brother’s tone and hardness; it was as if Tyrell had come back from the dead and possessed his young brother’s body.

  “It’s okay, Troy. I’ll...”

  “Shut it down!” Troy repeated with an almost inhuman cruelty to his voice.

  “We have to take this kid home,” said the officer in the front seat.

  “I’ll come with you,” Robert said.

  “Yeah, sure...Okay...Where do you live, kid?” asked the officer in a routine, uncaring tone that showed little empathy for the kid who had just watched his brother get shot six times in the chest.

  Troy said nothing.

  “Where do you live, kid?” repeated the officer, just as impatiently as the first time. Troy again stayed silent and stared straight ahead.

  Robert had been to Tyrell and Troy’s home at least four times so he said, “It’s one three four Erskine Avenue, officer.”

  The officer said something into his radio and they were off. A second police car followed behind them.

  Robert liked Tyrell and Troy’s mother very much. Mrs. Williams was an animated, heavy-set woman who possessed a rich and contagious laugh. He admired the way she always spoke in such a forgiving way to her sons. She was so accepting and, despite all the trouble Tyrell had brought into their family, she seemed forgiving. Robert closed his eyes, let out a mournful sigh and started to dread what was about to happen. He imagined arriving at Tyrell and Troy’s home, their mother dramatically reaching out and clutching her remaining young son tight to her bosom, and then probably falling to her knees and wailing uncontrollably to the God above, screaming for the heavens to return Tyrell back to her arms...back to his home.

  Robert looked at the little kid who maybe, in some alternate universe on this very night, would be watching his older brother do something like play basketball. Troy would be watching Tyrell spin and win the game with a stupendous, long, three-point shot, surrounded by celebration and crowds cheering, chanting his brother’s name. Instead, the only sound that filled the air was the annoyingly constant police chatter from the cruiser’s radio.

  The twirling red lights on the cruiser reflected off every window, making it appear as though the houses on the street were lighting up as the cruiser moved through town. Kids and parents sitting on their porches and playing in the street scattered into their homes as the flashing red beacons approached them. In this neighbourhood, patrol cars were a common and not always welcome sight. The cruiser finally pulled up in front of the small, grey, semi-detached house. In a couple of moments, Robert was about to find out just how effective he actually was as a probation officer.

  The house had two front windows, and the reflection of a TV’s bluish light flickered through an evergreen tree that was much too close to the front of the house.

  “Wait in the car,” the officer ordered.

  He looked around as he walked towards the door. Knocking a little too loudly.

  “It’s the police. We need to talk to you.”

  Ten seconds later he knocked again. But his knock was interrupted when the door opened. There was Troy’s mother. Robert closed his eyes; he couldn’t bear to watch the scene that was about to unfold. He found himself holding his breath the entire time the officer spoke to Tyrell’s mother. Troy just looked at his mother, shaking his head slightly.

  A loud yell was heard and suddenly, there was a bang on the police car’s back window. Robert turned to see what had caused the noise. There was no emotional scene of a mother down on her knees, screaming to the empty sky, no begging for the gods to undo what had been done.

  Instead, Troy’s mother was banging on the car window, yelling at Troy, “I don’t want no part of this, you young good for nothing...you hear! Nothin’.”

  “All right, Mrs. Williams, step back from the car,” said the officer. Two other police officers came out of the second car that had been following the car Robert and Troy rode in.

  “Open the door! Get those two out here,” the officer snapped at the two other cops.

  “I told you and your brother if you brought trouble...” the woman yelled as the door opened.

  “All right, Ma’am, stand back,” the officer said, holding his arm up and moving the mother away from the car.

  “Mr. Sanchez, could you bring that kid out here?”

  Robert reached over to Troy but Troy just shoved his arm away and began to push Robert out of the backseat so he could get out.

  “You tell them, you little brat...you better tell them this wasn’t my idea,” the woman said, walking with angry strides towards Troy.

  “Ma’am, please, hold on,” one officer said, holding up his arm again to block the woman from getting to Troy.

  “Kid, is this your mother?” the officer asked. Troy just stared at the woman and said nothing.

  “Kid, is this your mother?” The officer impatiently repeated his question. Robert’s confused eyes went back and forth between Troy and the woman. “Kid, for the last time, is she your mother?”

  Almost in a whisper, Troy turned to the officer and said, “No. My mother’s dead.”

  “Troy, what are you saying?” Robert asked.

  “No? So this isn’t your mother?” The officer walked over and looked down at Troy. The boy didn’t return the officer’s look.

  Robert turned and knelt with one knee on the sidewalk in front of Troy. ”Why are you saying this isn’t your mother, Troy?”

  “Because I’m not!” the woman interjected and then spoke directly to Robert. “The two of them paid me and said whenever you came around to pretend that I was their...”

  “Ma’am, please...Please let me...” the officer cut her off and then turned to Troy. “You and your brother Tyrell, where are your parents?”

  Troy then spoke with a take-charge kind of voice. “I told you, my mother’s dead and my dad—I don’t fuckin’ know.”

  “Which is it: dead or you don’t know?” the officer questioned.

  “My mom’s dead and my dad, I’ve never seen him, so I don’t know.”

  “Okay, okay,” the officer said to the woman and Troy. “You two go with Officers Harden and Birchmont. They’ll take your statements back at the station.”

  “I’m not going! Why should I go?” the woman said defiantly.

  “Well, lady, it looks as if you did some things that you maybe shouldn’t have, right? So if you want to clear this all up, you better go with them now.”

  “Hmmmph!” the woman spat out. She and Troy followed the officers into the back of their car, which was parked behind the one that Robert and Troy had been in. She never stopped complaining and cursing Troy as they entered the back seat.

  “That damn brother of yours...I told you he would end up getting himself shot! You better straighten this all out. I’m not going to jail for—” The car door slammed and subdued her loud cries into a muffled rant. Robert could see the woman’s arms still waving animatedly in the back of the car as the police cruiser moved down the street.

  Robert stood there with his mouth wide open in shock. The officer laughed and put an arm on Robert’s shoulder. “How long have you been a probation officer, buddy?”

  “Five months,” Robert replied sheepishly.

  “Ha ha...” The officer laughed even louder. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride back.”

  “Wait...What the hell is happening?” Robert asked.

  “Look, when you’re on probation, you gotta hav
e a fixed address right? So this...this Tyrell Williams, well, he told you this is where they were living and you bought it, right?”

  “I...ah...well, where did they live then?”

  “That’s your job, buddy. How the hell am I supposed to know? Anyway, your caseload just got a little lighter, eh? Come on...” The officer started walking back to his cruiser and opened the back door for Robert.

  “But I don’t get it. Why pretend he had a mother? Why not just find a place of their own?” Robert asked.

  “He was on probation, he can’t be taking care of a minor.” And then the cop stopped. “He probably did that so we wouldn’t try to put his kid brother in a foster home.”

  Robert got into the back seat as the officer closed the door. The officer sat down and started the engine. He looked in the mirror and said to Robert, “Maybe the brother thought he was doing something admirable, but he was just raising another felon. That kid will be sitting right where you’re sitting within two years, if it takes him that long.”

  Robert looked into the mirror and gave a meek, smiled sigh to the officer. It all happened so fast. In one moment, the world changed! In one moment, a wave of tears washed over him. In one moment, a young man whom Robert had connected with for five months was gone—in one moment, a brother was wiped off the planet in a storm of bullets. Change could happen in one moment. A little boy was homeless—now completely alone, and God knows where he’ll end up! How many worlds were changed in that one rifled moment?

  He cried softly, leaning his head on the back of the officer’s seat and then looked beside him. There it was, the old worn yellow curled notebook that Robert had always seen Troy carry. The same one he had seen this young boy scribble away in as he spoke with his older brother, Tyrell. Robert picked up the book and looked at the front cover. On it was the scratchy scrawl of a ten-year-old’s handwriting:

  C U when you get there.

  He opened the book and on the first page was written “Coolio’s song.” Under that title was what looked like the lyrics. As the police car’s radio spoke to the officer driving, Robert drifted away into Troy’s world.

  The book was filled with what seemed to be Troy’s attempt to write his own lyrics. It was filled with more scratched marks than words and it was hard to actually follow the sentences, but Robert made out these words:

  question guns—and your war—and that door that you lock

  Home’s not a street—that u walk and can’t talk

  question pain—that you gain—finding fame—in the game

  Get a phone—you can moan

  but never question Home that’s your own

  that’s your own—Not alone—not alone

  Robert was jolted back to the world around him as the police car came to sudden stop.

  “Sorry ‘bout that, buddy. Is it okay if I drop you off here? Just got a call, it’s in the opposite direction,” said the officer.

  Robert looked up and saw his car in the parking lot across the street. “Yeah, this is great...” Robert said as he held up the yellow book. “Oh, and I have this...” but then he cut himself off. He was going to ask the officer to make sure Troy got his book back. But he knew it would never make it back to the little boy’s hands, so he just put it under his arm and continued, “Ah, nothing...You’re in a hurry...Thanks for the ride.”

  Remember when I got home that night, love? You had called my mother and told her what happened. I remember her standing there as I opened the door (it doesn’t matter how old you are but when something traumatic happens, seeing your mother, well). I just started crying. She grabbed me and held me so tight it almost broke my ribs. You and Jenny were hugging and crying, everybody was crying because I was so close to those bullets—knowing that I could have died, too...My mom telling me how sorry she was that she helped me get that job and I should do something safer, like my music. And all I remember is feeling that incredible gut-wrenching feeling of guilt and overwhelming sadness...Guilt because I had a mother, guilt because there was a mother there waiting for me. And this sadness...well, maybe sadness isn’t even really the word for it because what I felt for those two boys, and now for that little Troy, it was like my heart had cracked open and I could actually feel it dripping. I felt like my heart was wet and weeping.

  Remember Little Rock? How she was so worried about me that she slept in our bed for the next two weeks!

  “Home’s not a street that u walk and can’t talk. Get a phone you can moan. Home’s your own. Not alone. Not alone.” Troy was ten but his words sounded more like an old solitary warrior who had battled a lifetime on the streets of his city, maybe for justice—justice from a world that didn’t really seem to care or really even try to listen to him or his brother.

  Do you remember that time we sat in that park—you know the one that has those lions on the gate—and we all took turns reading and singing out loud every single thing that little kid wrote in that yellow book?...And in my head that whole time, I had this kind of crazy wish; I was hoping that maybe Troy would hear us—hear his own words—and then like an apparition that comes from chanting some magical words, he would suddenly appear—no longer having to live on the street and be fighting for a home...because you and me and Little Rock, we would give him one.

  It had been impossible for Robert to return the book to Troy, or even locate him. The government agency that had custody of Troy thought he might be in danger because he had been a witness to his brother being shot. So, Troy had been put into protective foster care—somewhere that Robert hoped he would at least find a peaceful loving place he could call home, that home he achingly wrote so much about.

  Five years later, Robert left the probation office and started doing his safe school workshops in high schools. He would bring that yellow notebook along and read it out loud to the students. He hoped that Troy’s innocent expressive words would show the students how a ten-year-old street kid had so keenly identified the loneliness and heartache that so many in their teens deeply felt. And workshop after workshop, Troy’s words created a sense of inspiration and painted a picture of someone who had never given up on the quest for hope, home and happiness.

  Nine years after Robert witnessed young Troy holding his dead brother Tyrell on the sidewalk, he found himself sitting in a large room with eight inmates at the Milestone Penitentiary. After hearing about Robert’s success in the high schools, the prison asked him to run a series of workshops for young offenders who had three or fewer months left to serve and were getting ready for transitioning back into society. These prisoners were like the same wayward souls he would have met when he was a probation officer. Robert was so excited by this unique opportunity. This was the reason he had left that job so that he could do something like this. He knew the time these men had with a probation officer was too short and scattered. And Robert thought maybe, maybe by doing these workshops here—before they got out—that he could really make a real difference in their lives.

  “This is Robert Sanchez. He’ll be working with you today.” That was all the warden said before he left the room.

  Eight young men in their late teens and early twenties sat in chairs that were roughly formed in a circle. The prison’s library was a classroom-sized space. White metal shelves lined the walls and housed maybe a thousand books. Three large wooden desks displayed six ancient computers that were all chained at the back to the wall. Behind the circle of chairs stood three guards, two with the sneering grimaces of dogs you might find tied up at the back of a factory, and another who actually looked interested in what was about to happen.

  “Thanks. Hi, my name is actually Roberto Sanchez.” Although he had just been introduced as Robert Sanchez, looking at the ethnically diverse audience surrounding him made him think being Roberto would gain him greater acceptance.

  Of the eight inmates, five were black, one was Asian and two were Hispanic. Most of them looked as if they spent the majority of their time in a gym or a tattoo parlour. Six had shaved their head
s and one had spiky, jet black hair. The Asian had shoulder length hair that was tightly tied into dreadlocks. A strange sight caught Robert’s attention. One inmate held a pencil and a pad, looking as if he was ready to take notes. The body language of all the prisoners showed complete disinterest. Most were slouching as if they might fall off their chairs. And most did not even look at Robert as he spoke.

  “I’m not sure what we can do for a couple of hours each week for the next three months, but...”

  Robert was quickly interrupted. An inmate, who had to be close to six foot seven, jumped from his seat and towered over Robert.

  “Damn! Nobody said we had to do this every week! Three months? Damn!” This outburst sparked a couple of other inmates to also state their displeasure with the time commitment.

  “Sit down, you piece of crap,” one of the snarling guards snapped as he put a hand on the shoulder of the tall inmate and forced him to sit. “Go on, Mr. Sanchez,” said the guard dog, who wore a satisfied smile at his ability to slam the inmate back in his seat and restore peace so quickly.

  Robert looked at the guard. Although he wanted to say ‘thanks,’ he found it hard to say anything that would empower that self-satisfied smile. He leaned into the group and spoke in a hushed voice, “Okay...wow...Well, if some of you feel like you don’t want to be here, let’s talk about that.”

  “Don’t bother. They don’t have a choice,” the other guard barked.

  In his years as a probation officer, Robert had dealt with some police officers like this guard, ones who didn’t believe in rehabilitation or second chances. The ones who treated every offender as if they had committed their crime against them personally; therefore, it was always the right moment to get even. And Robert knew only too well how futile it could be trying to fight these types of people, so instead he employed the philosophy of keeping his enemies close.