by Mark Oshiro
“I lost my son a week ago,” she said, and she didn’t bother wiping her tears away. They dripped down onto the table, onto the statement she had handwritten and folded and brought with her. “He was taken from me by a man who has disappeared, who won’t even show his face and admit that he shot my … my…” She coughed, too loud, and it was like she shrank before them all, became a smaller person somehow. She was throwing her soul into the world, uncertain she’d ever get it back.
“I don’t know what to do without him. I am here to ask you for help.” She broke into a full sob then, and Moss stood and dragged his chair with him, the sound of it scraping the stage loud and obnoxious, but he didn’t care. He sat next to Javier’s mother and wrapped an arm around her shoulder as she continued. “They have not even released his body to me,” she said. “They still have it. I can’t bury him. I don’t know what to do.”
She put the paper down on the table and pushed it away. “Please help me do something,” she begged, her eyes on the crowd. “Help me do anything.”
Martin sidled up to Moss and put a box of tissues and a pitcher of water on the table before dashing off. He handed a tissue to Eugenia and she blew her nose. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is too hard.”
She stood, her chair scraping like Moss’s had, and she moved into the wings, collapsing into a man’s arms. Moss turned back to the crowd and could make out a number of people crying. Hold on, Moss told himself. You have to be strong for them. He remembered that morning in the quad, when he shoved down his terror for Shawna. Do the same thing again.
“So what do we do for Ms. Perez?” Wanda asked the crowd. She gestured toward the table. “Any of you?”
Moss felt the eyes of everyone in that room turn to him. It was instantaneous, and he didn’t know how his mother didn’t crumble under that kind of pressure. “I don’t know,” he said, his face too close to the microphone, and the feedback squealed at him. He moved back from it. “How do we get James Daley held accountable? That’s what I want.” He looked over to the wings, saw Eugenia still bent with grief. “I think that’s what all of us want.”
There was a shuffle in the back of the room, a hand thrust up in the air, a white sheet of paper in it. “I might be able to help!” The voice cut through the commotion, and Moss squinted as he watched a woman with short blond hair squeeze past people grouped in the aisles. She stumbled as she made it to the steps, but she recovered and headed straight to the pulpit, where Wanda and Reverend Okonjo stood. Her outfit was conservative, dress pants under a light blue blouse, her hair delicately swept back. She extended a hand to Wanda, who stared at it with confusion.
“Excuse me, but who are you?”
“Rachel Madsen,” she said, and she smiled, a quick gesture with her lips pressed together. “Communications manager for the Oakland Police Department.”
It was like someone had punched the entire room in the gut. Moss stood, and his heart leapt to this throat. “What are you doing here?” he shouted. “This isn’t for you.”
The words seemed to cut her deep. He saw the disappointment cross her features for just a second, but that smile returned. “I understand you might be upset, but I assure you—”
“Might be upset?” He grabbed the back of his chair to steady his legs, which shook from terror. “They killed her son!” He pointed back toward Javier’s mother.
“I came because I have a statement from the Oakland Police Department that I wanted to read. We believe that it was best you heard it from us first before we released it to the public.”
There was silence. It was painful. Moss looked to his mother, whose brows were creased in concern. She was shaking her head gently, but Rachel Madsen still stepped up to the pulpit. She laid out the paper she had, ran her hands over it as if to straighten it out. She looked up at the crowd, which sat frozen in horrified silence. He saw Esperanza in the front row, her mouth slightly agape, her body on the edge of her seat. Moss wanted to slump so badly, but he refused to look weak. Not now, he told himself. Don’t give it away.
Rachel cleared her throat, gave another meaningless smile. “‘On Friday, September twenty-first, at two twenty-one P.M., the Oakland Police Department responded to reports that there was a riot at West Oakland High School after multiple students allegedly tried to leave campus.’”
“You know that’s a lie,” Kaisha interrupted on her own microphone. “How can the police respond to something they started?”
“If you’ll just let me read the statement—” Rachel said.
“No, I won’t let you read it,” Kaisha shot back. “I thought you said that you might be able to help.”
Rachel pursed her lips, but did not say anything at first. “I am here to respond to claims that the Oakland Police Department acted outside the scope of their—”
The crowd got restless, and Moss lost his temper. “Why … are … you … here?” He clapped in between each word, eschewing the microphone, shouting as loud as he could.
Rachel flinched, then blinked at Moss. She looked down at the statement she had, then back up at Moss, then back down to the paper. She cleared her throat again. “‘Officer James Daley then encountered Javier Perez, a student of Eastside High, who was trespassing at the time of—’”
She never got to finish. Moss picked up his chair and flung it toward the back of the stage, fury coursing through his veins. People in the audience sprang out of their seats and started shouting. Kaisha was at Moss’s side and she held him as he glared at Rachel, who folded up the paper she had. That same little smile appeared again, the one where she didn’t open her lips, where she pressed her mouth into a thin line, and it made the anger boil inside him, swirling in his chest and pulsing out into every inch of his body. But Kaisha reached down and grabbed his hand and whispered in his ear. “Not now.”
They watched Rachel walk past them. She avoided their gaze and darted off into the shadows behind the stage.
Reverend Okonjo shuffled up to the pulpit, and he already looked exhausted. “Please,” he said, and the microphone carried his voice throughout the room. “Please sit down.”
Wanda was there, and she pulled Moss into a hug. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said, and squeezed tight. “I shouldn’t have let her speak. I was just … shocked.”
He stepped away from her, his heart racing. “It’s not your fault, Mama,” Moss said. He felt a giddiness run through him, much like he did that night at Eugenia’s place. “Well, I admit I didn’t expect that.”
His mother rolled her eyes, but the sadness was gone. It was as if the woman had given them all a jolt of energy to snap them to attention. “Yeah, I thought that the OPD might have a little more tact than that.”
“Wanda?” Reverend Okonjo was gesturing toward her. “If you’d like to continue?”
She kissed Moss on the forehead, then headed back to the pulpit. Moss sat in the chair Eugenia had been in, taking in the audience as they tried to settle back down. He watched as his mother reclaimed the room with grace. “Well, that was interesting, wasn’t it?” Wanda said, laughing.
Some folks responded with curses. A short black woman at the front of the line to speak tapped the microphone. “If you don’t mind?” she said.
“Go ahead, Lanessa,” Wanda said.
“I think we can already see how quickly they’re going to blame other people for what they’ve done,” she said.
“Tell ’em!” someone in the crowd yelled.
“I don’t have any answers, but I run the community workspace down on 14th Street in downtown,” she continued, “and I wanted to offer you a space. Somewhere you can print posters, plan rallies, anything. Anyone from West Oakland High can come down, show me their ID, and you can use the space for free as long as you need to.”
There was a loud round of applause after that one, and Wanda thanked Lanessa. The woman stepped aside, and Moss’s heart leapt. Rebecca stood at the microphone, and she reached down to adjust it, raise it higher. Moss looked
down to Esperanza, who was typing on her phone. He snapped once, and her gaze flew up to him. He pointed toward her mother with his chin, and she turned to look. In the awkward silence, he heard Esperanza say, “Oh, no.…”
Rebecca cleared her throat. “Hello, Wanda, Moss,” she said, smiling from ear to ear.
Wanda nodded at her. “Good to see you, Mrs. Miller. Did you have an idea?”
She shook her head. “More of a question about how those of us who are more privileged can help,” she answered. “Because we want to help, even if this didn’t happen in our neighborhood or to our daughter. And there are a lot of folks in Piedmont who want to help, but aren’t sure what we can do that’s most effective.”
There was some light applause in appreciation of her words. “That’s a good question, Rebecca,” said Wanda. “I can’t speak for everyone, but the easier answer I can give is that we need to fund-raise for Ms. Perez to help her with the costs associated with the funeral.”
That got a louder round of applause, and Rebecca was nodding at that. “Is there anything some of us can do with the administration? Pressure we can apply there?”
“Perhaps,” said Wanda, “but we should probably wait until we have a more concrete plan before any of us reach out to anyone at the school.”
“Well, I would like to offer up myself as a resource, if that’s okay.” Rebecca seemed excited that she had a way to contribute. She puffed up, beamed toward the stage. Moss caught an eye roll from Esperanza and stifled a laugh.
“Of course,” said Wanda. “We can talk later.” She gestured as if to tell Rebecca to let the next person speak.
But Rebecca didn’t move away from the microphone. “It’s just that I have a connection of sorts to one of the people who runs West Oakland High,” she said. “I actually taught the principal’s son a few years back.”
Moss looked back to Esperanza, whose face was crunched up in confusion. She shook her head at Moss, then mouthed, I don’t know.
“Okay,” said Wanda, her voice tentative, unsure. “If we need to utilize that, I’ll let you know.”
“Well, I’ve already talked to him about this matter once.”
The gasps were audible. Moss felt his heart drop into his stomach, and Esperanza cried out. “What? What are you talking about, Mom?”
“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “I just called him up a few days ago to chat with him about the rally, to make sure he knew how hard the kids had been taking these new initiatives.”
Moss stood slowly, the horror of realization spreading upward, planting itself in his chest, threatening to erupt out of his mouth. His mother had a question ready, though, and she lobbed it out.
“Exactly when did you talk to Mr. Elliot?”
Rebecca’s initial response was to take a step away from the microphone, and she seemed suddenly aware that every eye in the room was on her. She cleared her throat. Again. “A couple of days before the rally,” she answered, and this time, it was Esperanza who shot up.
“Mom, what are talking about? I told you not to get involved!”
“I just wanted to make sure that none of your friends were hurt!” Rebecca shot back, confusion spilling forth.
“You told him,” Moss said, to himself at first, and the sound in the church began to rise, so the next words out of his mouth were at the top of his lungs. “YOU FUCKING TOLD THEM!”
Her mouth was agape. The crowd silenced. “What?” Rebecca said. “What do you mean?”
“They knew everything!” Kaisha exclaimed. “They knew about the walkout, about when we’d be leaving, and you told them? How could you?”
She sputtered for a couple of seconds. “It sounded like he already knew,” she said. She turned back to look in the far corner, but Jeff was trying to hide his face. “He knew, honey, didn’t he?”
Moss’s heart pitched to his feet and the nausea rose in its place. He heard Kaisha and Reg say something to him, but he couldn’t parse the words, and it was like all the oxygen in the room had been sucked out. He felt the blackness again, the dark blurs in the corner of his vision. “Please tell me you’re kidding,” he muttered, but it came out too loud and his shaking voice was sent out into the church.
“I thought I was helping,” she said, and the worst part, Moss knew, was that she believed herself. “I didn’t want them overreacting and hurting anyone.”
“But look what you did!” Moss shrieked. “You told them our plans, and they got the police involved, and now he’s dead, and it’s your fault!”
She was drowned out at that, the crowd shouting at her, and Moss recognized the start of a wave of panic in Esperanza’s mom. Rebecca stepped back up to the mic to say something, but he couldn’t stand there. He couldn’t listen to her. He swayed at first, and Reg’s hand darted out, grabbing his arm, and Reg tried to help steady him, but momentum carried Moss toward the side of the stage. He backed away from the table, slowly at first, and then he was jogging down the steps, and he couldn’t even bring himself to look at Esperanza, even though she was yelling his name. He pushed past all the people, and he flung open the doors at the back of the room, light spilling into the tense space. It was a cool night, and it felt good on his burning face, but the shame came rushing back as Moss saw just how many people were staring at him.
There were hundreds standing around the doors to the church. Some sat on the steps. He saw Shamika, shock on her face. Dawit rose and called in his direction, and he ignored him, too. He just started walking away, pushing past everyone, many of whom must have put two and two together and figured out that he was the kid onstage, the one whose life had just fallen apart. He could tell because they wore expressions of pity. Moss hated it and he just wanted to escape from them all.
Bad memories flooded back. The reporters outside Dawit’s store, the way they crowded around Moss days after his father’s death, their microphones in his face. “Do you think your father should have put his hands up?” Moss couldn’t speak then, just as he couldn’t speak now.
The Rolodex in his head flipped again. He and his mom were at the farmers’ market, the one down by Jack London Square. A woman had swooped in so quickly that no one had any time to see her coming. “I’m glad your father is dead,” she had said to Moss. “Less garbage on the streets.”
Again.
Francis. On the playground during recess. He had pushed Moss down on the basketball court, and his palms hurt for days after that. “My daddy’s a cop,” he had said as he stood above Moss, his hands balled in fists. “I’ll tell him to shoot you next.”
Again. And again. All of the people who had told him and his mother that Morris deserved what he got. It was the same nightmare once more.
Except it wasn’t a dream.
He hooked a sharp right at the end of the building, and he felt the ground drift away from him. He put his hand up against the stone facade of Blessed Way to steady himself, to stop the darkness from swallowing him whole. He squatted down, to get closer to the earth, and he crumpled there. His knees scraped against the concrete, and the brief flare of pain felt liberating. He hurt. It felt so lonely to think that, but it was his truth. That truth swallowed him up.
Javier was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it.
No clever speech would make Moss feel better. No plan to take down the Oakland Police Department would absolve his heart. Tears poured freely down his face. They felt immense on his cheeks, as if somehow he were crying harder than was humanly possible. He cried for a minute, two, maybe ten, and he didn’t care. Moss choked on the spit and congestion and he then felt a hand on his back.
He looked up and into the face of Bits, whose own eyes were red. “Hey,” they said. “Been watching you. Didn’t know if there was a good time to interrupt.”
Moss wiped his face with the back of his hand and cleared his throat. “It’s okay,” he said. He sat up and put his back against the church, but he couldn’t look at his friend. How long had they been here? How loud had he been
? “Everything okay in there?”
“I think so,” Bits said. “It’s pretty intense, though. There are a few people who agree with Esperanza’s mom who’re tryin’ to argue that it’s our fault the walkout ended so badly.” They paused. “Someone brought up Javier’s citizenship. It’s honestly a nightmare.”
Moss swore under his breath. “Is my mom okay?”
Bits smiled and sat down next to him. “Your mama is always okay, Moss. She’s in her natural element in there.”
He sniffed a few times, trying to clear up his sinuses. “Yeah, I hope so.”
“She tried to leave to come get you,” Bits said. “I told her to stay, that I’d do it.”
“Really?” Moss said, looking up at his friend. “Thanks.”
Bits seemed to recognize that maybe Moss didn’t want to say anything. It comforted him.
Moss squeezed Bits’s hand. “Thank you. For being here.”
“You know I lost my dad, too, right?”
Moss shook his head at that, looking into Bits’s eyes. He could tell they were holding back a rush of tears, so he looked away quickly, down at the hand that held his. Bits’s was rough, not that much lighter than his own.
“A while back,” Bits said. “Like, just at the end of fifth grade.” They laughed, a rueful sound. “Actually, it was right after I met Njemile.”
“How come I never heard about it?” Moss asked.
Bits shook their head. “I mean, I don’t talk about it myself. Drive-by shooting over on Campbell. ‘Collateral damage,’ they called it.” They wiped at one of their eyes. “He didn’t even make it to the ambulance.”
“Jesus,” said Moss. “I’m sorry.”
They smiled. “It’s okay. You didn’t know. I got pretty messed up after that. Joined the Willow Street gang not too long after, did some things I’m not proud of. I was young, maybe, but I didn’t know what I was doing. What I got involved in.”