by Mark Oshiro
Moss wanted to say, “But I’m not doing anything yet!” She was gone, though, and the crowd around him had grown. Where were people coming from?
Another phone was thrust in front of his face, and the flash went off. “Hey, be careful!” Enrique said. “Don’t be like the paparazzi. That’s not what this is for.”
“Could everyone take a step back?” Moss asked. “This is a lot. I’m feeling a bit closed in.”
Hayley stood up then, her arms stretched out protectively in front of her. “Everyone move up onto the sidewalk!” she ordered, waving people out of the street. “Please, give this young man some room.”
“How is this happening?” Moss said quietly, watching as the group moved off the road.
“Did you think no one would notice you here?” Enrique said.
“No, of course not,” he said. “I just didn’t think it would happen so quickly.”
“It might be a Sunday night, but you were bound to get some attention,” Hayley said. “That’s some good planning, Moss.”
If only I had actually planned this in advance, he thought, but he kept it to himself. A couple came up to him to ask him what he was doing. He spoke to them for a few minutes before he realized it was the same couple he’d seen on his bike ride over. Maybe this won’t be so bad, he thought, and maybe I don’t need to be so negative.
He lost track of time. Enrique was talkative, full of stories about growing up in East Oakland. He told Moss about his uncle dying from a drive-by and then how the Oakland PD shot his brother during a traffic stop.
“They’ve never protected our neighborhood,” Enrique explained. “Never. You know, we got robbed once, and my mama was scared as hell. These guys in ski masks had busted into our house, and I came home to her crying. Guess I just missed them.”
“She ask you to call the cops?”
He nodded. “Yeah, and I told her it wasn’t a good idea, not after what happened to my brother, but she just wanted to feel safe.”
“What happened?” Hayley asked.
“They showed up six hours later. At like four in the morning. Banged on that door like it was a drug bust. Scared the shit out of all of us.”
“Lemme guess,” said Moss. “They weren’t exactly helpful.”
“Nah, man! They tried to tell us it was our fault for living in a bad neighborhood and that we shoulda had a better lock on our door.”
“Yo, that’s the same trash they told my pops,” said one of the newcomers who stood behind Enrique. He was handsome, and Moss admired whoever had done his cornrows. “Except they said it was because his car drew too much attention to him.”
“They told me my dress was too short.”
They all looked over at Hayley, whose eyes seemed distant and vacant. “Happened last summer,” she explained. “Some guy—super drunk, went to Cal, you know the type—cornered me in a bar over on Telegraph. Tried to put his hand up my skirt. I knocked him over the head, and he called the police. Guess which side they took?”
Enrique swore loudly and Moss reached out and squeezed Hayley’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Probably doesn’t help at all, but if it matters, I’m glad you’re here.”
“Of course it matters,” she said, and a smile flitted across her lips. “We all have our reasons for being here. So I’m glad you’re here.”
“I guess I just can’t believe anyone would stick around for this,” Moss admitted. “I don’t know, I thought I was gonna be here all night by myself. That it was all going to be pointless.”
“Most people don’t care,” said the guy with cornrows. “It’s a lot easier to pretend the world will go on spinnin’.”
Moss shifted his position. The pole at his back was starting to feel a little too hard. He stuck his legs out in front of him and leaned forward a bit, hoping that he could get a good stretch. He became aware of how his body felt in that moment: cramped and trapped. He swallowed hard and his throat was dry, so he pulled his messenger bag toward him to get some water. As he was doing so, a car screeched to a stop a few feet up the road from the growing crowd, and Moss recognized the blue Toyota. Martin’s car. The passenger door was flung open, and his mother emerged from it, her mouth agape, and Moss dropped his bag at his side. Oh no, he thought. He hadn’t figured out what he was going to tell her.
There was no anger on her face as she approached him, though. She came forward, slow and deliberate, and her eyes danced from one person to the next. She looked over at the group of young black girls who’d arrived ten minutes earlier; they held a sign that said, #JUSTICEFORJAVIER. They stood next to a group of older men who had set up a small table to play checkers, the same men who often played at Lowell Park. Most of these people were complete strangers to Moss, and he saw something in his mother that he recognized. This must have been what his own face looked like when he entered Blessed Way and seen what his mother had done.
He was nervous about what his mother was going to say, but a swell of pride swallowed up the anxiety. “Hi, Mama,” he said, and he beamed up at her, hoping it would overpower the awkwardness that hung over everything. “I guess I stopped waiting.”
Hayley moved out of the way as Wanda crouched down beside him. She reached down and grabbed his hand, caressed it, and gave him a look he’d never seen before. What was it? Anger? Concern? Something else?
“Morris Jeffries, Jr.,” she said, soft and in awe, “what have you started?”
He felt a wave of bashfulness pass over him. “I don’t know, Mama. I don’t know.”
“This is your mom?” Enrique asked, and a huge smile lit up his face. “Buenas noches. Your son is pretty amazing.”
“Yes,” she said. “He is.”
31
“How’d you find out where I went?” Moss asked as his mother sat close to him. “I probably should have said something, but it was a … a momentary inspiration, I guess.”
“You were upset,” said Wanda. “I don’t blame you for running out. And it was Kaisha who told me.”
“Kaisha?”
“Yeah,” said Martin, who had walked up to them. Next to him was Shamika, who looked around at the crowd with wonder in her eyes. “You know she’s clued in on all that online stuff.”
“Online stuff?” He turned to his mother. “What’s he mean?”
“Baby, you’re everywhere,” she said, and he saw the twinkle in her eyes. She was serious.
“Yeah, Moss,” said Shamika, grinning, her hoop earrings catching the streetlights and sparkling. “You’re the whole reason that the whole JusticeForJavier thing is even happening.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Moss said.
Wanda shook her head. “Kaisha found the hashtag on the trending page of Twitter. It was only a few minutes later before she figured out you were here.”
“Pretty boss, man,” said Martin, and he rubbed Moss’s head. “Look how many people are here! And in just a few hours.”
“It’s not that many people,” said Moss. “Maybe like thirty or so.”
“You kidding?” Martin said, and he laughed. “Brotha, there’s like a few hundred people here already.”
“No way, man. That’s not possible!”
“Maybe you can’t see from where you are,” his mother said. “Come on, let us help you stand up.”
Wanda and Martin grabbed under Moss’s arms, and his mother helped guide the chain up the pole. When he managed to get upright, he saw beyond the people who had been standing around them. The crowd stretched down Broadway, almost to the on-ramp to the 880. He looked in the other direction and saw people bunched up to his left, and they began to peter out closer to 8th Street. He heard voices behind him and craned his neck. He couldn’t even catch a glimpse of the front door to the precinct if he wanted to.
“You did all this, Moss,” Wanda said, and she planted a kiss on his temple. “Though next time, maybe tell your mama what you’re about to do.”
He blushed. “I’m sorry, I really am. I just got overwhelme
d, that’s all.”
“We should talk, though. Soon. I do have some things to tell you. I was just worried that it wasn’t the right time.”
Moss danced from one foot to the other, hoping that the pins and needles that had come rushing in would go away. He had so much he wanted to say to her, but the crowd in front of him parted, and a pretty Latina woman walked through, straight up to Moss. She stretched her hand out and Moss gingerly shook it. “Sophia Morales,” she said. “Sorry to barge in here, but I got wind of your protest from Twitter.”
“Who are you?” Moss said, a little wary of her sudden arrival.
Shamika gently smacked him on the arm. “Moss, she’s from NBC. You know, one of them big-name reporters?”
He thought she looked a little familiar. His nerves spiked. “What do you want?”
“You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to,” she said. “I can’t say the same for the other people who will inevitably show up. But I wanted to hear what you have to say. Your protest has already gotten a lot of attention.”
She cast a glance over at Wanda. “I assume you’re his mother. I won’t interview him if either of you don’t want to.”
Wanda looked at Moss. He shrugged. “I want to do this,” he explained. “I figured that if things went well, the media would show up.”
His mother curled up her lip in concentration. “When you want this to stop, you just tell her. Or give me a look.” She turned to Sophia. “Don’t mess with my boy,” she said.
“I won’t, I promise,” said Sophia, then she gestured to her camera guy, who’d been waiting on the outside of the crowd. He walked over to them as Wanda stepped away. Moss squinted as the bright light at the top of the camera flashed on. You can do this, he told himself. Just be honest.
The others moved away from him, and he caught Enrique nodding in his direction. “You got this, man,” he said, his skateboard at his side. Sophia took a position next to Moss while the cameraman took a few lighting tests.
“Do you prefer to go by Moss?” Sophia asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. You can call me Moss Jeffries if you want.”
“Have you ever been on camera like this before?”
“No, not at all,” he said. “I’m a little nervous.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “It’ll keep you attentive. This is going to sound weird, but try your best to talk to me as if the camera isn’t even here. I’ll stand here and pivot your direction, so speak to me, not to Tyree over there.”
Tyree handed over a body microphone to Sophia. She clipped one end to Moss’s collar, then snaked the cord behind him and put the transmitter in his back pocket. “Just talk normally,” she explained. “You don’t need to speak into the mic. It’ll pick everything up.”
“Can I get you to say a few things, Moss?” Tyree said. Moss looked at the cameraman and was jealous of how thick his beard was.
He cleared his throat. “Uh … yeah. Testing. Check, check. My name is Moss. I live in West Oakland.”
Tyree gave a thumbs-up.
“Now, this is for a live broadcast around eleven twenty P.M.,” Sophia continued. “Don’t worry about the live thing. I’m going to introduce the story, and then turn to you, ask you about why you’re out here. I’ll try not to surprise you too much, just ask open-ended questions to get you talking.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, rubbing his hands together. The temperature had dropped even more in the last hour, but he’d been so occupied that he’d not had a chance to think about it. He cupped his hands around his mouth to blow warm air on them and was then hit with a wave of self-conscious anxiety. “Wait, what do I do with my hands?”
She laughed at him. “Everyone has that same problem. Even I did when I started. You can keep them in your pockets at the start, but if you’re expressive and like to talk with your hands, that’s fine, too. Just don’t bump the mic; it’s very sensitive.”
Moss sucked in a breath and looked over at his mother. She smiled, short and full, and inclined her head once. “I can do this, I can do this,” he said to himself.
“You’ll be fine, Moss, I promise,” Sophia said.
“Sixty seconds to broadcast,” said Tyree. “Moss, can you turn your body just a little bit to your right, so that you’re facing Ms. Morales?”
He reached down and held the chain as he turned. It scraped against the pole, and he saw Tyree wince. “Yeah, make sure not to move around much. We don’t want the mic to pick that up.” He looked at his watch. “Thirty seconds.”
It was like his heart had never beat faster in his whole life. He started to look around at the crowd—at his mother, at Shamika and Martin, at Enrique and Hayley, at the guy with cornrows, at all the nameless faces whose eyes were locked on to him—and Sophia put her arm out, touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Not them,” she said. “Just look at me. You’ll do just fine.”
She straightened up, and Moss watched Tyree count down silently on his fingers. When he pointed at her to begin, she smiled at the camera. “Thank you, Ross, and yes, it’s a very interesting scene here in downtown Oakland. Just an hour ago, we got word that there was a protestor outside the downtown administrative building for the Oakland Police Department. When I arrived here, I almost couldn’t believe my eyes.”
Tyree slowly panned the camera, and Moss stood as straight as he could, taking his eyes off Tyree, keeping his attention on Sophia, just as he had been asked.
“I have Moss Jeffries with me here, and I wanted to give our viewers an exclusive. Mr. Jeffries, when we saw the photos on Twitter and Instagram, we thought this was part of a prank. But you’ve really chained yourself to this flagpole, haven’t you?”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “What I’m doing is not a joke.”
“Why have you decided to do this? And why here, outside this building?”
His throat felt tiny, constricted, but he wouldn’t let this stop him. “Last week, Javier Perez was shot and killed by James Daley, an Oakland police officer who was part of an unethical raid on my high school.” The words felt right coming out of his mouth, and he mentally patted himself on the back for thinking of “raid” at the last second.
“What do you mean by that? What happened at your school?”
“I go to West Oakland High,” he said. His voice shook for a second, but he took a breath and began again. “It’s an okay school. Maybe not the best, but we try. Lots of kids try there. But our school administration signed a contract with the Oakland Police Department to put cops on our campus and to run us all through metal detectors, and it’s disrupting our classes. We can’t concentrate. We can’t enjoy learning.”
Sophia turned to the camera. “Now, for our viewers who might not know, this is the same school where Reginald Phillips was injured by a metal detector installed by the school not too long ago. Mr. Jeffries, do you know Mr. Phillips?”
“Yeah, of course,” Moss said. “One of my closest friends. That’s why we had decided to peacefully protest the police presence on our campus. So that no more people would get hurt.”
“And you were there when Mr. Perez was shot, yes?”
Moss knew he’d have to talk about Javier, but the way she said it tripped him up. It sounded so official, so detached. His gaze dropped down, but Sophia ran her hand down his arm. “I’m sorry, Moss, I know this must be hard for you,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, and he wasn’t looking at her, but he kept talking. “It happened right in front of me. James Daley was the one who shot him. Right in the chest.”
“And that’s why you’re here,” she said. “But why this? Why chain yourself to this flagpole?”
“It was kind of a last-minute thing, honestly.” He paused; his heart fluttered in his chest. He hadn’t prepared anything to say, so he just went with the truth. “James Daley has disappeared. The police haven’t spoken to any of us who were there, despite that we witnessed a murder. That seems kind of ridiculous. Isn’t that, like, the one thin
g they’re supposed to do?”
“Wait,” Sophia said, her face wrinkled up in a mixture of horror and disgust, “are you saying that none of you were contacted by the Oakland Police Department about Mr. Perez’s death?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Not one of us, ma’am. We don’t get to tell our side of the story apparently.”
“Then what do you hope to achieve with this protest, Moss? What do you want to happen?”
“I don’t know that I have, like, a long-term plan, you know?” Moss said. “I haven’t even graduated high school, and this is the kinda stuff we have to deal with already.” He sighed. “Miss Morales, you ever been to my school?”
He could tell that he caught her off guard. She was so used to asking the questions that she tilted her head to the side. “No, I can’t say I have.”
“You should go sometime,” he said, and he felt a momentum building in him, so he rode with it. “You can see how the paint peels around the front door. Or how many ceiling tiles are missin’.” He paused again. “Can I show you something? I promise it’s important.”
She looked over at Tyree, and he motioned for her to keep going. “Certainly, Mr. Jeffries.”
He gestured toward his messenger bag, which sat on the floor near Martin’s feet. Martin picked it up and tossed it to Moss, and he caught it with his left hand. “This is the book we’re reading for my AP English class with Mrs. Torrance,” he said, rummaging through the bag. He pulled out his tattered copy of Things Fall Apart, and the cover caught on something and tore off. “Damn,” he said. He held up the remainder of the book in front of him. “This is what I gotta use to study. Our school is in pieces, Miss Morales, and instead of helping us, getting us books, they installed metal detectors. They hurt and scare my friends. They brought in the police, and they brutalized us. Why wouldn’t I protest that?”
Moss had forgotten about the crowd, but a few people present clapped after that. Sophia had a hand up to her ear, and Moss could tell she was listening to something in her earpiece. “Okay, got it, Ross,” she said, then looked back at Moss. “My colleague wanted to know about your connection to this place. Is it true that your own father was shot and killed by the Oakland police?”