by Mark Oshiro
“Speak up!” It came from somewhere in the crowd to his right. He couldn’t locate who said it.
“Thank you!” Moss repeated, perhaps louder than he’d ever been, and he saw people in the crowd nod at him, smile, raise their fists in the air. “We are here to demand justice for Javier Perez!”
He felt good saying Javier’s name, to hear the cheers and whoops that came in response to it. He heard music muffled by the crowd—Jazmine Sullivan’s “If You Dare”—and then people to his left parted. A bearish black man pushed a dolly with a speaker on it toward him. He was impressed, once more, by how resourceful this community was. He was handed a microphone, and he tapped it, then held it up to his mouth. “Better?” Moss said.
More cheering. He had never felt so electrified before.
It was 7:41 A.M.
“We’ve just been told that we have less than an hour left,” he said, “before the Oakland police move in. “He was met with a wave of boos. “Are we going to leave?”
The crowd shouted, “NO!”
“Are we going to be intimidated?”
“NO!”
“And are we going to accept anything less than justice for Javier?”
“NO!”
The denial rang out loud and powerful, and Moss wished he could see how many people were beyond his line of sight. He wanted to be taller in that moment, but in a way, he felt taller, like he finally mattered.
“I loved Javier,” Moss said, and as the words came out of his mouth, he believed it. It hurt to say them, but it was true. “And I’m not leaving until we get what we want. Are you with me?”
He was drowned out. First by the screams of solidarity, then by the group chanting, “Justice! Justice! Justice!” over and over again. His mother hugged him as he got lost in the spectacle before him.
“It’s gonna get ugly soon,” she said. “But I got you. I promise you.”
“I got you, too,” Moss said. “Thank you for this. For making it possible for me to believe that I could actually do something.”
His mother waved a hand at him, dismissing his words. “You didn’t need me,” she said. “I needed you.”
It was 7:45 A.M.
Martin had been suspiciously silent after Johanna had left, and he grabbed Wanda’s arm and pulled her in close to Moss. “What are you doing?” Wanda said, alarmed.
“Be quiet,” he said. “Both of you.” He moved close to Moss’s mother, whispered something in her ear. Her eyes went wide, then back to normal an instant later. “I vote for telling Moss,” he added.
“Tell me what?” Moss tried to keep his voice down, but all the fear and anxiety came rolling back into his body.
“It’s not good,” his mother said. “But I trust you, Moss, and I’m trying to learn my lesson. You should be told the truth.”
“I hate this already,” he blurted out. “I take back any and all proclamations I made, right now.”
She smirked at him. “They’re bringing in a Silent Guardian.”
He furrowed his brow. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“Moss, it’s the worst,” said Martin, and for the first time since he’d arrived the night before, there was fear in his eyes. “And we might want to leave, or at least warn others.”
“About what? What the hell is a ‘Silent Guardian’?”
“Remember all that weird shit that the cops used against you and your friends?” Martin said. “This is like the king of them all. It’s a device that makes you feel like you’re on fire.”
Moss balked at him. “You have to be messing with me. That’s not a thing.”
“Unfortunately, it is, and even worse, I know exactly what it feels like,” said Wanda. “Your whole skin erupts in heat. It only lasts while the thing is pointed at you, but … it’s not pleasant, honey. And there are a lot of people here.”
“How do you know this?” Moss asked.
“I heard that Johanna chick say it,” Martin said. “I was right next to her.”
No, no, no! Moss thought.
It was 7:53 A.M.
“What do we do?” Moss said, trying to keep his voice down. “Give up? Try something else?”
“I’m personally willing to feel a little pain to make a point,” said Martin, shrugging. “I think everyone who is sticking around feels the same way.”
“We gotta tell ’em,” said Moss. “You wanna do it, Mama?”
She nodded her head. “I’ll make an announcement,” she said, and she set off to find the speaker that had just disappeared. Moss’s feet hurt; his stomach rumbled; his back was a mess of knots and soreness. He drank more water, hoping he was hydrated enough. He couldn’t risk a migraine at this point.
A woman named Estelle, who wrote a local politics blog, came up to him and asked him his story, and he spent nearly fifteen minutes telling her about his father, about his father’s death, about his school, about Javier. She looked like one of his father’s aunts, the one he’d only met once, when she managed to come over for a week from Puerto Rico. Moss couldn’t remember her name, but he saw her in the way Estelle nodded her head when he spoke. In the way she focused her attention on him. In the way her dark hair curled tightly. He missed his father fiercely when the woman walked away.
It was 8:10 A.M.
Moss tried not to let his nerves get the best of him. They were creeping up on him, hiding in the shadows of his mind, poking and prodding him. He hated any interaction with the police, but now he was inviting them into his life in a way that seemed absurd. How could he actually do that? How could he stand up to a power that could take his life, or the lives of everyone around him? He aimed for distraction at the moment instead. He asked Kaisha to update him about what was happening on social media. Njemile regaled him with tales of her first foray into online dating. “It’s approximately as bad as you think it is,” she said. “I have spoken with two whole men—two!—who pretended to be lesbians just so they could talk to me, an actual lesbian.”
“Ew, why?” Moss said. “That’s so gross.”
“Men are gross,” said Njemile. “Are you at all surprised by your gender?”
“I should not be, but come on. What did these guys think the end result would be? That you’d renounce your sexuality just because they could catfish a lesbian really well?”
“Moss, it is sometimes impossible to analyze the mind of men,” she said. “I refuse to do it.”
“I had the same problem before me and Reg got together,” Kaisha added, looking up from her phone and then rolling her eyes. “So many men thought that they were the one who could prove to me that I wasn’t ace.”
Moss thought that Esperanza was going to chime in with a story or two of her own, but she still stood awkwardly off to the side. He instead turned to Bits. “How are you? Handling this well?”
They shrugged. “I’m a little nervous,” they said. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen. Isn’t it almost an hour? Why aren’t there any cops around?”
It was 8:22 A.M.
Moss shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems eerie, doesn’t it? Where’s my mother, by the way?”
Someone tapped him on his shoulder, and then Sophia appeared in front of him, a sheepish look on her face. “Moss, I just want to—”
“You’re kidding me!” Moss said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I know, and I don’t blame you!” Sophia was shaking her head, desperate. “I promise you, I had no intention of asking that question. One of the anchors asked it, and I’m so used to just acting as a go-between that I blurted it out without thinking. Please, I’m so sorry, Moss.”
He stared at her. She looked sincere, but he had no reason not to be wary of her. “Why are you here?”
“Well, I wanted to apologize again,” she said, “but I also wanted to offer you something in consolation.” She paused and waved to someone to come over, and Tyree ambled up.
“I have something to show you,” said Tyree, and Moss’s friends moved a
side for him.
“What’s going on?” Rawiya asked. “Sorry, some of us aren’t entirely up to speed yet.”
“Later,” said Moss. “I’ll explain it all. It’s been an interesting night.” He turned to Tyree. “What’s up? What do you have for me?”
Tyree brought his camera up and flipped open the viewscreen on the side. “Since you’re kind of … well, incapable of moving right now, we figured you might want to know what you’re unable to see.”
“This is around the corner, on 8th,” Sophia explained. “About two hundred yards down the street. Tyree captured this about five minutes ago.”
“Excuse me,” he heard a familiar voice say, and his mother squeezed through people to get back to him. She looked to Moss, then to Sophia, then frowned. “I couldn’t find the speaker, so it can wait,” she said. “What is she doing here?”
“Mama, they have something to show us.”
Moss and his mother huddled around the camera with as many of the others as could fit, and Tyree started the playback. At first, Moss wasn’t sure what he was looking at. The shot zoomed out, and he gasped. It was in the middle of a street somewhere. There were so many of them, all clad in solid black, many of them wearing the exact same gear he’d seen at school that day, and it was like his entire insides became jelly at once. They stood in ordered lines, and he couldn’t count them. Objects hung from their belts, some familiar, most completely foreign. He pointed to them, his finger hitting the screen.
“That’s what they had on campus, Mama,” he said. “Well, at least some of it.”
“Oh, great,” said Rawiya. “This is just great.”
“Where’d you say this was?” Wanda asked, her eyes locked on the images unfolding.
Sophia pointed north. “Down that street up there, to the west.”
“And I don’t know how much time we have until they arrive,” said Tyree. “It looked like they were getting ready to leave.”
It was 8:29 A.M.
“Mama, how long do you think we have?” Moss asked.
“I don’t know, baby,” she said. “I didn’t get a chance to tell anyone about … well, that other thing.”
“Should we tell the others to get ready?”
The squeal of feedback was his answer. Their heads snapped to the right, to the entrance to the department building, and the shouts and warnings began to roll through the crowd.
Moss couldn’t see anyone, but he heard the words that erupted out of the bullhorn.
“This is an unlawful assembly,” the voice said. “You were given a warning to clear this area out within the hour. Anyone who is not gone in the next five minutes will be arrested for trespassing and disturbing the peace.”
It was now or never.
35
His body was telling him to run, to get as far away from this building as possible. But Moss couldn’t. He couldn’t run away from this fear.
“No,” he said out loud, fierce and angry. “Not again.”
“What do you mean?” Wanda said.
“I can’t run from them again,” he said. “I wanted to run and hide when they had killed Javier. But I can’t do it anymore.”
“I love you, baby, I really do,” she said. “But I don’t know that we want to be here, you know?” She turned around and seemed to be looking for a way out.
But he stopped her, his hand outstretched, wrapped around her right arm. “Mama, I have an idea. Do you trust me?”
Wanda kept her eyes on the cops by the entrance to the administration building, and he swore that he could feel the rage pumping through her. Guess I’m much more like her than Papa, he thought. She licked her lips. “Yes, baby. I do.”
He reached into his pocket with his other hand, and he dug around in it. His fingers closed on what he wanted, and he produced the key to the chain around his waist.
“Moss,” said Esperanza, the horror evident in her voice. “What are you doing?”
“The element of surprise has worked in my favor all night,” he said. “So lemme surprise them again. Sophia, you wanna help me?”
She was startled by the offer. “What? Me?”
He nodded. “Tell Tyree to start recording,” he said. “Your little mishap earlier just gave me an idea.”
Moss twisted the chain around, and the scraping on the pole reverberated up his spine. He put the key in the lock that kept it together and opened it, letting one end drop to the ground. He felt a relief spread, and he let go of the other end. It clanked on the sidewalk, and even in the midst of the noise of the crowd, it got the attention of people surrounding him. Moss didn’t hesitate. He crossed the space between him and the three cops in a few steps, and he enjoyed the utter shock on the face of the cop who held the bullhorn.
Moss raised both his hands high. “I have no weapons on me, and you’re free to search me,” he said. “I just want to ask you something.” He paused. “Is this what you really want?”
The cop looked from Moss to the camera trained on him from over Moss’s shoulder, then back to Moss. His salt-and-pepper mustache twitched. “What?”
“Is this what you really want?” Moss asked the question with the same commitment and certainty as before.
The man lowered the bullhorn, and it hung at his side. “What are you talking about?”
“You took my father from me already. Why are you letting them take someone else I loved?”
Anger passed over the man’s features for an instant, but his eyes shot to the camera again and he kept his expression neutral. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Moss laughed. He couldn’t help it. He’d figured that the man would react this way. “Are you saying y’all don’t remember the shooting of Morris Jeffries six years ago?” He tapped his temple with his right index finger. “That’s right. Y’all have shot so many people that you can’t sort them out.”
The reaction from the crowd was so satisfying to Moss in that moment, and he had his friends to thank. He felt like he was back in middle school, when a good insult could make you king. Rawiya and Bits had their hands cupped around their mouths, droning out a long “Ohhhhhhhhhhh!”
He smiled at the cop, thankful for who had his back. “Well?” Moss asked. “Do you remember?”
He hesitated. “It’s irrelevant,” he said. “And get that camera out of here!”
He lunged, but Moss did not flinch. Sophia was now at his side. “Excuse me, Sophia Morales, NBC News. Is it true that this department is responsible for the death of this young man’s father?”
The cop’s face went pale. “I don’t need to make a statement about this to anyone,” he said. “All of you need to clear out before—”
“So you don’t deny it, then?” Sophia asked. “Don’t you think that’s a little cruel? Everyone knew the name of the young protestor chained to the flagpole hours ago. Or can you really not remember?”
Moss had never seen panic personified, but that is what this man had become. He raised the bullhorn again, but it was like his lips couldn’t form any words. He dropped it to his side again. “I don’t have to do this,” he said, and he turned around to head back into the building.
Sophia took a step forward. “Sir, it’s a fair question. We just—”
“Get back!” The cop who yelled it stepped forward. Moss saw the baton raised in the air, but it happened so quickly that he couldn’t shout out a warning in time. The baton rushed down through the air and connected with Sophia’s right elbow as she began to bring it up to block the blow. The crack of her bone rang out clear in the horrible, nervous silence, and Sophia’s wail of pain and terror was an alarm, a warning bell, the drop of a match on a pool of gasoline. She fell to the ground and Moss tried to rush to her side, but his mother practically tackled him.
“No, Moss, we need to go now!” Wanda shrieked, and then the first of the cops was upon them.
Moss felt the baton over his back, but it only grazed him as he twisted away, his hand in his mother’s. They ran
smack into Martin and Shamika and toppled over one another. Everything around him was a mess of screams and the thuds of batons on bodies. Someone pulled him up—was it one of the cops?—and his feet ached. He screamed for his mother, then saw her take a baton to the face. Something broke, he heard the snap, and blood gushed out of her nose, but she didn’t hesitate. She pushed herself up and reached over for Moss, taking his hand. Who’s holding me? He wrenched himself around and saw Martin’s hat.
“Go, go, go!” Martin yelled. “Don’t waste no time, y’all. Get out of here!”
Moss stumbled forward, his mother yanking him away from cops that had begun to march on the others. He couldn’t focus on any one thing happening around him, though he was desperate to catch a glimpse of someone he recognized. Where were his friends? Was anyone else hurt?
He saw Rawiya, the fear in her eyes. “What do we do?” She screamed at Moss. A cop reached forward, grabbed ahold of her head scarf, and tried to pull it. She deftly darted away from him, and then tried to draw Moss toward her.
“Go!” Moss shouted at her. “Just get to safety!”
The crowd that had spilled out onto Broadway surged to the north at first. There were voices in Moss’s ear shouting and screeching, and bodies pushed and rubbed up against him. He had already lost Rawiya. He called out to his mother, “Are you okay? Mama, are you hurt?”
They pushed forward again, and Wanda wiped the blood away from her mouth. “Moss, I’ll be okay,” she said, the words forced out through pain. “Just focus. Get us out of here.”
They hit a wall then as the crowd stopped moving forward. Enrique was there, his skateboard raised above his head, a large gash running down one side of his face. “What’s happening?” Enrique said, and he grimaced as the people behind him slammed into him.
“What happened to you?” Moss shouted.
“Tripped,” he said. “Hit my head on a mailbox.”
“Dude, that looks bad,” said Moss, anxiety in his throat.
The crowd surged again, but Moss wasn’t sure they actually made any progress at all. He tried to see over the heads of the people in front of him. Why had everyone stopped?