By Any Means Necessary

by Candice Montgomery

  Yeah, no kidding. Patricia McKenzie is right about some things, apparently.

  23.

  I throw my clothes back on, step-by-step, my movements feeling mechanical and almost subconscious.

  Black jeans, one leg at a time, following a black long-sleeved thermal, a black sweatshirt, and the only beanie that sat just on the floor near the door. One by one, clothes go on instead of coming off, and I find myself rummaging through the giant trunk at the end of Desharu’s bed to find a can of black spray paint.

  And then, nothing on my mind but my uncle and my neighborhood, my feet carry me left, off campus, instead of right, toward the beautiful boy waiting for me in his dorm room.

  I have a bus to catch.

  It’s the last thing I think before I leave.

  Gabriel’s nowhere in any of it.

  24.

  I’m going to the site. Of course I’m going to the site.

  Half a dozen times, I manage to talk myself in and out of whatever it is I’m about to do, can of spray paint clutched in my hand.

  The property is located in Pleasanton, California.

  Pleasanton is like if East LA’s younger, more pretentious cousin came home from boarding school and had to move in with you and your family.

  Pleasanton would use the term “ghettoized” to refer to the body wash in your shower.

  Pleasanton would tell you they got the same bamboo earrings you got. But from Urban Outfitters. Two years ago.

  Pleasanton is the Bay Area hood for hipsters. Pleasanton’s God—its creator—is gentrification.

  Which is why I’m exactly 0 percent surprised that it is the location of this construction site. The shop that used to be here was, according to what debris still remains, a diner called Corazón. You can guess at the owners it probably displaced.

  It’s never not some Black or brown people.

  The construction site looks a little like oblivion.

  In an effort to illuminate the city’s crime, streetlights around the site are stacked far too close together, a copse of leafless trees and their orange orb branches. Fog has rolled in slowly, whispering along the cracked dirt gravel like a secret waiting to be buried.

  Pillars and steel beams stacked like Tetris have converged on the small space in question. Tractors covered in mud and black streaks of what I assume to be oil sit positioned in groups of two, dead like toy robots down on battery life.

  Here, in this part of town, couples still have arguments with the windows open and tíos and tías still dance bachata on the porch with the sound up on its highest setting, but only because they don’t know any better yet.

  The city hasn’t taught them that Black and brown people get fined for expressing emotions at a volume white people find to be too much.

  There’s a brick wall all the way in back that’s covered in white banners with red lettering.

  FUTURE HOME OF YOUR NEW SoMa!

  SoMa. South of Market.

  Over it, I spray paint BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, the can kicking in my hand with the first vertical line of the B, smoothing out as I hit the Y, the A, the N, and so on. Done, I finish it off by tagging an X just below it, demanding they pay attention, the way Malcolm would have wanted it.

  This area is basically a neighborhood that’s been built primarily for immigrant families and low-income housing. According to some of the information Q sent, the plans for this are to create more jobs and less viable housing for those families.

  The ones already here will be forced out with a jump in rent prices and the balance of available work will skew given the amount of employees who would have to commute all the way from places like Oakland.

  It’s everywhere, this gentrification shit. It’s careless and it escapes me how people—white people who have never been and will never be affected by this—would fail to explore all avenues and future points of downfall.

  I know, I know. I’m not being naive here. They don’t give a shit, and if it keeps Black and brown folks under a shoe then their work has been done.

  Systemic oppression.

  Google it. Spend forty-five minutes reading articles written by Black people.

  Then come back and tell me you wouldn’t pick up the crowbar like I have now.

  Tell me you wouldn’t put every ounce of hurt and anger and frustration that’s ever touched your body into that first swing. Tell me you wouldn’t double down on it with the second. Tell me your third, fourth, and fifth swings wouldn’t pull on your muscles like fire.

  Mine all do. A score, settled.

  And they don’t stop there. I take the crowbar to every damageable piece of equipment that dares to find me, and the reverberation of the metal-against-metal strikes skip up my arms and settle right in my elbows.

  In my chest, I feel a scream that knows it has to stay put, but I can’t help that with every new piece of equipment I dent, there’s a small growl, a release that demands to be given a voice.

  They say there are people called synesthetes who, on occasion, experience emotion as color. I’ve never believed in that kind of thing.

  Not until now, when a haze of red becomes the feeling of knowing, of helplessness. Blinding white bleeds in every time reason tries to pull my arm back, only to be forced out by red

  and red

  and red

  and red

  red, then blue, and both together in a jumping dance of colors that finally registers as something outside of me and what I can feel.

  The small blip of sound that infiltrates is a surge of nitrogen in my blood.

  Police.

  It’s ironic that this fear seems to come at me in a familiar color. Black.

  25.

  “Drop your weapon!”

  Three words have never in my life been so confusing and so incredibly clear.

  The metal of the crowbar bites into my palm as I reflexively squeeze it tighter. I try—I try repeatedly—to let it go. To drop it. And I know in my head and chest that this is the weapon they’re referring to, but fear tightens my grip and denies every response my brain tries to send in the name of self-preservation.

  “Drop your damn weapon and get down on the ground.”

  An image of Uncle Miles swims into my vision, right there, front and center, and that’s all I need. My entire body convulses, crowbar falling to the ground in almost the same instant as my knees hit the dirt, rocks and debris cutting into my skin, right through my jeans.

  I’m already facedown on the ground, still convulsing, shaking so violently that I bite my tongue, and there’s really no guarantee that I haven’t bitten it clean in half. I’d almost suspect that I have by the way my face starts to hurt, but soon there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s a new pain altogether.

  A knee in my back. A hand pressed into my face so hard that I feel a rock cut into my cheek, and what I suspect is a shoe meeting the back of my skull—a combination made to rob me of everything but what is raw inside me, so that it’s all I have left.

  They take everything from me. They do it so that they have a reason.

  I call out several times, so many times, so many, though I’m not sure any of it is actual words. I’m down and not resisting, I’m not resisting just the way Uncle Miles and Moms and Lisa and Theo and Mr. Jones and every other Black adult in my life have instructed me not to. I’m not resisting, I’m doing my best, and it’s not good enough for them because I feel it, I feel the kiss of cold steel at the back of my head, right up against my scalp, my hat gone in a forceful swipe that stings in a way that mimics how my eyes feel, stinging with dirt and sweat and tears that I fucking wish to God I’d been able to keep to myself. This, a violation in itself, robs me of everything, and I wish, I keep wishing that I’d been able to save some of myself from being snatched by them.

  I don’t know whether it’s better to keep quiet or to talk—to promise them that I hear what they’re demanding, that a gun in my skull isn’t necessary, that I’m not resisting, I’m not resisting, I promise
I’m sorry I’m not resisting, that I’m a good person—that I am a person.

  I feel so small. And I lose myself in that feeling. I lose myself and who I am, and giving up, that’s always felt unfathomable until now.

  It feels real now, so real that I can admit that I’ve always known there were many of us in this, many of us Black boys who get hit here, while still—still, you do nothing.

  Hands up.

  Don’t shoot.

  I can’t breathe.

  I’m not resisting.

  These words will mean nothing to you. But they mean everything to us.

  26.

  Cuffs.

  The back of the police car.

  A dragging march, point A. Point B.

  Holding.

  Processing.

  Holding.

  Holding.

  27.

  I don’t know how long they’re allowed to deny me this, but I don’t get a phone call. Not until what I estimate to be several hours later. The circle clock on the wall hasn’t moved its arms even once since I’ve been here.

  But then I do get my call. And she’s there. Here. Lisa’s here, and she’s a mess. She is sobbing and wordless, and she is shaking. And forgetting this image of her … it’s going to be a slow unraveling.

  It feels weird that she doesn’t touch me once I’ve been released and given all my personals and stuff. She barely even looks at me as we walk out the door of the station and out into the parking lot.

  When she does finally stop in her tracks and turn to me, it’s to hit me. Like, I am not super tall, but I am taller than Lisa. By a good amount. But Black women in a chaotic explosion like this … it’s dangerous. She slaps at and punches me in the chest repeatedly, and all I can do is let her. All I can do is let it happen until she exhausts herself. I did this to her, and I hate it. Hate knowing I turned her into this person who can’t communicate how she feels through her words and has to resort to using her fists instead because it hurts so much to be reminded of the system, to be reminded of the status quo and how it ended the life of the man you love with your entire self.

  When you see something like this on TV or in movies and the other person just has to stand there and take it and then they become this human straitjacket. That’s real.

  It happens in real life because there is literally nothing else to do but that.

  “This has to stop, Torrey. It has to stop!”

  I nod and hold her tight. And tighter and tighter and tighter still as she yells.

  “They could have killed you. They would have killed you, Torrey, there was no reason for them not to. Do you understand what I am saying to you?” She meets my stare and it’s so clear that she’s begging me, eyes searching, to just get it. Because she cannot and will not be able to verbalize it.

  “I need you to really hear me when I say this. Listen very carefully. Miles would not have wanted this for you. He’d have burned the farm to the ground first before he ever let you be handcuffed over it.”

  “I know,” I say, even knowing I shouldn’t. I don’t know what else to say though.

  I gambled with my life.

  “Do you? You’re an adult! They could charge you as an adult. And more importantly, you could have been shot dead. Tonight. You could have been killed. You are worthless to them, Torrey. They look at you—they see an animal. One of a number of problems with a heartbeat and nothing more.”

  Help. Please, help me, I can’t keep feeling this way.

  “I know,” I say. I can’t help it. My only other option is to say the truth. That I understand just how many people on this planet would rather I didn’t exist. And that, sometimes, I wish I didn’t either. So I just keep repeating the same thing: “I know, I know that.”

  I’m barely able to catch my breath now, bubbles popping after existing a moment—maybe less.

  And I’m breaking into so many pieces.

  Please help me. I don’t know how to live this way.

  I know that my worth, my value, has never been much of anything. Never will be. Not in my lifetime and probably not in the next either.

  Finally, I offer, “I’m sorry.” And she just squeezes me so tight in reply.

  The car ride back to campus is so quiet. Aunt Lisa doesn’t let go of my hand, and when the circulation in it is clearly being cut off and I try to pull away, she holds tighter and says, only, “I can’t. Just a little longer.”

  “Okay,” I say, if only to just verbalize something. “Yeah, that’s okay.”

  When we arrive, she parks in the student lot and cuts the engine.

  “Is this a rental?” I say. Lisa drives Uncle Miles’s manual ’03 Honda Civic. It’s a good car. But this … is not that. This is a fucking Hyundai.

  “Yeah. I just didn’t want to be stuck waiting on an Uber. Plus, the airport has good deals.”

  “I’ll pay you back for the flight.” I know this isn’t money she had to spare.

  “Boy, shut up. Don’t nobody want your forty-eight dollars.”

  Smiling feels like a thing people write songs about but don’t actually do in real life. Feels new and uncomfortable.

  “Are you going back tonight?”

  Aunt Lisa hits a switch to roll the windows down and let some fresh air in that doesn’t taste like tears.

  “I booked a one-way, so I might just drive back whenever.”

  Not an answer. “What about where you’re staying? Hotel? Airbnb?”

  “My dad has some cousins who live in the Mission.”

  I nod. “Cousins you know?” Lisa isn’t super tight with her dad. She’s my family. I’d sooner have her sleeping in the dorm with me and Desh than some whack-ass place that feels foreign to her.

  She nods back. “The only good thing about his side of the family.”

  “You eat?”

  “Torrey, I swear to God, if you don’t stop trying to Black Mom me to death, boy.”

  Here—here is where the smiling thing becomes more acquaintance than stranger.

  “Get out of my car, Torr. I hear there’s a boy in there waiting for you.”

  I hug her and try to communicate that she is the strongest oak tree. That she is never not blooming and bursting from the ashes.

  She’s right. Gabriel is waiting for me just inside the door of Prominski, seated in one of those itchy, reupholstered-one-time-too-many chairs they’re constantly redecorating the first-floor commons with.

  “How’d you know?” I say.

  He uncrosses his legs in this way, just so, how only a dancer would. “How’d I know you were going all stealth burglar with a death wish? I didn’t. Not at first. But you didn’t show up to the Undie Run, and then your phone kept going to voicemail when I called you, and that literally never happens, so I ended up having to get super creepy and tracking you on Find My Fucking Friends—which I will probably not forgive you for making me do, Torrey—and basically it just took some Googling from there. And … also, I called the apiary and had to leave a message on their answering machine and apparently your friend Endira gets all voicemails transcribed to her email? And she gave Lisa my number?”

  Wow.

  “Wow. Uh … that was a lot.”

  “You’re damn right it was a lot. It was a lot for me to have to go through. Jesus, Torrey, what the hell. Why couldn’t you just have talked to me or to Lisa or to literally any of the billions of people who care about you before deciding to fly off the freaking handle?”

  I pace. It’s all I can do. It’s late enough—or, rather, early enough—that I can’t really go all Rambo on him in this dorm lounge. “You’re one to talk.”

  “What?”

  “You’re talking to me about flying off the freaking handle? You? Mr. Rules don’t apply to me, Mr. Run around campus after hours in your underwear, Mr. Break into your dance studio. Gabriel, you are the literal embodiment of flying off the handle. You are made up of carelessness, and that’s just not who I am.”

  “You’re judging me like you we
ren’t in that stuff with me.”

  “I was in it with you because I am in love with you, not because I wanted to or needed to.”

  “Great, so, hard-up, can’t-ever-make-a-move Torrey is right, and I’m just wrong.”

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong for all that. Stop putting words in my mouth. What I am saying is that you are wrong to judge me and try to make me out to be some kind of screw-up all because I did something radical for a reason that actually matters and not just because I wanted to be some kind of manic pixie dream boy.”

  That’s it. All of it. This is how we end.

  Gabriel and I are each other’s antonyms. There’s no denying or fixing that fact. If even I can’t make sense of this thing between us, how many more people are rooting against us because the math of him and me doesn’t add up?

  He stands. I can tell his fight-or-flight reservoir is all out of fight. “All I’m asking is for you to bend a little, Torr.”

  “And all I’m asking for is that you take something—anything—seriously for once.”

  I regret it immediately. My grams used to tell us, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”

  I think what I just said and how I said it—neither is okay. He proves me right when he shakes his head, glances at me long enough for me to catch the tears in his eyes, and then leaves without another word.

  28.

  In my dorm room, the lights are all off when I walk in, but one of Emery’s oil diffusers is in the corner serving as a night-light.

  I stop short when I take in the sight of all my friends scattered around the room.

  Do they know? They have to. They know what happened, and they did this for me.

  Do they know how much I love them? They did this for me, so maybe they do.

  My girl is the only one awake when I walk in. “We’re using an essential oil for calming since none of us could manage it on our own,” Emery says.

  I hug her. Hug her so tight and thank God this girl calls me friend. Sometimes it’s just enough to be found worthwhile to one person who is clearly a better human than you’ll ever be.