For all the young brothers and sisters in detention centers around the country, the ones I’ve seen, and the ones I haven’t. You are loved.
believe nothing
these days
which is why I haven’t told nobody the story I’m about to tell you.
And truth is,
you probably ain’t
gon’ believe it either gon’ think I’m lying
or I’m losing it,
but I’m telling you,
this story is true.
It happened to me.
Really.
It did.
It so did.
MY NAME IS
Will.
William.
William Holloman.
But to my friends
and people
who know me
know me,
just Will.
So call me Will,
because after I tell you what I’m about to tell you you’ll either
want to be my friend
or not
want to be my friend
at all.
Either way,
you’ll know me
know me.
I’M ONLY WILLIAM
to my mother
and my brother, Shawn, whenever he was trying to be funny.
Now
I’m wishing I would’ve laughed more
at his dumb jokes
because the day
before yesterday,
Shawn was shot
and killed.
I DON’T KNOW YOU,
don’t know
your last name,
if you got
brothers
or sisters
or mothers
or fathers
or cousins
that be like
brothers
and sisters
or aunties
or uncles
that be like
mothers
and fathers,
but if the blood
inside you is on the inside of someone else,
you never want to
see it on the outside of them.
THE SADNESS
is just so hard
to explain.
Imagine waking up
and someone,
a stranger,
got you strapped down, got pliers shoved
into your mouth,
gripping a tooth
somewhere in the back, one of the big
important ones,
and rips it out.
Imagine the knocking
in your head,
the pressure pushing
through your ears,
the blood pooling.
But the worst part,
the absolute worst part, is the constant slipping of your tongue
into the new empty space, where you know
a tooth supposed to be but ain’t no more.
IT’S SO HARD TO SAY,
Shawn’s
dead.
Shawn’s
dead.
Shawn’s
dead.
So strange to say.
So sad.
But I guess
not surprising,
which I guess is
even stranger,
and even sadder.
THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY
me and my friend Tony were outside talking about whether or not we’d get any taller now that we were fifteen.
When Shawn was fifteen he grew a foot, maybe a foot and a half. That’s when he gave me all the clothes he couldn’t fit.
Tony kept saying he hoped he grew because even though he was the best ballplayer around here our age, he was also the shortest.
And everybody knows
you can’t go all the way when you’re that small unless you can really jump. Like
fly.
AND THEN THERE WERE SHOTS.
Everybody
ran,
ducked,
hid,
tucked
themselves tight.
Did what we’ve all
been trained to.
Pressed our lips to the pavement and prayed
the boom, followed by the buzz of a bullet, ain’t meet us.
AFTER THE SHOTS
me and Tony
waited like we always do, for the rumble to stop, before picking our heads up and poking our heads out to count the bodies.
This time
there was only one.
Shawn.
I’VE NEVER BEEN
in an earthquake.
Don’t know if this was even close to how they are, but the ground
defi nitely felt like it o pened up
and ate me.
THINGS THAT ALWAYS HAPPEN WHENEVER SOMEONE
IS KILLED AROUND HERE
NO. 1: SCREAMING
Not everybody screams.
Usually just
moms,
girlfriends,
daughters.
In this case
it was Leticia,
Shawn’s girlfriend,
on her knees kissing
his forehead
between shrieks.
I think she hoped
her voice would
somehow keep him
alive,
would clot the blood.
But I think
she knew
deep down in the
deepest part of
her downness
AND MY MOM
moaning low,
Not my baby.
Not my baby.
Why?
hanging over my
brother’s body
like a dimmed
light post.
NO. 2: SIRENS
Lots and lots of sirens, howling, cutting through the sounds of the city.
Except the screams.
The screams are always heard over everything.
Even the sirens.
NO. 3: QUESTIONS
Cops flashed lights in our faces and we all turned to stone.
Did anybody see anything?
a young officer asked.
He looked honest, like he ain’t never done this before.
You can always tell a newbie.
They always ask questions like they really expect answers.
Did anybody see anyone?
I ain’t seen nothin’, Marcus Andrews, the neighborhood know-it-all, said.
Even he knew better than to know anything.
IN CASE YOU AIN’T KNOW,
gunshots make everybody deaf and blind especially when they make somebody dead.
Best to become invisible in times like these.
Everybody knows that.
Even Tony flew away.
I’M NOT SURE
if the cops asked me questions.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Couldn’t hear nothing.
Ears filled up with heartbeats like my head was being held under water.
Like I was holding my breath.
Maybe I was.
Maybe I was
hoping I could give some back to Shawn.
Or maybe
somehow
join him.
WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN
we can usually look up and see the moon, big and bright, shining over us.
That always made me feel better.
Like there’s something up there beaming down on us in the dark.
But the day before yesterday, when Shawn
died,
the moon was off.
Somebody told me once a month the moon blacks out
and becomes new
and the next night be back to normal.
I’ll tell you one thing, the moon is lucky it’s not down here where nothing
is ever
new.
I STOOD THERE,
mouth clenched
tight enough to grind my teeth down to dust,
and looked at Shawn
lying there like a piece of furniture left outside, like a stained-up couch draped in a gold chain.
Them fuckers ain’t even snatch it.
RANDOM THOUGHT
Blood soaking into a
T-shirt, blue jeans, and boots looks a lot like chocolate syrup when the glow from the streetlights hit it.
But I know ain’t
nothing sweet about blood.
I know it ain’t like chocolate syrup at all.
IN HIS HAND,
a corner-store
plastic bag
white with
red letters
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
HAVE A NICE DAY
special soap
for my mother’s
eczema.
I’ve seen her
scratch until it
bleeds.
Pick at the pus
bubbles and flaky
scales.
Curse the invisible
thing trying to eat
her.
MAYBE THERE’S SOMETHING INVISIBLE
trying
to eat
all of
us as
if we
are beef.
BEEF
gets passed down like name-brand T-shirts around here. Always too big.
Never ironed out.
gets inherited like a trunk of fool’s gold or a treasure map leading to nowhere.
came knocking on my brother’s life, kicked the damn door down and took everything except his gold chain.
THEN THE YELLOW TAPE
that says DO NOT CROSS
gets put up, and there’s nothing left to do but go home.
That tape lets people know that this is a murder scene, as if we ain’t already know that.
The crowd backs its way into buildings and down blocks until nothing is left but the tape.
Shawn was zipped into a bag and rolled away, his blood added to the pavement galaxy of bubblegum stars. The tape framed it like it was art. And the next day, kids would play mummy with it.
BACK ON THE EIGHTH FLOOR
I locked myself in my room and put a pillow over my head to muffle the sound of my mom’s mourning.
She sat in the kitchen, sobbing into her palms, which she peeled away only to lift glass to mouth.
With each sip came a brief silence, and with each brief silence I snuck in a breath.
I FELT LIKE CRYING,
which felt like
another person
trapped behind my face tiny fists punching
the backs of my eyes
feet kicking
my throat at the spot where the swallow
starts.
Stay put, I whispered to him.
Stay strong, I whispered to me.
Because crying
is against
The
Rules.
THE RULES
NO. 1: CRYING
Don’t.
No matter what.
Don’t.
NO. 2: SNITCHING
Don’t.
No matter what.
Don’t.
NO. 3: REVENGE
If someone you love
gets killed,
find the person
who killed
them and
kill them.
THE INVENTION OF THE RULES
ain’t come from my
brother,
his friends,
my dad,
my uncle,
the guys outside,
the hustlers and shooters, and definitely not from me.
ANOTHER THING ABOUT THE RULES
They weren’t meant to be broken.
They were meant for the broken to follow.
OUR BEDROOM: A SQUARE, YELLOWY PAINT
Two beds:
one to the left of the door, one to the right.
Two dressers:
one in front of the bed to the left of the door, one in front of the bed to the right.
In the middle, a small TV.
Shawn’s side was the left: perfect, almost.
Mine, the right:
pigsty, mostly.
Shawn’s wall had:
a poster of Tupac,
a poster of Biggie.
My wall had:
an anagram I wrote in messed-up scribble with a pencil in case Mom made me erase it:
SCARE = CARES.
ANAGRAM
is when you take a word and rearrange the letters to make another word.
And sometimes the words are still somehow connected ex: CANOE = OCEAN.
Same letters,
different words,
somehow still make
sense together,
like brothers.
THE MIDDLE DRAWER
was the only thing ever out of place on Shawn’s side of the room, like a random, jagged tooth in a perfect mouth,
jammed tight between the top drawer of shirts
folded into neat rectangles stacked like project floors, and the bottom drawer of socks and underwear.
Off track. Stuck. Forced in at an angle.
Seemed like the middle drawer was jacked up on purpose to keep me and Mom out and Shawn’s gun in.
I WON’T PRETEND THAT SHAWN
was the kind of guy
who was home by curfew.
The kind of guy
who called and checked in about where he was,
who he was with,
what he was doing.
He wasn’t.
Not after eighteen,
which was when our mother took her hands off him, pressed them together, and began to pray
that he wouldn’t go to jail that he wouldn’t get Leticia pregnant that he wouldn’t
die.
