Knucklehead, page 6
She didn’t respond, so I guess she gave me that. I turned off the TV anyway.
* * *
Alejandro and I huddled in the hallway after our morning class. “I heard that the guy who shot the video is getting death threats,” I said.
“Yes,” Alejandro replied. “He said that in an interview. Death threats from police.”
“White cat, yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he’s a brother now.”
Alejandro nodded.
“All they have to say is that they thought you had a gun,” I murmured. “They don’t even have to plant one. Pretty sure they used to have to at least plant one on you. Like, back in the sixties. Now they can just say.”
Alejandro nodded. “Maybe police don’t have access to as many throwaway guns as they used to. Maybe they need to conserve.”
“Fuckin’ gun control.”
* * *
It was the talk of the school—sometimes. Like I said, among black folk, it was the only news. And frequently I heard others discussing something in hushed tones. I heard words like, “Terrible!” Something was being roundly condemned. But not to me. As if I hadn’t heard? Didn’t know? I don’t think three white people made eye contact with me that day.
They weren’t all cowards. Rachel came up behind me after the last class of the day. “I know it doesn’t change anything, not really, but those cops will have to be sacrificed. For the sake of the system.”
“Yes. Because they got caught.”
“Which is the only thing that makes this special. I know . . . it’s the exception that proves the rule.” She started to walk away.
I touched her elbow. “Yes. But all I’ve ever known is the rule. So, an exception is actually kind of nice.”
I immediately regretted the word nice, but she seemed to understand.
* * *
As soon as classes were over I went home. Home home; where I grew up. I needed my mom. I bet a lot of us needed our mom that day. We sat in the kitchen and drank coffee in the evening for no reason.
“Your day sounds a lot like mine,” she said, after letting me unload. “Our neighbors have been as skittish as your schoolmates.”
I had not seen that coming. “That’s insane. I only just met those fools at school. These people have known us for decades.”
“Well,” Mom said, “we know them. This morning, when I was coming back from step aerobics, Doris Kane was walking into the building in front of me, and when she noticed me behind her she broke into a little run to get to the elevator. The elevator door was still open when I walked into the lobby. Doris was smiling at me. But she was also pushing the Door Close button like a madwoman. I smiled back at her and went to the mailboxes and let her go. I knew the mail hadn’t come yet. I didn’t want to be on the elevator with that any more than she wanted to be with me.”
“Wow.”
“Mm-hmm. And a little while before you got here, I went down to the laundry room. I stepped out of the apartment with my basket, and while I was locking up, Joan McClendon opened her door. And our eyes met, and she closed the door back. And locked it.”
“They’re scared of you,” I marveled. “Little five-foot-tall business lady. Scared.”
“Yes. I haven’t seen anything like this since Roots. It was on every night for a week. You were still in . . . grade school? Junior high? I don’t remember.”
“Junior high. Seventh grade.”
“That’s right. I remember you talked about it in school. I asked you. Your teachers taught Roots all that week. That was good for you children. But out in the work world?” She let out a hard chuckle. “Those crackers left us alone. That’s how I knew they were watching it too.”
We sipped our strong-ass coffee.
“This was before VCRs. Everyone watched a show at the same time. Each night, someone would get raped, or maimed, or killed. And the next day, black folk went to work, like always. But we wished someone would say something to us! There was real unity that week.” She stared into her cup. “They were united too—united trying not to get jumped on!” Now she laughed for real. “Mm-hmm. They felt guilty. Just like today.
“But here’s the thing, baby,” she went on, softer. “Here’s the thing: they’ve got something to feel guilty about.” She reached for my hand across the table; I immediately felt sleepy. “I know, when a drug addict hits a lady over the head and his face is all over the paper and he looks like you, how you feel a little bit responsible sometimes. We’ve talked about that. And I hope you know that you’ve got nothing to do with that hoodlum. You didn’t raise him. I certainly didn’t raise him. And he’s not raising you. You didn’t grow up on the money he took out that lady’s purse. He’s not a part of you. It’s got nothing to do with you. Not with who you are or where you are or how you got there. You don’t do it. You don’t benefit from it. You wouldn’t tolerate it. That’s what makes that so different from this. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I told her that I did.
I did not enjoy watching that video. I was truly sorry it happened. But I was glad that this wasn’t just another invisible, forgettable incident. This time, we would see a little justice. They had been exposed. This time, the system would work. It had to.
Another Thousand Words.
Sunday, March 17, 1991
Un. Real.
Not two weeks later. Another grainy video. This one’s indoors. A little store. Back east it would have been called a bodega, with Puerto Ricans or some other sort of brown people running it. But they didn’t call them bodegas in South Central, apparently, and this one was run by an Asian woman. We see her standing behind the counter, where the security camera is pointed. We see someone wearing a backpack walk into the store, past the counter, and out of the shot. We know that her name was Latasha Harlins. She was 15 years old.
We see Harlins approach the counter, a plastic bottle of orange juice in her hand. The woman behind it—her name is Soon Ja Du—snatches away the girl’s backpack. They trade slaps over the counter. Soon Ja Du stumbles, stands, picks up a stool, and throws it at Latasha. She misses. Latasha grabs her backpack with one hand and throws the plastic bottle with the other; she too misses. Latasha says something snarky and turns to walk away.
And the woman reaches under the counter, pulls out a gun, points it at the back of the schoolgirl’s head, and fires.
Latasha is dead immediately, before she’s even finished falling. You can see it. By the time she hits the floor she’s just a doll.
It was on every channel, not quite as often as the video two weeks earlier but often enough that I could watch it every 15 minutes or so for two hours across the various network and cable news shows. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t believe that you were allowed to show that on TV. You can’t show fake sex but you can show real murder. In prime time. I felt Amalia’s concern for me radiating from various parts of the house. She wanted me to turn off the TV and be with her. To be happy. I couldn’t right then.
My disbelief faded. As I got used to it, I attempted to focus on the fact that the woman had been arrested. She would be tried and convicted and sent to prison. It wasn’t enough; it was hardly anything. But it was all we were going to get. I told myself that it was enough.
Of course, we didn’t even get that.
Soon Ja Du was tried, and the video was admitted into evidence, and the jury watched it. And the jury convicted her of voluntary manslaughter, which was fair. Heat of passion, like if you walked in on your wife with another man. And the jury recommended a sentence of 16 years. Which also was fair, considering.
But then the judge—Judge Joyce A. Karlin—disregarded the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Soon Ja Du to probation. No prison. Not a day. Five years probation, 400 hours of community service, and a $500 fine.
That night, watching the video over and over, if I had known all that, I don’t know what I would have done.
Backup.
Tuesday, July 23, 1991
’Twas the night before the three-day California Bar Exam. Downtown Oakland has a Chinese takeout place every six feet. “You hungry?” I asked. “Maybe you want we should get some takeout?”
“Sure. Do you have any money? I left my purse at the hotel.”
“Naw, man, I ain’t got no money.” I scouted the rest of the block. “Cool—there’s a coke machine across the street.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why do you still call them that?”
“Takes me back to the good old days. On The Street. All that junk-bond money. Up my nose.” I winked. She rolled her eyes again.
I started to jaywalk. “I’ve got my card. Pick a place.”
“That one.”
“Bet.” I trotted across the street and hit the coke machine.
I went into the takeout joint Amalia had picked and slipped her a twenty. She was the only customer, being served by a little old Asian man. An even littler old Asian lady peeked over the counter at me.
I don’t think they realized that we were together.
Amalia seemed to be having the normal experience: Hi, I’d like the ________, please / OK / That will be $____ / Here you go / Here is your change / Thank you.
I enjoyed the Special Treatment: What you want / Hi, can I have the _______ / You got money / Obviously / Show me / See, so can I have the ________ now / We are out of that / OK, can I have the ______ then / It’s very spensive / etc. Granted, the Special Treatment was what I got in New York Chinatown too, but they didn’t know that.
Eventually, I was permitted to buy some old-looking shrimp fried rice and a few sad dumplings. I paid and left without fuss. Getting preemptively shot in the head seemed a real possibility.
Silently, we regrouped outside, unstapled our paper bags, and stared down into our takeout cartons, surveying our respective takes. After a moment, I closed my bag and started to head back to the hotel. She caught my arm.
“Hold this.” She handed me the bag and her change and went back inside.
I stood outside and listened to a different kind of special treatment: Angry Sister Putting People Through Their Paces. My food is cold / But / The rice is hot but I think you nuked it / No / Was that beef range-fed / What that / You didn’t give me a fork / Yes / No, you didn’t / This one’s dirty / How long has that dead chicken been hanging there / Let me see your last health inspection certificate / and on and on and on. She busted those old folks’ balls a long time.
Eventually, she came back out, holding three plastic forks, a thick wad of paper napkins, and two cans of Pepsi. She hadn’t taken any money in with her. She grabbed her bag from me and dropped in her extorted loot. “Let’s go.”
We walked awhile.
“Once we move and get settled in and stuff,” I said, “we should get married.”
“Yes.”
West.
Wednesday, August 21, 1991
We’d all seen Rachel off to LA two weeks earlier, and Amalia to San Francisco a week after that.
Now Alejandro and Mom were at the airport with me. A stewardess opened the door to the gate and announced that we were about to board. At that, all pretense of good spirits disappeared.
I took my mother’s hands and she squeezed mine really hard.
“Mom . . . I’ve put this off as long as I can.”
“I know.”
“I’ve never been away from you before. Not really.”
“Baby, you’ve got to go. You have to leave here like I had to leave Alabama. You’re too good for the life you’d have here.”
“Yeah.” It was absolutely true that in the city of my birth, I’d gotten one callback interview and zero offers. And all the way on the other side of the country, where I knew no one and had never lived or even visited until a year ago, I’d gotten offers from four top-tier firms, including Clay, Conti & Dixon, the firm I’d signed with. I ate spiders for them; they owed me.
Still. I didn’t want to go. I did and I didn’t. My bright future waited for me. My beautiful fiancée. Piles of money. Freedom. Nothing on the other side of the scale but this one little lady and if I could have figured out how to bail on the whole thing right there without looking like a punk, I would have. If Mom would’ve let me. She wouldn’t have.
The stewardess announced that my section was boarding. I hugged Alejandro. I hugged my mom a long time, until I felt those little pats she did on my back when she was ready to be done hugging. “You go do this,” she said into my ear. “You go get ’em.”
We were all smiles again. “Go.”
“I’ll talk to you tonight.”
“OK.”
“I’ll call you as soon as we land.”
“We’ll talk soon enough. Go!” She laughed.
I went.
Years later, she told me that her heart had been thoroughly, irreparably breaking.
* * *
Life swept us up.
We each spent 12 hours a day at the office, five or six days a week. We worked hard but it all felt very glamorous, very LA Law. In January, we did our taxes; when we saw our taxable incomes in black and white we laughed and laughed. And that was for just four months.
We finally started to live together full-time. We wanted to buy a house, but with our newborn careers there just wasn’t time to hunt or do all of the business involved. So we rented a little cottage on Steiner, near that row of colorful Victorians on the hill overlooking downtown, the one on all the postcards and the one that everyone who ever comes to SF always takes a picture of like it’s the first time. Amalia called it our “Dream Deferred House.”
At some point we got married, in a small ceremony at Mrs. Dr.’s AME. Mom already loved Amalia but called her “daughter” for the first time. Our parents met. Mom approved. Dr. and Dr. were visibly relieved.
At work, Evan created opportunities for me, and I took them. On smaller cases, he let me conduct depositions and argue motions. On big cases, he took the lead and I had his back. We were unstoppable.
As a baby DA, Amalia met the expectations her grades had created by winning her first trial two months after she got there. Then she exceeded them by winning another trial a month later.
When we weren’t working or playing, we nested. We adopted kittens, a litter of three that could amuse each other when we were at work. The five of us spent entire Sundays in bed.
Money wasn’t real. We had everything that could be delivered to us delivered. At night we went to concerts and four-star restaurants, and on long weekends we stayed at B&Bs in beach towns with no other black people in them and terrorized the locals with our smiles and cash.
The world was brighter. The air was sweeter. Everybody loved everybody.
II
Bizarroworld.
Wednesday, April 29, 1992
It was just after lunch. I was writing a brief. I was trying to explain to the Ninth Circuit why they should make Bank A eat a huge loan that had gone bad, rather than Bank B. The trick was to think of reasons other than Because Bank B is the one that’s paying me.
The phone rang.
“Marcus.”
“Baby! Baby? What’s wrong?”
“Do you have a minute?”
“What’s the matter?”
“Are you alone?”
I tried to relax. “Yes.”
“Have you heard?”
“No. What.”
“The jury acquitted those policemen.”
I can’t really describe how I felt when I heard that. Best I can say is that I felt bad. I felt so bad.
“I wanted you to hear it from me.”
“Thank you. I love you.”
“I love you too. I am going to let you go now.”
“Alright. Thank you, baby.” My hands were shaking. “See you soon.”
I hung up and sat there.
I had waited so long. We all had. We’d made it through the initial horror of the video and the betrayal of non-black people around us denying what was right in front of them or avoiding us or simply not caring. We sat through all the spin by the pundits and the press going after Rodney King for being an asshole, as if the Penal Code provided that the penalty for being an asshole was to take the beating of a lifetime in the street. We survived the change of venue, when the trial was moved from LA, where the crime occurred, to Simi Valley, former Reagan stronghold and future Trump stronghold. We watched while that classic piece of Americana, the All-White Jury, was impaneled. We sat through the trial, which the press called “the Rodney King trial” even though it was those cops being prosecuted but then actually turned out to be the Rodney King trial after all.
We trusted. We didn’t want to trust but we’d had little choice. We trusted and we waited. And this was what we got: not guilty on all counts. Those cops were home by now.
I stood up. I would take a walk around the office. I wasn’t thinking clearly—I wasn’t really thinking—but it felt like the whole world had just changed, completely, and I wanted to go check out the fishbowls on the ceiling and the potted plants made of feathers and the paintings that were alive.
But it was all exactly the same. Everybody was walking around, or sitting, or standing. Content, or at least resigned. They were all acting like everything was normal.
I went by Evan’s office but it was empty and dark.
I wandered down almost every hall in the building—our seven floors of it, anyway—searching for one single thing that made sense. People either ignored me or gave me the too-big smile reserved for the One Black Guy in the Office. I must’ve been staring at them like they were ghosts.
I made my way back to my office and fell into my chair and stared out the big window for I don’t know how long. Maybe an hour. Eventually I swung my chair back around and saw that the Message light on my phone was blinking. I hadn’t heard it ring.
It hadn’t rung. The message was an alert sent to everyone in the firm, in every office, every city, from sea to shining sea: “This is a Clay, Conti & Dixon Telephone Emergency Response System alert to all locations,” said a prim female voice that sounded vaguely familiar. The head of HR, maybe. “Rioting has broken out in parts of Los Angeles, and may be starting in other areas, in response to today’s Rodney King verdict.” Even through my haze I bristled at that term. “All personnel are to conclude their business and proceed to their homes immediately. Contact the managing partner of your office for information regarding transportation in your area, as well as other emergency information. To repeat: all firm locations are hereby closed, immediately and until further notice. Please follow the firm’s Telephone Emergency Response System procedures for further instructions tonight, tomorrow, and subsequent days until the current crisis is resolved. Thank you.” The message began to repeat. I hung up.
