How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays(6)
When David and I started the seventh grade, we heard rumors that rocking your hat tilted to the left or right, doing twisted things with your fingers, and wearing the wrong colors were grounds for a beatdown. But by the end of seventh grade, the rumors became full-fledged law in Jackson. As much as this law immediately altered the way David, Lerthon, Henry Wallace, and I moved through space near the end of seventh grade, this law sadly governed Jermaine’s entire life in Chicago.
My father took me to visit my aunt, Jermaine, and his siblings the summer I turned fourteen. We didn’t stay long, but the whole time I was there, I kept hoping that Jermaine would come back to stay with me in Jackson. I figured that girls like Marsha Middleton, who wouldn’t give me much rhythm, would have to pay attention if they knew I was cool enough to have a cousin like Jermaine.
Jermaine carried himself like the quarterback Coach Stanley wanted Henry Wallace to become. It’s crazy to say that you knew any boy or girl would grow up to become a leader of men and women, but you only had to watch how Jermaine patiently observed you with those clear, slow-blinking eyes to know that one day, he would be followed. We both walked the earth with clenched fists, but Jermaine’s fists seemed more likely to open and offer you whatever you needed to get by.
Less than ten years after I visited my cousin in Chicago, Jermaine’s little sister was murdered. Months later, Jermaine was incarcerated for manslaughter.
A little over a year ago, Jermaine got off probation, which meant he could finally leave Illinois. After exchanging a few texts about how sure he was Derrick Rose wouldn’t let his Bulls fall to LeBron “KANG” James, Jermaine texted me, “Cuzzo I just want to be somewhere where I have some healthy choices. Can you help?” I texted him back, stating that I’d do whatever it took to get him and his little girls to New York so they all could breathe a different kind of air. I meant every word I texted, too.
Jermaine never asked me when he could come to New York. Instead, he sent periodic text messages praising his team, the Bulls, and questioning the bench production of my team, the Heat. “Win or go home, cuzzo” was his favorite text message. I’d get this text whenever his team played a great half or Rose bent laws of physics. Jermaine and I found joy in knowing that black boys from places like Jackson and Chicago were using their athletic genius to obliterate expectations.
That was more than a year ago.
Jermaine is still in Illinois, piecing together work here and there, and I wake up every morning in a world distinguished by rolling hills, manicured meadows, potbellied squirrels, aged gnomes, and a make-out spot called Sunset Lake. Not only have I not sent for Jermaine and his family to join me, I haven’t even asked him to come out for a weekend.
The worst of me, I understand, has less power than the worst of white folks, but morally is really no better. The worst of me wants credit for intending to do right by Jermaine, and has no intentions of disrupting my life for the needs of a cousin I always looked up to. I am no more equipped to use or understand the language and work of American responsibility as a grown-ass man than I was as a seventh-grader in the halls of Holy Family Catholic School.
A few years after David Rozier indirectly tried to show me the language and work of American responsibility, he and Henry Wallace were dead. The truth is that half the boys in that seventh-grade class at Holy Family died before reaching thirty-five years of age. I used to spend hours daydreaming about David, Henry, Roy Bennett, Tim Brown, Kareem Hill, and Jermaine while playing behind Lerthon’s house. Roy, Tim, Kareem, Jermaine, Lerthon and I were teenagers in my dream. David and Henry were not.
***
As our nation shamefully debated Chicago’s murder rate during the summer of 2012, folding complicated human lives into convenient numbers that were shared, “liked,” discussed, and neglected all around the country, I spent more time talking to Catherine Coleman, my grandmother.
I told her that I might attend this “Peace” basketball tournament in Chicago to promote an end to all the violence. I asked her what she thought of my inviting Jermaine to come with me.
Grandma was quiet for a while. Then she asked me whether the Chicago mothers and grandmothers of kids living and dead would be attending the game.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “Probably some will.”
“Tell those folks at the game that it would help to get the mamas and grandmamas there,” she said. “And tell everybody watching them boys play ball that they need to listen to what the mamas and grandmamas have to say.”
It made too much sense.
Though my grandmother worked from the time she was seven years old, our nation forbade her from registering to vote until she was deep into her thirties. She has lived under American apartheid longer than she’s been technically “free.” Our nation told her she would enter the chicken plant as a line worker and retire as a line worker, no matter how well she worked. Our nation limited the amount of formal education she herself could attain and patted her on the back when she earned enough to buy her daughters and son a set of encyclopedias. Our nation watched her raise four black children and two grandchildren to become teachers, all the while responsibly arming herself and her community against the worst of white folks and the destructive tendencies of neighbors.
Last month, after burying her brother, Rudy, Grandma bent her knees and reckoned with burying her son, her sisters, her mother, her grandmother, her father, and all four of her best friends. She asked her God to spare her the responsibility of burying any more of her children or grandchildren. A few weeks later, an irresponsible American aspiring to be the leader of our nation, who got a majority of the vote from the worst of white folks, called her a “victim” who feels entitled to health care, food, and housing.