Stand Your Ground: A Novel (6 page)

The muscles in Tyrone’s jaw were moving back and forth, in and out, up and down, and I stood. And it was a good thing because when Tyrone said, “Look, you better have that man arrested or I will not be responsible—” I grabbed his shoulder, stopping him from finishing.

Yes, my husband had every right to say what he was going to say. But I knew how things worked in America. His words wouldn’t be taken as those of a grieving father in search of justice. He’d be considered a terrorist and the police might even rush over here and arrest him.

My touch made Tyrone calm, and instead of telling the
detective how he would go on his own murderous spree, he only said, “That man needs to be arrested and I need to know when you finally do it.” Then he slammed the phone down without giving Detective Ferguson a chance to respond.

“What did he say?” Delores asked.

I looked at her with big eyes. Couldn’t she tell? I didn’t want Tyrone repeating that, reliving that, taking his rage from zero to sixty all over again.

But I guess the question seemed natural to Tyrone. “They haven’t arrested him because they haven’t completed their investigation. And right now it’s not considered a homicide.”

“Well, if it wasn’t a homicide, what was it? A suicide? Did my grandson get out of that car and shoot himself?” Delores asked. “Is that what the police are gonna say?”

I wanted to tell Delores to keep quiet! Couldn’t she see the steam rising from the top of Tyrone’s head?

His rage was now approaching one hundred when he said, “And they don’t want to release the man’s name for
his
protection.”

“That’s it,” Delores said, jumping up. She waved her finger in the air. “Call Al Sharpton. I’m not kidding.”

“Well, I know who I
am
going to call.” Tyrone looked at me and said, “My brother.”

I didn’t let a moment pass before I said, “No.”

“What else am I supposed to do, Janice? That cracker murdered my son and I want justice.”

“I do, too, but I don’t want it that way. It’s been less than twenty-four hours, Tyrone. Let’s see what the police will do.”

“Really? You want to wait for them? You know they’re not going to do the right thing.”

“But that doesn’t mean we have to do the wrong thing.” I could
see that my words weren’t convincing him. I added, “This time, the police might do right by us.”

He grimaced. “We’re black, Janice. The police will never do right by us or anyone who looks like us. We have to take care of and look out for our own. That’s what my brother is all about.”

I wanted to say that his brother wasn’t about anything except trouble, but all I said was, “I don’t want Marquis remembered that way.”

Tyrone stood silent, though by the look that he gave me—he could have heated all of Pennsylvania with the fire that burned in his eyes. It was just because of what he’d learned, but still, his glare made me want to step back. Made me want to reconsider and maybe tell him to go ahead. Call his brother. Let him organize bike rides and rallies and rioting. Let his brother, Raj, do what he always did. Cause havoc.

But I stood my ground. Because what I said was true. I didn’t want our son to be remembered for anything besides the wonderful young man that he was. I didn’t want Marquis to be part of a movement that led to looting and lunacy; I just wanted to hold on to his memory.

“I’m just praying . . .”

Tyrone let out a half chuckle, half growl at my words.

But that didn’t stop me from continuing: “. . . that it will be different for us. I’m praying that this time, the murderer will be arrested and justice . . .”

Tyrone laughed. He just leaned his head back and laughed out loud. But there was no joy in the sound. After a while, he stopped. “All right.” That was all he said before he stomped out of the room, leaving me alone with my grief, now peppered with fear. Because if Tyrone got his brother and his brother’s friends involved, this would be a mess.

I stood wondering if I should go after Tyrone because right now I didn’t want to be without him. And surely, he needed me.

But sixteen years of marriage made me know that this was one of those moments when Tyrone needed to be alone.

“Janice.”

I’d forgotten about Delores. When I faced her, she said, “You know Tyrone is going to call Raj, right? He’s probably upstairs calling him right now.”

I shook my head. “No, he’ll wait.”

“No, he won’t. First of all, he has to call his brother to tell him that Marquis was killed. And once Raj and the Brown Guardians find out about this, they’re going to make sure justice is done . . . one way or another,” she said as if she were all right with that.

I sighed. It was the one way or another that I knew to be true.

“You married into the Johnson family, baby,” Delores said as if I needed that reminder. “And I told you a long time ago, that with the Johnson men, you’ve just got to let the men do what the men have to do.”

She wasn’t telling me anything that I didn’t already know. And what I already knew scared the hell out of me.

L
ast night, I had closed my eyes for one reason—I wanted to see Marquis. If I couldn’t see him while I was awake, surely I would see him in my dreams. I was absolutely sure that when I laid my head down, he would come to me. I knew that he needed to see me as much as I needed to see him.

I almost couldn’t wait to get to bed. That’s why even though we had a house full of people, I’d come to my bedroom and closed the door on what felt like madness in the middle of my mourning.

I’d lain down, but I didn’t undress. I just closed my eyes and rushed into unconsciousness.

But my dreams were empty. Filled with only darkness.

And now it was morning.

At least, it felt like morning. I hadn’t opened my eyes, not wanting to face this day—this first full day of the rest of my life without him.

Rolling over, I reached across the bed for Tyrone. His arms were just what I needed; his embrace would get me through.

But then I opened my eyes slowly. My husband’s side of the bed was empty, just like my dreams. I pushed myself up and leaned against the headboard. Had I slept alone all night?

Maybe he had come to bed and awakened before me. I didn’t know. We didn’t get to say much to each other last night. Not with our house filled with so many people.

For hours, all I did was answer the door, and then balance heavy aluminum pans packed with fried chicken and ham, collard greens and string beans, macaroni and cheese and dirty rice. And then, of course, there was cake after cake and pie after pie. How had these people come up with these home-cooked dishes so fast? Did they have food stashed in their refrigerators, saved for a time such as this?

Our home bulged with more people than the walls had ever seen. Just about everyone was there for my mother-in-law, though Tyrone had called his shop and a few of the mechanics who worked for him came by right away.

I hadn’t called a soul, not that there were many for me to reach out to beyond my coworkers. I never bonded well with others. Maybe that was because I was already fifteen when I met the first person who ever cared about me—Delores. And I was sixteen when I was loved for the first time in my life—Tyrone.

Growing up without knowing my mother or my father made me feel like I’d hit the lottery when I had a husband and a son. Add to that mix my best friend, and those three blessings had been enough for me.

But though I wished Syreeta was here, I hadn’t called her yet. Since she was living in Germany teaching English as a second language to high school students, I wanted to wait until I could say more than “Hi, Syreeta; Marquis, your godson, is dead.”

So I’d spent the time surrounded by all of those people, and never had I felt so alone.

That’s why I kept moving. Between the living room and the
dining room and the family room, dishing out food, serving up drinks to people I hardly knew.

More than once, someone said to me, “Janice, you need to sit down. Let us serve you.”

But I just smiled. And kept moving. And kept breathing.

And kept wondering, why were all of these people in my home and when were they going to leave?

Not that I didn’t appreciate their kindness, and not that I knew the proper etiquette for grieving a child, but I had a feeling that it should have been just me and Tyrone. Together. In private.

What I wanted didn’t matter, though. Our home swelled with folks and the sound of sad chatter, a mournful noise that hovered like lead above us.

But then the mourning turned militant. In every room, the conversation was the same:

“He was shot . . . by a white man!”

“What? Why?”

“You know why. Because he was black.”

All kinds of exclamations and expletives followed that. And then more expletives than exclamations came when they were told that the murderer had not been arrested.

Tyrone moved from room to room, repeating his mantra: “They’ve been hunting our boys and now they’ve killed my son!”

Men jumped up, women shouted—it felt like a rallying cry to me. There were so many stories that had started out this way—black boys whose murders had turned into movements.

I didn’t want to be part of anything like that. I didn’t want to be the mother living out her grief in front of the country. I didn’t want my son to be remembered for how he died; I wanted the world to
know how he lived. And I didn’t want my son’s death to be used as any kind of excuse for any kind of violence.

But that talk kept on, becoming more belligerent.

Someone yelled out, “Where are the Brown Guardians?”

Someone else said, “They’ll know what to do!”

Another voice: “You know they were responsible for that six-car pileup on the interstate that killed that cop.”

“Yeahs” rang out, sounding like cheers and that was when I knew there was no place for me in my own home. Not that I hadn’t heard about that accident four months ago.

Nicholas Watson, a young cop who’d shot a black boy in an altercation inside a convenience store, but who had never been arrested, had been killed nine months later in what the police eventually called a freak accident.

But Marquis had told me that word on the street was that the accident had been the work of the Brown Guardians. The Brown Guardians, who considered themselves a neighborhood protection group, but who were nothing more than a vigilante motorcycle gang to me.

There was no way I wanted to hear the Brown Guardians mentioned in the same sentence as Marquis.

So I’d exited to our bedroom. And lain on the bed. And waited for Marquis. Who never came to me.

Now I wondered again if Tyrone had come to bed. Or had he been up all night caught up in the emotions of what happened to our son?

I rolled out of bed, stretched, then thought about freshening up. At least, I should change out of my dress, brush my teeth, splash water across my face. But I kinda felt that if I did any of that, I’d be moving on.

So instead, I walked into the hallway, then stopped. Right outside of Marquis’s room.

The door was closed and I didn’t remember closing it. But I knew I couldn’t open it, so I turned toward the steps.

Sounds of life rose from below. Downstairs, I stood at the kitchen’s opening, watching Delores at the sink. Just like me, she was dressed in the same clothes she’d worn yesterday and I wondered if she’d even gone home. She piled plates on top of plates, pots on top of pans, all left over from last night, I supposed.

I opened my mouth to tell her that we had a dishwasher, but then I stopped. Delores knew that.

My eyes roamed through the room and I could see Marquis in every crevice, in every corner. I paused when my glance settled on the bar stool at the counter where I’d sat . . . When was that? Two days ago?

“I can’t believe you ruined Mother’s Day for me,” Marquis said.

I stuffed my mouth with a forkful of blueberry pancakes. “How did I do that?”

“I was supposed to cook you breakfast, and serve you in bed.”

“Yeah, but you did that last year, and remember how that turned out?” I laughed, reminding my son of the runny scrambled eggs and the crispy bacon that was way on the other side of burned.

I was too hungry this morning, so I wasn’t about to leave my nutrition to Marquis, no matter how admirable his intention.

“It just doesn’t seem right that you had to cook your own breakfast on Mother’s Day.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m just happy to have a good meal and to share it with you.”

He grinned. “Happy Mother’s Day, Mama,” he said, before he kissed my cheek. “And may we share many more.”

With the tips of my fingers, I caressed the spot where Marquis had kissed me, and I could almost feel his lips. I sobbed, or maybe I just gasped. I did something that took my breath away at the thought that I’d never celebrate another Mother’s Day.

“Oh!” Delores turned and rushed toward me, wiping her hands on the apron she wore. My apron.
World’s Best Mom
was embroidered on the black cloth in red.

Pulling me into her arms, she said, “I was just about to check on you. Are you okay?”

How was I supposed to answer that? “I’m good,” I said, because words hadn’t yet been created that would describe how I felt.

Delores shook her head at my lie. She said, “Well, sit down and I’ll fix you breakfast.”

I glanced once again at the bar stool where I’d sat Sunday morning. “I’m not hungry.”

She said, “But you have to eat. People will be here soon, and you won’t even think about eating then.”

More people? This soon? Too soon!

My eyes moved to the digital numbers on the microwave. It was barely nine.

I asked, “Have you seen Tyrone?”

She nodded as she returned to the sink. “He slept in the family room with me.”

“He slept in there?” I asked, sounding like I didn’t believe her, though I did. It was just hard to believe because once we got back together, Tyrone and I always slept together. Always.

Delores glanced over her shoulder at me. “Yeah, by the time everyone left, it was so late he didn’t want to disturb you. And he didn’t want me to be by myself. I’m just so upset by this, you know?”