The Account: A Two-Story Duplex

—in homage to Jericho Brown

Max, age 19

I’ll tell you what happened. Jojo was out front. That’s what I heard. It wasn’t even late, it was four o’clock in the afternoon and sunny and everyone was chanting, holding signs, altogether peaceful. It was something to behold. 

And of course, the cops come tearing up the road, blurting their sirens, screeching brakes. Five cars right into the middle of the street. Could have killed someone. It was like that. Picked up Jojo and Bess and Lilah, just randomly arresting whoever, no reason but to crush us.

The spittle in that cop’s breath. He grabbed Bess by the wrist, left bruises the shape of his fingertips. Everyone has a record now? Maybe someone won’t hire you, maybe you can’t get a job. But then they set the bail for the girls at 800,000 and Jojo’s was a million. No priors. We’re ordinary people, just citizens. We only let citizens go out there. I wasn’t there that day but I know these people. I called everyone’s parents and then we put on some music and sank to our knees in prayer.

Esther, age 64

For fifteen minutes, we knelt in prayer. The doors to the church propped open to let in the day and I wore a mask but mostly we spread out. We were together. Eddie among us, our brother, and it was terrible what was happening on those streets. I wasn’t there but I’ve known Eddie all my life, he was in school with my youngest, and now their four-year-olds are in preschool. 

He’s our cousin. He’s my husband. People were just testifying, I know this man, this father, just doing his job, thankless, beyond thankless, risking his life out there in those dangerous streets. 

They think they can do anything now. It’s bad for all of us, this lost civility, this shouting, these accusations, and what will happen if we let the criminals take over? One of them had a record. It was juvenile, but Connor told me theft, graffiti, all kinds of things. Blocking traffic, no one can get to work. Don’t they have jobs, out there at four o’clock in the afternoon? 

Eddie has a bruise on his cheek, dark and purpling, they told me this skinny girl just elbowed him in the face, resisting arrest. That’s against the law. In my day, we said “yes sir” “no sir.” Spent my whole life working, just obeying the law and working, and now I’m unreasonable? Just because I seen Eddie relaxed with his shirt sleeves rolled up over his slim wrists having a beer at the church picnic and Darlene his wife brought me an entire dinner, chicken and pasta, when my mother died. It had a cream sauce. She brought salad in a clear plastic baggie and there were sugar cookies with cinnamon. It’s strange what you remember. These are good people. 

Eddie lifting a baby to kiss her belly, pulling a face at the stench.  

Max

I call bullshit. They’re charging Bess with assault. A major charge, big, huge, and we’re going to fight with everything we’ve got. Rach started collecting online and we’ve raised over a thousand. Not enough. The families are talking to lawyers. I don’t know where they’re getting the money, and I’m thinking of them all inside the jail, and how many people are there, and could they have it, the disease? There’s a toilet in the corner. Heard it from Jean, he was written up once, they kept him overnight, then let him go. No charges. It’s like that. We’re barely a city, but it’s like that.  

Esther

I’m thinking of getting involved. Not going down, nothing like that, not putting myself in harm’s way. I couldn’t do it to the grandbabies. No, I was thinking only I should write someone a letter. I should write it to these kids, like an explanation. They don’t know how hard we work. Chris got up crack of dawn his working life. These kids are paying thousand dollar checks to sleep til noon, none of them can fix a leaky faucet. Wait til their toilet backs up and they need us, oh that’s when. You learn a trade, someone always needs you. That’s real skilled labor. That’s what I believe. 

Max

They published this old witch in the paper. Unbelievable. Actual name of Esther, sounds like she doesn’t know what century we’re in. She’s talking about work ethic. She thinks she’s talking to us. She thinks she knows me, like she’s my own mother, like she gets to throw me some but she doesn’t she has another thing coming. 

Get a job, she says. I have a job. I work at the CVS, pays better than on campus. Maybe I saw her one time buying support hose for her swollen ankles. But nah, she doesn’t even come into the city. She might see two men kissing and faint and die and someone would get accused of murder.  

Esther

Genesis 9:5. Tell them to read their Good Book. 

A smart little thing name of Rachel Thompson published a reply to my letter. Fifteen-dollar words everywhere, spendthrift, like money is cheap. “Intersectional identity.” “Emotional precarity.” “Inter-generational trauma.” 

I’ll give her inter-generational trauma. She wants that? My people came on the boat from the famines, so many babies died. We always give. We always help. Anyone needs it, the church makes a meal train. We are helpers, born and bred. We don’t cause trouble. 

Max

Rach wrote up a bad-ass letter to the editor. She nailed it. She hammered it. I would not want to be on the other end of that hammer, nailed into a coffin. She explained us. Who we are. 

Esther

Eddie is my brother. I mean it. My spiritual brother, my brother in Christ, my younger brother in Christ. I love him that way. He’s a handsome man. Tall and lean and he always has stubble. When I was a girl I used to shave my daddy’s face with my hand, just like I seen little Joy do with Eddie. It always makes my heart split, and not just because I’m missing my daddy. 

He could get in trouble. He hasn’t done anything! But he’s out there doing his job and what happens if he shoots in self-defense? Better judged by twelve than laid in a coffin, my daddy used to say all the time, rest him. He was killed in the line of duty, yes by a criminal. I’m law-abiding. Respectful. If you have something to tell me, say it to my face.