I remember running toward sky, some open space, some room to breathe. Freedom. And I wasn’t supposed to. So a bullet pulled me back to reality. At that point, death was more real than anything because I remember not owning my own body, my own breath, my own thoughts. In death, you own it. You take back your shit—your body, your thoughts, your past—and you own it.
Even when I’m born again in Detroit, and I’m supposed to be free like the fucking wind, there’s still some shit trying to own my life—money and the bullshit jobs my moms had to work, these shitty streets, and this whole fucked-up system. When you remember all the ways you been killed, and how that shit hurt your fucking soul, ain’t no way in hell you could shake that off. So I didn’t give a fuck about nothing. Niggas out here threatening to take my life, I just laugh and promise to come back when I’m gone. That’s why when Q put a gun in my little ten-year-old hands and told me to aim it at that guy with the Detroit Tigers cap, it wasn’t even a thing.
It’s war out here, son. If my pops and his pops before him been fighting all their lives to just fucking breathe, then what’s there for a little nigga to contemplate when somebody puts a gun in his hands?
But my aim was off. My little hands were cold, sitting in the passenger seat of that car. Q was right there next to me telling me to calm the fuck down and aim straight for the Detroit Tigers cap. He was teaching me more about these streets than my pops ever did. But it was all wrong from the start. He got into my head. It messed with my aim.
The blowback made me drop the gun and I missed the guy in the Detroit Tigers cap. It hit a guy named Haitian Phil in the back of his head.
He got into my head. It messed with my aim.
I spent the rest of my life working on my aim and trying to prove to Q that I’m a real G. I never said a word to nobody, not even Haitian Phil’s daughter. I couldn’t hate Q. I couldn’t hate my fucked-up aim. But I could hate that girl for having a dead father whose ghost fucked with me in my sleep, in broad daylight, and even when I was so high, I could hear every fucking cell in my body move.
Everything got into my head—this life, these streets out here, this fucked-up system. They all messed with my aim.
And there’s nothing left to do down here where it’s dark and empty but wait to go back. That’s my one aim.
THIRTY-TWO
KASIM’S FACE IS everywhere. Not just in my thoughts and dreams, but on TV, on the internet, on posters all over downtown. Even on T-shirts that Chantal brings home one day. His ghost is a giant. And it’s as if every part of him has been spread all over Detroit and lives in the air, in the water, and in other people’s thoughts. His arms and legs reach farther than he ever would if he was still alive. Everyone is talking about Kasim Anderson. People say, “I am Kasim Anderson.” They march to the border of Grosse Pointe with his big name and his face on big posters, and they shout, “I am Kasim Anderson!”
I remember Kasim means “divided amongst many.”
They say, He should not have been killed.
Other people say, But he was selling drugs.
Some say, But he was running. He should not have been running.
More people say that he deserved to be alive.
I hate the way they toss his name around like that—like a ball in a game. He is dead because we all killed him with our own stupid games. That’s what I say, but there is no one around to hear me.
I met his mother. She knew my name. That was all she said, my name. Her words were drowned in tears.
The people at school are quiet around me or they apologize over and over again. Imani hugs me and rubs my back whenever I see her after class.
Ms. Stanley asks me to come into the office one day. Mr. Nolan is waiting there with her.
“We wanted you to come in without your cousins, Fabiola,” she says. “We’re here for you.”
They talk some more, but I don’t hear their words.
The teachers know my story now. They know our story—the Three Bees. No. The Four Bees.
Chantal is Brains.
Donna is Beauty.
Pri is Brawn.
I am Brave. No one has to tell me this. I know it for myself.
I slip in and out of class like a ghost. My cousins and I, we fold ourselves and try to become small, small.
We don’t go to the protests downtown. We don’t talk to reporters when they come to our door. We hide.
The ghosts in the house start to crowd us. We feel them in the walls, in every room.
Kasim is not here. He is with the people—spread out over Detroit, and Michigan, and America, and maybe even the world. Divided amongst many.
No one talks about Dray. His death was not on the news. But he lingers in this house. I feel him by the doorway, never moving with the wind, as if he is stuck there.
Self-defense is the word that has been programmed into me, into us. Self-defense. Even though they found no gun to match the bullet in Dray’s head, no one digs for more answers. But some truths are buried so deep, not even the earth understands it.
I had to give a statement. I had to piece together everything about that night, and tell it to a detective man and his notebook. Chantal spoke for us with her high-pitched questioning voice.
They are watching us, Matant Jo says.