Silence comes between us.
Hailey shakes her head. Her lips are thin. “Unbelievable.” She grabs her jacket off Maya’s bed and starts for the door. She stops, and her back is to me. “You wanna really know why I unfollowed you, Starr? Because I don’t know who the hell you are anymore.”
She slams the door on her way out.
The news program returns on the television. They show footage of protests all over the country, not just in Garden Heights. Hopefully none of them used Khalil’s death to skip class or work.
Out of nowhere, Maya says, “That’s not why.”
She’s staring at her closed door, her shoulders a bit stiff.
“Huh?” I say.
“She’s lying,” Maya says. “That’s not why she unfollowed you. She said she didn’t wanna see that shit on her dashboard.”
I figured. “That Emmett Till picture, right?”
“No. All the ‘black stuff,’ she called it. The petitions. The Black Panther pictures. That post on those four little girls who were killed in that church. The stuff about that Marcus Garvey guy. The one about those Black Panthers who were shot by the government.”
“Fred Hampton and Bobby Hutton,” I say.
“Yeah. Them.”
Wow. She’s been paying attention. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She stares at her plush Finn on the floor. “I hoped she’d change her mind before you found out. I should’ve known better though. It’s not like that’s the first fucked-up thing she’s said.”
“What are you talking about?”
Maya swallows hard. “Do you remember that time she asked if my family ate a cat for Thanksgiving?”
“What? When?”
Her eyes are glossy. “Freshman year. First period. Mrs. Edwards’s biology class. We’d just gotten back from Thanksgiving break. Class hadn’t started yet, and we were talking about what we did for Thanksgiving. I told you guys my grandparents visited, and it was their first time celebrating Thanksgiving. Hailey asked if we ate a cat. Because we’re Chinese.”
Ho-ly shit. I’m wracking my brain right now. Freshman year is so close to middle school; there’s a huge possibility I said or did something extremely stupid. I’m afraid to know, but I ask, “What did I say?”
“Nothing. You had this look on your face like you couldn’t believe she said that. She claimed it was a joke and laughed. I laughed, and then you laughed.” Maya blinks. A lot. “I only laughed because I thought I was supposed to. I felt like shit the rest of the week.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
I feel like shit right now. I can’t believe I let Hailey say that. Or has she always joked like that? Did I always laugh because I thought I had to?
That’s the problem. We let people say stuff, and they say it so much that it becomes okay to them and normal for us. What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?
“Maya?” I say.
“Yeah?”
“We can’t let her get away with saying stuff like that again, okay?”
She cracks a smile. “A minority alliance?”
“Hell, yeah,” I say, and we laugh.
“All right. Deal.”
A game of NBA 2K15 later (I whooped Maya’s butt), I’m walking back to Uncle Carlos’s house with a foil-wrapped plate of seafood lasagna. Mrs. Yang never lets me leave empty-handed, and I never turn down food.
Iron streetlamps line the sidewalks, and I see Uncle Carlos from a few houses down, sitting on his front steps in the dark. He’s chugging back something, and as I get closer, I can see the Heineken.
I put my plate on the steps and sit beside him.
“You better not have been at your li’l boyfriend’s house,” he says.
Lord. Chris is always “li’l” to him, and they’re almost the same height. “No. I was at Maya’s.” I stretch my legs forward and yawn. It’s been a long-ass day. “I can’t believe you’re drinking,” I say through my yawn.
“I’m not drinking. It’s one beer.”
“Is that what Nana said?”
He cuts me a look. “Starr.”
“Uncle Carlos,” I say as firmly.
We battle it out, hard stare versus hard stare.
He sets the beer down. Here’s the thing—Nana’s an alcoholic. She’s not as bad as she used to be, but all it takes is one hard drink and she’s the “other” Nana. I’ve heard stories of her drunken rages from back in the day. She’d blame Momma and Uncle Carlos that their daddy went back to his wife and other kids. She’d lock them out the house, cuss at them, all kinds of stuff.
So, no. One beer isn’t one beer to Uncle Carlos, who’s always been anti-alcohol.
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s one of those nights.”
“You saw the interview, didn’t you?” I ask.
“Yeah. I was hoping you didn’t.”
“I did. Did my mom see—”
“Oh yeah, she saw it. So did Pam. And your grandma. I’ve never been in a room with so many pissed-off women in my life.” He looks at me. “How are you dealing with it?”
I shrug. Yeah, I’m pissed, but honestly? “I expected his dad to make him the victim.”
“I did too.” He rests his cheek in his palm, his elbow propped on his knee. It’s not too dark on the steps. I see the bruising on his hand fine.
“So . . . ,” I say, patting my knees. “On leave, huh?”
He looks at me like he’s trying to figure out what I’m getting at. “Yeah?”
Silence.
“Did you fight him, Uncle Carlos?”
He straightens up. “No, I had a discussion with him.”
“You mean your fist talked to his eye. Did he say something about me?”
“He pointed his gun at you. That was more than enough.”
His voice has a foreign edge to it. It’s totally inappropriate, but I laugh. I have to hold my side I laugh so hard.
“What’s so funny?” he cries.
“Uncle Carlos, you punched somebody!”
“Hey, I’m from Garden Heights. I know how to fight. I can get down.”
I’m hollering right now.
“It’s not funny!” he says. “I shouldn’t have lost my cool like that. It was unprofessional. Now I’ve set a bad example for you.”
“Yeah, you have, Muhammad Ali.”
I’m still laughing. Now he’s laughing.
“Hush,” he says.
Our laughter dies down, and it’s real quiet out here. Nothing to do but look at the sky and all the stars. There’s so many of them tonight. It’s possible that I don’t notice them at home because of all the other stuff. Sometimes it’s hard to believe Garden Heights and Riverton Hills share the same sky.
“You remember what I used to tell you?” Uncle Carlos says.
I scoot closer to him. “That I’m not named after the stars, but the stars are named after me. You were really trying to give me a big head, huh?”
He chuckles. “No. I wanted you to know how special you are.”
“Special or not, you shouldn’t have risked your job for me. You love your job.”
“But I love you more. You’re one reason I even became a cop, baby girl. Because I love you and all those folks in the neighborhood.”
“I know. That’s why I don’t want you to risk it. We need the ones like you.”
“The ones like me.” He gives a hollow laugh. “You know, I got pissed listening to that man talk about you and Khalil like that, but it made me consider the comments I made about Khalil that night in your parents’ kitchen.”
“What comments?”
“I know you were eavesdropping, Starr. Don’t act brand-new.”
I smirk. Uncle Carlos said “brand-new.” “You mean when you called Khalil a drug dealer?”
He nods. “Even if he was, I knew that boy. Watched him grow up with you. He was more than any bad decision he made,” he says. “I hate that I let myself fall into that mind-set of trying to rationalize his death. And at the end of the day, you don’t kill someone for opening a car door. If you do, you shouldn’t be a cop.”
I tear up. It’s good to hear my parents and Ms. Ofrah say that or see all the protestors shout about it. From my uncle the cop though? It’s a relief, even if it makes everything hurt a little more.
“I told Brian that,” he says, looking at his knuckles. “After I clocked him. Told the chief too. Actually, I think I screamed it loud enough for everybody in the precinct to hear. It doesn’t take away from what I did though. I dropped the ball on Khalil.”