“You obviously don’t know shit,” I say.
We’re next to some duplex houses. I don’t know what street this is. I’m not familiar with the east side like that. Sirens go off nearby, and it’s as hazy and smoky as the rest of the neighborhood.
“There’s a gas station not too far from here,” Seven says. “Chris, can you help me push it?”
“As in, get out the protection of this car and push it?” Chris asks.
“Yeah, that. It’ll be all right.” Seven hops out.
“That’s what you said before,” Chris mumbles, but he climbs out.
DeVante says, “I can push too.”
“Nah, man. You need to rest up,” says Seven. “Just sit back. Starr, get behind the wheel.”
This is the first time he’s ever let anyone else drive his “baby.” He tells me to put the car in neutral and guide it with the steering wheel. He pushes next to me. Chris pushes on the passenger side. He constantly glances over his shoulder.
The sirens get louder, and the smoke thickens. Seven and Chris cough and cover their noses with their shirts. A pickup truck full of mattresses and people speeds by.
We reach a slight hill, and Seven and Chris jog to keep up with the car.
“Slow down, slow down!” Seven yells. I pump the brakes. The car stops at the bottom of the hill.
Seven coughs into his shirt. “Hold on. I need a minute.”
I put the car in park. Chris bends over, trying to catch his breath. “This smoke is killing me,” he says.
Seven straightens up and slowly blows air out his mouth. “Shit. We’ll get to the gas station faster if we leave the car. The two of us can’t push it all the way.”
The hell? I’m sitting right here. “I can push.”
“I know that, Starr. Even if you did, we’ll still be faster without it. Damn, I don’t wanna leave it here though.”
“How about we split up?” Chris says. “Two of us stay here, two of us go get some gas—and this is that white-people shit you guys were talking about, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” the rest of us say.
“Told you,” says DeVante.
Seven folds his hands and rests them on top of his dreads. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. We gotta leave it.”
I get Seven’s keys, and he grabs a gas can from the trunk. He caresses the car and whispers something to it. I think he says he loves it and promises to come back. Lord.
The four of us start down the sidewalk and pull our shirts over our mouths and noses. DeVante limps but swears he’s all right.
A voice in the distance says something, I can’t make it out, and there’s a thunderous response like from a crowd.
Chris and I walk behind the other two. His hand falls to his side, and he brushes up against me, his sly way of trying to hold my hand. I let him.
“So this is where you used to live?” he says.
I forgot this is his first time in Garden Heights. “Yeah. Well, not this side of the neighborhood. I’m from the west side.”
“West siiiiiide!” Seven says, as DeVante throws up a W. “The best siiiiiide!”
“On my momma!” DeVante adds.
I roll my eyes. People go too far with that “what side of the neighborhood you from” mess. “You saw that big apartment complex we passed? Those are the projects we lived in when I was younger.”
Chris nods. “That place where we parked—was that the Taco Bell your dad took you and Seven to?”
“Yeah. They opened a new one closer to the freeway a few years ago.”
“Maybe we can go there together one day,” he says.
“Bruh,” DeVante butts in. “Please tell me you ain’t considering taking your girl to Taco Bell for a date. Taco Bell?”
Seven hollers laughing.
“Excuse me, was anybody talking to y’all?” I ask.
“Ay, you my friend, I’m trying to help you out,” says DeVante. “Your boy ain’t got no game.”
“I have game!” Chris says. “I’m letting my girl know I’m happy to go with her anywhere, no matter what neighborhood it’s in. As long as she’s there, I’m good.”
He smiles at me without showing his teeth. I do too.
“Psh! It’s still Taco Bell,” says DeVante. “By the end of the night it’ll be Taco Hell with them bubble guts.”
The voice is a bit louder now. Not clear yet. A man and a woman run by on the sidewalk, pushing two shopping carts with flat-screen TVs in them.
“They wilding out here,” DeVante says with a chuckle, but grabs his side.
“King kicked you, didn’t he?” Seven says. “With those big-ass Timbs on, right?”
DeVante whistles a breath out. He nods.
“Yeah, he did that to my momma once. Broke most of her ribs.”
A Rottweiler on a leash in a fenced-in yard barks and struggles to come after us. I stomp my foot at it. It squeals and jumps back.
“She’s all right,” Seven says, though it seems like he’s trying to convince himself. “Yeah. She’s fine.”
A block away, people stand around in a four-way intersection, watching something on one of the other streets.
“You need to exit the street,” a voice announces from a loudspeaker. “You are unlawfully blocking traffic.”
“A hairbrush is not a gun! A hairbrush is not a gun!” a voice chants from another loudspeaker. It’s echoed back by a crowd.
We get to the intersection. A red, green, and yellow school bus is parked on the street to our right. It says Just Us for Justice on the side. A large crowd is gathered in the street to our left. They point black hairbrushes into the air.
The protestors are on Carnation. Where it happened.
I haven’t been back here since that night. Knowing this is where Khalil . . . I stare too hard, the crowd disappears, and I see him lying in the street. The whole thing plays out before my eyes like a horror movie on repeat. He looks at me for the last time and— “A hairbrush is not a gun!”
The voice snaps me from my daze.
Ahead of the crowd a lady with twists stands on top of a police car, holding a bullhorn. She turns toward us, her fist raised for black power. Khalil smiles on the front of her T-shirt.
“Ain’t that your attorney, Starr?” Seven asks.
“Yeah.” Now I knew Ms. Ofrah was about that radical life, but when you think “attorney” you don’t really think “person standing on a police car with a bullhorn,” you know?
“Disperse immediately,” the officer repeats. I can’t see him for the crowd.
Ms. Ofrah leads the chant again. “A hairbrush is not a gun! A hairbrush is not a gun!”
It’s contagious and echoes all around us. Seven, DeVante, and Chris join in.
“A hairbrush is not a gun,” I mutter.
Khalil drops it into the side of the door.
“A hairbrush is not a gun.”
He opens the door to ask if I’m okay.
Then pow-pow—
“A hairbrush is not a gun!” I scream loud as I can, fist high in the air, tears in my eyes.
“I’m going to invite Sister Freeman to come up and give a word about the injustice that took place tonight,” Ms. Ofrah says.
She hands the bullhorn to a lady who’s also in a Khalil shirt, and she hops off the patrol car. The crowd lets her through, and Ms. Ofrah heads toward another coworker who’s standing near the bus at the intersection. She spots me and does a double-take.
“Starr?” she says, making her way over. “What are you doing out here?”
“We . . . I . . . When they announced the decision, I wanted to do something. So we came to the neighborhood.”
She eyes beat-up DeVante. “Oh my God, did you get caught in the riots?”
DeVante touches his face. “Damn, I look that bad?”
“That’s not why he looks like that,” I tell her. “But we did get caught in the riots on Magnolia. It got crazy over there. Looters took over.”
Ms. Ofrah purses her lips. “Yeah. We heard.”
“Just Us for Justice was fine when we left,” Seven says.
“Even if it’s not, it’s okay,” says Ms. Ofrah. “You can destroy wood and brick, but you can’t destroy a movement. Starr, does your mother know you’re out here?”
“Yeah.” Don’t even sound convincing to myself.
“Really?”
“Okay, no. Please don’t tell her.”