Saturday – Rashad

Custody. at’s the one word I kept hearing over and over again as I dried in and out of a painkiller coma, which by the way, might’ve been the best sleep I’d had in I don’t even know how long. And that’s with a broken nose and a few fractured ribs.

Custody. ey brought me into the hospital, handcuffs still on, blood still pouring from my nose like a faucet with rusty pipes. My head pounding.

Every breath hurt. My jacket, the one my brother gave me, now torn.

Custody. e doctors sent me through X-rays, administered pain drugs,

ddled with my nose until it was set back in its original place, even though they made sure to tell me that it would never look the same. at it would always look broken. But once it healed I would, at least, be able to breathe normally. ey applied ice packs to my ribs, which were super uncomfortable because aer a while the cold makes your skin feel like it’s burning. But aer that, it all goes numb.

Custody. A police officer—not the one who did this to me, but a different one, the one who ngerprinted me—stood outside the hospital room on guard, making sure I didn’t run. As if I could. As if I were a real criminal. As if I were a criminal at all. He stood watch at the door until my parents arrived.

Custody. e police officer explained to my folks that I had been caught stealing. Not only that, but that I had also been charged with resisting arrest and public nuisance. ere was no point trying to explain. I could barely breathe. I could barely keep my eyes open. e officer read the citations and explained that even though they were all misdemeanors, I had been processed and would still have to appear in court. en, because I’m a minor, my folks had to ll out paperwork so that I could be signed over and returned to their custody. Aer that, the police officer le.

 e next morning, when I woke up from it all, there was my mother, sitting in a chair on the other side of my hospital room, staring out the window.

“Ma,” I said, instantly wincing. I could feel the gauze taped to my face, to my nose. It’s that same tight feeling my skin gets aer swimming, aer the chlorine has turned me into cardboard. I cleared my throat and called out for her again.

She whipped toward me, sprang from the chair, and dashed over to my bedside as if I was about to deliver my last words.

“Rashad,” she said, her voice full of all the motherly stuff. Worry and love and hope and fear. “Oh, baby,” she repeated, rubbing her hand on my forehead gently, her voice cracking. “How you feelin’?”

e truth was, I was feeling two ways. Physically, I obviously didn’t feel great, that’s for sure. But not terrible. Not like I thought I’d feel. But maybe that was the drugs doing their thing. I did feel some soreness, though. My breathing was weird and uncomfortable. Every breath felt like a hundred tiny needles sticking me in the chest. And that was breathing through my mouth. Breathing through my nose wasn’t an option. Not yet, at least. But I was okay. Hell, I was alive. And so the other stuff—well, the alternative was way worse.

e other way I was feeling was just . . . confused. I mean, I hadn’t done anything. Nothing at all. So why was I hooked up to all these machines, lying in this uncomfortable bed? Why was I arrested? Why was my mother waiting there for me to wake up, dried tears crusted on her face, prayer on

her breath?

“I’m okay,” I said.

She sat on the side of the bed. “Listen, I need you to tell me what happened, Rashad. And I need you to be honest with me, okay?” But before I could answer, my father came into the room, making a not-so-grand entrance. He had two cups of coffee, and even though one was for my mother, my dad’s face looked like he could’ve used them both. And maybe a third. But him being tired didn’t stop him from preaching.

“He up?” my dad asked my mom, handing her a cup. He hadn’t even looked at me yet. If he had, just for a second, he would’ve noticed my eyes were open, a sure sign of me being awake. My mother nodded, almost as if she were giving him the green light to acknowledge me.

 “Rashad.” He said my name the same way he said it every other day when he was waking me up for school. As if nothing was wrong. As if he wasn’t broken up by the sight of me lying in bed, black and blue and taped and bandaged and tubed and connected to machines monitoring whether or not

I was actually still breathing.

“Hmm,” I grunted.

“Help me out here, son,” he said in his normal voice, which was his asshole voice. “I need to know what the hell you were thinking, shopliing.

Shopliing? And from Jerry’s of all places?” Dad had that disappointed look on his face—the same face he used to give me before I joined ROTC, the same face he made whenever he talked about Spoony.

“I didn’t steal nothin’,” I said, suddenly feeling too tired to explain, even though I just woke up.

“Well then, why did the cops say you did?” Dad replied, narrowing his eyes and taking a sip of his coffee. A slurp.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Dad scoffed. “Really, Rashad? You don’t know?”

I felt a cough coming on and did everything I could to pinch it back, knowing that if I let it out, my entire body would feel like it was being hit by a million tiny hammers on the inside. I managed to get it down to a single, closed-mouth grunt, and guess what? It didn’t matter. Every bone still seemed to tremble, and my head suddenly felt full of helium.

“No, I don’t know,” I repeated aer getting through the cough.

“Look, baby, just tell us what happened,” my mother said, calming my father down as usual. “From the beginning.”

I started the story but didn’t get very far before the nurse came in, interrupting everything with breakfast.

“Good morning,” she said in a singsongy way aer a light knock on the door. My mother greeted her pleasantly. My father forced a hello.

“Got you some oatmeal, and some orange juice, and a little bit of fruit cocktail.” e nurse set the food on the tray by my bed. “Is everything else okay?”

“What’s your name, hon?” my mother asked.

“Clarissa.”

“Clarissa, everything is ne, thank you,” Ma said. “But do you think we can raise the back of the bed up just a little, so he’s not lying so at?”

 “Of course,” Clarissa said, sliding the tray away and coming to my side.

She pulled out a remote that was wedged between the mattress and the frame. With the push of a button, the bed started to reposition, which meant my body started to reposition, which meant . . . ooooouch!

“Is that good?” Clarissa asked. I just nodded, which was hard to do because now my chin was smashed into my chest. I had literally been folded up.

She moved the food tray back so that it was close enough for me to reach, and aer telling us that the doctor would be in shortly, she le, and my mother helped me situate myself on the bed so that I could look and feel normal. As normal as possible. Normal enough for my father to get back to business.

“So walk me through this, son. You got to the store . . .”

“I got to the store, just to get gum and chips. I picked the bag of chips I wanted, and then I bent down and dug in my bag to try to get my phone so I could call Spoony. is lady didn’t see me squatting behind her, and tripped over me. en I lost my balance, and the bag of chips went ying. e cop assumed I had done something to the lady, which I didn’t. e dude who works the register looks up and thinks I’m trying to put the chips in my bag, but I wasn’t. en the cop rushed me and yoked me up all crazy.” I paused, then added, “And that’s it.”

My mother sat quietly and my father paced back and forth, from the door to the window. Ma was clearly horri ed. But Dad, he had on that Son, you aren’t telling me everything look. It was clear that to him, I had to have done something wrong to bring this on.

“Were your pants sagging?” Dad interrogated, now back over by the door.

“Were my pants sagging?” I repeated, shocked by the question. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Oh, it matters. If it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck . . .”

My mother glared at him. “David! is is your son we’re talking about. e boy’s never even been suspended.”

“But they don’t know that,” Dad said. “What they see is what he presents.

And it sounds like he presented himself as just another—”

“Another what?” Ma cut in again, this time her voice spiking to that Don’t start level. Dad swallowed the rest of his statement.

 “Well, they said you resisted arrest,” he continued in another direction. “If you didn’t do anything wrong, why would you resist arrest?” His voice began to rise. “And how many times have I told you and Spoony, I mean, since y’all were young we’ve been going over this. Never ght back. Never talk back.

Keep your hands up. Keep your mouth shut. Just do what they ask you to do, and you’ll be ne.”

at was another one of those way-too-familiar songs Spoony and I were forced to sing when we were kids. Every time Dad said it, it was always the same. Just like the army talk. But this one was even worse, because it had a rhythm to it, like a poem, or a chant. Never ght back. Never talk back. Keep your hands up. Keep your mouth shut. Just do what they ask you to do, and you’ll be ne.

“I know, I know. And I did all that,” I said, running through the scenario in my head again. “I didn’t ght back; I couldn’t. And I didn’t say jack besides trying to explain that I hadn’t done nothing wrong, but before I could even get a word out, he was all over me.”

“You couldn’t have,” Dad said, matter-of-fact. He looked at me as if he didn’t know me and shook his head. As if he was disappointed. As if I asked for this. at really pissed me off. at really, really got me going, because I was being blamed for something I didn’t do, not just by that stupid store clerk and that asshole cop, but also by my father. A burning sensation rose in my chest and stomach, the fractured ribs sizzling. My eyes began to water with frustration.

“I did.” My voice shattered in my throat and came out pitchy and emotional. “You don’t gotta believe me. But I did.” I turned my head away.

You know who did believe me? My brother Spoony. He showed up a few minutes later, aer working an overnight shi at UPS and catching a quick nap. And let me tell you, when he arrived, he was full of re.

First was the obligatory mother hug. Spoony ran over to our mom and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Made sure she was all right. en came the “Dad.” at’s all Spoony said to him. Just an acknowledgment of his presence. It’s not that he was bee ng with our father or that they didn’t get along—I take that back. ey really didn’t get along. ey just couldn’t see eye to eye on most things. Dad was all about discipline and believed that if you work hard, good things happen to you no matter what. Of course, part

of working hard, to him, was looking the part, dressing the part, and speaking the part, which Spoony didn’t really vibe with.

Spoony had, I don’t know, maybe eight or nine locs sprouting from his head like antennae. ick and matted like strips of carpet, but I always thought they looked pretty cool. Dad . . . not so much. ey’ll think you’re doing drugs, he’d say. Spoony’s clothes were always two (or three or four) sizes too big. at was just his style. at was pretty much his whole generation’s style. Nineties hip-hop, gritty, realness. Wu-Tang. Biggie.

Hoodies and unlaced boots. ey’ll think you’re selling drugs, Dad would say.

Why can’t you get a haircut? Why can’t you dress like a respectable adult? Why can’t you set an example for your brother? Huh, son? Why? And because Spoony was tired of explaining himself, and Dad was tired of asking him to change, they kept their conversations short and sweet. Like Spoony greeting him, “Dad,” head nod. Followed by Dad saying, “Spoony,” head nod. And

that was that.

Spoony came over to my bed.

“Li’l bruh, you good?” he said, something grape- avored on his breath.

“I’m good.”

“What happened?”

I started running the story down and got about halfway through, just up to when the cop pressed me, when Spoony lost it.

“See?” he said, looking around to our parents. “See? is is that bullshit!

I’m so sick of them treating us like we animals. Like we America’s disobedient dogs!”

“Calm down, Spoony,” Ma said, which only made it worse.

“Calm down? Calm down?” Spoony’s voice got signi cantly less calm.

“Haven’t we been a little too calm? ey get to do whatever they want to us, to him—to your son—and we’re supposed to just calm down?” He put his hands on his head, attening his locs, rocking back and forth in that way people do right before they punch a wall.

“Spoony—”

“And he was unarmed! Calm down? Do you know the stats? It’s something like black people are twice as likely to have no weapons on them when they’re killed by cops. Twice as likely! Should I run down the list of the people this has happened to? Calm down? Let’s paint their names on the

walls and watch, there’ll be enough to give the entire hospital a fresh new look. en tell me to calm down. He could’ve been killed!”

“But he wasn’t,” Dad said, deadpan. He seemed totally unimpressed by Spoony’s outburst, and probably wrote it off as theatrics. He was always calling Spoony a rebel without a cause.

“But he could’ve been! For a bag of chips that he was gonna pay for! For having brown skin and wearing his jeans a certain way. And guess what, Dad, that ROTC uniform was right there in that bag. e bag was open so that cop probably saw it. But did it matter?” Spoony’s voice fanned, the anger

breaking him down.

“at’s enough!” Ma said rmly.

Dad and Spoony glared at each other until nally Dad turned away and looked out the window. Ma just sat on the bed, rubbing my hand, her eyes wet from it all. Spoony leaned against the wall. And I sat there thinking about what was going to happen to me. I know my father and brother were arguing about what had happened, but all I could think about in that moment was what was going to happen next. Would the charges stick?

Would they follow me around, a smudge on my record until I was eighteen when it would nally disappear? Does anything actually disappear these days?

e silence was much worse than the yelling, so I ddled with the remote. e same one that controlled my bed controlled the television. I turned it on. Too bad TV sucks on Saturday morning unless you’re a little kid or a politician. And politics are painful to watch. Boring. So the sound of helium-pitched cartoon characters had to be the life ra for this sinking ship of awkwardness. ankfully, the doctor came in to save us from the equally awkward distraction of cartoons.

“Good morning, folks,” he said, full of cheer, which was weird because this was not a cheerful occasion. But I guess doctors always have to try to li the mood. “I’m Dr. Barnes.”

“David Butler,” my father said, shaking his hand.

“Jessica,” my mother said, doing the same.

“Randolph,” Spoony said, introducing himself with his government name. He got the nickname Spoony because when he was young, he refused to eat with a fork. He was always scared he’d poke himself in the tongue, so he only ever used spoons. But that’s not something you tell a doctor.

 “And Rashad,” the doctor said, pointing at me. I nodded. “Nice to meet all of you. I just want to give you all an update on what’s happening and what’s

ahead of us.”

“Sounds good,” Dad said.

“Okay, so Rashad’s nose was broken, but we’ve already set it, so as long as he doesn’t bump it or knock it, it’ll heal just ne. e same goes for his ribs. ere’s really nothing we can do about them except make sure that Rashad isn’t in any pain, but as long as they’re fairly stable, they’ll heal up as well. We did do an X-ray just to make sure there were no lacerations to any of his organs, and there weren’t, so we’re pretty much in the clear with that.”

“So when can he come home?” Ma asked, starting to beam.

“Well, that’s the thing. Under normal circumstances I would say that Rashad could go home tonight.” Ma stopped rubbing my hand. e doctor continued. “But this isn’t a normal circumstance. He has some internal bleeding—hemothorax, it’s called—which just means there are some torn blood vessels around his lungs due, I’m sure, to the impact. Usually, this xes itself, but we’ll need to monitor him for a few days in case it doesn’t.”

“And if it doesn’t . . . ,” my mother began.

“en he’ll need surgery,” the doctor told us.

Surgery. at’s one of those words that no matter how many times you hear it, it always freaks you out. Surgery. My mother’s face tightened as she did everything she could to hold it together, but she couldn’t keep her leg from bouncing like she always does when she’s trying keep her emotions tucked in. Spoony bit down on his bottom lip. My father just seemed to be taking it all in, not particularly bothered.

“Sound good?” the doctor asked.

“Sounds good,” Dad replied, shaking the doctor’s hand once more. Dr.

Barnes said he’d be in to check on me in a few hours, and le.

I reached for the remote and turned the channel.

I wish there were more interesting things to tell you about the rest of the day, but the truth is that most of it I spent dozing in and out of sleep, while my family sat around watching me doze in and out of sleep. Well, at least, Ma and Dad did. Spoony was in and out of the room, making and taking phone

calls, and whenever he was in the room he was texting. I didn’t know who all the texts were going to, but I knew at least some of them were going to his girlfriend, Berry. And, funny enough, Berry’s little brother was my homeboy, English. English Jones. e athlete, pretty boy, non-asshole who everybody loved. Yep, that guy. So I knew that if Berry knew what happened to me, English knew. And if English knew, Carlos and Shannon knew. And if those two dudes knew, then by Monday, half the school would know.

And then I was asleep. And then I was awake again. And Clarissa brought lunch in. I had barely touched breakfast. e oatmeal. Maybe a spoonful or two. It wasn’t so bad, but aer my father acted like . . . my father, I had pretty much lost my appetite. I offered it to my mother, but she couldn’t eat either.

Spoony ate the fruit cocktail and said it reminded him of elementary school.

“I used to love the grapes, but there was never enough of them,” he said, holding the cup up to his face and slurping the fruit out.

For lunch, Central Hospital served up its nest turkey club sandwich with vegetable soup. I ate half the sandwich aer my mother pretty much forced me to eat something, and I have to say, it was pretty good. All these years I had been hearing about how nasty hospital food was, and now that I

nally got a chance to taste it, it wasn’t half-bad. Better than school lunch, that’s for damn sure.

Still nothing on TV except for an overly dramatic Lifetime movie that my mother was totally into. A cliché stalker story. A woman meets a man on a bus on her way home from work. ey exchange numbers. Go out on a rst date. He’s perfect: attractive, smart, and he has a good job as an audio engineer for television shows. She’s excited until she nds out he’s wired her whole house so that he can hear everything she does when he’s not around.

He can hear her shower, and cook, and talk to her friends about how crazy he is. And he listens to the feed while he watches TV, on mute, in the attic of the house next door, where he lives (she doesn’t know this, though). Total stalker. Shittiest actors on Earth meets the shittiest story on Earth, which makes for the perfect Saturday aernoon movie. For my mom.

And then I was asleep. And then I was awake again. But this time, my folks were knocked out. Dad in the chair, his head bent at a painful-looking angle, his mouth wide open. As usual. My mother, small, had tucked her knees to her chest and nestled into her chair—the only cushioned one—like a child. She looked so peaceful. So calm. It was nice to see her get some rest.

e only person who wasn’t asleep was Spoony. He was still sitting there.

Still fooling with his phone. Still texting.

“Spoon,” I called out soly—I didn’t want to wake my parents. It was nice to have the room quiet for a moment. It was nice to not see their eyes, my father’s disappointed, my mother’s all sad and worried.

Spoony looked up and rushed to my bed. “Wassup, man, you okay?”

“I’m ne, I’m ne,” I said, calming him down.

“Okay,” he said, glancing down at his phone. “Look, I talked to Berry and told her what happened. She’s been all over the internet, checking to see if anything has been posted—you know, some live footage or something.”

“And?”

“And so far, nothing. But something’s gotta pop up. And I don’t care what Dad says, this ain’t right.” He bit down on his bottom lip. “It just ain’t right.

And you know me. You know I’m not gonna sit here and let them sweep this

under the rug, like this is okay.”

“I know.”

I gotta admit, there was a part of me that, even though I felt abused, wanted to tell him to let it go. To just let me heal, let me leave the hospital, let me go to court, let me do whatever stupid community service they wanted me to do, and let me go back to normal. I mean, I had seen this happen so many times. Not personally, but on TV. In the news. People getting beaten, and sometimes killed, by the cops, and then there’s all this fuss about it, only to build up to a big heartbreak when nothing happens. e cops get off. And everybody cries and waits for the next dead kid, to do it all over again. at’s the way the story goes. A different kind of Lifetime movie. I didn’t want all that. Didn’t need it.

But I knew not to even bother saying it. Not to Spoony. No point.

Because he’d agree that this was normal, and that that was the problem.

Spoony had been dealing with this kind of crap for years. He’d never been beaten up, but he’d been stopped on the street several times, questioned by cops, asked to turn his pockets out and li his shirt up, for no reason. He’d been followed around stores, and stared at on buses by women who clutched their purses tight enough to poke holes in the leather. He was always a suspect. And I knew, without him saying a word, that the one thing he never wanted, but was sure would eventually happen, was for his little brother— the ROTC art kid—to become one too. So there was nothing that was going

to stop him from ghting this. ere was nothing I could do to calm him down. is was not going away. is was not getting swept under the rug of “oh well.” Not if Spoony had anything to do with it.