“Why? You have Amir.”
“Yeah?” I ostensibly look around the surprisingly calm street. It’s a Sunday afternoon, and I would expect at least a few kids popping wheelies. “And where’s Amir now?”
“If you need him to—”
“That’s my point. I don’t need him to. I can protect myself.”
“Hey.” She presses a gentle kiss on my mouth, her soft lips opening briefly under mine. She rests her cool, soft palm against my face, and I lean into her, needing the contact. “I’m sorry if I was insensitive. I know this makes you think about what happened with Jade, but it isn’t the same thing.”
Ancient guilt cuts off my air for a moment, gagging me. I was a kid, just like Jade was. And he was a cop. I don’t know what I could have done, but it kills me all the time that I did nothing.
“I know that.” But the helplessness feels familiar. It feels the same. “But I’m never gonna be caught in a position where I can’t take care of someone I care about again.”
“I’m done,” the officer says, walking toward us. “Well, almost. I’ve searched you. I’ve searched the car.” His eyes light on Bristol.
“Ma’am, would you stand against the car for me?”
“No.” My voice is an abrasion in the pleasant Sunday afternoon quiet. I’m cuffed, but I lean my torso in front of Bristol’s chest so she can’t stand. “She’s clean.”
The officer’s brows lift at my challenge.
“I’ll be the judge of that.” He nods to Bristol. “Ma’am, may I search you?”
“I said she’s clean.” I swallow the helpless frustration bubbling in my throat, scorching the lining of my stomach. “Don’t touch her.”
Those are the words I said in my mirror for weeks after that officer crossed the line with Jade.
Don’t touch her.
Words I never said to him that summer day when I was a kid.
Bristol glances from me to the officer, concern knitting her eyebrows. She understands my fear, as irrational as it may seem. She tries her best not to flash the officer when she stands from the curb. I surge to my feet and step between them, ready to beat him if I have to, literally with my hands tied behind my back.
My fists clenched behind me belie the calm forced into my voice and onto my face.
“I’ve cooperated fully with you, though you still haven’t even given me a reason for the stop,” I say. “You and I both know you don’t need to search her. And you won’t.”
Am I imagining the touch of satisfaction in the look he gives me? That I may have the expensive whip and the beautiful girlfriend he could never pull in a million years, but today he gets to feel like the bigger man? In this neighborhood, just a block away from that play- ground where Jade lost a measure of her innocence, it’s hard for me to tell where my preconceived notions end and reality begins. Is it as hard for him to look at me and not see what he expects instead of who I really am?
That moment of clarity doesn’t change our circumstances. That he wants to search Bristol, and whether I’m right or wrong, he isn’t touching her if I can help it. I need to calm down. I know the rules, I hear the mantra.
Do whatever it takes to make it home. Always answer with respect.
But there is no respect, not for me from him. Not for him from me. There is an unspoken feud pitting us against one another, and every cell in my body rebels against following the rules.
I try the old trick from my childhood, reaching for poetry—for Neruda, Poe, Cummings, anyone whose eloquence will calm the clamor of my heart and ease the riot in my chest. But all I find is the revolt of NWA’s “Fuck Tha Police,” chanting that a young nigga got it bad because he’s brown. The lyrics gather in my brain like an unruly mob. Every word uproarious and disorderly. They swell in my head and crack my skull like a Billy club. My wrists strain against the cuffs, and the outrage of a million men who’ve sat on curbs and lay in the streets on their bellies strikes a match in my heart.
If I’m not careful, it co
uld burn me to the ground.
The officer and I face off, an unbridgeable distance between us, when another cop car pulls up. Relief flashes over the officer’s face to see one of his own arriving at the scene just in time. My anxiety doubles seeing another set of blue lights. Another cop to compound my trouble. But when the car door opens, it isn’t just one of the officer’s own. It’s one of mine.
My cousin Greg gets out of the car like a guardian angel, and my shoulders sag. I didn’t realize how painfully tight I held my muscles until he stepped out with his badge and all the tension drained from me.
“We got a problem, Dunne?” Greg triangulates a look between the officer, me, and Bristol.
“Routine stop, sarge,” Dunne says. “I was just about to search the other passenger, but was getting resistance from the driver.”