“Let me know when you get to the reassuring part, babe.”
“And all those things.” She pauses, leaning her head onto my shoulder. “But you have passion. You’re brilliant. You know these issues. You’ve lived these issues. Just tell them what you know, what you’ve experienced.”
Her confidence soothes my tattered nerves, and her reassurances give me peace in a way no one else can. She’s always done that. Her eyes glow with pride and love and confidence in me. This feels like us. It’s been months since we felt like us, since there’s been any ease around us, between us. Maybe it’s being in a different city. Maybe it’s knowing we’re rounding a bend with Dr. Wagner loosening the chastity belt. Whatever it is, it feels good. For the first time since Zoe died, it feels right.
Even before we lost Zoe, the shadow of loss hung over us for months. I know we’ll never be the same. We’ll bear the scars of the ordeal we’ve suffered, but we’ll still be us. It’s not about what we endure, but that we endure, the fact that I ain’t going nowhere, and neither is she, no matter what’s tossed our way.
“We’re here,” she says, studying the line of people crowding the sidewalk. “You ready?”
“Hell no.” I bring her knuckles to my lips. “But are you with me?”
“Hell yeah,” she whispers, dotting kisses along my chin.
“Then I’m good.”
I capture her lips, wanting just a taste to hold me over, but dammit she’s so sweet and I can’t stop. Hunger breaks the surface of my control and makes me sloppy. Deep licks, sharp bites. I’m sucking her chin, nuzzling her neck. Without my permission, my hand wanders to cup her breast, to pinch her nipple, her sharply drawn breath making me even harder. I need it in my mouth. I’m sliding to my knees in front of her when everything crashes and burns.
“Ahem.” Amir, not looking even a little shamefaced, grabs our attention. “Like your mama always says, if you didn’t bring enough for everybody, put it away.”
“You vibe-killing, cock-blocking motherfucker,” I say as goodnaturedly as can be expected with a saber poking through my jeans. Bristol’s throaty, unabashed chuckle doesn’t help matters. Inhibited, my ass. I don’t care what time she gets home, I’ll be up and ready to show her how uninhibited she still is.
“Let’s go kick some racist ass,” I say, struggling to refocus.
“Kicking racist ass” may be overstating my performance, but I hold my own against Clem Ford. I’m not Iz. I don’t have the epidemiological substantiation for my responses. I know fewer statistics than Iz does, and God knows I’m not as polished, but every bullshit reason Ford trots out for his corrupt system and avaricious worldview, I have an answer for.
“Are you saying crime shouldn’t be punished?” Ford asks after we’ve been at it for
an hour. “That Black men deserve special treatment?”
“Special treat . . .” Disbelief traps the words in my mouth. “You think we get special treatment?”
“It sounds to me like that’s what you’re asking for, that crime be overlooked.”
“No, I’m asking that justice be blind and that punishment fits the crime the same for everyone,” I say, outrage stiffening my voice. “That a Black man with a busted tail light not spend weeks in jail because he doesn’t have bail money when someone snorting coke is given a slap on the wrist and set free. Prosecute a man for being guilty, not for being Black, Brown or poor.”
“Oh, not this argument again.” He rolls his eyes.
“Which argument are you anticipating exactly?” I demand, heat licking up my neck in the face of his derision. “The systematic criminalization of Black and Brown men in America? Or maybe you think I’ll point out that when crack ravaged communities of color in the nineties it was a crime, but now when we have widespread opioid abuse in suburbs and rural areas it’s a health crisis? I’m not saying it’s not a health crisis, but where was that perspective, that compassion when drugs eviscerated a generation of Black people and their communities?”
“I’m only saying—”
“Oh, no,” I cut in over him. “You probably thought I’d regurgitate facts about men of color serving three, four times the sentences for possession of marijuana as other groups for possession of cocaine and heroin. Are those the arguments you were expecting?”
For a silent second, hatred rears from behind the polite mask covering Ford’s face. His fury is fire, but my composure isn’t even singed. And before he can hide it, I see that my even keel only makes him angrier.
“The courts determine the appropriate punishment for the crime, Mr. James,” he finally replies, his voice smooth and restrained.
“And when there is no crime, Mr. Ford?” I ask, not waiting for his response. “When black men, Hispanic men are pulled over and arrested for bullshit reasons and then languish in the system for months because they don’t have money for bail for their non-crime? What’s their crime? Their skin color? Their poverty?”
“I don’t think—”
“No, you don’t have to think about it, do you?” I punch the words for emphasis. “When corporations like yours set lock-up quotas, demanding ninety percent prison occupancy rates, securing cheap labor for your businesses, to do your work, you don’t think about the charges the system has to trump up to meet those quotas, do you?”
“We don’t—”
“What if people in certain states start paying attention to the fine print of their tax bills? How outraged will they be when they realize they are penalized for fewer prisoners? That they pay for empty beds? It’s outrageous.”
“What you call outrageous, we call capitalism,” he says, looking into the audience for understanding, because the word “capitalism” always works.