Right as we get off the freeway, we’re met by a police roadblock. Only one lane of traffic isn’t blocked by a patrol car, and officers talk to drivers before letting them pass through.
Suddenly it’s as if someone grabbed my heart and twisted it. “Can we—” I swallow. “Can we get around them?”
“Doubt it. They probably got these all around the neighborhood.” Momma glances over at me and frowns. “Munch? You okay?”
I grab my door handle. They can easily grab their guns and leave us like Khalil. All the blood in our bodies pooling on the street for everybody to see. Our mouths wide open. Our eyes staring at the sky, searching for God.
“Hey.” Momma cups my cheek. “Hey, look at me.”
I try to, but my eyes are filled with tears. I’m so sick of being this damn weak. Khalil may have lost his life, but I lost something too, and it pisses me off.
“It’s okay,” Momma says. “We got this, all right? Close your eyes if you have to.”
I do.
Keep your hands visible.
No sudden moves.
Only speak when spoken to.
The seconds drag by like hours. The officer asks Momma for her ID and proof of insurance, and I beg Black Jesus to get us home, hoping there won’t be a gunshot as she searches through her purse.
We finally drive off. “See, baby,” she says. “Everything’s fine.”
Her words used to have power. If she said it was fine, it was fine. But after you’ve held two people as they took their last breaths, words like that don’t mean shit anymore.
I haven’t let go of the car door handle when we pull into our driveway.
Daddy comes out and knocks on my window. Momma rolls it down for me. “There go my girls.” He smiles, but it fades into a frown. “What’s wrong?”
“You about to go somewhere, baby?” Momma asks, meaning they’ll talk later.
“Yeah, gotta run to the warehouse and stock up.” He taps my shoulder. “Ay, wanna hang out with your daddy? I’ll get you some ice cream. One of them big fat tubs that’ll last ’bout a month.”
I laugh even though I don’t feel like it. Daddy’s talented like that. “I don’t need all that ice cream.”
“I ain’t say you needed it. When we get back, we can watch that Harry Potter shit you like so much.”
“Noooooooo.”
“What?” he asks.
“Daddy, you’re the worst person to watch Harry Potter with. The whole time you’re talking about”—I deepen my voice—“‘Why don’t they shoot that nigga Voldemort?’”
“Ay, it don’t make sense that in all them movies and books, nobody thought to shoot him.”
“If it’s not that,” Momma says, “you’re giving your ‘Harry Potter is about gangs’ theory.”
“It is!” he says.
Okay, so it is a good theory. Daddy claims the Hogwarts houses are really gangs. They have their own colors, their own hideouts, and they are always riding for each other, like gangs. Harry, Ron, and Hermione never snitch on one another, just like gangbangers. Death Eaters even have matching tattoos. And look at Voldemort. They’re scared to say his name. Really, that “He Who Must Not Be Named” stuff is like giving him a street name. That’s some gangbanging shit right there.
“Y’all know that make a lot of sense,” Daddy says. “Just ’cause they was in England don’t mean they wasn’t gangbanging.” He looks at me. “So you down to hang out with your old man today or what?”
I’m always down to hang out with him.
We roll through the streets, Tupac blasting through the subwoofers. He’s rapping about keeping your head up, and Daddy glances at me as he raps along, like he’s telling me the same thing Tupac is.
“I know you’re fed up, baby”—he nudges my chin—“but keep your head up.”
He sings with the chorus about how things will get easier, and I don’t know if I wanna cry ’cause that’s really speaking to me right now, or crack up ’cause Daddy’s singing is so horrible.
Daddy says, “That was a deep dude right there. Real deep. They don’t make rappers like that no more.”
“You’re showing your age, Daddy.”
“Whatever. It’s the truth. Rappers nowadays only care ’bout money, hoes, and clothes.”
“Showing your age,” I whisper.
“’Pac rapped ’bout that stuff too, yeah, but he also cared ’bout uplifting black people,” says Daddy. “Like he took the word ‘nigga’ and gave it a whole new meaning—Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished. And he said Thug Life meant—”
“The Hate U Give Little Infants F---s Everybody,” I censor myself. This is my daddy I’m talking to, you know?
“You know ’bout that?”
“Yeah. Khalil told me what he thought it means. We were listening to Tupac right before . . . you know.”
“A’ight, so what do you think it means?”
“You don’t know?” I ask.
“I know. I wanna hear what you think.”
Here he goes. Picking my brain. “Khalil said it’s about what society feeds us as youth and how it comes back and bites them later,” I say. “I think it’s about more than youth though. I think it’s about us, period.”