WARNING!
This is a short chapter, buts it's very powerful. I hope you guys like it. Give me feed back.
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I sat in my bed sobbing, watching the Kalief Browder documentary.
"Baby what's wrong?" Brandon asked coming into his bedroom.
I'd snuck out of the bed we were sharing in my bedroom and come in here to watch some television because baby girl is keeping me up. I didn't know I'd feel like this once I turned the tv on.
I just cried, and cried some more feeling a great sorrow within.
"Talk to me baby." He said kissing my head.
"I'm thinking about how cruel this world is. How black people cant just be happy and black boys and girls can't just be kids." I cried. "He-he had his entire life in front of him and it was snatched away from him because of a crime he didn't commit." I cried more. "Baby he spent his youth on Rikers Island. Sixteen years old and on Rikers Island." I shook my head.
"I'm scared to raise a black child. A black boy especially because this world will tell him he can't be a man and show emotions and he can't-can't be strong and resilient without being violent. It's constantly proven that black boys are meant to die by gun." I cried. "I don't want my son to have to live through that." I shook my head. "I don't wanna be a mother that's crying because her son or daughter is dead for being black in America. I-I don't wanna find out that my son committed suicide because he was afraid." I babbled on.
Kalief was arrested, and put on Rikers Island at only Sixteen, he was a kid and went to prison for a crime he didn't commit. He spent a lot of his time in solitary confinement and video footage showed that he'd been beaten and abused because he was so young. He tried to make a better life for himself, hot his story out and even pushed President Obama to stop the solitary confinement of minors in federal prisons but he couldn't run from his demons.
He went to school, made decent grades and pushed himself to go to school but somehow, he couldn't shake his demons. He tried to commit suicide a few times in Rikers Island and twice since he'd been out until one day he succeeded. He died in his family house and his mother found him.
He came from a strong family, with people in his corner and he couldn't handle the pressures of this world that haunted him and the only reason he got arrested that night is because he fit the description; he was a black teen and he was with another black teen.
I can't imagine getting a phone call that that's my son. That my son being a teen boy and going to a party like many do carelessly would get caught up in mess like that. As a soon-to-be mother it hurts.
"Baby, calm down. Everything will be fine." He kissed my forehead. "Listen, I can't promise you that our children won't experience racism or profiling, I can't promise you that people won't mistake our children for bad people but I can promise you that I will try my damnest to make sure our sons and daughters, however many we have is prepared for this. That they realize their worth, and they realize that as black youth they have to be a little more careful, even if it's not the most desired conversation it'll be discussed." He told me kissing my head.
"We are gonna fight to make sure our children don't end up on Rest In Peace signs because of police brutality. We're gonna educate them as much as we can you hear me?"
I nodded and he held me as I finished crying.
"I don't want it to be you either Brandon." I looked into his eyes and explained.
He nodded, blinking his eyes so he wouldn't cry.
"I love you too much to let that be me baby." He told me and I hugged him closer to me.
I wouldn't be able to take being like Philando Castile's woman and watch my fiancé die while my daughter is in the backseat, or be like Sean Bell's fiancée on my wedding day.
I didn't want to be the wife of Eric Garner or the mother to Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice,Michael Brown, Rekiya Boyd and Aiyana Stanley-Jones.
I don't wanna be a Tarika Wilson. This isn't the life I want for me, for my man, for my family but the only thing that I can do is be aware, to try to be an upstanding citizen of the law and abide. And even then-all of the people I named never dealt drugs, and were completely innocent.
