The Day My Mother Yelled ‘Don’t Shoot’
I knew what happened to people of color who stood outside of nice houses for too long
My mother had changed the lock on the front door. I’d have trouble with the old one whenever I’d visit; the bolt always seemed to catch splinters of wood before struggling into the notch. So it was only a matter of time before she changed it. Maybe if I’d visited more often, I would have gotten the new key. Perhaps if this visit had been planned, she would have remembered to leave one for me. There were a lot of things that could have happened differently that day.
I had just gotten off a graveyard shift that morning. New York City had been at the height of rush hour when I’d hopped aboard the train at Penn Station. Bodies chafed against each other, purveyors of free newspapers communicated in exaggerated shouts, and the garbled voice of the train conductor sounded grated through the speaker. Walking through Manhattan on a weekday morning can feel like walking through a scream. But standing in front of my mother’s house, the quiet was unsettling. More unsettling was the silhouette I cut against the suburban backdrop. Garbage cans sat in neat rows at curbside. Gigantic oaks gently swayed in the breeze. And when my mother’s neighbors looked out of their windows, they saw an unfamiliar silhouette clad in a bomber jacket and white tee, braids peeking from beneath a Yankees cap and a durag.
History has taught me — and most men of color — that’s what you do in the presence of the police. You freeze because your body no longer belongs to you.
I was tired. I felt exposed. I knew what happened to people of color who stood outside of nice houses for too long. Henry Louis Gates had been arrested outside of his home around this time in 2009. I wanted to get inside as quickly as possible. I followed the driveway around back and checked the rear door. It was locked. On my way back around, I quickly checked the side window, also locked. Out of options, I called my mother from the driveway. She picked up on the first try and apologized; she told me there was a spare key in the garage.
