Evelyn Toronto
Evelyn
Toronto
2004
After returning his phone to his pocket, Antony strode across the kitchen, waving Kingsley and Evelyn to follow, then went to the living room and picked up the remote. The screen lit, and he changed the station, stepped back. “BLACK BOYS BEATEN” read the ticker. “One is in critical condition,” said the reporter, “in the ICU. The others sustained serious injuries.”
Antony sank to the couch, fists on his knees, and leaned forward as the reporter described the altercation—three boys, mistaken for suspects, unarmed, walking home from school and all now in hospital. When the segment finished, Antony turned off the screen. The remote fell to the floor. He turned to Evelyn and Kingsley. “That’s why I’m out there!” Tears streamed down his face. “That’s why this matters.” He shook his head, his dreads swinging, paced to the window and back. “They treat us like dirt. Did you hear how the reporter talked about it? Never laying blame on the cops, making it sound like those boys got what was coming.”
Kingsley cleared his throat. “I don’t think—”
“What?” Antony spun to his father. “You don’t think what?”
“I don’t think that’s necessarily true. She said the boys were unarmed. She said witnesses stated they weren’t being aggressive.”
“She also said they were ‘known to police.’” Antony raised his fingers for air quotes. “Known to police! What Black man isn’t, what Black person!”
“Well, I’m certainly—”
“Pa! How many times have they pulled you over?”
“I don’t know. But it doesn’t happen so much anymore.”
“You’re known.”
“What?”
“That’s what it is. That’s all it has to be. Driving while Black your only crime, and you’re in their databases. Fu—” He glanced to Kareela. “Frigging walking while Black. That’s what street checks are all about: getting our names, our dates of birth, our addresses. Making us known so when something like this happens, they can make it seem like we’re trouble. Like any little slipup, any little anything represents a pattern.”
“Well, those boys should have been compliant.” Kingsley stepped toward their son. “If they had, it all would have gotten figured out and none of this would have—”
“No!” Antony shouted. “They were right.” Kareela ran to Evelyn, climbed up on her lap. “No. If they had, then the cops would have their fingerprints, too. I know you don’t get it, how bad it is out there.” The muscles and veins in Antony’s neck bulged. His arms shook, the tears still streaming. “They were boys. Just boys. Walking in their neighborhood. They were boys, Mom.” He caught Evelyn’s gaze and her heart wrenched. He turned to Kingsley. “They were me.”
“They weren’t you.”
“You just watch.” Antony turned from his parents again, hands to his head. “They’re going to get away with it. Those officers are going to be lauded as heroes. For what? Beating up three kids because they ‘looked like suspects,’ because they didn’t bow down and cower like frightened animals when the cops told them to listen.”
“There’s probably more to it,” said Kingsley. “Not that it’s right, I’m not saying—”
“There doesn’t have to be more to it!” A sound of pure pain erupted from Antony’s throat. “Don’t you get that? Don’t you see? Their crime was walking while Black. Being in a part of town the cops didn’t think they should be. That’s all it takes. They stop us. Identity checks, searches, seizures, hauling us in. And that’s the easy stuff. They beat us. They kill us, simply for existing. Our very being makes us suspect, no matter how good we are, how smart, no matter how we try to fit in. You know it, Pa. You live it. Don’t tell me you don’t. You live it every day.”
Kingsley shook his head. “No one’s ever—”
“Okay, so you’ve never been beaten. But you’ve been stopped. And professors ten years younger than you have tenure, while you’re still scrambling.”
“I’ve focused on teaching. Not done as much research as I should—”
“That’s what they tell you. But you know, Pa. You—”
“Well, it’s true”—Kingsley cleared his throat, shifted his feet—“for now, maybe, we have to work twice as hard to—”
“Stop! Just stop. Please. Open your eyes. Black men can’t go anywhere, do anything in the white man’s spaces without being suspect. We’re scrutinized constantly. Walking home from school, I’ve been accosted, threatened. And Malik—he was beaten so bad it hurt to breathe.”
“What?” Evelyn slipped Kareela off her lap, stood.
“And why?” Antony continued, his gaze still on his father. “Because they didn’t believe a Black boy could be telling the truth that he lived a block away, that he could have a right to be anywhere but the gutter.”
Kingsley stepped forward. “What are you talking about? When did this happen?”
Antony cast a hand to the side. “Years ago. When I was fifteen, maybe sixteen.”
“Did they hurt you?” Evelyn moved closer, remembering a night Antony had come home sullen and tense, the muffled sobs she’d heard through his bedroom door.
“They shoved me, warned me to stay out of the park at night if I didn’t want trouble, then Malik got between us, and—” Antony’s jaw clenched. His lip trembled. “And I just stood there.”
“Antony, it wasn’t your—”
“You were just walking?” Kingsley interrupted. “Home? Across the park? That was all?”
Antony nodded.
“Was Malik okay?” Evelyn asked. “Did his parents know?”
“After a while, physically, at least,” said Antony. “He told his parents he got mugged and didn’t want to report it.”
“Is that…?” Evelyn hesitated. “You and Malik, you were so close, and then…”
Antony nodded. “He didn’t like being around me after that. He became what they thought we were.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Kingsley reached for Antony as he shrugged him off.
“Like you would have believed me?” Antony laughed. “Even now, you can’t believe it. Can’t believe me.”
“No, I do. I—”
“You would have thought we were doing something we shouldn’t have or had lip. You would have questioned, thinking we must have done something to provoke it. Just like you questioned now.”
“Son.” Kingsley’s voice tensed. He couldn’t deny it. Of course he would have asked. Not as justification for the officer’s actions, but to understand. At the time, Evelyn would have wanted to understand, too, but after the past years of listening to Antony, watching the news with him by her side, she understood without any explanation needed. “You should have reported it. We’d have gone in with you.” Kingsley rubbed a hand across his hair. “Not just for you, but for Malik.”
Antony’s shoulders fell. He shook his head and exhaled. “Nothing would have come of it. Two cops we didn’t know the names of, against us, two inconsequential Black boys? I decided, instead, that I’d change it.”
Evelyn and Kingsley stared at each other. Evelyn wished she could turn back time, be there for her fifteen-year-old boy who must have been terrified, who didn’t think telling them would make a difference.
Antony raised his hands, then let them fall. “I was walking. Chatting with my friend. Laughing. That was all. And that’s what I want.” His jaw quivered. “To walk. Not just for me, for Malik, for those boys.” He gestured to the screen. “For all of us, to be able to go for a walk, stroll through a park without fear. Without being looked at as criminal.” His voice shook. His eyes closed. “That’s not too much to ask. It isn’t. But it’s not going to happen unless people fight for it. So I started learning all I could, meeting people who—” His phone buzzed. He whipped it out, read, then raised his gaze, fire in his eyes. “We’re moving the protest up.”
“What protest?” Evelyn went to the rocking chair, motioned for Kareela to join her, then pushed her foot to rock, hoping the action would help her resist the urge to dart across the room, hold her son and cradle him in her arms the way she was cradling Kareela, to try to make all this hurt go away.
“We’ve been trying to get the word out, gather thousands. And this will help. It won’t just be a protest but a rally call, a sit-in, to make it clear this can’t keep happening. We’ll camp outside city hall and make the people who run this city hear that we won’t stand for the way people of color are treated—the disproportionate incarceration rates, the abuse, the systemic and institutionalized racism. We’ll stay for days if we have to, weeks, until they acknowledge that there needs to be change, until they determine to enact our plan.”
“What plan, Antony?” Kingsley stepped toward him. “What plan, exactly?”
Stop! Evelyn wanted to yell. Don’t question him. Support him. Hold him!
“We’re working on it,” said Antony. “We’ll have a list of demands, of—”
“I’m sorry for what happened to you.” Kingsley put his hand on Antony’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for what happened to these boys. But you can’t be working on it—”
“Pa.”
“You have to know . If you want change, you have to know and understand how change happens. This is why you need to go to law school. This deferral you took…” Kingsley lifted his hand and sighed. “Antony, write them, call, I’m sure it’s not too late to get in for the fall semester.”
“Pa.”
“Kingsley!” Evelyn said at the same time. They’d discussed this. Agreed they’d support Antony’s passion, so long as he got his degree. And he had. Then he applied and got into law school. A year wasn’t so long to wait.
Kingsley turned from her pleading eyes, back to Antony. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. You’re not. Change needs to happen. But go about it the right way. Don’t yell in the street, don’t—”
“Pa!”
“Son.”
They stared. Evelyn’s mouth opened and closed—wanting to support Antony, as they’d said they would, but not wanting to go against Kingsley, especially when she, too, wanted Antony to have as little to do with these street politics as possible.
“Come with me, Pa.”
“What?”
“Tonight. We’re holding an emergency meeting. And come to the protest. See what it’s about. See what and who we’re fighting for.”
Kingsley raised his arm the way he always did before a lecture and Evelyn wished, just for one moment, that he were a puppet on a string and she the puppeteer, so she could close his lips, extend that arm to embrace their hurting son. The fingers of one of Kingsley’s hands hit his opposite palm. “This is not the way to do it. You need to—”
Antony flung his own hand in the air. “I’m out of here. My people… our people, need me.”