He answered her only with a frightened embrace that answered, I need someone to hold after the dreams …

She was the angel he had remembered and prayed to in foreign darkness, only she came much, much too late.

All she could think in the weeks following that last night was, what had been God’s point of sparing her a telegram for three years just for the police to knock on her door when she thought the worst was behind them? She and the children had arrived home from the house she cleaned on East Eighty-eighth Street, she had made beans and rice for dinner, and was nursing her son. She had turned on the radio because she knew Billy liked coming home to music. But the hours had fast gone by without her hearing his footsteps pound four flights of tenement stairs to get to their Edgecombe Avenue apartment. By ten, she wrapped the food in foil and placed it in the icebox, hoping she would have to wake later in order to reheat it in a skillet for him. By midnight, she was wondering which one of his buddies could have corraled him into getting drunk at Minton’s Playhouse or St. Nick’s Pub. By 2:00 A.M., she was in a cold sweat. By the next noon, when three New York City police officers knocked on her door with an excuse (not an apology), she was dead.

You know all niggers look the same to ’em, one of the girlfriends who moved in with her after the shooting explained.

Just count your blessings they ain’t come looking for nobody here ’cause then you and your babies might be dead right ’long with your husband, another girlfriend’s mother consoled while she gave Tawana her first bath in days.

It’s just a shame they got a man who wouldn’t hurt nobody ’less the government made him, the elderly neighbor who came to check on her in the following days said.