His searching fingers raked my books onto the floor as if he’d find something illegal between the pages of my novels. I didn’t have a voice to tell him to get out, this grown, white man in my room, in the middle of the night. I had on nothing, really, a T-shirt that barely covered my thighs. He wore an entire uniform with a cap and stars and a gun.

His skin, his clothes, his behavior in our apartment—I just kept thinking he didn’t belong. I could hear Meechie’s voice pleading, all high-pitched, then coughing. Me and the officer destroying my room bolted for the door. One of us knocked over the photo of me and Meechie, fracturing the glass. Then he yelled at me to “Stay here!” and went to Meechie’s room too.

“Meechie!”

Mama howled his name over and over from outside his door. Then a police officer appeared at the end of the hall, because apparently one of them stayed by the apartment entrance. He walked down the hall from the kitchen, in no hurry, and said, “Ma’am, won’t you come on in here, and sit down.” It wasn’t a question at all. He motioned for us to follow him down the hall. When we didn’t move, he hollered, “Let’s go!”

“Meechie!” Mama yelled at his door. “Mama’s here!” Then she grabbed my hand, and we did what he said and sat on the couch. It was true. She was here, and he was there. And that’s how it had been for a long time. She was here, and he was there. In his own world of gangster rap and whatever else he did in his room behind that closed door. We went downtown, and he was back at the building, in the apartment by himself. We visited Mama Pearl and he stayed home, alone, watching TV. We were always here while Meechie was there. It was his choice to stay back. That night, I felt all the times that we were separated, and I blamed Mama. If she hadn’t opened the door, he would still be asleep. If she hadn’t opened the door, their loud, dirty boots would’ve remained outside, and not in our sacred space, all over our peaceful, clean apartment. If she hadn’t opened the door, my brother wouldn’t have had the law choking him in his own bedroom.

They all came back to the living room in a straight line, Meechie’s face still smashed flat with sleep. I could see lines where the pillowcase creased marks into his jaw. He had dried saliva at the corner of his mouth, and everything else he had control over stretched into panic.