Mama went to her room and closed the door. Meechie slammed the front door. I stood there in that empty hallway, not because bullets were flying outside, but because it’s where we always went to be safe. I slid down the wall and sat on the floor. In the distance, on State Street, somebody’s truck was playing Down for My Niggaz, the same song that Meechie rapped the night that he came home from the police station. My brother had walked out on us, had left us for the streets. That day, me and Mama got new names too: them other niggas.

Eleven
Cowboy Camp

I remember, the morning after he left, going into Meechie’s room, taking deep breaths in there, inhaling the scents that he’d left behind: A vile, sour odor clinging to socks lying in the corner. The lingering scent of Cool Water cologne, still heavy on the pillowcase. I sat on his bed, still a mess. He was gone, but bits of him clung to those cotton fibers. He’d left dishes on his dresser. Drawers still wide-open, exposing T-shirts that I’d start wearing. One knock-off Nike lay on its side in the closet, a pair he hadn’t worn in years. His room was a museum of a boy who once was. A boy who’d never come back.

I wrote in my journal a lot more after Meechie walked out. I’d stashed a photo of us in the back, between blank pages. We were just kids, four and eight in the snapshot. By the time I got to those sheets, and saw his sweet smile again, I’d begun writing about the unimaginable things that happened that summer.

Mama attacked Meechie’s room that first afternoon after he left, cleaning it with bleach. She erased his essence. I started going in his room more often, just to look out the window. He had a view of the fire lane, a road running between State and Federal Streets, where there was more foot traffic than fire trucks. We lived sandwiched between State and Federal, the government on both sides of us at all times.