@WhitePowerCord: Like monkeys in the zoo. Making sounds and throwing feces. Ooh Ooh. Fenced in! Tear gas! Tase their asses! #PassThePopcorn

@KelvinX_: Underhill, take your stand. #TodayForShae #TomorrowForAll

DAY FIVE:

AND THE DAYS THAT FOLLOW

PEACH STREET

Come the light, the street goes quiet. Business as usual, despite a lingering feeling of aftermath.

Curfew is a promise of one thing, and a threat of something else. The tension in the neighborhood makes it hard to move around.

The neighborhood is at war, day and night. The ice-cold pavement seethes with fury. The weather may be the only thing keeping them from lighting it up.

WITNESS

The squad car rolls past your house a few times nightly. Blip-blip.

The small sound speaks much louder to you. We are watching. We know who you are. Where you live. Remember that, when you speak about what you saw.

You draw the curtains tighter after the third time, turn the lights down as low as you can stand. Think about the girl. About the cop. About what is required of you.

You heat a pot of water. Stand by the stove, remembering the war in your wife’s eyes. Try to reconcile the dueling pleas for safety and justice. You prepare a mug. Chamomile is supposed to be soothing. But you’re out, so you settle for Lemon Ginger. You can cut the spice with honey.

The water roils and hums. The head of steam gathering in the kettle is emblematic of something. You watch the first curls escape through the tiny hole. Snap off the heat at the first hint of a whistle.

Blip-blip.

You can take the hint. Enough already.

You sip your tea. Think about your children, asleep in their beds, already so inured to the blip-blip that they do not even stir.

EVA

There is always a cruiser stationed outside our house. Daddy says it is to keep us safe.

There are a lot of people who are out to get cops. Especially cops turned famous by circumstance.

When your name is on the national news, Daddy says, it tends to bring out the crazies. “There’s a target on my back,” he says.

So there is always someone watching. I’m not to answer the door.

They don’t flash their lights or anything, but the warmth of the red and blue covers us like a blanket anyway. We are protected. We are part of something bigger than any one of us.

I can snuggle under the covers and know that no one is going to hurt me.

Still, it is hard to sleep.

I don’t like knowing that someone might want to hurt me.

TINA