Screen Shots

Driving west on 80 takes you through some evolving landscape. From Newer New Jersey, where the smell of Bayonne still lingers in the air like so much puke, through the western most Jersey, where the racism is just delicious, into Pennsylvania. The place of the Amish, instead of the Jewish. Pennsylvania is vast. And it transforms. Ebbs, ties, marking the bends with farm castles and patches of creatures.

I think I counted 11 dairy farms before I hit Pittsburgh. The rest stop was mostly peopled with truckers, and truckers with pets-which made me miss my dog. I refilled my car and thought of my Smokey. I got back on the road for comfort. By then I was in the thicket of the state. Pennsylvania can also pass and not move, the interior is dense when you are moving. The areas in the state shifts into minefields of other states as well, like a venn diagram visible from space. There is PennsylJersey, PennsylTucky, (sister cousins abound), and PennsylHio. God and Truck country.

It really was beautiful. Pure and green.

Youngstown was the first signal that I was approaching dry Ohio land. As soon as I hit the border, the landscape changed. The soft and windy tree lined routes became rougher, and a little more jagged to the tires. The air turned to tire fumes and the traffic patterns get tighter. There was more roadwork going on. And when I got into Ohio, the sun was going down. I kept thinking of baseball stadiums and mill towns, and then all of a sudden, view from the window got dusty and stark. The highway was lit with markers and metropolitan signs that seemed to me a pale knockoff of the signs from I95.

Then I came up to Cleveland.

I got in to the city late and arrived at my girlfriend’s house on unlit streets. The houses are quaint, and everyone in the neighborhood has a yard. This is good, because my girlfriend Dee Dee has 4 of her 5 children living with her. The age range is 7-2 ½.

When I pulled up into the driveway, I walk over to the side door from where the kitchen light reflected out into the evening. I cam upon 4 little versions of Dee Dee. Sweet sepia seraphs that looked me up and down and licked their lips like I was breakfast. I thought they would be sleep. Dee Dee pulled her hijab on and greeted me at her door.
Dee Dee.

The last time I saw her she was walking away from the campus our freshman year, into a car that pulled out of Tennessee, then Kentucky, then over the boarder to the free state of Ohio. We were freshman together for exactly 7 months together. It was like being in war and we became sisters in arms. We listened to the stories of the young Black girls and boys who had come to the college before us, and late at night had to man the bell tower to warn of oncoming attacks by sheeted men looking to murder Negroes in college. We registered voters for the Democratic Party in the red-necked thistles of west Tennessee. We drove past the state erected statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Klan, as we returned to our campus to study. We saw my first burning cross, way off on a distant horizon in Smyrna Tennessee. We built  houses together with Habitat for Humanity.

We slept with the same boy.

 Now I stood before her some 20 years later, fully grown from the 18 year old stuck up and serious militant fawn that she was- a mother, recently divorced with the same soft face and perfect pouted lips, fair skinned and black and strong and beautiful- smiling. The only woman I have ever met who could smile mischievously and triumphantly at the same time.

She opened her home. The first one to come out and wave at me was her youngest boy, Jaquoub, who can recite and spell his entire name. His older brother, Taj, a gentler, sweeter strength of a boy with an ethereal smile whispered,  “hi”. Yazmin, the oldest, a pretty cocoa brown girl of seven, began introducing everyone to me, and on cue, the youngest and fairest, Zhara, with her golden blonde hair, touched my legs. She is the investigator, with the strength and fearlessness of the youngest of four.

Brave enough to venture forth into action while her siblings reason, safe enough because she has three who love her enough to die for her.

They rotate around their mother like stars and moons, move like constellations and gather and spread apart like little brown supernovas.

Immediately I knew there would be no sleep until they had all wound down.

Dee Dee stepped out of the kitchen after I settled my stuff in the room and listened to the crescendo of screams of an entire clan.

“I’m so glad you are here, but I have to feed them.”

Since I was a special occasion, we were going to get them pizza. I followed 5 sets of bright shining teeth into a minivan-literally I had to follow them because the streets were almost completely unlit.

This is the topography of the hood in Cleveland Ohio- the houses were perfect compact squares on top of a handful of yard set deeply away from a flat, jagged street. The lights on the side were sparse when they were lit, and the front of these houses had no porch lights, you couldn’t even see into windows at people watching TV or breaking bread. They were desolate, solitude squares.

We made a right on East 200^th street to traverse to the Pizza Hut to get the night’s special company repast. We passed whole blocks that were completely closed up. I don’t mean abandoned chic like Detroit, I mean closed up for the evening, on a Saturday night at 10pm. I was expecting to see Bizzy Bone or Kirby Pucket outside walking to the Circle K to get a pack of cigarettes or something, but no luck. Everyone in the hood seemed to be in for the night. Or the party was somewhere else in Cleveland, and nowhere near Euclid.

We hit a four way stop by a school, the kids were securely in back behind darkened mini van windows.  When Dee Dee made a left, we noticed about three police cars at a stop, surrounding a tan sedan with a young Black man inside. Dee Dee and I both looked at him, stopped  abruptly in our chronological conversation of catch up.
We both knew why we stopped, struck by the shrill sweet question of her Yazmin

“Mommy, why are the cops pulling over that man?”

The man in the car that was stopped was leaning out the driver’s side, his head on the window ledge, his hands hanging down the door with the blacks of his hand swinging down limp.
Immediately I thought he had been hurt.

Dee Dee rounded a corner and pulled the car over about 15 feet away.

We both took out our cameras and started filming.

The officers saw us, kept up with their traffic stop, and then we noticed that the boy in the car did move. I felt a small  whimper of air leave my mouth, I didn’t want to make any noise because I didn’t want her kids to know how scared I really was.

Dee Dee measured my reaction and put her phone down.
“I don’t know if his life is in danger, it seems like he’s gonna be ok…for now.”

I let myself laugh and looked back at the precious cargo that was still undaunted about our pizza adventure.

Dee Dee’s oldest son Taj is six years old, and absolutely gorgeous. He has a smile that is missing teeth and eyes that ripple like pools with skimming rocks. His long brown body is strong for his age and his feet are wide and steady. He kicked them back and forth as he hummed a song about pizza.

Jaquoub, the youngest son, is a dark brown slip of a boy with a stern face and soprano lilt. His tiny lean frame betrays a beautiful muscle tone- the small muscles that hold up the neck like crutches, the six pack that strains against breath and expands and contracts in his 5 year old stomach. Large hands that are already scarred and strong, Arms that will rise out of him come puberty and make him chiseled, and fearsome at about 15. The younger one doesn’t hold his tongue. He jumps up and yells to be heard over his siblings. He reads his mother’s moods and modifies his responses to please or antagonize her.

He gets angry.

Lashes out when he cant control his temper and kicks the chair of the minivan sometimes when he can’t understand how to process his moods.

He reminds me, not of the kids that I teach at home, but the fate that befalls them just because of their temperament.

We drove about a block away from where we had stopped and filmed when we saw the cop light flash in the rear view mirror.

I took out my phone from my purse again. I looked back at the children again who were all quiet, wide eyed, waiting for a sign from their mother.

Dee Dee pulled our her phone and called 911 as soon as she stopped the car.

The officer on the phone greeted her before the thin-framed Black man in a police uniform came upon the driver’s side window and shined a light into the faces of her children.

Jaquoub screamed.

The officer that came to my window was Asian in descent, probably Pilipino. He had a with a disarming smile, like a liaison instead of an officer.. He looked me in the eye and asked me how I was doing that evening.

I turned to Dee Dee as she spoke to the dispatcher about us just being pulled over.

The Black officer waited for her to roll down the window.

“I had called because I was being pulled over by the police and I just wanted to make sure that these were police and I wasn’t in danger.”

The voice answered back- is the police officer with you right now?”

“yes”

“Does he have badge and can you see it?”

The officer at Dee Dee’s side shone his flashlight in the car through the closed window.

“Yes”

“…Ok so I think you should let him perform the stop.”

“Ok, thank you. I just wanted to make sure this was s a legitimate stop and that my life wasn’t in danger.

The officer tried to get Dee Dee’s attention from the other side of a closed window. She rolled the window down slowly, I stared into the flashlight that sat on the officer’s shoulder.

He was brown and clean-shaven. He looked young- he and his partner, in fact, looked younger than Dee Dee and me. And new. Like neophytes and new men.
The officer had a drawl in his baritone, almost Southern and unmistakably Black, I have never been able to place a specific timber to a Cleveland accent. I imagined this officer was homegrown-as a New Yorker the cop accent is so ubiquitous it follows me to movies from outside my window at home. It even transcends culture lines to evolve into the quintessential douche bag cop accent: a New York cop. 2^nd only to the Boston cops.

This officer was almost polite, if not still irritated by the way the stop was going.

Both officers were slight, as well. They didn’t appear to have the Bradley Cooper chests that squeeze into bulletproof vests like the cops at home. It made him look human to me. Or maybe it was his brownness.

“Are you done?” He asked into the car as Dee Dee was rolling down the window.

“Yes officer-“

“Can I see your license and registration?”

Dee Dee was courteous. “Sure”. She handed it over to him and stared straight ahead, her phone on the dashboard. I held the camera at an angle where the officer could see I was filming, but I didn’t put it in his face.

The children were still in the darkness in the back of the car. Not even breath in their crisp tiny bodies, like naked branches in a forest at night.

The officer looked at the license, holding it up to the line of sight of Dee Dee’s profile. He spoke some numbers into a mouthpiece that hung from his collarbone. His flashlight was still, and his partner’s light shone down on my lap, impeding my recording from time to time.

“So, this is a traffic stop, have you ever been pulled over in a traffic stop?

“Yes, officer and the as time I saw somebody get pulled over they died.”

“So why, if you’re so fearful of something like that happening, why would you stop and pull your car over in an intersection and stop-“

“We saw a man outside his window, he looked dead to me and I was concerned.”

“Ok, the man looked like that because he was getting a ticket, you stopped at the intersection and were blocking cars- you cant just stop at an intersection and start filming, you can park your car a safe distance away and then get out and start filming, but obstructing traffic isn’t safe.”

“Ok officer, we are sorry. We understand now.”

“Also, your license plate is obstructed. The county name and number should be visible and they are not because of your license bracket.”

“We understand, Officer, Thank you.” I replied to him in my most friendly nonviolent voice.

He asked Dee Dee for her insurance card while he waited for the reply that was supposed to come out of the walkie attached to his collarbone.

“Do you understand what I am telling you?”
Dee Dee stared forward and answered him.

“I understand completely. In the future if I see someone in distress I should pull over at a safe distance, I should properly park my car I should exit my vehicle and then I can record if I think somebody’s life is in danger at the hands of the police.

“Right.” The officer smiled, he was exasperated, but his speech was even and patient.

“Just make sure that you stay out of intersections and do not disrupt the flow of traffic. Can I have your registration?”

Again Dee Dee complied. The red lights blinked against the whitewashed houses on the other side of the street. Then darkness. There weren’t that many streetlights anywhere in this city. And no one had passed us on the street in almost 20 seconds. It occurred to me to start counting after 5 seconds.

“Jaquoub…”I heard the voice of Taj, call his little brother’s name in comfort.

“What’s wrong,” I turned to spot movement in the backseat, all I could hear were their voices, and the see the flash of the occasional white of the eye in the florescent of the officers beacon. Their teeth were too small to reflect, and I imagine their mouths too pursed in fear. Even though, when the boy spoke his brother’s name he was calm, loving almost, as if he reached out and sensed something in the dark.

“Thank you officer,” Dee Dee placed her license back into her wallet. “I appreciate you explaining that to me and letting me leave this traffic stop with my life. I’m really not trying to be funny.”

The officer lowered his flashlight- “But I really don’t appreciate that though,- I don’t appreciate you having your kids scream when I walk up to the car-“

“They were screaming because they were scared, officer.” I didn’t sound friendly anymore, but I was still respectful and holding on to the camera.

“I had to see back there,” He answered back.

Dee Dee looked at me, “No, no , my kids are aware of how they can be treated by the police.” She turned to the back= “Ya’ll got your hands up?”

 From the movement of the darkness in the back, I can tell as soon as Dee Dee said it, all the children in the back put their hands up.

The officer lowered the flashlight more- “It’s just not helpful you teaching your kids to act this way a at traffic stop-“

“I teach my children to try to avoid the police at tall times. “

The officer interrupted, “But can I just make a statement though?”

“NO, not if it has to do with her children. Thank you so much for letting us off with a warning Sir, we are very sorry.”

The officer looked at Dee Dee again.

“D o you want to step out the car so I can talk you?”

Dee Dee’s eyes remained foreword as she answered him.

“No, I’m afraid”

“Ok, I’m just asking, because I would like to have a conversation with you.” He blinked and pursed his lips, He looked into the back of the car again, but now the flashlight was lower, picking up the shadows inside by the windows, and I wondered what he saw.

He turned and looked in my camera and said, “Because you need to be very informed all the way and not just informing one side of what occurs. Ok?”

We agreed. We thanked him again and he told us to have a wonderful night.

We still had pizza to attend to. We drove on, bouncing between silence and raging reply and picked up food for the kids in the back that didn’t understand why their mommy and her friend were laughing about their anger, so they tried to join in. At least the girls did. The two boys didn’t say anything for a while.

When we got back to the house and ate, I watched Dee Dee’s kids jump on top of each other in the living room after they had eaten their company is here dinner. They hugged each other almost like they were giving chokeholds. As if their life depended on their physical contact. They loved each other with a fierceness of a wolfpack.

Like a handful of coins in different shapes and colors but stamped identical on both sides.

When they finally went to sleep that night and Dee Dee and I watched the video, I felt shook when I saw it from a camera’s perspective.

 Cracked up like the inside of a thermos that has hit the ground.

 That officer may or may not be a good man, but he was still a cop, and he still pulled us over for no reason, but he didn’t kill us, he wasn’t even rude, not like the overseer rudeness I have come to expect from the NYPD, and all cops. He was patient and even-tempered, he said he wanted to have a “conversation” with her, which is exactly what I say to my students at home when I want to disengage a tense situation, but he still wouldn’t admit that he pulled us over because we were filming his previous stop. Dee Dee checked her license bracket, and it wasn’t obstructing anything that needed to be verified on her license plate.

But we lived.

That night before I went to sleep I thanked God.

And then I prayed for that officer.