The TV had been on for as long as I’d been sitting at the kitchen table with Joseph. I had been prodding him to no effect, trying to get to the bottom of what happened—the mess with him and Rebecca—that landed him a few hours in jail. I kept the TV on low just as background noise and didn’t pay it any mind, encouraging him to eat the food he let grow cold on his plate. I was trying to set his mind at ease about bail and the other steps ahead to clear his name, when the timpani rolled and a trumpet blared as Susan Washington appeared on-screen, announcing the start of the evening news.  

“Our leading story at the top of the hour: a manhunt continues for Darius Jenkins, suspect in the killing of beloved local business owner, Phil Schneider, who was shot dead this afternoon in front of his car dealership in East Avondale. More details forthcoming as the investigation advances.”

I turned from the television to look at Joseph. He’d been despondent all afternoon, his face cast down at his lap, but the news made his head tick upward. I watched his eyes linger on the screen and narrow at the image they’d posted of the deceased businessman—blond-haired, blue-eyed with a ruddy face, double chin, and a squinty smile that after a moment’s attention looked more like a snarl.

Susan Washington transitioned to the next story—a terrible blaze that torched one of the high rises on MLK—and when I saw his eyes glaze over, I resumed talking with my son about the details of his case.

“We need to wait and see what moves the other side is going to make, but honey, to me the outcome seems pretty clear. Straight A student with no prior offenses, not even an absence from school? A judge is going to look at that and know something is off with this girl.”

Joseph rolled his eyes, refusing to talk as he had done ever since I’d come to retrieve him, and yet I carried on, not wanting to believe what was staring me in the face—how a few hours was all it took to turn my son from who he was into someone else.

He’d come to adopt the style and manner of his peers—the hard stare, chin up, and arms folded like a rapper posing for an album cover shoot, but underneath it all my sweet Joseph was all smiles, all curiosity.

He absorbed information with an ease that astounded everyone he knew, none more so than Rebecca, his accuser. I think about the ceremonies where some school official would read his accolades before granting him one of his many awards for high achievement. Rebecca was a similarly decorated student and, on the dais, she was always near enough to where I could see them side by side—his brightness contrasted to her grimacing, always sour to be second best. I think about it all now and chide myself that I hadn’t read the desperation in her face. I’d come to believe that hers was a look of determination to find some means of outworking my son. I could never have guessed that her eyes held a more sinister design—that she was concocting a plan to remove Joseph from the running altogether, clearing a path for herself at the top. Her accusation? That earlier the same day, Joseph had sexually assaulted her—my beautiful son who only weeks earlier had opened up to share his feelings for his classmate, Justin. My son who hadn’t the strength nor might to overwhelm anything but an opponent in a game of chess.

Joseph breathed in quickly, and my eyes shot to him, happy at the evidence that finally he was going to speak to me.

“The story a minute ago,” Joseph said. (As bookish as he was, he never kept up with current events.) “What’s that all about?”

I sighed and smiled faintly, grateful for a moment’s connection.

“It’s been going on all week,” I told him. “On Monday, a reverend was found shot dead, watering the petunias in his front yard. They reported it like any other homicide, with the suspect still on the loose. The next day, it was the same sort of thing. This guy—Dr. Mathis I think was his name—walking out of his dentistry practice, stabbed multiple times until he bled to death on the sidewalk. That second time they found a tag that read ‘care of TM,’ which the detectives said was similar to the earlier incident—on Monday the murdered man had ‘care of MM’ printed on a large sheet of paper that had been tucked into his pocket. On the news they said they caught the Tuesday Man but for whatever reason the murders kept on going.”

Joseph flinched, then massaged his wrist and brought his hands to the side of his face—swollen from where the police tightened the handcuffs then slammed him headfirst inside of the police van.

He stopped and looked down again, then shook his head.

“These people are no good, ma.”

I was trying to think of something else we could talk about, but we let the silence linger. A commercial had flashed on the screen—a new drug for irritable bowel syndrome where the side effects seemed just as bad as the original malady—before Joseph spoke again.

“So, what happened on Wednesday? Was there a Wednesday Man?” he asked.

I wrinkled my brow, stunned that he was still stuck on the news from several minutes earlier, but figured it might be the only way to keep him from leaving my company, headed into his room.

“On Wednesday … it was some insurance guy,” I said. “That time the killer put a tag in the murdered man’s pocket with the same words ‘care of WM.’ The news was saying there was some kind of manifesto printed on the other side trying to recruit others.”  

“These kids,” I sucked my teeth, “they don’t think about what they do and what it means for the rest of us. They think they can just go around killing folks, not understanding that’s the wrong way to get justice. Doing it that way makes them just as bad as whoever it is they’re fighting against.”

Joseph stared at me blankly, urging me to carry on talking about the murders.

“The man who was killed on Thursday, I think, was a barber. He’d just opened a shop downtown a few weeks prior. And today it’s this guy. Now that the story has gotten so big, it’s hard to tell when all of this violence is going to end. It’s just so random.”

“Not really,” Joseph looked down at his bruised wrists. “They’re targeting men with some local renown, men whose loss would be felt.”

I paused, trying to understand Joseph’s tone—it was a kind of confidence overlapped with what seemed like a growing sympathy with the killers.

“So, you agree with these men?” My voice was low, though tinged with anger. “There has got to be a more dignified way to fight back than this.”

“That ‘kumbaya’ stuff only works,” Joseph came back, “when the man on the other side has morals—when the opponent can feel shame about what he’s doing.”

“But what do they get out of it, the killers?” I looked at Joseph a long time. His head went back to stare at the ceiling light.

“I bet,” he said, “if only for a moment, those men felt triumphant and free.”

My mind frowned at the folly of his words. I opened my mouth to combat what he’d said, but nothing came out. I started thinking about freedom—one little word like a national religion, a word like sun through trees—shining on the tall and mighty, its brilliance dulled as it filtered through a canopy of colorful leaves. What were the possibilities of freedom for a black person living under the shadow of whiteness? What did it mean for my son who could spend his life excelling in all areas yet be crippled by baseless accusations?

I didn’t speak much after that. I just poured Joseph some more tea, which oddly he did drink, and sat with my thoughts as the news went on.

“Police officer sentenced for excessive use of force,” was the next headline. I looked up at the screen at the same time as Joseph and we both shook our heads to see that Donell Jenkins, the officer in question, was black.

“That would never have happened if he were a …” I started to say, then held my words.

“These people are no good, ma.” Joseph said. “They have no shame.”

I looked at my son who was smoldering by then, his arms trembling as if he would erupt at any moment. It sent a fear coursing through me like ice water in my veins, though I couldn’t dwell on it, distracted by the timpani and horns as a Breaking News graphic appeared on the screen.

“This just in,” Susan Washington stated with new urgency. “Authorities have just detained the man suspected in this morning’s killing of local business owner Phil Schneider.”

“He was found at a gas station on Route 10 with News Channel Nine cameras just arriving at the scene.”

The next images showed two police officers, one man and one woman, walking alongside the suspect—a black man whose face reminded me of Joseph’s, who looked like he could have been the exact same age. He jerked back and forth, trying to free himself from the restraints, the veins and tendons on the sides of his neck raised to a height as he tried making himself heard over the sirens.

Susan Washington stopped speaking with the reporter on location, asking production to let the audience hear the apprehended man, whose pleas became audible mid-sentence.

“… ‘cause I ain’t got no fear,” he said, his head jerking, the spittle flying from his lips. “They need to feel the same pain they putting us through. And who ‘bout to step up? Who gonna be the Saturday Man?” were his last words before the officers lowered him into the back of the cruiser and slammed the door.

“You see that?” I told my son. “That young man thought he was making a statement, and all it’s going to do is land him with a life sentence. You see that?” I said it again but Joseph did not respond. I turned to look at him and felt a pit grow in my stomach. I shuddered, watching his eyes change from the dark brown orbs they once were and start spinning like pinwheels.

“Joseph?” I said.

“Joseph?”

I called his name over and over but my child said nothing, and in the time after I threw my face into my hands—overcome with emotion—he must have stood up to leave.

In the ensuing days there would be cameras and bright lights, and I would stumble through tears, answering questions directed at me by Ms. Washington herself, though she got everything wrong. She asked about my feelings, my fears, and nothing about the evening I sat with Joseph and watched him activate in front of me, not knowing in the moment that I had lost my son forever.

Afterword

When I was approached to write a story based on the artwork of Armina Howada Mussa, I was first sent a series of photographs of her sculptures. Of the images I received, the one that stood out most is And to Us is the return (2025). The sculpture itself is challenging to describe—an inverted dome that sits atop a shallow tray. It has the appearance of an ancient artifact, like chipped earthenware found at an archaeological dig, though to my eye it looked more like an eggshell, abandoned by the life it once contained. The image made me think of freedom—the various ways we understand this concept as well as the paths we seek in its acquisition, then who and what gets left behind.

Initially I conceived a story centering on a woman who experiences the loss of an infant child. I was halfway done with the draft when another, more satisfying sequence occurred to me. In the new story the characters were faced with a comparably devastating circumstance, though the narrative math did not set them up to confront sorrow or helplessness. I created a story that would incentivize a show of strength by the characters in question—where there was some possibility, however dubious, of fighting back against circumstances.