A PANTHER THROUGH AND THROUGH. It’s what I’ve wanted. It’s been everything. If she’d said it to me a week ago, a month ago, I would have been over the moon.
Even now I cling to it. Tell myself I did the right thing.
It’s only been a day, but already I miss Raheem. I don’t know how to think about him now, without a place to put him, like the bed across the room or policing the streets with the Panthers. I imagine him floating, getting smaller and smaller as he moves away and away.
I sit at the base of the wall, knees drawn up tight. The sweat that stings my skin doesn’t quite jive with the fresh spring air. My pulse pumps beneath the skin of my throat like the flawed and ticking surface of an old forgotten clock. People come up, speak to me, but I’m locked here, unable to listen or respond.
I breathe toward a place in me that cannot be touched. I know I’m going to carry the weight of guilt for the rest of my days. Things I’ve heard, things people have said, do not sink in. “It’s not your fault. You did the right thing. Power to the people.” Every attempt at forgiveness crashes like an ocean wave, never fading, just lulling to rise again. Over and over. Crashing. The sound and the clean mist spray, but I’m nowhere near the water. I can never be clean of this.
To live for the people, to die for the people. What about the in-between? What happens between the moment you decide to give up your life and the moment you actually die? It feels like suspended animation, this call to arms. Unceasing. I can’t begin to say I’m sorry. I can’t begin to believe there was a right thing to do, a way to play both sides against the middle.
I start to see Raheem’s betrayal as a betrayal not just of the Panthers but of me. Everything I’ve worked for dashed with a sweep of his hand into the pigs’ enormous till. I can’t forgive him. He won’t forgive me, either, and I can’t forgive myself. It’s a wash of anguish.
Perhaps that’s what it means to be a Panther in the end. To do the unforgivable. Willingly, without flinching. The greater good is worth our sacrifice. Worth more than one life, more than my destruction from the inside out. The worst part is, it’s Raheem who taught me that.