DO YOU know why I pulled you over?
No, sir.
Registration’s out of date.
Ingrid had watched the video fifteen times, and more—from her desk at the Starling Trust, on her phone in the subway, at home in the kitchen while David sat with a drink, watching B-grade TV.
Anything in the car I should know about?
A gun. But I got a license.
Don’t—
Bang. Pause. Bang.
The few times she’d brought up Jerome Brown and that New Jersey cop, David had shown little interest, quickly pointing out that, hey, the guy was reaching for a gun, right? Then he’d find a way to redirect the conversation back to his long-suffering novel.
Jerome? You kill my boyfriend? Wake up, Jerome! Did you kill my boyfriend?
So she let it be, creating a secret space in her life that held Jerome Brown, his girlfriend, Moira, and LaTanya, the five-year-old in the backseat who’d filmed her father’s execution.
This wasn’t the first time she’d heard this kind of story. Not the first time she’d seen handheld video of uniformed cops and young black men and heard the two-strike thumps of a trigger being pulled. Cities as catchphrases for institutional racism: Ferguson, St. Paul, Baton Rouge, Los Angeles, Montgomery, Raleigh, Charleston, Staten Island, Baltimore. She commiserated with friends at work; together, they shook their heads and lamented the state of the country—white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, after all! And knowing that even if they weren’t part of the solution at least they recognized there was a problem. They weren’t coldhearted.
How could she not watch it, along with five million others? How could she not read the Times for its hourly updates and listen to the talking heads who commented on all the sticky topics that surrounded the murder of black men in America? Ingrid’s head filled up with incessant partisan chatter: race and gun control and insufficient police training and fatherless childhoods and the medieval state of America’s criminal justice system. Then all that was swept away by the final moments of the video: a five-year-old crying off-camera as she tried to hold the phone still, just as she’d been told to, her mother telling her it’ll all be fine, telling her to not shatter completely.
Baby. Baby, it’s all right. Mama’s here.
When on Facebook she saw the call to gather in the center of Newark to protest the genocide of African Americans by the police, how could she not go? Back in college, she would have joined the struggle without a second thought, but she was a different person now. She’d grown addicted to comfort and quiet, while around her the world had deteriorated and the ruling class had consolidated its enormous power. She and her peers had slept for too long; it was time to do more than simply recognize a problem.
On Friday afternoon she left work early and took the Montclair Line to Newark’s Broad Street station, then hailed an Uber to take her to police headquarters, but the driver had to let her out a block away because the protesters had spilled into the road all around the building. She paid with her phone and got out and approached a crowd that seemed to have no end. Young and old, black and white, a kaleidoscope of ornate religions. Children on the shoulders of chanting fathers and grandfathers, teenagers waving signs and fists, watched over by police in riot gear, faces hidden by Plexiglas helmets. At first, she was overcome by weakness and a sharp terror—What are you doing, Ingrid?—wanting to turn around and hurry back to Tribeca and watch all of it through the safety of her television. But she’d made a decision, and so she moved beyond the police and into the crowd, through the sparse periphery—deeper, to where the night grew humid from the press of bodies and warm words. It was so loud, the shouts—Black lives matter! Hey hey, ho ho—these racist cops have got to go! Off the sidewalks, into the streets! Why are you in riot gear; we don’t see no riot here!
And then it came out of her, too. She couldn’t help it. Her mouth opened of its own accord and shouted: The people united will never be defeated!
On another day, in another place, sipping from a glass of rioja with her smart friends, she’d have laughed at clever jokes about these kinds of slogans. But now … now she stood with them. She spoke with them. Her voice had a thousand mouths. Her fist was in the air, punching the evening sky. Not just her fist but hundreds of them, punching holes in the clouds. If this went on, she thought with a hint of giddiness, the sky was going to crack and fall.
Speakers climbed on crates and shouted through bullhorns. A well-dressed local alderman, scores of fevered citizens, and a zealous preacher who asked, “What do we want?”
“Justice!” she called back.
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
“Praise the Lord.”
She’d grown. She had a thousand hands and feet; she was as big as a city block. Her voice could be heard for miles.
She was so entranced by the expanse of her body, the sheer power of all her limbs, that the brief shout, and then the scream, didn’t register. When a fat woman to her left looked over, past her, and said, “Oh, damn,” Ingrid looked, too. There was a fight breaking out. She jumped to see better, and at the apex of her leap she saw the shining Plexiglas helmets and the white smoke of tear gas. Everyone saw it now. The shouts erupted, mouths no longer in sync. Voices dislodged from the great beast, each voice betraying only panic. Someone shouted, “Hold your ground!” A few people did, pulling up shirts to cover their noses and mouths, but T-shirts and blouses aren’t made to repel tear gas. A gunshot—she didn’t know from where—and the panic took over. Run.
It was a mess now, her massive body breaking apart into smaller pieces that stumbled and shouted and fled. The cops mingled with the crowd, sticks high, grabbing shirts, pulling and dragging to waiting vans. The young fought back, throwing rocks and swinging backpacks, but were soon overwhelmed. Truncheons rose and fell. She saw an old man trampled. The flash of a Plexiglas shield. Another gunshot. A dazed boy with blood on his head. Sirens. Ingrid’s body was scattering, tumbling down side streets into the city.
Then she, too, was gone. Alone again in the streets of Newark. She didn’t know where she was anymore.