Revolution

Sometimes I can still feel the gun in my hand. The smoothness of the oiled stock, the surprising heaviness of it, the startling force as it fired, the smell of gunpowder in my nose. I always thought it would be easy to squeeze the trigger. But it wasn’t. The resistance, in fact, was fierce.

What I miss most is my name. I lie awake at night and sigh it out into the air like a song—Retha, Retha, Retha. I can hear my mother calling me home on those August firefly nights when I’d stay out late racing the boys—and winning usually. “Retha, time to come in now.” When I came in, whining and groaning that I never got to do anything, she’d say, “You know I can’t have you running the streets at all hours. Just ‘ause these little knuckleheads do doesn’t mean I’m going to let you.” Then she’d brush my face roughly with her hand. “Lord, child, you look like who-shot-John-and-don’t-do-it-again. Get upstairs to that tub.” That’s when I knew that she wasn’t really angry. That’s when I knew she loved me. Her hand on my face, my name in her mouth. The sound of my name. I still listen for it. But there is only silence.

My mother was twenty-one when I was born. It was a difficult birth and she couldn’t have any more children after me. She always said she didn’t mind—”You more than enough work, child”—she would say to me, laughing, but I wondered sometimes. I’d see her giving babies long, considering looks in the grocery store, like she’d rather buy them than a can of tuna. My father died when I was ten. Hit by a car crossing the street on his way to work. The clearest memory I have of him was the way he’d swing me up in the air when I was little. I remember the blue sky pressed against my eyes and the deep rumbly way that he’d laugh as he tossed me. I know they loved each other. I know that my mother poured everything she had into the house once he was gone. She filled it with knickknacks; awful little brown-skinned china dolls ordered from the backs of magazines; plastic slipcovers on the furniture; small, scratchy hand-loomed rugs everywhere. They choked me. They only made me want to get away, to be someplace airy, to live in a house with one chair, sand on the floor. Someplace clean. Now I live almost this way, like a monk or a hermit. But I think of her cluttered house so often. I think she’d be pleased.

It takes a long time for news to get here. I didn’t hear about Huey being killed until sometime after it happened. I got a copy of USA Today at the Novotel—three days afterward. It had that picture of him in the rattan chair with the beret and the gun. It was like a knife in my flesh. I killed for him, for what he stood for. When I close my eyes, I can still see the surprise in the eyes of the man I shot—so blue!—growing wide with shock, then flat as the life went out of him. Seconds before he died, he knew it was going to happen. He was resigned to it, ready. There was no more fear. I could see it. I could see right into his heart, into his spirit. It was the only time I’ve ever really felt close to a white person.

Deciding to run didn’t come right away. In those days, it was so hard to think. There was only one person I could trust. Do you know what that means? People say it all the time—”Can I trust you?”—but they don’t know what it means not to trust. It means the ground under your feet is flying over your head half the time. It means your...