Tyra Hunter, and: Adam's Work, and: The Other Side

Tyra Hunter

You can never know what happened,not entirely, not fully, but there isalways the trace, the witnesses,the evidence that you can piece,the likely version that would explainher having crawled away fromthe paramedics after they stoppedgiving her treatment, the witnesseswho maintain that they beggedthe paramedics to stop taunting herand go back to treating her woundseven as she worked to drag herselfout of the road. There were the nurseswho called her combative, whenshe arrived at the hospital,and the medical records that showshe was treated in accordancewith the protocol for addicts,despite her clear constitution,and there is her mother who insistson her virtue, and it's true thatI am taking sides here, that overthe newspaper accounts throughwhich her death first reached me,I was always inclined to sidewith Tyra Hunter, to say her nameand to celebrate the life thatshe had built in which her boy bornbody was treated like the womanshe knew herself to be, until hercar spun out and the EMTdiscovered her penis, until he stopped treating her at the exactmoment, according to witnesses,he said, "This ain't no bitch,it's a nigger."

Adam's Work

Bed-Stuy, September 2006

Over our heads, the bottle breaks, smashing the lightin front of the house, the cool pop of the escaping gasesjoined by the clearer crash of breaking glass. I fumbledwith the keys and you know already the word theywere shouting, the name they named us as they threwthe bottle, the name to which we said yes, but also to whichwe said no, as though there were two parts to that name,and one part was the thing that we were, and the other partwas the thing they might do to us, as though the atomic natureof words would make us defenseless, unable to resist or refuse.They shouted just before they threw it, so that we would look,and we did turn, and we did answer to that name, and we saw them,shouting, illuminated in our porch light, just before they let the bottle fly,and then they were turning, even as they were throwing the bottle,they were turning to run, their work finished with the naming,our work finished with the answering, the bottle comingas something like emphasis, and we were safe in that moment,though we could only have known it afterward, as dangeralways reveals itself, not in the moment but in the result, the way a car can slide out and then right itself, or the waya car can slide out and then crash. We were safe in that moment.They called us to their name for us, and then they ran,and still that name lingered, as I got the keys right and openedthe door, and still we heard that name, insisting that we deserve more,that they know where we live, that our love makes us lessthan human, or so monstrously human, we deserve what we get.

The Other Side

My mother tells me that she's on the other side now,that she's closer to death than she is to life, that shesees it, the way a high school sophomore can see collegeor the army, or the way a man and a woman might seetheir children, even when they have only known eachother a short while. When I ask her what it's like,she says it's ok, that she believes in a god who'sour father, that she's sure there's somewhere to go.

I'm a year from the age she was when I was born,and I can't imagine almost dying the way she did,the way her body held my precariously perched body,the way they expected the placenta to leave herbefore I did, that I would drown still inside her andthat she would die as...