Thahabu

Everyone has been talking about Desiigner’s XXL freshman freestyle this week. I really liked it: It’s not that I think it was especially esoteric or that Desiigner is one of the best lyricists of our time, but it was catchy and he really has a knack for rhythm. But what stuck out to me most was that the tune sounds like a lullaby, yet the lyrics are extremely morbid. It’s basically about Timmy Turner killing everyone with a gun. Initially the juxtaposition made me giggle, but then it reminded of the summer my younger cousin got shot by a stray bullet almost 10 years ago.

He was eight and I was 11. I was standing in the kitchen while my dad was chopping fruit or something when I got the news, I remember the way the sun was coming in and hitting our light brown countertop, it was so shiny. “Jabari* got shot yesterday, he’s in the hospital and he might not walk again.” My mouth went dry and my head became a hazy smog. It didn’t really register to me, what had happened.

I had just seen Jabari and my other cousins the weekend before, I was ecstatic about starting middle school and he’d found out he was going to skip the fourth grade. I was so proud of him. My cousins live in Newark, New Jersey, a 10 minute drive from where I live. Being the shy kid that I was, I preferred spending my weekends playing games and having sleepovers with them over interacting with the children in my own town. That’s why I always say that half my childhood was spent in Newark, playing hopscotch and running to the corner store for honey buns and Now and Laters with my cousins and their friends. I became so attached to that block that even when my cousins weren’t home and I was just being babysat by my grandma I’d go next door and hang out with their neighbor Makayla.

At that age I didn’t pay much attention to the differences between our neighborhoods. From my perspective, the South Ward of Newark was heaven. It was my dad’s hometown, and where I received the most love from overly concerned aunties and my grandma. Reports of gunfire and gang disputes seemed so irrelevant and far-fetched to me, That doesn’t happen where my relatives live, there’s so much love there, it’s so safe! I was woefully ignorant and, that summer, I learned that ignorance is a privilege. Even though I was there every weekend. I didn’t live there. I was able to appreciate it as the wonderful place that it is just like my family members could, but I was able to ignore community issues that they could not. They had friends who had been victim to gun violence, something could never imagine until it happened to Jabari.

Things started to change after that. Jabari was in the hospital for what seemed like a year. Visits to my grandma’s house became less frequent—my dad didn’t want me visiting my friends and family over there as much. It wasn’t safe, in his opinion. I didn’t understand it then, but his intentions were in the right place. I felt guilty, though, for not seeing them. Whenever I did, they’d complain that they missed me. As time went by, they made new friends whom I didn’t recognize and I began to feel out of the loop.

When Jabari finally left the hospital, he was in a wheelchair and struggled with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. He still kept his lively sense of humor and positive outlook on the future, but it was still a difficult adjustment. I was so angry that his way of life had taken a such radical turn while he was riding his bike home from football practice. One of our other friends was shot in the arm that year, too, and I now understood these horrific acts of violence, especially in summer, weren’t just news stories that I could shake my head at while watching CNN.

After that, I began to get agitated about the way people used the word “ghetto.” I felt that when people misused the word or talked down on those neighborhoods they were talking about my family. It disgusted me that people who had never even stepped foot in an inner city area had so much nonsense to say about it and the people who lived there. I was sitting with my friends in freshman lunch when one of them used the word in a really offensive way that she wasn’t aware of and I started screaming at her. I even followed her into the bathroom when she tried to diffuse the situation because I was so upset. It was years after my cousin’s shooting and he was walking with the help of a cane. But I see now that I acted that way because I was triggered.

Last year, me and my friend Max were talking about how much we love Chance the Rapper. They started playing “paranoia,” the second half of Chance’s “Pusha Man” song. Although I had heard the song before, I had no idea of its name, so when it started I was surprised. “I heard everybody dies in the summer / So pray to god for a little more spring,” I told Max to shut it off because it reminded me of the summer Jabari was shot. I felt so bad about inconveniencing them, but the song highlights how, while summer is a fun and relaxing time, it can also mean the start of senseless violence for a lot of people. I’m reminded of this whenever Jabari posts an RIP Instagram picture for friends that were murdered.

When I heard about the Pulse nightclub shooting and the death of Christina Grimmie, I cried and got really depressed. My friends were sad too, but didn’t understand why it affected me so much. It’s reactions like that they make me embarrassed to discuss this story, because I know it makes them view me in a different light. ♦

*Names have been changed.