The Sign Is Out There

All the people in the world are equal. God created humans with the same rights, regardless of their skin color or ethnicity. Therefore, it is unbearable if someone underestimates others because they have different skin color. You have to be kind to everyone you know. You have to treat people equally.

That is the thing I always tell my students in my class. Some people might think I am crazy talking about human equality to third-graders. But I always think it is the best time to introduce them to important social skills. They were beginning to be curious and understand the importance of working with friends. They would question any differences they found among the group. In fact, the class I was teaching was very diverse, I could not really come up with the statistics. Even if I did, there would be a long list of different ethnicities.

I remembered how Kimberly was shot. She was a good friend of mine and she was black. She had just come back from dinner when the police were raiding her apartment block. She walked on the aisle and found two policemen pointing guns at her. Shocked, she ran to her car. One of the policemen released a gunshot right at her back. She collapsed, shook and then died. Nobody did anything on it. Her husband, Alejandro, told me that police raided their apartment building several times a year because they suspected the tenants would possess drugs. They only checked the units where the tenants were black or Hispanic. He told me that he knew some white guys possessed drugs but police never raided their unit. Alejandro was furious but he did not want to confront the police. He figured out the way to fight the inequality through advocacy and he founded an organization to spread awareness on racism. He asked me to join him, to prevent another Kimberly in the future. I said I would try.

My husband, Thomas, once told me that we had passed the racism era a long time ago. Racism was the topic in the 70s and the 80s, when we were kids, he said. As adults, we didn’t have to care about it anymore because our generation had done a great job solving the problem. I didn’t believe in him. I though it was still a problem we were facing right now. It’s still our generation’s problem.  I recalled we argued about this in the car on our way home from our honeymoon in the Bahamas. And the outcome was not so good.

“Why don’t you just mind your own business?” he responded when I started the discussion about how unfair our social system was.

“But, you can’t just sit there and do nothing while you know some other people are treated badly,” I said.

“Oh, c’mon, honey. Why bother? We have just started a family. We have a business, a decent house. Why don’t you just enjoy your life?” he looked at me.

“It’s not about me. It’s more than just…watch out!!!”

Thomas turned around and saw a truck in front of us. He turned the wheel to the right and the last thing I remembered was the disturbing cracking metal sound.

I was sitting in a restaurant. I could hear a jazzy music playing in the air. I looked at a glass of red wine in front of me and then to another empty glass next to it. Why am I here? What am I doing here? I took out a mirror from my purse only to find myself put on make up. I was wearing a black blouse, not too fancy though. I put my mirror back and ran my fingers on the edge of the velvety white tablecloth just to kill the time. I felt a vibration in my purse. It must be my phone. I took out the phone. It was Kimberly.

“Hi, dear. How was the dinner? Has he proposed you yet?” Kimberly sounded happy.

“No, not yet. In fact, Thomas hasn’t shown up yet. If he isn’t here in ten minutes, I will probably just go back to the apartment.” I answered reluctantly. Thomas said we should meet at the restaurant at 7 p.m. but it was now almost 8. I didn’t think he was serious about our date.

“Woo, woo, easy, Sweetheart. He might run into something. You know he is not that kind of guy who would mess up this important kind of date, don’t you?” I knew Kimberly was half laughing.

“I know him quite well after the tenth date, Kim. But this is ridiculous,” I picked two petals of a red rose on the table. “I should just probably go home.”

“It’s strange. But spare yourself some times. He will be there. I guarantee,” she tried to console me.

“Thanks, dear. But I would rather spend my Saturday night watching a film with you than hopelessly doing nothing at this restaurant. It’s too fancy, you know what I mean?” I took a sip of wine.

“I have this case of a girl being raped by her white janitor at the office, remember? I won’t be able to spend the weekend with you even if I would love to. Just be patient. Patience always brings something good, isn’t that you always say to me?” she laughed again. “Order another glass of wine. That might help,”

“I have already had two glasses of wine, you know. But you might be right. I will order another one, talk to you later,” I called a waiter.

“Enjoy your dinner, my dear,” she tried to cheer me up.

“Thanks, enjoy your weekend. Love you,” I ordered another glass of wine.

“Ha ha ha. You know I always enjoy my weekend,” she laughed and hung up.

“Here is your champagne, Miss,” said the waiter.

“Wait, I ordered a Carbeney, not a champagne,” I complained.

“But Miss, a gentleman right there order it for you,” he pointed at the man standing at the door, smiling. He was Thomas.

He pointed his hand to the glass of champagne on the table. I looked at it. There was something in the glass. I looked at Thomas again. He grinned. It was a ring in the glass. He walked towards me, his hand was behind his back.

As soon as he was right before me, he kneeled and showed me a banquet of red roses and said “Will you marry me, Honey, Honey, Honey, Honey….”

I opened my eyes and saw fussy shape of Thomas’ face above me. He had bandages on his forehead. There were some plasters on his cheek. His hand was casted.

“Where are we? What… what… had… happened?” 

“Don’t be panic, honey. We are in hospital but we’ll be okay, you will be okay,” he consoled me.

“Are you okay?”

Looking at the bruises on his face, I was so shocked that I could not say a thing. I was so afraid that I might lose him. He started his auto dealing business from scratch so we could live a better life. He bought the house we were living in. He was the only person I could turn to since my parents died. He was my everything.

“I’m okay, Honey. Don’t talk too much, “ he caressed my forehead. “Everything will be fine.”

I was silence and everything came to me in a flash. We argued about my involvement in activism and then there was a truck before us. We probably hit the separator. It was bad experience after a bad argument. Since the accident I decided not to talk about my idealism with him because it would upset him.

***

That day, I spent my afternoon, like any regular afternoons, sitting on our Italian couch we bought two months ago for my birthday. Even though we have been married for almost ten years now, Thomas always has a way to show me his feeling. Like this year, he was planning for a trip to Mexico for our 10^th anniversary, which blew me up in the air when he first told me his plan.

Holding a cup of peppermint tea, I turned on the TV.

“A seventeen-year-old kid was shot yesterday night and the shooter was released today,” announced the news broadcaster on TV.

I almost choked when I saw the picture of the victim: a black boy wearing a red hoodie jacket. How could they release the man who killed an innocent boy? Suddenly I thought about Kimberly. Maybe it was the right time to pay my debt to her. I needed to do something.

“What’s on TV, Hun?” Thomas asked from his office at the far corner of the living room.

“Errr… Nothing new.  A kid got shot,” I told him.

“Oh, where is it?” he asked again.

“I don’t know yet. But it seems like it happened in Lake Twins.”

“Lake Twins? It should be not far from here,” he looked out from his office door. “Thank God it didn’t happen in our neighborhood. That’s why I bought the house here from the first place.”

I looked at him and raised my eyebrow.

“Oh, c’mon, Honey. We agree not to talk about that anymore, right?”

I didn’t answer him. I needed to do something. I needed to call Alejandro. I reached my black purse at the other end of the couch.

“Alejandro,” I said as I heard somebody talking at the other end, “have you seen the news?”

“Yes, Jennifer, I’m watching it right now,” Alejandro said.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Don’t know yet. Need to study the case. Why you ask?”

“I need to do something for Kimberly, don’t you think?”

“But, what about Thomas? Is he okay with that?”

“I will take care of him. Keep me informed, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Who was that, Honey?” Thomas walked out of his office.

“Oh, it’s Alejandro.”

“What does that bastard want?”

“Err. He asked about his son,” I tried to come up with a good reason.

“We agreed that you would stay away from him, didn’t we?” his face was red.

“Yeah. Nothing personal. It’s just about his son at school,” I reached my porcelain cup and sip the tea, just to reduce my anxiety.

“It’s about his son, or about you?”

“Really, honey. It’s nothing personal.”

“I don’t like the way he approaches you.”

“He knows that I won’t leave you, for whatever reason, Honey,” I walked towards him, gave him a hug and whispered, “Nothing will break us.”

He pushed me away and walked back into his office.

* * *

“Justice for Trayvon! Justice for Trayvon!” 

I shouted together with the crowd on the march protesting the police’s decision not to arrest the shooter. I was so angry with the security who shot Trayvon. It was not because he claimed that he was using self-defense, but the fact that he followed the victim because he was black. Alejandro and I agreed that this would be the best thing to do: bringing media’s attention to this unfair case and we have been doing a very good job so far. The case just went viral and it went to be national news. It seemed like people around the country were aware of this case. The only person who was not happy would be Thomas.

“Justice for Trayvon!” I shouted again, soon followed by the crowd.

Buzz. Silence. Buzz. Silence.

I felt my purse buzzing. My phone was ringing.

Jesus, not from Tom, please.

I fished my hand into my black strap purse. I stirred whatever things in it.

Phone, where are you?

I had to get down to open the purse so I could see the inside. Lipstick. Make-up set. Notes. Receipt.

“Are you okay, Jennifer?” Maria, who was carrying her son, asked.

“I’m okay. Got a phone call, I guess,” I smiled bitterly.

“Gosh, I should have come clear to Tom from the very beginning,” I told myself.

But I knew it was not the right time. He had been acting like my mom lately, after we got the result from the doctor, to be exact. We did not really think of having children from the very beginning, so we didn’t really bother to seek the cause. However, four months ago I started to feel some pain in my stomach. I went to see doctor and he found that my womb was not functioning properly because of a trauma in the past. The doctor suggested me to bring Thomas to explain the problem. Out of curiosity, he had himself checked and found that he had some problems with his prostate. The next thing was worse, the doctor told us that we could not have children. We could have figured out this ten years ago when we had car accident and had minor injury on the hip.

Not after Thomas’ investigative probing about Alejandro last week. He has been asking a lot about my going out with Alejandro. This Trayvon’s case has taken most of my free time. We had to do a lot of research and gathered many people to push the court to charge the shooter with proper sentence. I had to spend several weeks with Alejandro, discussing the best strategy to get people’s attention on this case because it was important to us and we wanted to make sure that our strategy was working right. We could finally do something to payback what had happened to Kimberly. Her death should not be in vain. Something must be done to ensure that there would be no more other Kimberly. Somebody should pay for her death and we agreed that Trayvon’s case would be our turning point. Thomas has been calling me once or twice a day since.

“Ah, here you are.”

I looked at the screen.

Jesus.

I had to stay away from the crowd, as far as possible, before answering the phone call. At the pretty empty parking lot, I answered the phone.

“Jennifer?” a familiar but frantic voice. “It’s Alejandro.”

“What are you doing with Thomas’ phone?” I was confused.

“You need to drive to the hospital now. Thomas had a heart attack.”

“What?”

“Explanation can wait. Come now!”

He gave me the address of the hospital. I ran to my car, parked 500 feet behind me.

Jesus. Where is my key?

I turned the purse upside down and shook it. I could see the things inside it falling down to the street. I took the key from the ground and scooped the other things into the purse. I needed to be there as soon as possible. I turned the engine and headed for the hospital.

Alejandro was sitting in front of the ICU when I arrived. Through the glass I saw Thomas weak body lying on the bed. An oxygen mask was covering half of his face. The machine next to him showed his heart rate. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with sadness. I put my palms on my face. They soon were warm and wet. I got down. Alejandro tried to support me and guided me to the chair.

“I am so sorry, Jennifer,” he said.

“What did you do to him?” my voice echoed in the alley.

“Easy, Jennifer. Easy,” Alejandro held my shoulders. I pushed his hands away. “You listen to me first.”

I didn’t want an explanation. I wanted my Thomas back.

“He invited me for lunch today. He suspected that we had an affair. He…” he didn’t finish his sentence.

“What… did… you… tell him?” I coughed.

“I thought he knew about what we are doing. So, I told him what we have been doing for Trayvon,” Alejandro lowered his voice. “And he suddenly collapsed. I called the ambulance and then I called you. But the doctor said he had passed his critical condition.”

“It’s… It’s all my fault,” I cried. “I should have not started to deal with this issue from the very beginning. The last time we talked about this, we… we had accident. And now….”

I tried to say something but no words seemed to come out of my mouth. I was so sorry that I caused Thomas so much trouble that I almost choked myself.

“I… I...,” I stuttered.

“He will be okay,” Alejandro put his hand around me. “He will be okay.”

In silence I made a promise, the one that I made ten years ago, that I would not bother others’ business anymore. I wanted my Thomas back. I promised I would be a good wife, serving him at my best. I would do everything I could to be by his side.

Alejandro handed me a tissue paper and then put his hands on my shoulders. I trembled but he caressed my shoulders. We sat on the chair in silence until the doctor came.