Read Online How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon - Free Book Online Page A

one seemed to notice it except me. So we’d be walking down the street and other guys would be like, “Yo, S. Yo, J. Yo, T. Yo, Tyrell.”
    I threw a punch at T one time over it. Way back, when the initial thing was new. He just walked up to me and was like, “Tyrell—” and I hauled off and punched him. It happened out of the blue, for both of us.
    His nose started bleeding. I covered my head in case he decided to hit me back. But he just grabbed his face and said, “Shit, man.”
    So I said, “Sorry.”
    “What gives?”
    “How come you get to go by T?” I said. Really, I think it was a whole stew of things that had me feeling roughed up that day—stuff from home, stuff from school. But some things were fixable, and some things weren’t.
    “Well, it starts my name…?” he said slowly. He pulled up his shirt and dabbed it on his face.
    “Mine too.”
    T cleaned himself up best he could with us standing on the stoop. “You can be T,” he said. “Is that what you want?”
    I didn’t know what I wanted. I sat down and put my head on my arms. T sat down next to me. “Ty, my man,” he goes. “You so much bigger than one letter.”
    After that he started calling me Ty. Other guys picked up on it. It made me feel good. I got a nickname like the others, but it was bigger, like T said.
    That was years ago. New shit happened and I forgot all about that punch. Sammy became Sammy again. Junior became Junior again, which frankly was a nickname in the first place. But I’m still called Ty to this day, and T stayed T, for some reason.

 
    TINA
    The phone rings and rings and rings.
    Not usual.
    Tariq’s bedroom door is closed and locked.
    Not usual.
    The counters and the tables and the kitchen chairs are covered with baskets and platters and foil pans and plastic cartons of food.
    I can eat anything I want.
    Not usual.
    There’s fruits and crackers and cheeses and cakes and noodles and weird-looking salads and chicken and pie and potatoes and macaroni.
    I open them all and nobody yells.
    Yummy.
    But not usual.
    The phone rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and rings.
    Mommy picks it up and throws it, crack , against the wall.
    It’s quiet in the house.
    Very, very unusual.

 
    REVEREND ALABASTER SLOAN
    Vernesha sits with fingers knotted together. I have sat with a hundred grieving women and this is what they do. Sit quietly with folded hands while the world rips their sons, husbands, sisters, loved ones to shreds. I wonder if the power of their own hands holds them together.
    She follows my gaze to the lump of shattered plastic and metal on the floor beneath the window. “They won’t stop calling.”
    She wears a half smile. I can’t imagine where it comes from in the midst of the tornado she’s standing in.
    “No, they won’t stop,” I tell her. “Sometimes the best thing to do is to get out in front of it.”
    She nods, distant. “I want to speak.”
    “It’s smart to have Marvin doing the talking right now.” Vernesha’s brother has made some statements, defending Tariq’s character and decrying the general wrongness of how this whole thing went down. “He’s making sure your voice is being heard, but it’s quite soon for anyone to expect you to speak. And I’m here now.” As if that’s any reassurance. “I made one statement on my way in here, and I’ll be holding a press conference in a couple of hours.”
    “I’ll come,” she says, squeezing her fingers tighter. “I want to speak.”
    I have known in my life but a shred of the power of women’s hands. For a moment I feel as if Tariq himself is folded between her palms, unable to slip away.
    “You don’t have to.”
    Her eyes turn sharp. Dangerous. “I have to. I’m his mother.”
    “Well, you can’t really go wrong,” I tell her, stopping short of the truth: Whatever you do, they’ll eat it up.
    The little sister comes out. “You’re on TV,” she says. “Reverend Alabaster Sloan.” She pronounces