Inner City Blues – A Black Child’s Lamentfeatured

A few days after my 11th birthday, I was shot at.

My father was getting robbed on our front lawn. We heard the pop pop pop from inside the house.

I thought it sounded exactly like the popping of a big soda bottle; I had never heard gunshots that close before.

 

My grandmother opened the blinds & exclaimed my father’s name in horror.

She ran outside—into open gunfire—without hesitation to be by my father’s side.

 

My 15 year old brother & I still did not fully grasp what was happening until we peered through the open doorway & saw my grandmother cradling my father in her arms.

 

We then heard a voice say “stay back!” followed by the sight of a muzzle flash & another pop.

 

When I saw the flash, I thought I was going to die.

 

My brother & I ran upstairs. We tried calling 911, but I was incoherent—screaming, babbling, hyperventilating into the phone. We couldn’t recall our dad’s address. So we were unable to receive help.

 

Eventually, the man left. My father & grandmother came back inside. A chunk was missing from the tip of his finger where a bullet grazed him.

 

My brother & I got a stern talking to about memorizing our address. They showed us where the gun was hidden. Just in case.

 

Two months after that, my father was shot to death. I was told he was robbed at the Valero gas station on 7 mile. They shot him in the back. His death certificate says he died at home. My grandmother was the one to report it.

She was also the one to tell me he died. 

 

Two young men killed him apparently. Now, they are enslaved by the state for life.

 

My family fully fell apart after that. My grandmother isolated herself. My brother’s mother & my mother rekindled their bitter feud. 

 

I lost my friends because I stopped going to school. I lost all sense of Hope & Love for the world. A coffin of wounds closed around my heart; & I lost my Self. 

 

Without my father to assist us financially, my mother & I returned to a period of chronic homelessness & hyper mobility. This would be my reality through the ages of 11-19 years old.

 

As a result of my circumstances, I lost all semblance of mental stability. I was diagnosed with severe depressive disorder, severe anxiety disorder, & post-traumatic stress disorder shortly after my father’s death. 

 

Through my adolescence, I would experience abuse at my own hands & those of others. I would be exploited, my body taken from me for someone else’s financial gain. I would exploit myself, using my body to survive because I had no other means. 

 

At 15, I would receive a traumatic brain injury from a beating at the hands of my “boyfriend“, who was the first to show me what my body was worth. 

The beating was provoked by my going nonverbal, a symptom of the autism that would continue to go undiagnosed due to the way I appeared in the world.

 

My mother had no sympathy for me. I was being “fast”. I was “trying to be grown”.

No one saw a child who was so desperate for Love they were willing to endure attention that hurt, because it was better than no attention at all. 

 

Shortly after this, I was subjected to more abuse within the psychiatric system after an attempt at self-extermination.

This brought me even deeper into self loathing. I was convinced that I was truly worthless.

 

The silhouette of the man & the muzzle flash of his gun pointed at me from my front lawn continued to haunt me.

 

When I lost myself in a sea of chemicals & pain, I awoke paralyzed; & he was standing over me. That damned flash inches from my face. His face still concealed by the shadow of his hood. I wished the bullet would reach me this time.

 

My circumstances led to me bouncing from place to place, doing what I could to survive. There were times where I was subjected to physical & emotional abuse as a result of becoming an unwelcome guest in someone else’s home. 

 

In the summer of 2019, I ended up on the street because I refused to continue subjecting my body to abuse for a place to stay. I was staying with a Black woman cop & her family on the East Side of Detroit. 

When I said I no longer wanted to continue with our arrangement, she & her husband informed me that no one is going to take care of an adult for free. 

 

Over the course of that summer, I was robbed, physically attacked, & experienced threats that changed me for good.

 

In the year of 2020, I lost everything aside from my cat & precious few belongings. I moved to Minnesota with the help of an online friend who offered me a place to stay. This was the last year I would see or hear from my mother. 

 

It was also the last year I would see my grandmother alive. 

 

She died from Covid after going into the hospital for a heart attack & a stroke.

While she was hospitalized, I had convinced her to get the surgery she needed. She was afraid of dying on the operating table, & she said I helped her be more optimistic. She caught the disease as she was being prepared for discharge.

 

She called me & told me she was being transferred to hospice. I didn’t know what that meant. I thought she was going somewhere to get the care she needed to be healthy again. She didn’t want to tell me the truth.

 

Staff at the hospital stole her personal belongings as she was dying. No leads were found. 

 

My beautiful grandmother died alone in a hospital as a result of neglect. & She was robbed on top of that.

 

Two years later, I would hear from one of my older sisters. She had developed an addiction to crack. Her voice sounded different. We both cried on the phone. 

 

After the call, I wailed until the fire in my chest engulfed me completely. I mourned the girl she used to be. I cursed the system that crushes little Black girls by design.

 

Two years after that, I would receive a phone call about my brother. He had been shot in the head twice, shortly after returning to Detroit from his other home in Atlanta.

 

They shot up his car while he was in the driver’s seat.

 

By the time I had been informed, he was still in the hospital. They told me it was only a matter of time. He wasn’t making it out.

 

He passed January 7th, 2024. He had gotten accepted into medical school after graduating from Morehouse College. He wanted to be a pediatrician. He’s one of the smartest, most resilient people I’ve ever known. 

 

& he died from two bullets to the head in Detroit, Michigan. 

 

The silhouette of the man & his muzzle flash visited me that night. I saw my brother with tears in his eyes & blood in his ear. I saw my father bleeding from the wound on his back. I saw what killed them. 

 

Now, I live in Minneapolis where the gangs of the USA terrorize random people. Committing executions in broad daylight. They don’t have to hide like the petty criminals in the hood. Their criminality is allowed. 

 

I’m being asked about my safety. I am receiving prayers & well wishes. The world seems to be concerned about Minnesota & the escalating violence from the government. 

 

& yet, I am torn up inside because I feel safer here than I did in Detroit. 

 

I am resentful. I feel rage & bitterness. 

 

Because imperialism has always made war on Turtle Island. They have always terrorized citizens with no regard for human suffering. 

 

I survived that war. I am haunted by it. I will never recover. 

 

The hood has been unsafe. Stolen African descendants have been dying & disappearing as a direct consequence of white supremacist imperialism. 

 

No, my father, brother, & grandmother were not murdered by men in uniforms.

 

They were murdered by the systems those men uphold. What those men represent. 

That is what killed them. 

 

I’ve neglected to share the full extent of what I’ve lost & endured as a result of structural violence. The list is too long. 

 

The fact is, this is not new.

What’s happening in Minneapolis is no more scary to me than what I come from. 

 

I had just turned 11 & saw the flash that came with a bullet intended for me. It’s haunted me since.

My father was murdered. My brother was murdered. My grandmother was murdered. My sister’s life was stolen. 

 

By white supremacist imperialism. 

 

The hood exists because of white supremacist imperialism. Violence in the hood is a result of white supremacist imperialism.

 

It is an intentionally manufactured breeding ground for prison-slave labor, sex-slave labor, & continued subjugation of Stolen African descendants. 

 

The deaths of my loved ones were by design. My trauma is by design.

I am not meant to be alive. I even feel guilty for it. 

 

Everyday I cry for my Beloveds. My family. I remember their lives & their deaths. No one else will. 

 

I don’t think I will ever be free of the pain. 

 

So now, when I see colonizer descendants crying about ICE, or when people ask about my safety, I must acknowledge the bitterness I feel in response. 

 

That bitterness is saying “I’ve been more hurt by this monster than most of you will ever be.”

 

That bitterness is saying “Why have you gotten the luxury of feeling safe for so long?”

 

That bitterness is saying “They tore me apart & killed my family. & None of you care because they did it without uniforms.”

 

That bitterness comes from the child within me who’s had to bear this grief-rage for so long, who’s discovered the monster behind the horrors that touched their life, & has had to watch as the rest of the world accepted it as “the way things are”.

 

Until it started happening to them. 

 

& even then, the Killing Fields of America still go unseen, ignored.

Global injustices take precedent over the people suffering & dying next door.

 

I’m angry. I’m hurting. I feel like a mass of wounds enclosed around a beating heart & eyes that can’t stop crying. I’ve been this way since I was 11 years old. The weight just gets heavier.

 

So in my eyes, what’s happening in my city right now is old news. 

It’s just new to y’all. 

 

Consider yourselves lucky.