Part IV.

This is part IV of a posted series that began 3 posts ago.

Jamaal is dead.

He showed up in class one day at age 15, now 40 lbs heavier, facial hair, menacingly mean expression seemingly cemented onto his face. No one knows exactly what happened. Facts are hard to come by in a community distrustful of all authority, while simultaneously bound by an unwritten code that talking to "The Man" can get you as dead as Jamaal is. Did it have something to do with being on a street where he was not welcome, or perhaps he failed to come through with his end of a deal? Who knows? Maybe he became so big the lure of wanting his action was too hard to resist. In any event, it was dark, as was the car that sped by. In a moment of time too small to calculate, six or seven inexplicably loud bangs and six or seven muzzle flashes later, Jamaal lay at the foot of his turf. The street corner of 3rd and Pine was his kingdom as well as his final resting place.

Shaniqua hasn't been to school in months. Pregnant with her second child in less than two years, Shaniqua has no need for school any more. She's receiving enough aid to get her by for now, and soon her children will be of school age, where she can then have them evaluated to see if they too can be declared EMH or whatever. The circle has now closed for Shaniqua. She has begat what she beheld. In some strange way, so has Jamaal.

As Gay strolls down the street heading for school that morning, she thinks of Jamaal. She saw that his funeral was to be this morning, but she wouldn't go. She couldn't go. School and the students she mentors are a built in excuse to miss the funeral, but the truth is Gay just can't do it any more. She can't go there and watch the carefully choreographed dramatization by the mother crying out loudly about her "baby" being dead, while she falls arms spread over the casket. She couldn't listen to the friends who wanted to blame all the ills on the evils of racism and anything else they could come up with. Gay is a fine woman, Christian in intent and action at all times. And she just couldn't. Not now. Not ever again.

As she entered the school she whispered a small prayer offering to God in Jamaal's name, then walked up to a student and asked him to empty his pockets of whatever was bulging from them.

Another long day had begun.

In a few hours of talking to Gay, I learned of these things that are happening right now...today...as we speak. I wish Gay and all like Gay the power of faith, conviction, and strength as they pursue their search for the one...just the one...who will listen to and absorb the message.

The end.