Your daddy know you’re out here? he asked.
I looked at him then, wondering for one irrational moment whether he knew my father.
But it’s just something men say to me—particularly Black men—when I encounter them in situations that look sketch, or when I might be in over my head. I think it’s because I’m petite and have one of those faces—docile and compliant, like I might be the kind of person who is easily led astray.
As the cop maneuvered me over to a waiting van where a bunch of other protestors had already been nabbed, I craned to look over my shoulder. When I realized how close the cops in riot gear were, I paused to yell before trying to take off myself and there was a second when I looked up and into the eyes of this guy I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen before, but who seemed familiar.
His eyes were gray, or a noticeably light hazel. Maybe even blue. I couldn’t tell for sure from the distance between us, but they weren’t dark brown. And he had curly hair, in a low-cut fade. When our eyes met, his lips parted a little, like he was about to say my name. He looked at me the way I’m sure I was looking at him, like we knew each other. And then someone bumped me, and I was spinning around.
By the time I made my rotation, the guy was gone and even in the confusion around me, I felt a tiny spark of disappointment.
In the back of my transport van was one of the protest organizers, and while we were being driven to our destination, he reminded us: Don’t say anything! Make no statements of any kind except to identify yourself!
He wasn’t raising his voice, but he had an emphatic way of expressing himself. Like everything he said had an exclamation point after it. He had removed his t-shirt and tied it around his head like a bandana, and his jeans hung low on his hips. He was covered in perspiration and his eyes were bloodshot, from the smoke or tear gas but he looked strong and resolute.
While he repeated the rules to us, no one else spoke. He just looked like one of those people, the ones who are born to be in charge, so you naturally listen whenever they speak. When he was done, he sat on the floor of the van, knees to his bare chest, and arms resting on them. He looked absolutely unfazed by our circumstances while inside, part of me was just on the edge of panic, thinking about where we were likely headed. I had never been in trouble of any kind before, never been called to the principal’s office in high school let alone arrested and taken to a police precinct.
When the organizer guy caught me looking at his ripped chest, and at the tattoos that crisscrossed his arms, he winked at me, and I blushed, letting my gaze drop.
Guys like him overwhelm me. I never know what to say or how to act around them. I’m attracted to them, even while I know they’re not my type, if that makes sense. Or maybe it isn’t that they’re not my type, I just don’t know that we would dance to the same rhythm in the mating dance.
Tee is very much into guys like him. All her boyfriends are like the organizer guy—fiery and difficult to contain, wild and free. Tee challenges and verbally spars with them, invades their personal space to get their attention, looking them boldly, directly in the eye and easily slipping into something like verbal foreplay. I would only stammer and stutter and make a fool out of myself.
Though guys like the organizer make my stomach twist and my head go a little fuzzy, I sense that to be with one, especially if he has no earnest relationship intentions, could potentially wreck me. With a guy like that, I would be little more than a groupie. Tee has the kind of heft, the kind of attitude that tells them she will accept nothing less than being their equal.
We were taken someplace that wasn’t like I expected a police station to be. I think it was more like a central booking area, or a place that the police department had probably temporarily repurposed to take in protestors.
They separated us by gender right away, and the ones who looked like they might be juveniles, they pulled out of the crowd and then locked the rest of us in a room. I scanned the faces immediately, looking for Tianna, but she wasn’t there. She hadn’t been in the van and neither was she in the room where they kept the rest of us. It wasn’t a cell. Or maybe it was, but it wasn’t how I pictured a cell to be. It was just a long, narrow room with no windows, brick walls that had been painted white, and benches on either side. There weren’t enough seats for all of us, but because we were women, we all instinctively tried to make ourselves smaller, to make room for each other.
While we waited to see what will happen next, we talked among ourselves, about where we were picked up, how many people we believed were at the protest, whether the same thing is happening in other cities and what the scale might be there.
DC, one girl said nodding. I bet it’s lit in DC.
We ain’t tryna get nothin’ lit, another girl responded. It ain’ about all that.
Someone else sucked her teeth. You know she ain’ mean it like that. But still. Fuck that. I say we burn this motherfucker all the way down.
That kind of talk passed the time—I don’t know how much time exactly—until finally someone came and I was pulled out of the room by a female cop.
It was weird, how they just direct you from one place to the next when you’re under arrest. No
