Promise Boys

by Nick Brooks

As a Black man, you get no benefit of the doubt. You have to be on the right side of everything.

Still, even if he’s innocent, I think this’ll ruin him. I think it’ll traumatize him, and I think that’s the flaw of the system. Once it touches you, you tainted forever, guilty or not. Same thing happened to me.

A tweak here, a tweak there, and before you know it, I realized we were herding boys like cattle. They weren’t kids anymore, they were prisoners.

They’re children. Everyone seems to always forget that. No matter their size. No matter their skin color. No matter their attitude.

Hearing Coach say the team needs me is the best feeling in the world, especially because basketball’s the only thing I’m good at. I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody tell me they need me for anything.

When you need money, when you need to survive, violence follows. The only difference between me and them boys at Promise is the uniform we wear. They have theirs and I have mine, but we all the same. Lions in a jungle, fighting to be king.

When that gun is pointed at you, it’s scarier because that gun isn’t bound by the same rules.

Every day we send our children out into the world, they are inflicted with a thousand tiny cuts. And all the limpias in the world can’t clean it, because the wound is open.

Girls have to notice everything. Especially ones like me. It’s a survival mechanism. It’s how we keep our heads above water in a world that’s so incredibly dangerous for us. We notice everything, take stock of possible threats, and lock it all in our memory.