The Reformatory

by Tananarive Due

“I don’t b’lieve in ‘evil’ in most ways,” Miz Lottie said. “I believe in the devil, all right, but man don’t need no help from Satan to do what folks call ‘evil.’ Man do evil ev’ry day and call it doin’ their job. Slave drivers was ‘doin’ their job,’ beatin’ the skin off folks. Slave catchers settin’ dogs to rip out eyes and limbs.

’Cuz, see, colored folks fighting for what’s theirs is like a virus to white folks—and they kill a virus so it don’t spread.

This isn’t everything, he heard Mama’s voice say inside his ear. Mama’s here. There’s more ahead for you than this. This is only a moment.

There is more than this.

Kindred spirits awaited him here: boys who had been afraid of beatings and dogs, whose skin had been torn or charred, whose bones had snapped, spirits circling the site of their shared tragedy. They rose from the stink of the wrong done to them, and he could almost see them in the dark: blinking eyes around, straining to have their faces remembered.

“These Florida sheriffs laugh with you on Friday morning and set the Klan on you Friday night,”

“I dunno,” Redbone said. Now his voice was an old man’s too. “But we’ll figure it out.” We was a mighty and beautiful word.

The system, Mrs. Hamilton had said. TRUST in the system. The words lanced her. How could she trust in a system that would lock up her brother over nothing? A system that would leave arsonists unpunished after they burned down her house? And chase Papa out of town? Gloria felt safer than she had in nearly a week, but she had never felt more alone.

Robert watched Redbone being led away by Boone until they were around the corner and out of sight. When Crutcher turned to leave too, Robert was left alone with the hanging hog carcass and the flapping crows landing beside it. Loneliness was so thick in the air that Robert’s lungs rattled with sand. He tried to draw in deep breaths but could not. When he sobbed so deeply that his stomach clenched, his mouth made no sound. It was the purest grief he’d felt since Mama had died—or maybe worse, since he had let down his only friend.

Robert never saw Redbone again.

Who do you think does the killing? It’s them. They come to work every day like killing people is nothing. How can they do that? How can they kill kids and nobody does anything?”

Robert wrestled in silence with the idea that Redbone might be happily away from the Reformatory, which felt good, but his grief deepened knowing that he might never be able to see him like he saw Blue.