It’s the middle of the night, and someone’s pounding on the front door.

“Police!” I hear. The pounding gets louder, faster.

I curse under my breath, my heart skipping beats, and I feel around in the darkness to turn on my nightstand lamp. I cut it on with one tug of a string.

My alarm clock blinks at me: 2:47 AM.

“Oh my God,” I whisper-yell to myself. “Three o’clock in the fucking morning.”

And then I hear some movement outside my bedroom door, and I see the red and blue flashing lights illuminating everything. Tyler comes into my room, wearing a tight white tank and some basketball shorts, a black do-rag on his head.

“Don’t get the door,” Tyler says, sitting down on the edge of my bed. “Mama said not to open it.”

Mama’s wise—a bit too wise when it comes to random police visits to the house. She’s become familiar with them over the years. I mean, it’s routine, the way they come banging up on your door in our neighborhood for literally anything. Crackhead found dead. Some white kid from Sojo High ran away. The car outside our house has a flat tire. Some white woman down the road says she saw a suspicious black man.

And for Mama and Tyler and me, we worry more about police visits to our house than the gang-infested streets. And Mama has already started crafting a plan for how to get out of being pinched by the po-po just because of who my dad was, if that time ever comes, a time we all pray never does.

The pounding goes on for a whole ten minutes, and I end up slipping out into the hallway, taking step after tiny step, making sure I’m not breathing too hard. But Mama is already standing at the end of the hallway, arms crossed, side-eyeing Tyler and me for being hardheaded and trying to go to the door anyway. It’s like we can’t ever get anything past her.

She does one of her famous eye-rolls and then exhales in frustration before walking to the front.

“What y’all want?” Mama yells to the police through the door, keeping her distance. She closes her bathrobe tightly, like she feels too exposed. “Stay away from the door,” Mama whispers to me.

“Ma’am, we are here to talk about an incident that happened earlier tonight. Could we come in?”

“No, I’m not dressed,” she shouts back, signaling me to get back. I step away, taking slow steps, feeling some of the iron burns in the carpet underneath my bare feet since Mama can’t afford an ironing board. Tyler sneaks up behind me, catching me off guard.

“Please, ma’am, put clothes on. We’d like to speak with you about what happened.”

“I don’t know nothing about what happened, and I got to go to work early tomorrow. Please leave! I ain’t asking y’all again.”

“Ma’am, two boys died tonight.”

“I said leave!”

“Ma’am, please!” an officer begs, his voice deep and low.

She sighs and then looks through the peephole. She opens the door a crack, letting some of the moonlight wash inside, and then all the way, filling big empty spaces in all of the dark corners with light. They walk in and Mama flips on the light switch.

There are two cops, both of them black. One has hair; the other doesn’t. They nod at Tyler and me in a friendly manner, like they come in peace. Mama closes the door behind them.

“What’s this about two boys dead?” Mama’s lips tremble a bit.

“On the corner of Ninth Street and Elm, two boys were shot dead. One looks to be an accident. The other appears to be in self-defense, ma’am,” the officer with hair says.

“Oh my Lord. God, help us all,” Mama says, shocked, holding her face. “What happened?”

“There’ve been several robberies and reports of vandalism in the area. Tonight there was yet another incident where we had vandals running away from an armed store owner. The vandals were vaguely described. So, once our officer responded to the call, he apparently got the wrong guys.”

I swallow hard, realizing that he’s talking about what happened to us.

I give a glance to Tyler, and he wears anxiety like his do-rag, his chest heaving and his eyes bloodshot and wide—so wide.

Mama looks back at us, concern on her face, like she’s unsure if she should tell them that her sons were the ones who were wrongly accused, but we’re alive.

The other cop chimes in, putting a hand on his chest. “The scene ended with an accidental shot landing in the back of an African-American male graduate of Sojo High, killing him on impact, and a self-defense shot being fired into the chest of a Caucasian male whose name we’re still trying to figure out. Apparently, some others got away, unharmed, but might be suspects.”

I feel a lump in my throat, and it gets so hard to breathe. My hands get clammy. I forget to blink.

Tyler takes a step backward, his chest heaving harder.

“Those kids can’t be suspects,” Mama says.

“Well, why’s that, ma’am?” the bald officer asks.

“Because…” She trails off, glancing at Tyler and me, like she’s about to tell them that we were those suspects who got away. “Because… they were just kids in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The officers look at each other and then back at Mama, like they think she’s hiding something, but then they give her a nod.

“Well, if you get information about them or you hear anything, please don’t hesitate to give us a call. Okay? You may even win a reward of some kind.”

“All right.” Mama sighs.

“Thank you for your time,” the bald officer says, walking out the door.

“Wait,” I call after them.

“Yeah? What can I help you with, son?” the bald officer asks.

“Did that cop get in trouble? Or is he hurt?”

They look at each other again. “I’m afraid some are calling for his suspension. He did his job but didn’t do it carefully enough. He put innocent kids in some real danger.”

“Could’ve killed more than just two,” I say, and then they’re gone.

After I hear Mama lock the door, I breathe in and out for what feels like the first time.

“Y’all don’t say nothing to nobody,” Mama says. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” we say in unison, looking each other in the eye.

She walks around us toward her room. “Tell Ivy and G-mo what I said, too.”

Finally, I’m able to make it back to my room and get a couple more hours of sleep before starting another day of my chaotic life, returning to Sojo High.

Two weeks ago, I wrote my dad a letter:

I would kill to have him back, and this now occupies my mind as I listen to Tupac rap about his father, who was never really there.

Nine years ago today, when I was just eight years old, my dad was sent to jail for a crime he did not commit. The memories are like scars on my brain. The police pounding on the door until the door fell inward. The screaming from Mama and Tyler. The hollering in my heart. And then blackness and arms everywhere, dragging my dad out like he was a monster to be sent back to hell. I erupted inward, feeling like I was falling apart. I screamed my eight-year-old lungs out, became a disaster, and then in a flash, I was hit over the head with one of those batons that the local Sterling Point police have. “For my own good,” they said.

Writing to him helps me see past it, past the shame, even past his absence sometimes. That helps me stop crying, because one thing I still remember from him—one thing I still replay in my head—is that men don’t cry, and every day I try to remember that. But, man, sometimes that’s just too hard to live by.

He’s five hours away, in a rusty, moldy building halfway across the state, a place that exists in the shadows and mist and ash of the world called Montgomery Correctional Facility, and I haven’t been able to visit him yet. Because Mama doesn’t want me to see him. And on top of that, we can’t even afford the trip. To Mama, the trip to Montgomery Correctional Facility is the distance of Sterling Point to, like, Russia or some shit because it’s a few hours away.

He should be here with us. He didn’t do what they say he did. But because he hung around the men who did, he got the same fate.

I change into my I DIDN’T CHOOSE THE HOOD LIFE; THE HOOD LIFE CHOSE ME polo and some joggers, and I go to do my chores before it’s time for school. And, man, I’m just too excited to have heard from him to cry right now, but I know I will later. At nighttime.