Hood On

It's been a minute, but this is a bread crumb to a much larger piece that I am working on. Please enjoy and let me know your thoughts.

*Ring, Ring, Ring!*

Elijah was about to head out to the store when his phone rang. He saw it was his mom and immediately picked up.

"Hey, Ma."
"What you doing, baby?"
"Bout to head to the stow."
"You got yo hood on?"

He pulled his hood off quickly. "No."
"That's no ma'am. And if you run into the police, you bess remember that."
"Yes, ma'am."

His chest felt tight; he regretted picking up his phone. He wanted to get off as soon as possible, but stayed and listened to his mother.

"How you doing?"
"Aw, you know I'm watching the news. I just got off the phone with yo auntie Loretta."

"Oh, really?"
"Yup, she down in Mississippi protesting."
"You know she always out there tryna do something. I love that about her." He laughed, remembering his aunt who, instead of bedtime stories about dragons and knights, would recite passages from Angela Davis's If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance.

"Yeah, you know they shot another black man in Mississippi, so she down there tryna get the story more coverage. He was walking with a hood on, so be careful. I don't mean to scare you, but you mine. I got to keep you around for a long time."

"I know, I know. Alright, Ma, I'mma head out."
"Ok, baby, be safe."

He hung up and sighed. He'd been hearing this all his life before the hashtags and viral social media clips of black boys who never got to grow up and black men who didn't get the courtesy to die of old age. Every time he left his house, he felt dread.

He worked hard in his life to get away from it. He thought if he got a degree, people would see him differently. He thought if he got a nice car, they would treat him differently. He thought because of the way he'd been taught to carry himself; they would respect him. 

He was wrong, and his mother was too. She'd taught him to break himself down into digestible pieces for the world to tolerate him. And even with the best pieces of himself, he still got followed around in stores, asked to show his license plate because police couldn't believe a black man like him would have a nice car. He worked harder to exist than he did doing anything else, and by the age of 32 he was another exhausted black man deciding if he should put his hood on.

Artwork: In The Hood (1993) By: The Great, David Hammons