Someone Like Me

Prologue

You started as an assignment for me, but became my way of life—a daily task that wouldn’t let me rest unless I’d shared my innermost thoughts, be it at two in the morning or eight in the evening. You have been my savior on dark and lonely nights.

You have been like a second mother, allowing me to tell you everything that happened during the long hours of the day, everything that ripped my heart open with joy and laughter, or pain and tears.

No judgment you gave, only a listening ear to my scribbling. My wild talk.

Frankly, I don’t know if I would have survived this year without you.

I can’t say that I love you; you are not a person, although I suppose one can love a thing, too.

So I say to you, my dear journal, thank you.

You have been a good friend and my closet, as Jack once said.

Thank you for understanding. For understanding everything.

Even today, as I sit here with only minutes left to write in you, you understand why I’m wearing this dream of white and lace, and why the person I gave my heart to told me that he could love…someone like me.

Chapter One

May 24, 1985

We’re under the stars, blending in with the black sheets covering the sky—or so I hope. Zee sits next to me. Both of our hearts racing. Zee’s eyes staring into mine like he’s checking to see if the bones in my body are strong enough to do what he’s asking me to do.

Rob Mr. Johnson’s gas station.

What if we get caught? I ask him, trying to hide the fear in my voice and knowing I haven’t put on the big-girl panties required for a task such as this.

Zee laughs, but I, of course, don’t get the joke.

Relax, we ain’t gonna get caught. I got this thing completely figured out, baby. Besides, if we don’t do this, how are we gonna pay rent this month? Mr. Johnson ain’t giving me my job back. That old man fired me for something I didn’t even do, so the way I see it, I’m simply giving him a real reason for firing me.

We can find another way to pay the rent, Zee. Let me get a job, I plead.

You don’t need a job, and you’re barely legal anyway. If anyone finds out that I got an eighteen-year-old living with my thirty-five-year-old behind, I’ll get locked up just because of that. You understand what I’m saying?

I guess.

Look, ain’t I been good to you these last six months? He places a finger on my lips and slowly trails it down to my heart. Ain’t I been taking good care of you since I found you on the streets after your mama died? I mean, you ain’t had to dig in no trash cans or sleep on those cold benches since you been with me, right?

Zee always goes there, reminding me that he rescued me from Georgia’s mean streets. Most times, I feel like I’m his maid, cooking and cleaning like a Hebrew slave after his boys come over and wreck the place—a one-bedroom apartment in a building with more holes in the wall than a poor girl’s shoes.

Zee, you know I’m grateful.

He looks at me with one eyebrow raised, not fully convinced of my sincerity.

Look, Mýa, I can’t pull this thing off without you. I need my girl to have my back. You’re my girl, right? He grazes the side of my cheek with the warm tips of his fingers. You love me, don’t you, Mýa?

I nod slowly, but I know my heart would have answered quite differently.

That’s my girl. And since you ain’t shown that you love me in the way I want, I figure this is your chance to prove it.

What’s that supposed to mean?

You know what I mean, but we ain’t got time to go into that. Just know that I ain’t gonna wait forever. I’d hate to see you end up back where you came from. Zee leans over and places his chapped lips on mine. Let me go get this rent money.

I try to force a smile, like the moon sometimes does when the air is just right. I swear you can see it smiling even when everything below it is a mess.

Zee looks out his window to check our surroundings once more. It’s two in the morning, so there shouldn’t be much traffic. Do me a favor and keep your pretty little hands on that steering wheel and the car running, okay?

My knees tremble as a couple walks past the car. Zee sits up in his seat, but quickly relaxes when he sees that neither of them glance in our direction. The moment they turn the corner, he opens the glove compartment.

I gasp in horror. Please tell me that’s not a gun!

It ain’t a toy.

The sweat from my forehead begins to drip down my temples. What in the world do you need with a gun?

The sly smirk on Zee’s face makes me feel like a five-year-old girl. What did you think I was gonna use to rob the place, my finger? That kind of thing only happens in movies or white neighborhoods. This is Decatur, baby. It most def ain’t Beverly Hills. Besides, the old man keeps a gun right under the register, so I had to come prepared.

What if—?

Stop it, Mýa! I ain’t got time for twenty questions, he snaps as he slams the glove compartment shut. Look, the car is stolen, and the cops may be out looking for it, so we gotta do this now.

I can feel the tears falling as I watch him hold the gun like he knows every inch of it with a certain familiarity.

I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to rage out on you like that. It’s just that I need us both to be at the top of our game. Can you do that for me?

Before I can say anything else, Zee jumps out of the car and slips the gun into his coat pocket. It’s eighty degrees outside. Anyone would wonder why he’s wearing a coat.

Anyone. Especially Mr. Johnson.

I get out of the car and run toward the store window, hoping to get Zee’s attention and maybe stop him.

But it’s too late.

I am too late.

The next few minutes happen in slow motion.

A young man runs up to Zee and tries to grab him and the gun at the same time.

Shots are fired. From Zee’s gun. From the one Mr. Johnson keeps under the register.

Blood covers the twenty-year-old, white and black tiled floor of the store.

Three hearts stop beating.

I don’t have my mama’s Vaseline to heal any of them.

Chapter Two

The bulky police detective with a receding hairline glares at me as I sit in a chair, staring at a spot on the wall behind him. I need that spot to help me focus, or maybe I need it to help me forget what I saw. But how can I? How can I forget the screams?

From me.

From Zee.

From the darkness that came afterward.

Those tears aren’t going to save you, little lady, the officer says matter-of-factly.

I don’t like him, but then again, I’m not supposed to. Apparently, the feeling is mutual.

I don’t want them to, I finally say without wiping the tears away.

I want to know what you were doing with a thirty-five-year-old man. He slaps a photo of Mr. Johnson on the table in front of me, forcing me to see the life that Zee took.

I shove the picture back toward him. He was—

He was what? Your boyfriend? the other detective asks. He’s younger than the bulky one, but not by much. The black mole on his cheek has hair sticking out of it, and his thick eyebrows don’t move with his eyes.

I nod.

The younger detective stands and leans across the table. You’re an eighteen-year-old kid. I have a daughter your age.

I find my spot on the wall again, behind the fat one—the place where I can see Zee, as he was before all of this. I can see his big, hazel brown eyes staring back at me just before the life left them.

I didn’t know, I whisper.

You didn’t know what? the bulky one asks. The heat from the room causes sweat to surface around his armpits and stain his shirt. You didn’t know that he was going to rob the place?

I didn’t know that he had a gun.

But you knew he was going to rob the place? the young one fires off as he plants his angry expression in front of my face to get my attention. I can feel the heat of his breath as our eyes meet.

I didn’t know at first. It wasn’t until after we were there that Zee told me what he was going to do. Zee said we had to do it so we could pay the rent, I say, frantically searching for my spot on the wall again.

The bulky detective slams his hand down on the table and makes it shake. People lost their lives tonight, young lady. And for what? So that you and Zee could pay the rent?

I don’t respond.

Stop looking at that freaking wall and answer us! This isn’t a game. We want answers, and we want them now! The younger detective stands and moves so that my view of the wall is blocked, but at this point, it doesn’t matter. Nothing does.

I didn’t want to do it! I spit. I tried to tell Zee that I could get a job. I got out of the car to try to stop him.

So you want us to believe that this was all Zee’s idea? Even the gun? The bulky one roars back as he produces a picture of Zee’s gun with yellow and black evidence tape around it.

I didn’t know he had that gun! It wasn’t like Zee said, ‘Hey, baby, I’ve got a gun’!

I can feel the heaviness of the sorrow that’s upon my face. I can feel my insides burning up in pain. The ache in my chest is suffocating me. When I look down at the floor, all I see are bullets by my feet.

That’s when the tears come down so hard, it’s as if someone turned on a faucet.

The younger officer shoves a box of tissues in front of me and says, Wipe your face.

Someone knocks on the door and hands the bulky detective a yellow envelope and a glass of water.

Here, he says as he places the water in front of me. Drink that. It may help you calm down. We’re not done here yet.

I don’t touch the water as he thumbs through the yellow folder with Zee’s real name on it—Zephaniah James Crawford.

Your thirty-five-year-old boyfriend had quite the record. Did you know that? the bulky one asks as he places the folder down on the table.

I shake my head.

None of it is pretty, the younger one says as he picks the folder back up and begins to provide me with a page-by-page summary of Zee’s past.

The first page tells the story of a black male with hazel eyes and brown skin who lived in foster homes until he was thirteen.

The second page gives vivid details of how, by the tender age of fifteen, Zee had been arrested four times for petty theft.

The third page outlines how Zee was later arrested for auto theft and, as a result, spent the next two years in juvie.

The fourth page was one I title Chances. It tells of the journey of a young man who struggled to make a new life for himself. Twenty-four and out on probation, he found that no one was willing to give him a chance, so he went back to what he knew—stealing.

The following pages describe a boy who became a man with a streak or two of gray in his hair, and who continued to bounce in and out of jail until an older man named Mr. Johnson gave him a job at his gas station and a dry floor in the back of the store to sleep on.

At the age of thirty-three, Zee was finally able to sign a lease on his first apartment. The building was old, the floors in the hallway were caving in, and the rats should have paid rent, but Zee called it home because it was his.

Two years later, while walking home from work on a brisk and rainy Saturday night, Zee found an eighteen-year-old girl digging in a trash can, looking for food. She had no coat. She had lost her mother and was living on the streets.

That last part isn’t in the folder.

That is in my heart.

Chapter Three

May 24, 1994

It’s hard to believe nine years have gone by since that night—the night that shaped every thought and every emotion that I have had since then. As my feet dig deep into the soft spring grass, I can feel my heart beating like it wants to come out of my body and run butt naked down the street screaming.

This feeling isn’t new.

For the past four years, I’ve been coming here on this date—May 24—right after my waitressing shift at Jack’s Pancake House ends. The first time was on a Friday in 1990: the day that I finally inhaled the crisp, fresh summer air as my feet landed on the free side of a facility that had desperately tried to suck the life out of me for 1,835 days.

I can’t forget the way the tears streamed down my face as I got my first taste of liberation when I peered into the place that was once Mr. Johnson’s gas station, now a hair salon on one side and a barbershop on the other.

Even now, I can still feel the weight of those tears.

I desperately want today to be different. Today, I want to finally do what I’ve been struggling to do—forgive myself. A counselor once told me that I needed to forgive myself if I wanted to move forward in life. Not that she was wrong, but she had said it so casually; it sounded rehearsed, like something she said to all the young, dumb girls who sat on her couch and struggled to put their bad decisions behind them.

But how can I go on when everyone who lost their lives that night can’t? They are gone, and although I didn’t pull the trigger, I know I should have done more to stop what happened to them.

As I close my eyes and allow a gentle breeze to soothe my bones, I can still see Zee with the gun in his hand, pointing it at Mr. Johnson. I know that no matter how hard I try to forget it, I will never be able to rid my nightmares of the look on Mr. Johnson’s face as the bullet entered his heart.

But the part that horrifies me more is seeing the body of the young man that tried to take Zee down.

He was someone’s son.

His name was Daniel Montgomery.

He was eighteen at the time of his death.

I still remember the letters that I wrote to his family and to the Johnsons. All two hundred and forty-one words took me three hundred and twenty painful days to write.

Hello.

You don’t know me, but I was there.

I was there the day you lost your loved one, the day a bullet took the life of someone who held a special place in your heart—in your life.

Words can’t express the depth of how sorry I am.

I know my sorrow will never be as deep as your own, but if knowing that I regret that night provides even a small measure of comfort to you, I wanted to give you that.

It’s not much. Nothing can replace a life.

You’re probably wondering if I knew what was going to happen that fatal night.

To be honest, I didn’t know much. I didn’t know that a robbery was going to occur until minutes before it happened.

I didn’t know there was a gun.

I could tell you that I never wanted any of it to happen, and while that’s true, I also know that I didn’t do enough to prevent the tragedy that occurred.

I will never shed as many tears as you have, but know that mine have fallen just about every night since then.

Even as I write this, I feel them.

I am not asking you to feel sorry for me. You don’t owe me that. You don’t even owe me forgiveness, but I’ll still plead for it, knowing I may never forgive myself for the role that I played in this.

I am genuinely sorry.

It took another forty days, three hours, and ten minutes or so for me to get them to the accountability letter bank, secretly hoping that they would somehow be undeliverable.

Chapter Four

I can’t sleep. I sit on the edge of my bed and stare into the darkness of my bedroom, which features nothing more than a bed and a small dresser. My apartment is small, but functional. I don’t have much, but I feel I have all that I need.

There’s a table and two chairs in my kitchen. My faithful record player takes up a small amount of space on top of an entertainment center that a neighbor gave me just before she was evicted. My black and white television barely works and requires pliers to change the channels. The only thing of value in my apartment is my vinyl record collection.

I check my clock and see that it’s just past midnight.

It’s on nights like this that I find myself straining to hear them: the midnight cries from women who once slept in nearby beds, all longing for something to rest their heads on that wasn’t soaked in urine.

The silence that fills the air around me now is still taking me some time to get used to.

I know I’m supposed to be happy.

My court-appointed attorney told me so.

He tried to convince me that I could find happiness in the arrangement he had made with the court—five years in what they called a women’s diversion program since I was considered a first offender. The diversion program relocated me somewhere in the country with nothing but red Georgia clay to look at, a small house with ten beds shared by twenty women to live in, and daily meetings that were supposed to rehabilitate me and get me ready to go back out into the land of the living again.

The land of the living. Back then, I wondered how I was supposed to live after what happened that night. Still, it was either the diversion program or being locked in a prison cell for up to ten years, so of course I took the country, the shared beds, and the meetings with counselors who said the same things over and over again.

But that wasn’t really what I was supposed to find happiness in; that part was supposed to come after I had completed the diversion program and the word felon was removed from my legal record. In short, I could go through life without a conviction following my every move. That fact was the only thing that gave me a measure of sanity, knowing that one day I wouldn’t have a yellow folder with my full name—Mýa Denise Day—on the front of it.

Not many who lived a life like mine got that chance.

I guess it can also be said that not many have experienced everyday things as I did afterward—things such