I think this happened between my daughter’s ninth grade and tenth grade years, which would make the year 2005. My daughter was dating her friend’s older brother, who was enrolled in culinary school in Atlanta, a five or six hour drive from our hometown of Memphis. I remember because my daughter was at the University of Memphis campus that week for a youth leadership program. She was staying in a dorm.
Abe is Mexican-American. His Memphis friend who went to culinary school with him is white. The two of them were making their way back from Atlanta to Memphis for a visit to their families. Abe was the passenger, asleep in his friend’s car late at night, when his friend pulled into an Exxon in Byhalia, Mississippi, not far from the Mississippi-Tennessee border. The friend went inside the gas station store, while Abe slowly woke to the confusion of the gas station’s fluorescent lights and his friend gone. Abe got out of the car, rubbing his eyes.
Later I researched the police department of Byhalia. I found out that the police department of this small town had just acquired a new German Shepherd as a drug dog. I imagine that the police were taking this dog out for a test run. I was able to find out the name of one of the white officers, and I remember finding his age. He was older than Abe, but still very young. I remember Abe telling me that one of the other officers looked like he might be Mexican. But whatever their race, all of the officers made a point of calling out Abe’s race and saying derogatory things to him, accusing him of being on drugs and out of control.
There were several police officers and at least one dog. There were also many witnesses including the store clerk, who stood dumbstruck as Abe was attacked. Abe’s friend came outside, trying to reason and reassure the police, incredulous of what was happening.
Abe was handcuffed behind his back and forced to lie on top of his handcuffed hands while he was kicked. He had dog marks on his body. I saw the marks and the place where the handcuffs cut him. The next day, his shoulder and arm didn’t hang right. The police took pepper spray at close range and sprayed his eyes while he was handcuffed. When I saw Abe, his eyes were swollen shut. It took months, maybe longer, for him to fully regain his ability to focus.
When the police were done, they gave him a ticket – I forget what the charges even were, they made so little sense. The ticket was a strange affair, printed faintly on regular paper through some sort of dot-matrix printer. Abe said he was hurt, and the police taunted him – did he want an ambulance?
He said yes.
When the ambulance came, the police officers told the EMT – “When he gets to the hospital, run every test you’ve got. Find out what he’s on.”
I remember looking over pages and pages of test results. He came back positive for cold medicine. Abe and his parents – with his sister Izzy as their translator – did not get home from the hospital till the afternoon.
After Izzy’s call, I remember checking my daughter out of her youth development program to take her to be with Abe. She and Izzy spent the afternoon and night just being alongside Abe as he tried to get comfortable on the pillows arranged on the floor. I remember talking with his mother in the living room, looking over the papers with her. I speak some Spanish and I tried my best to translate the unfamiliar words. That day and for the next couple of days I tried to help Izzy find legal resources. We called the local Latino advocacy organization, which had no expertise in police matters. We left messages with Mississippi’s ACLU office. We followed leads that led nowhere. At home I searched the internet.
One day – maybe the day when my daughter went back to her youth development program – I drove to Byhalia. I was so angry that this could have happened to Abe. I wanted to see what I could find out. I remember spying a police car parked at one end of town, near the small brick building where according to the ticket Abe was to appear in a few weeks, and another police car at the other end of town, close to the Exxon. I remember going inside the Exxon store and walking in circles before buying a Coke. The place looked like every other Exxon I had ever been in.
Passing through the town again, I stopped at a Mexican grocery in a small strip mall. Again I wandered the aisles before selecting a few items. I took them to the tall counter and asked the man and the woman about what had happened. We spoke in Spanish. They didn’t know anything about it. They said that the cops were nice in this town, they were good customers, the couple knew the cops by name. They told me I probably didn’t know the whole story. They said Abe was probably hiding something from me.
A few weeks later Abe, his father, and a lawyer went to the small brick building at the appointed time. They were told that the ticket didn’t exist, the incident had never happened.
We told ourselves it all could have been worse. We quit talking about it, like it was something we had done wrong. We told ourselves Byhalia was a place to avoid, late at night, but after all it was a place that could be avoided easily enough, especially late at night.
Now that I’m older and perhaps wiser, I understand that I can’t avoid Byhalia, and I can’t protect my children or their friends from Byhalia’s problems. Perhaps, probably, what happened to Abe has now happened again in Byhalia. Byhalia is everywhere, in Ferguson, in Cleveland, in New York, in Memphis. Even though the ticket issued to Abe never existed according to official records, I know that it did. I hope that the young officers have now grown into a more full understanding of what they did and what could have been the results of their actions. I hope that they have resolved to be better men, better police officers. By now they are probably fathers, and I hope that they are good fathers. I hope that they are reading the news stories of Ferguson and Cleveland and New York and crying with regret and determination to become part of the solution for a better society in which we don’t have to live in fear for our sons and daughters and loved ones, especially those who are brown or black. And if those officers want to make a personal apology to Abe and his parents, they can let me know. Words of apology would mean something. Words of apology would be a good start.
