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The earth is sodden. It always rains in the pacific northwest, but this October has been particularly bad. The local news has taken to interviewing meteorologists instead of having the regular weather guy speak – apparently, the heavy rains foretell of some storm or something. It’s sweeping south so it should just about miss Seattle, but they’re getting dumped on by the heavens anyway. The meteorologists say it’s good news because when the storm makes landfall, it’s supposed to be devastating, but the rain alone is miserable enough. Everything is miserable. The sky is grey, Lyla’s sneakers are sinking into the muddy earth, and the outlook is desperately bleak.
Although, like – it fits, doesn’t it? Sean is dead, and everything is worse now.
There’s not a tomb stone yet. They’re expensive, and they’ve only just finished paying off legal fees to lawyers who could only do as good as fifteen years. The GoFundMe campaign didn’t pick up steam – all honest reporting about who Sean Diaz was was buried under podcast and article and Fox News segment about the sixteen year old drug mule cop killer. The barest thought of all of that makes Lyla’s stomach roil, but she swallows her bile the way she’s done what feels like a million times before:
First, when learning what happened to Esteban and then the confusion about where Sean and Daniel were. The radio silence, broken up only twice that provided no comfort. The articles – god, the fucking articles. The news of the arrest at the border, and how Lyla’s heart plummeted to her feet, knowing what misery would follow and yet not having the faintest clue what hell they all would suffer. When they’d heard the verdict – fifteen years – the world titled on its axis and faded in and out of colour. She barely met Sean’s forced steadfast expression as they pulled him out of the courtroom, his shackles jangling. The reporters tittering it’s what he deserved or the judge was lenient, considering the charges had washed over her like a heavy wave. Their first phone call came a month after Sean was inside, and even now Lyla can hear his lie:
It’ll be alright. Best freaking fighters, right?
Daniel was inconsolable for weeks. He was putting on a brave face throughout the trial, but after the verdict was read, he wasn’t able to stop crying. There were a good three months where he’d speak in one word sentences or shuddering breaths. Things did improve, but they never really got anywhere close to good. They were beginning to get stable, until Sean went into confinement. There was no word about when he’d be released, but everyone was trying to stay positive.
It was naive to think that it would end well.
She knew it at the time – she’d spent a year learning about prisons on a deeper, sociological level. The lead up to college had her reading more, engaging academically with the ideology behind her constant campaigning for justice. She became familiar with the history and politics faculty at UCSC, of Angela Davis’ contributions to scholarship and her works. She read Are Prisons Obsolete? cover to cover the night before Sean’s incarceration; she couldn’t sleep anyway. After what she learned, she feared she’d never be able to sleep again, knowing where Sean was going to be.
She knew better and still she thought that because Sean had a community, he would be alright. They visited as often as they could. He ate commissary food, got good soap and through what he was able to purchase, he managed to take care of his eye. Lyla wrote Sean letters every week. Daniel wrote volumes. They would be answered in a chipper tone Lyla knew was forced, but she allowed herself to think that if Sean had the energy to pretend then maybe he’d be able to survive his term. He didn’t even get through a year.
The news of his death hit like a bullet. It was carelessly delivered, apparently – Claire and Stephen had gotten a call that briefly explained that the inmate had been found dead in his cell. Apparently, some inmates had escaped their cells (were let out by sadistic guards) and had an altercation with Sean (jumped him) just before they were locked in for the night. No video recording, of course – the footage was lost or corrupted, Lyla can’t remember the reason. It was difficult to internalise the news. It was difficult to even hear the news. Daniel could barely get a word out and Claire and Stephen, saturated in their grief (bafflingly, considering their enthusiasm for prison’s capacity to be rehabilitative) had broken the news. It was a tragedy, they said.
A tragedy, Lyla scoffs to herself, thinking about it now. There were eight men. It was a lynching.
With a heaved sigh, she crouches to press her fingers to the earth and then her full palm. One hand, initially, but then the second when she keels over with grief. Her knees go next and she feels them sinking into the earth as she sobs. If only she could reach down those six feet, break her hand through that coffin that holds her best friend in the way she can’t anymore. If only she could pluck him from the unloving hands of death. With the grief comes regret and endless questions as to what she could’ve done to change any of this. What if she’d showed up sooner for that stupid fucking party? What if, instead of getting him to hook up with Jenn – ho shrunk away from Lyla in the months Sean was gone, refusing to acknowledge her – they’d done something else? She could’ve kept Daniel entertained, and Daniel would’ve never gone outside. Maybe if she was a little more pragmatic, a little more sensible, Esteban might still be her. Her life – Daniel’s life – wouldn’t be shattered on the floor about them.
Maybe if she couldn’t save Esteban, she could’ve saved Sean. When he called from the road, she should’ve told them to keep going. She should have never pressured him to keep in contact with her – how fucking selfish was she to put her comfort over their survival? Maybe that’s why Sean surrendered; he wanted to keep his link to her, even if it came at the expense of his liberty. He didn’t pay attention in history or civics class – he had no idea what surrender meant. Once, he told her that he hoped to redeem himself by giving himself in, and Lyla could’ve slapped him. What redemption could there be in a world that enslaves and brutalises the disenfranchised?
There were times she plead with a God she didn’t believe in for another shot at this all. One instant redo on life. She could’ve talked to Sean, then – she could’ve made him understand that the apology owed is to him and not the other way around; that he should’ve paid attention in History because then he might’ve had the context to understand that he was feeding himself to the voracious beast that is the United States justice system; had she reminded him that the United States does not have conscious or a singular moral fibre –
“Lyla?”
Lyla picks her head up, swiping at her wet cheeks (useless – the rain has soaked her through to the bones) and turns. Daniel’s standing here, just as sodden as she is. His suit is soaked through, ill-fitting and hanging off of him. His eyes are red-rimmed and swollen like they’ve been for most of today, but he looks slightly calmer now. He’d disappeared some time into the reception, but Chris had assured those concerned (everyone) that he was taking a minute, and he’d be back. His return brings with it an eerie calmness washing over his features in a way totally incongruous to his nature. It’s an expression of grief far too mature for such a young face.
“Sorry,” she says, standing up, wiping her knees. “Sorry, sorry. Did you – did you need something?”
He shakes his head. He takes an aborted step towards her and then another. The earth squelches underfoot as he comes to stand beside her, right in the spot he occupied a couple hours ago when they lowered Sean into the ground.
They look at where Sean lies in a heavy silence, broken up only by the quiet staccato of rain on their soaked clothes and the occasional plaintive sniff from Lyla. When Daniel reaches for her hand, she squeezes it with as much reassurance that she can offer. It’s a feeble offering, honestly. What reassurance can she give? Sean Diaz is dead, and everything is worse now.
“Sean didn’t believe in heaven,” he says after a while. “When – when Mushroom died, he said that she was just…gone.”
Mushroom, Lyla remembers. The dog she never got to know. Daniel used to wear her bandana around his wrist, but she’s not seen it on him since they got the news.
She doesn’t know how to reply, so she only nods. What can be said?
“I don’t know if I believe in heaven either,” he says. “Grandm – Claire. And Stephen. They don’t like that.”
“No,” she says mildly. “But you’re allowed to have your beliefs.”
There’s a lull. Neither of them have moved. The cold and the wet has made them stiff.
“What do you believe?” Daniel asks after a long moment.
She looks at him — how grief has wrought his features almost unrecognisable. Her heart aches.
“In terms of what? An afterlife?”
Daniel doesn’t take his eyes off Sean’s grave. “In terms of anything.”
“Oh. Well.” She chooses her words carefully. Truthfully, she feels numb. She used to believe in justice, but it’s difficult to feel like that now, soaked to the skin, feeling grief roiling in his chest like a restless sea. She wishes she could believe in revenge, but it feels fruitless. There is nothing that could bring Sean back, being Esteban back, or change the circumstances that brought about their deaths that she could feasibly achieve in her lifetime. On better days, at better times, she has hope that the imagination of a better future is worth believing in. Presently, that feels like a remote, distant possibility. The feeling has passed before. Maybe it will again.
“Hope,” she says, thankful her voice doesn’t falter. “There has to be a better life than this one.”
Daniel nods, sniffs, wipes his dripping nose with a clenched fist.
“One after we die?”
Lyla shrugs. “Maybe. But I think it’s possible when we’re alive, too. If we can imagine a better world, we can create one.”
“Sounds like bullshit.”
It’s so strange hearing him swear. Lyla thought she’d be used to it by now, but she supposes Daniel stopped being a baby boy the day his father was shot in front of him.
“It’s not bullshit. It’s – it’s why things are able to progress.”
Daniel folds his arms over his chest. “Progress to the point of my dad being murdered, my brother getting blamed for a cop dying, and then killed in prison as a result, right?”
Lyla bites her lip. She can’t refute him. Not now, at least – not whilst they stand over Sean’s fresh grave.
“I understand.”
“You don’t,” he says tiredly. “You couldn’t.”
She reaches for him. “Danny —”
“I wish I were dead, too.”
Lyla’s heart plummets to her rain-soaked shoes. Aghast, she barely manages to say, “Don’t — don’t say things like that.”
The glare Daniel replies with is colder than the wind chill. “I fucking mean it, Lyla. If I were dead, I’d be with them, and I wouldn’t be – I wouldn’t –” His words are swallowed by a quick, short stuttering gasp, one that makes the fury slide into sorrow as he chokes out, “I wouldn’t be alone.”
Lyla wants to hug him – to scoop him up and cradle him the way she used to when she would babysit, back when life was normal and bearable. She doesn’t dare now. The air thrums with an energy that feels like a warning.
“You’re not alone,” she implores, feeling her sinuses sting with the threat of more tears. “I’m here. I’m with you. Chris is with you as well. Your mom and your grandparents –”
“Fuck them.”
“Fine, not them, then, but – you have people, Daniel.” Her voice grows thick with emotion as thick as her grief. “You have people.”
Daniel looks away. Her impassioned plea rolls off him like the rain water and he turns to stare where Sean lies.
“My brother died alone, and it was my fault. He – he did this because he thought that I would live a life, but – what life is there without my brother after everything we went through He’s the who could ever – understand –”
He begins to cry again, burying his face in his shaking hands. “It all was for nothing.” His voice cracks as he cries. “His – his sacrifice ended up meaning nothing.”
Lyla doesn’t reply – she can’t. There are no words which she could offer at this time that would heal the deep pit of grief burrowing within her spirit, or traverse across it to reach Daniel in a way that would bring comfort. So, she holds him close instead. Rain beats down on their shoulders, Lyla takes a deep breath of the cool air, thick with the scent of wood rot and petrichor and holds Daniel tight enough to stop yet another Diaz from slipping through her fingers.
Well, if one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most! —and listens to their testimony. Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person—ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
James Baldwin from No Name in the Street (1972)