Men We Reaped Read Online Free PDF Page A

nine. She had long glossy hair, and one mole on her chin and another on her chest, lined up like buttons; from when she was a toddler, my parents recognized the curse of beauty put on her.
If we ever have to worry about being made grandparents early
, my mother would say of Nerissa,
she’s the one
. Nerissa, unlike me, was popular in middle school, had boyfriends. She said she was head over heels for Rog, thought that he was the cutest thing in middle school. They passed notes in class. His asked:
Do you want to go out with me?
My sister replied:
Yes
. She wore big T-shirts she borrowed from Josh, big shorts, and tennis shoes. A year or so later, when she got pregnant for a nineteen-year-old boy from Gulfport, those T-shirts she borrowed from Joshua would hide her growing belly for the first five months.
    Nerissa and Rog’s romance lasted a week. She was too boyish, with her big shirts and shorts, so Rog broke up with her. But they were still friends. Years later, when she was living in her first apartment, Rog would visit, walk through the front door, throw his arms around her, ask her, “When you going to be my old lady?” Smile.
    â€œYou had your chance,” Nerissa joked. Rob, her boyfriend, sat on the sofa, with a black cigar in the corner of hismouth, a beer at his side. He smiled, his genial, easy smile, and showed the gold teeth he polished so religiously they shone against his dark face.
    â€œAw, come on Nerissa, give me another chance,” Rog said.
    â€œNope,” Nerissa laughed.
    Rog’s bedroom was dark: dark walls, dark curtains. He had shelves up, and on his shelves were model cars with shiny chrome wheels on them, so carefully put together, down to the smallest detail. In his stereo, you’d find Tupac. Old No Limit and Fifth Ward Boyz, both out of New Orleans. Camron and Dipset out of New York City. And on his wall, he hung pictures. He was a good artist. In Mississippi, out in the country where there is no concrete or enough buildings crammed closely enough to make a good canvas for graffiti, kids who would normally develop their street art and tag do it like Rog did, by papering their rooms with sketches. Rog drew pictures of cars and some of people. He tried his hand at stylized words. OPT, one piece of artwork said. Another: THUG LIFE. And another: LAUGH NOW, CRY LATER.
    Rog dropped out of school in the tenth grade; it’s not uncommon for young Black men to drop out here. Sometimes they are passively forced out by school authorities, branded as misfits or accused of serious offenses like selling drugs or harassing other students: sometimes they are pushed to the back of classrooms and ignored. Rog sat in the back of one suchclass and beat-boxed while his cousins sang spirituals that substituted the teacher’s name for Jesus’. He left school, worked, and then in 2000 went to Los Angeles to live with his relatives. He loved it. He worked in an auto body shop, made more money than he would have been able to make in Mississippi, and enjoyed the city: theme parks, roller skating rinks, the beach, where the water was blue and rushed the palm-decked shore in waves, so different from our beach, where the dirty gray Gulf lapped desultorily at a man-made beach ringed by concrete and pine trees.
    Later, I wondered if it was a kindness to Nerissa, a remembrance of their short middle school romance, that made Rog hang out with us during the 2001 Mardi Gras Pass Christian parade, when he was visiting home. I had been out of college and without a job for almost a year, but I’d booked a ticket and flown home from New York City for Mardi Gras. This added to my considerable credit card debt. I didn’t care. I needed to go home, even if only for three days. My brother was newly dead. I expected him to be alive every day when I woke. On that February day, I did not know he was only the first. It was raining and chilly. We were all subdued, except Rog. He swaggered