THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US

   We had been at the police station for hours with no word on my
husband’s condition, when the detectives that had spoken with me at the
scene walked in. One of them simply shook his head.
    “Where’s my husband?” I screamed.
    “Ma’am, he didn’t make it. I am sorry. He’s dead,” said one of the
detectives softly.
    Those words echoed in my head at least twenty times before
the message registered, I started screaming. Never in a million
years would I have thought that I would hear those words regarding
Joseph. That type of thing only happened in the movies, I thought.
    I was only 22 years old. Was this a bad dream from which I would
awake so Joseph could assure me he would never leave us like that?
Was this a sick joke where he would eventually walk through that
door at any moment and say, “Surprise? I fooled you!” Anything
made more sense than this being a reality.
    “Joseph! My God, please, not Joseph!” I cried. He was all I had
in the world. He knew me like no one else did. He took care of me
like no one else could. He loved me liked no one else could. I had
no idea where I would go or what I would do without him. I was
shaking and crying, as I slid down the wall onto the floor. I did not
want to move. I wanted to die at the moment. I had no one there with
me but Erica, and she was only four years old. No matter how hard I
tried, there was no way I could be strong for her. My heart and soul
were obliterated.
    One of the detectives picked me up off the floor and held me.
He asked if there was someone I could call to pick us up. That
moment, the starkness of the situation set in even deeper. There
wasn’t anyone…no not anyone and there would never be anyone. Whenever
I needed someone, Joseph was there for me. Now he was gone.
No one would explain to me what had happened. I would later
find out that Joseph had been shot fourteen times and that Sam Louis
had turned his body several times and fired more bullets into him.
Once they arrested him, the police retrieved more than two hundred
live rounds of ammunition from his pockets.
    At the time of the arrest, Sam Louis had told them he thought
Joseph was a police officer coming to arrest him because he saw him
in his uniform. After the detectives informed him that Joseph was
not wearing his uniform, he changed his story and told them that he
felt that Joseph was upsetting his mother and someone had to put
an end to it. He said he kept reloading and firing the bullets into his
brother’s body because he had to make sure that Joseph was dead.
    Erica was asleep. One of the officers had put two chairs together
and made a makeshift bed for her. I sat in a chair just staring straight
ahead. I thought that if I prayed hard enough, Joseph would come
back to me. I even thought that if Sam Louis would say he was sorry,
Joseph would come back. Most of the detectives had left for the day.
The room was empty except for the detective who had consoled me
earlier. He was sitting at his desk going over paperwork. He looked
over at me and asked again if I needed him to call someone for me.
I shook my head. I could not think of no one to call.
    I had nowhere to go. I could not move and when I tried to stand
up, my legs felt like rubber. When I was finally able to get up from
the floor, I remembered the one other person who I could count on,
and that was my father, Slick.
    By the time Slick came to pick us up from the police station,
it was dark and cold outside. Our sweaters and coats, and even my
purse, were in my car, which was still parked in the driveway at
Carmen’s house. I did not have any money, any warm clothes, or my
house keys. My God, what was I going to do? My eyes were swollen
and red and the skin on my face was very tight. I could taste the salt
from the tears that had rested on my cheeks.
    We drove to Slick’s friend’s house where we were met with stares
from a room full of strangers. He had moved from Ann’s house and
was living with a friend. Slick carried a sleeping Erica into the house
but she soon awakened in short order.
    “Mommy, where’s Daddy? Is Daddy coming here?” she cried.
I broke down and cried. I did not know what to say to her. Joseph
was never going to be with us again and after a pregnant pause,
    “Your daddy’s gone to heaven,” I said through a barrage of tears. I
turned away from her slowly, remembering what my aunt had said
to me when Peaches had died.
    How could a mother explain something like that to a child that
had just seen her father hours earlier? The look in her little eyes
would be forever burned in my mind. They loved each other so
much. Even though he was my world too, I wanted him to come back
just for her. I would have done anything for that to be so.
    My pastor called to pray for me over the phone. I tried hard to
listen, but what he was saying sounded like nothing more than a
barrage of unconnected words, hardly sufficient to neutralize the
burning ache I felt in my soul. I threw the phone across the room. I
did not want to hear any voices. All I wanted was for Joseph to walk
through that door at that very moment.