A shockingly powerful exploration of the
lasting impact of prejudice and the indomitable spirit of sisterhood that will
have readers questioning what it truly means to be an ally, from sister-writer
duo Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite, authors of Dear Haiti, Love
Alaine.
ISN’T BEING HUMAN ENOUGH?
When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under
mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated
sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi
becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality,
Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect.
Angelic.
One of the good ones.
Even as the phrase rings wrong in her mind—why are only certain people deemed
worthy to be missed?—Happi and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor
Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist
Green Book as their guide. But there’s a twist to Kezi’s story that no
one could’ve ever expected—one that will change everything all over again.
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Chapter 2
Kezi
Monday, April 16—1 Day Before
the Arrest Los
Angeles, California
I must have died and gone to hell.
Right?
Because why else
would I have
heard that outrageous bleating from my alarm at
5:30 (in the morning!) and chosen to wake up?
It was mid-April of twelfth grade. I should have been suffering from a severe case of senioritis
that could be cured only by sleeping in. But there I was, doing my Monday morning countdown to study.
“Eight…seven…six…five…four…four…four…three… why, oh,
why…two… ONE!”
I yanked the covers shielding my head down to my waist and leapt out of bed before
the just-right firmness of my mattress and perfectly
fluffed pillows could lure me back into their warm nest.
Bang bang bang.
Couldn’t even blame her. I dragged
my feet over to the wall I shared
with my baby sister, Happi,
and knocked twice. Two syllables. Sor-ry. (For counting so loudly that
I woke you up while I was trying to wake myself up.)
Silence.
I slipped on cozy padded knee
socks and plodded to my desk, where my notes were spread neatly across my
laptop, right where I’d left them the night before. Mr. Bamhauer, my AP US
History teacher and the miserable Miss Trunchbull to my precocious Matilda, was a stickler
for the “old way” of
doing things and insisted
our notes be handwritten
on wide-ruled paper so that the letters were big enough
for him to see without his glasses while grading.
I skimmed over the major
moments of the Civil Rights Movement that I knew the Advanced
Placement test makers were likely to ask about when I sat for the exam in less than a
month: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
Emmett Till. The March on Washington. The Civil
Rights Act of 1964. The Voting Rights Act of 1965. Each bullet
point was like a twist unscrew- ing the faucet of my brain, flooding my skull with facts. To me, Brown v. Board
of Education wasn’t just some case. It was
the rebuttal to Plessy v. Ferguson, the racist
court decision that dictated the “separate but equal” ideology. It was one of many nails
in the giant coffin of Jim Crow
laws and had ushered in the legacy of
the Little Rock Nine. But before the
Nine, we’d had students like Linda Brown, the Topeka
One. Mr. Bamhauer lectured about the past, of course…but he made it
stale and removed. To him, the people involved in all this world-changing were just names
and dates in a book. Nothing more. They hadn’t had souls. Or dreams.
Brown v. Board
of Education propelled my thoughts directly
to that little girl. I
envisioned how Linda Brown must have
felt when she’d learned at nine years old that she couldn’t go to the school down the road, the one her white friends in the neighborhood attended, just because of
her skin color. I felt her heart hammering
when she saw how shaken up her daddy was on the walk home after his talk with the school principal. I imagined the hushed conversations Oliver and Leola
Brown had over the kitchen
table when they decided to move for-
ward with the case, knowing what it would mean. I thought of all the parents hunched
over in exasperation, fear, and de- termination,
the folks in Delaware,
Washington DC, South Carolina, and Virginia, who decided they could no longer
accept segregation either.
I drank in American history,
in all
its problematic glory, like water. It was mine after all. My dad’s grandmother Evelyn had embarked on the Great Migration
to California after her husband was killed overseas in World War II. He died
for a country that didn’t think he
deserved to call it home. My mom’s grandfather
Joseph had been killed right here in
America’s Jim Crow
South. And their
tales were just the
family history that had been
passed down.
I wasn’t much of a morning person,
but once I rubbed the crust out of my eyes, I couldn’t close them again. Not with all these stories
of individuals insisting
they be remembered calling out to me at once. I had to listen to them.
After
almost an hour of studying, my alarm rang again
to drag me out of my bubble. I
walked back over to my and Happi’s
shared wall and knocked out another
syllabic message: Hap-pi! Wake! Up! Her groan was loud and miserable. I chuckled. The only human being
on earth less of a morning person than me? Her.
As I waited
to shower, I checked
the email account I used
for my YouTube page, marking off
the usual spam, replying to
short messages, and noting the invitations and requests I had to think on more and get back to.
But then. I paused.
Oh Kezi. I was reading this ridiculous article about parasocial
relationships. It was describing those pathetic people who feel like they know
media personalities but don’t. You know,
those freaks who get excited when they catch a glimpse of a celebrity’s baby
or read every interview to see what brand of shampoo they use. Like that
would make them closer. I thought it was fine. But I stayed
up all night. All night.
All night wondering if you would see me that way
too. Like some random weirdo on the internet.
But I told myself over and over,
she’s much too good, way too smart, to not realize
that some of her subscribers are more special than others. And I’m more than a subscriber. I’m a supporter. A lifeline. We get each other. No one understands the struggle and
what you’re fighting for like I do.
But all night I thought of this. Going insane. Running in circles in my mind
until I tripped on something that made me stop. It was something you said,
actually.
I tried to swallow but
couldn’t get past the sand in my throat. Nausea washed over me in waves, and I
clutched my stomach to steady myself.
You said: We’re in this together. You remember
that don’t you? It was that youth panel you spoke on two weeks ago at city hall and you made this beautiful,
beautiful comment on how to have hope in the face of hopelessness. You promised that “even in the darkest
moments, when you feel completely alone, like you’re
the only one who cares,
just remember that I care.
Our community cares.
And the people
who came before us and behind us and the ones who come up beside us
care
too. So long
as we keep caring and trying, there
is hope.” I cried when
your words came
to me. And I’m going to sleep well tonight knowing that I’m not alone. I’m not hopeless. I have you.
There was a video attached to
the email, sent from an address named mr.no.struggle.no.progress. My eyes widened and my
pulse pounded against my ears when I registered whose face
was in the thumbnail. Mine. I clicked
on the preview button with a shaky hand and watched
myself at the event the email sender mentioned. There I was, speaking animatedly and
pronouncing the very words this stranger
had taken the time to transcribe.
The camera panned
slowly across the room as my voice
continued in the background.
I remembered that day. I almost hadn’t made it in time, be-cause Happi’s audition for our school’s Shakespeare play had gone longer than planned. Instead of taking my
sister home after her tryout, I had dragged her with me straight to the panel. There she was in the video, seated
between Derek and Ximena,
who’d also come to show their
support. The customary sounds of an audience wove in and out of the
audio, a fussy baby babbling merrily,
a chorus of a dozen sheets of paper rustling, a sniff ly man’s sneezes
punctuating every
few sentences.
The camera continued its survey of the room, and I noticed
a group of people standing along
the back wall. The space had been remarkably packed for
a city hall meeting, and
I recalled that quite a few
members of the audience had come because they
were subscribers to my YouTube channel, generationkeZi. When the meeting was adjourned, more than half in attendance had made a beeline to where
I was seated, to chat. I’d greeted a lot of people, but others had stood on the
sidelines and watched from afar, never approaching.
Who was the person who had
sent this message? A fan I hadn’t gotten to speak
with? The cameraperson? A local citizen who was feeling particularly inspired?
The slow creak of the bedroom
door opening diverted my attention. I spun in my chair,
not even sure when I’d grabbed
the silver plaque I’d received
from YouTube for reaching
one hundred thousand subscribers, noting the instinct I had to hold it in the
air
menacingly.
“Bathroom’s all yours,” Happi
said, pausing midyawn to look at me strangely.
“Thanks, I’ll be
right in,” I replied to the back of her head
as she stumbled to her room.
Instead, I gripped the plaque in my lap and sat there, frozen. Him again.
Excerpted from One of the Good Ones Maika
Moulite and Maritza Moulite © 2021 by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite, used
with permission by Inkyard Press/HarperCollins.
About the Authors
MAIKA MOULITE is a Miami native and the daughter
of Haitian immigrants. She earned a bachelor’s in marketing from Florida
State University and an MBA from the University of Miami. When
she’s not using her digital prowess to help nonprofits and major organizations
tell their stories online, she’s sharpening her skills as a PhD student
at Howard University's Communication, Culture and Media Studies
program. Her research focuses on representation in media and its impact on
marginalized groups. She’s the eldest of four sisters and loves young adult
novels, fierce female leads, and laughing.
MARITZA MOULITE graduated from
the University of Florida with a bachelor’s in women’s studies and
the University of Southern California with a master’s in journalism.
She’s worked in various capacities for NBC News, CNN, and USA TODAY. Maritza is
a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania exploring ways to
improve literacy in under-resourced communities after being inspired to study
education from her time as a literacy tutor and pre-k teacher assistant. Her
favorite song is “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire.
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