The very short obituary of a Black man
By C. A. Rivera
Pablo Neruda wrote, “It so happens I’m tired of being a man.”
Guess what, Pablo? It so happens I’m tired of being a Black man.
A midnight black velvet petunia, not part of the natural foliage, born in the back seat of a 1964 Impala, smothered by gray-black ash puffs from a burning Los Angeles. Under the once blue sky, black plume clouds, spiraling, and lunging toward the once red sun. My mother swaddles me in her arms while my Black father’s head is smashed against the scorching asphalt, his body tased, and shot, multiple times for resisting arrest. Why couldn’t I have grown up with my Papa?
Fleeing immigrants, swimming through the roaring tributaries leading into the Pacific’s deep blue waters and others trudging through the South’s underground treacherous terrains to get to America, already despised and feared me. Why? Artistic caricatures of a Black man by Tinsel Town projected all over the world—nothing new. The hatred of a Black man, ongoing for thousands of years, inscribed in the limestone of the Aztec, Roman, and Greek empires and Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphics and in the bone and Asian bronze—all covered in Mesopotamian dust.
Spent most of my childhood years under the care of Grandma since mom and pops died before I turned six. Grandma: an uninformed witness to the blue-black bruises, black eyes, and bone fractures; falsified wounds from the football games and parkour. A Black Spiderman in the guts of the inner city; a supple, Black kid scaling wounded walls, rolling on pesticide filled fertilizer lawns, jumping from one convergence in the concrete to another trying to escape the tsunami of violence. Police brutality an understatement. The torture of a Black man, almost insurmountable. Beatings for resisting arrest. Beatings for not resisting arrest. Busted jaw, concussions, and chipped teeth scattered like tiny pieces of broken glass prisms. The pounding of heavy-duty black flashlights and flesh tenderizing batons casting an image on cracked cinderblocks. I, the shadow of my father. Police pummeling me. No one watching. Dragging me across the asphalt, riddled with uneven potholes, shredding the skin off my knees down to the bone. Animals get treated better than this. And the savages dropped me off at the Los Angeles General County Hospital for treatment every time. I stumbled through an old Art Deco General Hospital, The Great Stone Mother. I followed the yellow line, sat in the hallway, while the collage of gray-bearded male doctors on the dusty domed ceiling, hovered. The new doctors in training provided treatment while I daydreamed of becoming a doctor an imaginable but almost unrealistic goal for an impoverished Black kid. My bloody naiveté gushing out of my wounds, scarlet currents leading to the Los Angeles River.
I, Christopher Wallace Shakur: dumb, slow, smart, but had behavioral problems. Really smart, but was Black. Gifted, but mustn’t be Black. Penalized by relentless hours of detention for being one minute late. My Black soul, imprisoned. Didn’t matter that corrupt LAPD CRASH police units stopped me on my way to school, for walking with the other Black kids. They beat, slammed, and dragged us. Dangerous to walk in a group if you Black. Dangerous to show up late to school if you Black. I had to write. I’ll never be late to class a thousand and one times, with the echoes of steel toe boots ringing in my ears. I was an unwavering Black kid, in search of love, writing poetry in the name of my dear mom and pops, violating the rules of detention. Grateful to my Economic and Creative Writing teachers, who cultivated my herculean grit and propelled me forward towards the sun.
College years: an obstacle course riddled with two-faced blades. White professors argued back and forth, again and again. He is the top kid in the class, but he is here because of Affirmative Action. He is the top kid in our department, but he is here because of Affirmative Action. So, none of it counts. Christopher, you don’t have what it takes—not sure why they accepted you into our school? You’ll end up in prison, or dead, before you graduate. And I couldn’t call my dear mother if I saw a rat run through my bedroom. It was just me and the rat, because, after all, I, a Native Son, grew up in infinite poverty and my mother was dead. And so, campus police still followed and tormented me at night, beaming their heavy-duty black lights on me, paralyzing me. And yet, the privileged drunken kids, who lived next door, broke all the rules, completely intoxicated, hosting sex parties, drunken college men raping drunken women. But no one ever said anything, and they still don’t. The Cops never beamed their lights at those college kids.
The study of medicine at last. Test after test. Pop tarts. Ramen Noodles. Solitary intellectual confinement. Some days passed without food and money. And my singular Black friend, Big T, asphyxiated by an intractable poverty. I used lunch money to buy old editions of deteriorating books, then gave them to Big T to study—brotha couldn’t even afford a new pair of glasses. His vision hindered by the cracked glasses, swallowed by dusty tape like kudzu vines. Big T had zero chance of surviving to the end. True dat. Brother T only two years of medical school and now driving a big yellow school bus.
Then, it was only me and the terrified white male administrators and professors, once again. Reviews, never about academics; it was personal. Your beard is too long; you need to shave daily; you need to groom yourself. Shaved once a week; us niggas can’t shave daily, different hairdo. Professionalism is part of your performance. Didn’t matter that they had beards ten times longer than mine. They could. Medical school was easy. At least I didn’t get my head pulverized. It was just a bunch of scared narrow-minded white men bashing my soul with iron bars of professional bunkum.
Two months before graduating medical school, I was celebrating out in Chicago. I stepped outside to catch some fresh air after dancing for hours. Blue and white CPD turned the corner onto the sidewalk. A group of young Black kids were walking in a pack. The police started shoving them, telling them to get the fuck out of here. I walked around the corner, grabbed my phone to film. The police took their guns out. I turned. I heard multiple gun shots. I fell to the floor. Blood oozed out in search of the Mississippi. I was rushed to the hospital. Back and forth from surgery; too many gunshot wounds, despite the heroics of medicine. I used my last granules of energy left to finish my obit. I emailed the last part of my obit to Big T, who promised he’d drive his big yellow school bus from Chicago to Los Angeles and deliver the remaining piece to my best friend. Thanks brother T, I’ll miss you.
Twenty six years of a Black life that mattered was my racial destiny. I wrote this obituary. I didn’t want my Black history to be rewritten. I lived a mostly normal life, for a poor Black man. A few accomplishments here and there. Swaddle me in the Stars and Stripes alongside other war heroes. Cover my body with black petunias. I want to feel the soft velvet. Take a whiff of my magical scent. Frame this obit, place it all over America. Take selfies with the dead dark-skinned Black man. Twitter it. Signal it. Instagram it. WhatsApp it. WeChat it. Facebook it. Even Tik Tok it. Wait, only a terrified insecure white man can do whatever he wants. Snapchat it. Incarcerate the obit, isolate it, bury it, rewrite it, burn it. I’ll be happy with whatever you do with it, because according to Ralph Ellison, I was once invisible. Being shot in the back, by cowardly and racist Cops, now I’m invincible. And guess what, Pablo? I am survived by 21 million tired Black men. Roger that, America.
C. A. Rivera (he/him) is a physician-writer born and raised in Los Angeles. His writing has appeared in The Acentos Review, Ars Medica, Garfield Lake Review, Pulse, and in the Signs of life, a literary anthology themed around first-and second-hand experiences of illness and caregiving. A prior participant at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference under the renowned writer Sigrid Nunez, he is a member of the prestigious Macondo Writers Workshop and a recipient of an Author Fellowship from the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. He lives in Los Angeles with his family, where he is a practicing gastroenterologist and working on his novel Across the Asphalt, a searing tale of the Los Angeles carceral system’s effect on the health and soul of inner city young men. Follow him on Twitter/Instagram: @bitdocwriter