“On the one hand, we were relieved because she’d been working three jobs to make ends meet. Louis wanted her to have more time with us, or so he said, so she quit two of the jobs after they were married, and for a while, it was… It was nice to have her around more. The downside was that he was around, too. He changed a lot after they were married. Suddenly, everything we did annoyed him. Our music was too loud, we talked too much, we ate too much, we laughed too much, we didn’t do as well in school as his kids did. They were in college when they got married, so we didn’t see much of them.”
She took a sip from the water bottle. “After a while, King and I started to avoid him. If he was home, we stayed in our rooms and kept to ourselves. That’s when we became ‘ungrateful brats.’ We couldn’t win with him no matter what we did, and every time my mom told him to leave us alone, he got pissed at her and told her to shut up and let him run his household the way he saw fit. He said she should be grateful for him and how he saved us and saved her from being just another welfare family. That really hurt her feelings because she never applied for aid, even when we really needed it after my dad died.”
Amara took another sip of the water and seemed to be collecting her thoughts.
“As we got older, King began to talk back to him, to call him out on his shit. They fought a lot.”
“Did it ever get physical?” Sam asked.
“No, but I worried that it would eventually. When King wasn’t around, Louis would tell my mother, ‘That boy had better watch himself,’ or he’d get what was coming to him. She’d tell him to stop with that talk. King was a normal teenage boy, a good student and all the things she hoped he’d be. She asked Louis to leave him alone. That was around the time that Louis insisted we start calling him Daddy. We didn’t want to do that because we remembered our own daddy. We still missed him and grieved for the loss. It felt unnatural for us to call him that. My mom asked us to go along with it to keep the peace, which was the first time King said to me that if it came down to us or Louis, she might pick him. I didn’t think that was true, but as time went on, she became more about keeping the peace than about doing what was right.
“In many ways, King and I felt like prisoners in that home, even though he never hit us or anything. We knew kids who had it a lot worse than we did, so we pressed on, dreaming about the day we could leave it all behind and go live our own lives. We used to talk about getting an apartment together the day I turned eighteen.” Her eyes filled as she looked down. “That would’ve been today.”
Sam had been deeply moved by her composure. “Do you need to take a break?”
Amara shook her head. “I want to get it over with.” After a pause, she continued. “Things kept getting worse at home. King was in open rebellion, even though my mom and I pleaded with him to keep the peace until we could figure out a plan. King said there was no plan. We needed Louis to keep a roof over our heads. Mom didn’t want to go back to working three jobs, which would mean leaving us alone with him at night. We asked her who she’d pick, us or him, but she snapped at us not to put her in that position.
“When she thought we weren’t looking, she was very affectionate with Louis, which grossed us out. She said she was trying to survive and get us through high school, but we thought she was truly into him, despite the way he treated us. She begged us not to antagonize him. We had to look up what that word meant. King said that us breathing the same air antagonized him, and Mom had no intention of doing anything about it. I asked him if we should tell someone at school. He said, ‘What will they do? He’s never hit us. There’s food in the house, and we have everything we need. They’ll laugh us out of their office.’”
Amara took another sip of water. “When it happened… I was supposed to be spending the night next door at my best friend’s house. I’d started to spend a lot more time over there, which left King home alone with them. That made me scared for him, but I couldn’t stand being there if I had somewhere else to be. So I was next door, but I started feeling sick. My friend’s mom suggested I go home in case I was coming down with something contagious. I didn’t want to go, but I did. I tried to slip in through the kitchen door so no one would hear me, but when I walked in… They… Louis had King on the floor of the living room. He had his hands wrapped around King’s throat as he thrashed and struggled against his hold. My mother was screaming at Louis to let him go, but Louis was like a man possessed. He just kept squeezing until King stopped moving. I was terrified I’d be next if they knew I was there. I slipped down the hall and into my room, but kept the door cracked so I could hear them.”
Sam’s heart ached for what Amara had seen, for the loss of her brother and ally and for the weight she’d carried in the years since.
“My mother was shrieking at Louis, saying he’d killed her baby. He told her to shut the fuck up and help him figure out what to do with him. I was waiting for her to call the police, but she never did that. She just screamed and cried and begged him to call the rescue to bring him back. Louis said if she called anyone, he’d kill her, too. I was crying so hard in my room, with a shirt stuffed in my mouth so I wouldn’t make any noise. I’d never been so scared or devastated in my life.
“My brother was dead? Louis had killed him? Mom wasn’t immediately calling the cops or running for help or doing anything about it? I didn’t understand what was happening. And then I heard them talking about what to do with the body. I think I left my body for a time after that. I slid down onto the floor. I was there all night, afraid to move.”
Sam swiped away a tear that broke loose as Amara relayed her horrifying story. Next to her, Freddie stared at the wall over Amara’s shoulder.
“In the morning, I needed to use the bathroom, so I came out of my room to discover I was home alone. They were gone, and so was King. I was shaking so hard, my legs, hands… I’ve come to understand I was in shock, and the physical reaction was because of that. But at the time? It added to the terror. I went back into my room, closed the door and waited.
“I wasn’t sure what exactly I was waiting for, but I found out later when they returned home, and my mom freaked out, pretending to realize King hadn’t slept in his bed. I listened at the door as she began calling his friends to ask if they’d seen him. When their plan became clear to me, I got sick in a paper bag I pulled from the trash can in my room. Before long, there were people at the house, and my mother was hysterical because she couldn’t find her son.”
“Did anyone wonder where you were?” Freddie asked.
“Not once that entire day did anyone open the door to my room to see if I was there. I’m not sure if they assumed I was still next door, but no one checked.”
“So they also didn’t ask you if you knew where he was?” Sam asked.
“They did not.”
“Did the police come?”
“Not until he was found.” She fiddled with the label on the plastic water bottle. “It took two days for his body to be found. They screamed and cried when the police came to tell us he was dead. The word got out pretty quickly, and the house was overrun with people and food and condolences. My mother sat in the living room, sobbing the whole time, while Louis held her hand and accepted the kindness of neighbors and the few friends they had. Most of the people were friends of King’s and their parents. Everyone was devastated and filled with outrage over the death of another Black kid under suspicious circumstances. They were sure it was some sort of hate crime and were determined to get justice for him.”
Sam handed her a tissue that Amara used to blot the tears from her eyes and face.
“There was a huge, over-the-top spectacle of a funeral. My mother played her role to perfection. Sobbing and carrying on… I heard them say that more than fifty thousand dollars in donations came in and how that would pay for the funeral and cover their outstanding bills. I threw up again when I heard how they’d profited from murdering my brother.”
“What were their interactions with you like during that time?”
“Minimal. We kind of steered clear of each other. I came out to use the bathroom and eat and went right back in my room.”
“Did your mother offer any support to you after the death of your brother?” Freddie asked.
“She never once mentioned to me that he’d died. She acted like everything was normal when I was around, and I quickly understood that I was expected to do the same.”
“Why did you wait until now to report this crime?” Sam asked to get the information on the record.
