Summer 2007
Before Zavier Woodsever heard her voice, he was in survival mode.
The bruises on his back weren’t fresh, but they still ached when he moved too fast. His left rib had been sore for two weeks from the punches, ever since he’d talked back about a plate left in the sink.
That night, his stepfather didn’t yell. He just gripped the front of Zay’s hoodie, dragged him into the basement, and slammed him into the side of the washing machine so hard, the dryer shifted next to it.
“You think you grown now?”
Boom.
“You walk around here like you somebody.”
Boom.
“Your mama ain’t here no more, and you ain’t never been mine.”
Boom.
Zay didn’t cry from the blows to his sides. He didn’t scream.
He adapted to remain silent, but not because he wasn’t in pain; pain had become a language he’d grown to know too well.
One he never asked to speak.
Upstairs, his little sister Kennedy sat on the couch, curled under her throw blanket, waiting for the thuds to stop. She never ran downstairs anymore. She just waited and prayed.
Her father stormed up the stairs first, but Kennedy didn’t budge. She was her father’s prized possession; he’d never lay a hand on his only biological child. She learned that her desperate pleas to stop hitting her brother never worked, so she stopped trying long ago. Her father stormed past her, ignoring her cries as she sat bundled under the cover, and up the stairs to his bedroom. He slammed the door behind him.
A few minutes later, Zay had come back up. She didn’t ask what happened. She just whispered, “I’m tired of seeing him snatch you up, big brother. I have nightmares of him killing you.”
Zay didn’t respond. He didn’t know how to tell her he did too.
He stayed there not because he wanted to, but because he had nowhere else to go.
His aunts said there wasn’t enough space. His cousins were all struggling. Grandma had too many pills and not enough patience. They all knew that his stepfather was a monster but never stepped in. As far as he was concerned, when his mother died, the rest of his family had too.
Kennedy begged him not to leave. He’d also made a promise.
“Stay with your sister. No matter what,” his mama told him that night she died from cancer.
So he stayed.
The abuse began the night of her funeral. His stepfather, drunk and in a rage, punched Zay in the face because he was a reminder of a woman he’d once loved and never forgave for dying. He was angry with her for leaving him with two children to raise alone, one that wasn’t even his.
It was one of those brutal Detroit summers four days before August 1stwhen he would finally turn eighteen. He was at home, clicking through his Myspace page on his desktop, with one hand on the mouse and the other under his chin. He was frustrated from the slow connection and banged the mouse on the desk.
“Zay,” Kennedy said from the living room couch. “Chill out before you break it and my dad gets mad. You know how he gets.”
Zay scoffed. “Fuck yo’ dad. This shit is pissing me off!”
His rap group, The Ether Division, had gained a bit of a following around Detroit, mostly local open mics and basement party sets, but their Myspace Band page’s views and comments were steady. The group put their money together to shoot a video for their latest single “Westside Prayer” on the top level of MotorCity Casino parking ramp. It had only been a few days since they put it on YouTube, but the views had climbed. He was on Myspace trying to look at the latest view count. If he needed a ticket out, this was his best shot. The one verse he’d wrote at two a.m. about being broke, angry, and hungry for a better future was all that everyone quoted.
This justhadto work. He bet everything on it.
“I’m just tired of seeing him snatch you up,” Kennedy replied.
Zay didn’t respond, but her words sliced through him. He waited for the page to load and focused as it slowly began to display across the screen. It landed on a page of a girl he’d never seen, with his group’s song playing in the background.
