After Tupac and D Foster

The narrator describes Jayjones, Neeka’s older brother, whom the narrator has a crush on. He is a basketball player and works at KFC; he often brings fried chicken home for his family and friends to eat. The narrator notices that he has taken an interest in D, which makes her a little jealous. Compared to D, who has a unique look and mysterious past, she knows that Jayjones just sees her as a little sister.

One day, the narrator, Neeka, and D are sitting on their front steps and Jayjones brings them some fried chicken. While they eat, they talk about their families. Jayjones and Neeka describe their crowded household: their parents, two sets of twins, plus another brother in addition to the two of them. The narrator notes that Neeka’s other older brother, Tash, was arrested before D came to town and went to jail. She knows that Tash is gay, and when she and Neeka hear rap songs with anti-gay lyrics, they turn the TV off because it hurts to hear people talk that way about someone they love.

Jayjones brags that he made 397 out of 400 free throws the night before, then he offers to walk D to the bus stop when it’s time for her to go. The narrator watches them walk together and feels bad that sometimes she wishes that D never came to their neighborhood.

In the fall of 1993, Tupac Shakur is charged with sexual assault, and the narrator and her mother are following the trial. One snowy afternoon after D first started hanging out with the narrator and Neeka, the narrator’s mother asked her to tell her about D. She is concerned that no one seems to know anything about her, and she wants to know if D will be a bad influence on the narrator and Neeka. The narrator reassures her that D makes good grades and is not leading them astray. The narrator’s mother doesn’t like that D doesn’t know who her father is, but the narrator reminds her that she doesn’t know where her father is, so they’re not that different. Her mother tells her that she knows she thinks about her dad, and she certainly looks like her dad, but it’s best that they are not together.

One day, the narrator, D, and Neeka are jumping rope and they try to teach some younger girls how, letting them borrow their rope. The girls aren’t getting the hang of it and they eventually give up, saying that Double Dutch is one thing you just have to learn by practicing.

They sit down to talk when Jayjones runs up to them and collapses on the stairs. He tells them that he was running home and a police officer stopped him because the police officer thought Jayjones looked suspicious, as if he was running away with something. Jayjones is a talented basketball player and a fast runner, but he wonders what the point of having legs to run is if he’s just going to be stopped by cops when he does it.

Neeka tells Jayjones that he needs to do better in school so he can go to college and then get a job where he wears a suit, because police are less likely to bother a Black man wearing a suit. He says that as long as he’s Black, it won’t make a difference—he will always look suspicious to cops.

The younger girls approach them to return their jump rope and want to hang out with them, but Neeka tells them to stop getting into “grown folks’ business” (48). The girls walk away and turn the corner to go around the block. Everyone knows that Neeka is not allowed to leave their block and they laugh as Jayjones says those little girls must be more grown than she is if they are allowed to wander that far.

One day when the narrator comes home from school, she finds her mother watching Tupac’s trial after he was arrested for sexual assault. Her mother says the system is trying to make an example out of him, being harsher than was fair in order to scare other young men from following his example.

The narrator and her mother discuss how the judge and jury are biased against Tupac because of his tattoo, which says “Thug Life,” and his “gangsta” persona as a rapper. Even if there isn’t a lot of evidence against him for this particular charge, they are prejudiced against him because of the overall impression he makes, which is unfair. The narrator asks her mother if she really thinks that Tupac will go to prison and she replies that she does, because the court system wants to make an example out of him.

The next morning, Neeka and the narrator find the narrator’s mother in the kitchen, listening to a Tupac song. She tells them that Tupac had been robbed and shot five times the night before. The girls and the narrator’s mother are overwhelmed and upset by this news, grieving as if Tupac was one of their own neighbors. The narrator’s mother tells them that everything will be okay, but the narrator’s outlook is bleak. She imagines that she hears D crying from a distance.

Later that day, D, Neeka, and the narrator try to listen for news about Tupac on their boombox radio. It is the first day of December, extremely cold, and D’s hands are dry and cracked. Jayjones joins them, and he talks about what Tupac means to him—he feels almost as if Tupac is his brother. They each talk about the moments when they first encountered Tupac and what his music means to them.

Jayjones is amazed at how well Tupac can condense and clarify the things that he feels. He says sometimes other guys say disrespectful things about his brother, Tash, and if you play a Tupac song that preaches against hating others, they’ll be quiet. Neeka reminds him that Tupac doesn’t always have nice things to say about gay people, and she adds that if she ever hears anyone talking badly about Tash, she’ll make them pay for it.

The narrator says that the reason they connect with Tupac so strongly is because they are Black kids and Tupac is not much older than a kid himself. The themes of his music illuminate the injustices and dangers that Black kids in America are forced to contend with while most of the country doesn’t care.

After listening to Jayjones, Neeka, and the narrator talk about Tupac, D speaks up. She says that before she came to live with Flo, she saw and experienced a lot of terrible things in foster homes, things like Tupac describes in his music. She tells her friends that one of her foster parents spent the stipend she received for fostering on drugs and let the children she was fostering starve. She cries while Neeka and the narrator comfort her, and D tells them that she does not think Tupac will die; she and him are similar, and she knows neither of them will give up.

That night, Neeka is spending the night at the narrator’s house, and the narrator suggests that maybe she and Neeka really are lucky compared to D. Neeka scoffs at the idea because she is focused on the freedom that D has because she can take the bus and go wherever she wants until nine o’clock every night.

Tupac heals from his gunshot wounds, and on Valentine’s Day, he is sentenced to prison for over four years. The narrator’s community mourns for him, and they spend the next few days listening to the news and his music on the radio.

After Tupac’s sentencing, it seems like more and more cops are out in the neighborhood arresting young Black men. The narrator, looking back on this time, realizes that she was still very young and didn’t understand what was happening. She felt it was a surreal time, when the lyrics of Tupac’s music came to life in her own community. She spent a lot of time alone, trying to understand this confusing and sad time.

Several months after Tupac’s prison sentence, the narrator and Neeka have their 12th birthdays. To celebrate, Jayjones takes them and D to McDonald’s.