By Molly Riexinger

I was listening to Tiffany D. Jackson’s Let Me Hear a Rhyme this morning when a few words stopped me in my tracks.

Jarrell was talking about his OG, Mac, a man who had once held a position of influence and respect in his life. But now, as Jarrell poured out a drink for him, he said the man was dead to him.

Dead to him. Not dead.

And I knew exactly what he meant.

I have a brother who’s dead to me. He’s still walking around somewhere, living his life. But he’s been dead in mine for years.

His name is Nick.

The Family We Made

There was a time when Nick was one of the most important people in my life.

He wasn’t my brother by blood. He was my brother because we’d chosen to be family. We’d been through things together, protected one another, and lived by a code that meant something to us.

When my daughter was little and I needed diapers, formula, and wipes, Nick pawned his Xbox to get them for her.

That’s the kind of person he could be.

And I don’t want that part of him forgotten just because of what happened later.

Even now, years after everything happened, I think about Nick all the time. I drive past the park where his mother lives on the other side, and I think of him. I pass the gas station where we used to stop for Swishers every day, and I think of him. I see his name on an inmate list, or something his mother posts on Facebook because we’re still friends, and I wonder how he’s doing.

I’m not so angry anymore. It’s just sad.

Those ordinary places and memories are still part of my life, even though he isn’t.

I spent years involved in the black market, primarily the drug trade. I started in the Quad Cities, spent time operating in Rockford and sometimes Chicago, and eventually came back to the Quad Cities.

I wasn’t in a gang, although I associated with people who were. We had our own circle, our own relationships, and our own understanding of what loyalty meant.

Some of those people became family to me. Not in the casual way people sometimes use that word. I mean people I trusted with my life, people who protected my child, people I would have done almost anything for.

Jay was one of them. Jay and I were best friends for years. We did a lot of things together. He was family, too.

And Nick and Jay had their own history. There were times when Nick had fallen off in his hustle, and Jay was the one who put him back on.

Because loyalty wasn’t just something we talked about. It was something we expected from one another.

Loyalty Isn’t Blind

I don’t believe loyalty means blindly agreeing with someone.

I’ve had disagreements with people I loved. I’ve taken positions they didn’t like. I’ve lost relationships because I believed someone was wrong and wasn’t willing to pretend otherwise.

But there was a difference between disagreeing with someone and actively contributing to their downfall. I could believe you were wrong without helping someone else destroy you.

One of the rules I learned from the gangsters I associated with was the rule of the duck. The idea was that the duck only gets killed or hurt because it opens its mouth.

My ex-husband, Rae’s father, used to tell me my mouth was going to get him killed. And he wasn’t entirely wrong. I could be reckless with what I said. I had an opinion about everything, and I wasn’t always careful about who heard it.

In that world, saying the wrong thing could be dangerous. I had to learn that having an opinion didn’t mean I needed to voice it every time. Knowing when and how to speak was just as valuable as knowing what I wanted to say.

I’d been interrogated by police before. When I was, I kept my mouth shut. I knew I had the right to remain silent, and I couldn’t understand why people would talk without legal representation.

Keeping your mouth shut doesn’t mean you have to do nothing.

There’s another scene in Let Me Hear a Rhyme that reminded me of that. Kaven has information the boys need, but he doesn’t want to get involved by snitching. Pierce recognizes that Kaven has a right to protect himself. Rather than demanding that he abandon that right, Pierce offers another way for him to provide the evidence.

I appreciated that. Sometimes people act like you have only two choices. You either tell everything you know, or you refuse to help at all. But those aren’t always the only choices.

And silence doesn’t always mean you approve of what someone has done.

Sometimes it means you’re protecting yourself. Sometimes it means you’re refusing to make a situation worse. Sometimes it means you know there are consequences to speaking that other people aren’t considering.

That doesn’t apply to every situation. I’ve never believed that protecting someone who harms a child is the same as refusing to inform on someone to save yourself. Those are different things, and the distinction matters to me.

But in the world I came from, the code around talking was understood.

Or at least I thought it was.

Nick

Nick was a stick-up man.

He wasn’t just another hustler who got caught up in something. He made decisions that carried serious risks, and he knew what those risks were. There were people around him who helped him when things weren’t going well, including Jay.

Then Nick found himself facing the consequences of his own decisions.

He had a child on the way.

And he talked.

I understand wanting to protect your child. I understand that instinct better than almost anything.

But here’s where I have a problem with what Nick did.

He had a responsibility to that child before he made the decisions that put him in that position. That responsibility didn’t suddenly appear when he was facing prison.

And when he chose to cooperate, other people paid for it.

Jay went to prison.

Jay, who had been there for Nick. Jay, who had helped him when his hustle fell apart. Jay, who was my best friend and family for years.

Nick was the one who had been involved in stick-ups. He wasn’t some innocent bystander who’d been dragged into somebody else’s mess.

Yet his decision cost Jay years of his life. Time with his kids he can’t get back.

I know Jay was responsible for his own decisions, too. I’m not pretending otherwise. But that doesn’t erase Nick’s part in what happened, and it doesn’t make his betrayal fair.

After that, Nick was dead to us.

Not because we stopped remembering the good things he’d done. Not because every moment we’d shared suddenly became a lie.

He was dead to us because there were consequences to betraying people who had trusted you with their lives.

When the Rules Changed

Nick wasn’t the only person I knew who cooperated with police.

There were two women in our circle, Kati and Star, who were involved in a robbery. Kati left her phone behind, and when police questioned her, she gave them information that implicated Star.

Star went to prison.

Star was my friend and neighbor. She was someone I respected, and she’d helped protect my daughter more than once.

I knew Star had made her own decisions. She wasn’t innocent of the things she’d done, and I’ve never needed to pretend she was. But Kati had made decisions, too.

What bothered me was how differently people reacted.

Some of the same men who had condemned Nick were willing to excuse Kati because she was a woman and a mother.

But Nick was about to become a father.

If having a child excused Kati’s decision to talk, why didn’t it excuse his?

I didn’t believe it excused either one. I could understand their fear without agreeing with what they did.

And I couldn’t accept a code that changed depending on who had broken it.

Star eventually came home and built a different life for herself. I’ve watched her make something of that life, and I respect her for it. I respected her before she went to prison, too.

People are complicated. They can do things I disagree with and still be people I love and respect. They can make terrible decisions and go on to make better ones.

But I also believe we have to own our decisions. And if you make a decision, stand on it. That includes accepting the consequences that follow.

Choosing My Children

I eventually left that life.

It wasn’t because I suddenly decided everything I’d been doing was wrong. I didn’t hate every aspect of the life I was living. In fact, I loved and even miss much of it. It wasn’t because I woke up one morning and became a different person.

I left because that life had become a conflict of interest with my child.

I knew what could happen. I’d seen what happened to other people. I’d been questioned by police myself.

I also knew that if I continued, I could eventually find myself in a situation where my decisions cost my daughter something she didn’t deserve to lose.

Her mother.

Her security.

The life she should have had the opportunity to grow up with.

The cost was too high for someone who did not deserve to serve those consequences.

I loved the people in my community. Some of them had protected and looked out for me and my daughter when we needed it most. I wasn’t going to turn around and give them up to protect myself.

So I left.

I didn’t wait until I was facing a choice between betraying people I loved and leaving my child without her mother.

I made the choice while I still had another option.

I’ve said before that I love my children. But more than that, I choose my children.

And I think that’s a very different thing from continuing to take those risks, then using your child to justify what you do when the consequences arrive.

The Influence We Leave Behind

There’s another part of Let Me Hear a Rhyme that has stayed with me.

Jarrell wasn’t just talking about someone he knew. He was talking about his OG, someone he’d looked up to, someone whose influence had helped shape the way he understood the world.

I know something about that kind of influence from both sides.

I learned a lot by listening to people who had more experience than I did. I understood that there were people who knew things I didn’t, and that paying attention could save me from having to learn every lesson the hard way.

There’s a Jeezy line that came to mind when I was thinking about it: “Mister if I’m talking, you should listen. Game is free, okay?”

I understood the value of listening.

But I don’t think everyone understood how much I knew.

I was a white, college-educated woman who’d grown up sheltered. I was a mother. I looked like a soccer mom.

Unless you knew me well, you probably wouldn’t have guessed how much experience I had in that world. And I used that to my advantage.

Being underestimated can be frustrating. But if you understand that people are underestimating you, sometimes it’s one of the best protections you have.

Over the years, there were younger people around me who listened to what I said and watched what I did. Some needed a place to stay. Some needed protection. Some needed somebody who believed in them.

I tried to be that person when I could.

I don’t know how much I taught them explicitly and how much they learned just by being around me. I suspect a lot of it was implicit.

They experienced things. They watched things. They heard things. And those experiences became part of the map they were building their worldview from.

Now that I’ve spent more years raising children, I understand more fully how much influence adults can have over young people, especially young people who are looking for somewhere to belong.

That doesn’t mean I take responsibility for every decision someone else made, or that I regret everything I taught them. But I do think differently about the things people might have learned from watching me.

Hearing Jarrell talk about his OG made me consider that influence from both directions. What we learn from the people we look up to. What other people learn from us.

And what happens when someone who helped shape your world does something that changes how you see them.

Dead to Me

Years after Nick betrayed us, I saw him outside a convenience store.

I was in my car.

He saw me and smiled. He raised his hand to wave.

And for a moment, I wanted so badly to wave back.

I wanted to roll the window down. I wanted to talk to my friend and my brother.

Because I missed him.

I missed the man who had pawned his Xbox to buy diapers and formula for my daughter. I missed the person I’d trusted. I missed my family.

But he was dead to me.

To all of us.

And I’d made that decision based on something I believed in.

I couldn’t do it.

I met his eyes, left the window up, and drove away.

I watched his smile fade. His hand fall to his side.

And he knew.

I could see it on his face.

He knew he was dead to me.

I’ve thought about that moment many times over the years.

I didn’t retaliate against Nick. I didn’t send somebody to hurt him. I didn’t try to make him suffer for what he’d done.

I made a conscious choice to leave him dead in my life.

That didn’t mean I didn’t love him anymore. I did. I still do.

I’m not asking Nick to become somebody different. I love him for who he is. But he made choices that betrayed people who trusted him, and those choices cost me a relationship with someone I still love.

I’ve forgiven him to the degree that I can. But forgiveness doesn’t mean I have to restore a relationship, and love doesn’t mean I have to abandon the things I believe in.

Sometimes the consequence is simply that you no longer get to be part of someone’s life.

When I heard Jarrell say his OG was dead to him, and then pour out a drink for that same man, I understood.

He could still acknowledge what that man had meant to him.

He could still show respect for the place he’d once held in his life.

And he could still be done.

That’s what hit me so hard this morning.

Because I know what it feels like to grieve someone who’s still alive.

I know what it feels like to want to reach for someone and make the conscious choice not to.

And I know that sometimes restraint isn’t about having nothing to say or nothing you could do.

Sometimes it’s about knowing exactly what you feel, knowing what you’re capable of, and choosing to leave the window up anyway.