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Part 2: The Presence of My Enemy

There is an abundance of suffering here in the cool of the chapel this

afternoon. Suffering is a thing we all share, and especially this crowd

of East Oaklanders who have lost a child to the gun. (See Pt. 1: Chapel Light.)
Usually you think of the mother as the queen of the sufferers, but 13-year-old
Jimon Clark had a twin, Javon, and all indications were that they were twined

together in life until now.

Among the speakers are friends and teachers of the twins from Frick

Middle School, all of whom seem to find it a little strange to refer to

one of them without the other, as if this dying is the first thing one

of them has ever done independently. They seem to have been regularly,

unselfconsciously, referred to as “Jimonjavon.” Juh-MON-juh-vawn. One

word.

And so you must think of Javon as having died a little, too.  Or that

the entity, JimonJavon, was murdered, along with Jimon himself. It’s a

double-homicide. Or at least a homicide and a half.

The service opens with a reading from St. Paul, from his second letter

to the Corinthians: For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so

our consolation also abounds through Christ. It elicits a great amen

from the congregation, from the adults in the congregation, whose faith

must get shaken, but it always appears very strong. Christ is one of

the two comforts they are repeatedly offered, or that they repeatedly

find for themselves. Christ shares your suffering, in Christ is peace

and hope. If there is no peace in the city, no peace in your

neighborhood, no hope of safety, if the police can’t protect you, if

those who run the city are helpless, if the schools can’t raise you up

toward hope, there is Christ in the end.

The other comfort is heaven. No less than six times from the pulpit,

teachers and friends and family and preachers reminds us that Jimon is

in a better place. Better than Oakland, better than earth, better than

this world of struggle and fear and death. What other comfort are you

going to find? And what will you do if there is no softer place to go

for healing than where the fact of this bare meaningless death and void

lie?

An Instigator of Dreams

Young people take the altar to talk about how funny Jimon was, that he

was a kind of leader, an instigator, usually of innocent hi-jinks,

although sometimes these hi-jinks led to suspensions from school, which

elicits some laughs, but suspensions always sound serious to me, and

never funny in real life. One of the kids says, “I’m gonna wear his

colors.” But I’m not quite sure what this means. Probably Jimon just

liked to wear certain colors. He seems to have had that kind of fun and

colorful personality.

A teacher from Frick Middle School, from which Jimon and Javon had

graduated in the spring, says that Jimon assembled the very first student relay track

team to beat the Frick teachers in their end-of-the-year race. He talks

about Jimon’s determination. Jimon encouraged his relay team practice

every day. When ever there was a spare moment, he had them on the track

honing their baton transferring skills. I think this is the source of

the track star designation some of the media have given the dead boy,

which might be a bit of a stretch, the kind of legend the press

invents, or that we sometimes invent about our newly dead, a posthumous

medal of honor we bestow to comfort the dead, to make the dead feel

better about themselves. One article referred to Jimon as a “standout

athlete,” which seems like it might have been more precise.

Maybe Jimon did run track. Or maybe he would have run track at Skyline

High, where he was set to begin only a few days after his murder. Maybe

he would have run track, loved it, excelled at it, won great victories

and suffered the great crushing defeats that are the stuff of life.

Maybe he would have gotten a scholarship to run track at USC, studied

physical education or economics, gotten a degree and become a teacher,

a leader, an instigator of the dreams of 13-year-old kids. But instead

he is in a better place.

On the later, a friend of Jimon’s tries to sing for the dead boy a song

called, according to the program, “His Eyes is on the Sparrow.” She is

thin, tall, but a child. She is wearing very high heels. She is

distraught, sings one verse, very off key, then breaks down and is

helped back to her seat just in front of mine by another child her age,

Jimon's age. That night the one TV channel that has shown up broadcasts

this on its Ten O’clock News.

The Failure

The member of the city council from Jimon’s neighborhood approaches the

pulpit. Larry Reid’s voice shakes as he utters the second-most-heard

phrase at funerals of the killed in Oakland. “This has to stop.”

My opinion of the council member rises and falls by the moment. Unless

it turns out he has a personal relationship with the family, I’m

inclined to hate him for being here, or at least for speaking.

But then, when he calls the Oakland killings “insane violence,” I like

the term.

 “When I got the news of Jimon’s killing,” says Reid, “I saw myself as a

failure.” I appreciate the starkness of the term and the taking of this

personally. When he announces that he is giving the family a check for

$5000, it is the announcement, not the gratuitousness, that bothers me.

When he asks if anyone in today’s congregation knows anything about

Jimon’s killing, I quickly scan the room, even as I feel a chill run up

my spine. I watch carefully as Reid offers $2500 for the information.

To my eyes, no one reacts in any way that might indicate they know

something.

“If you’re scared to go to the OPD,” he says, “come to me. Because this

has to stop. In this city, when your children leave the house, you

don’t know if they’re going to come back.”

I’m impressed by his honesty, by his quivering voice, but, finally,

when he presents the family with a resolution from the mayor and city

council, I feel exceedingly empty.

The Enemy

Until an old gospel singer seems to appear from nowhere, an old man

backed with an organ, and sings a long, slow, agonized song based on a

verse from the 23rd Psalm, the psalm that begins, The Lord is my

shepherd; I shall not want, the one that declares that, though I walk

through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, the one that ends, I

shall dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

But it’s a neglected, middle verse the singer keeps repeating, an

enigmatic one I rarely note when I hear the psalm recited, that resonates: You prepare

a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Over and over in a

minor key, as the song comes to an intense climax, soulfully he sings

the words "in the presence of my enemy..."

I think the verse is about the abundance and joy of enduring life in

the midst of evil and death in the world, but sitting here this

afternoon, I can’t help but think about the funeral of Davante Riley,

which ended in gunfire. I can’t help but think about the trophies I’m

told the killers sometimes come to the funerals of their victims to

collect: a lock of hair, a cell-phone photo of the dead. I wonder if

the killer is with us today. Is the dead boy in the presence of his

enemy?

Or is it us? Are we in the presence of the enemy, or at least of the

enemy's quarry? And is the enemy, not death, but whatever it is in

Oakland that breeds the evil urge that lets a person kill like this.

Turn Out the Lights

Finally an old preacher speaks. He is short, and fat, full of energy,

with the worn, gravelly voice of a man with experience, and a man who

has done a lot of preaching.  He tells us he won’t talk for long, and

so he does. He talks about his past as a drug dealer. How he made a

hundred thousand dollars in one day. He makes it sound pretty good.

Then he says, proudly, that he now has a job where he makes $90,000 a

year, but he either forgets to include some kind of transition, the

part where he gets arrested or shot or loses his family or causes some

young person to become an addict or to overdose, or there just isn’t

any particular narrative lesson to be gained.

The preacher says that partying is fine, but that you “got to know when

to leave the party.” He has the congregation repeat this. He has us

turn to the person next to us and say it again. He tells bad jokes that

are likely lost on the kids. He ends with a recruitment drive, calling

up anyone who, right at this moment, has truly felt the call of Christ.

Forty, maybe 50 people, mostly the young ones, throng the altar. The

preacher tells us that there are pastors placed all around the room to

talk to anyone interested in joining his church.

The chapel service is ended. There is to be a balloon release now, out

in a field on the campus, but I head across the fuming blacktop to my

car. Inside, the thermometer reads 103 degrees. I drive the long way

down International Boulevard toward the lake. A hundred blocks, a

hundred stop lights. There are small gatherings of hookers on certain

corners, out in today’s bright blazing California sun. Most of them are

overweight. A couple of them are having a pretty good laugh over

something. I think about how I haven’t laughed like that in months.