Come Home Safe, Please.

Have you ever experienced a moment where your heart dropped from dread? Where you could think of nothing more than the unimaginable, causing a pit of hollowness in your stomach? I’ve felt it once before.

It happened one day when I was visiting home. I was surrounded by family – my mom, brothers, and little sister. My sister had just gotten home from walking the family dog and we were asking her how it went. Did the dog pee, poop, what route did they walk – we wanted a recap on things like that. She told us that a man stopped to talk with her about how cute our dog was.

At first, we didn’t think anything of it. If you’ve ever seen a picture of our Charlie, you know that he is thee cutest dog, ever! But her story quickly went left. As my sister continued on, she mentioned something that made my mom, brother, and me raise our eyebrows simultaneously. She went on to explain that the man who stopped to talk to her was actually driving on the main road, stopped his car, and got out of his vehicle to approach my 13-year-old sister to tell her how cute our dog is.

Immediately, our apparent fear rose to the surface. Mind you, my sister is – at this point – home safe and sound telling us the story from the comfort of the family room couch, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is what could have happened. She doesn’t understand the magnitude of what she just experienced and doesn’t get why we are now repeatedly expressing how glad she’s safe.

Although our intentions were pure, we allowed our fear to dictate the message. The message we really hoped to relay was clear, but we then understood our true fear – the fragility of life. Life can literally be taken from you in an instant. Take this for example: the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database lists 424,066 missing children under 18 in 2018. About 37 percent of those children are Black, even though Black children only make up about 14 percent of all children in the United States.

Let it be known that we had a little family meeting to explain how that was a very serious matter. But it’s hard to do that when you’re still calming yourself down from the “what ifs”.

It’s especially hard when you’re voicing your fears out loud:

• “You know how easy it would have been for him to just have grabbed you and put you in his car?!”

• “Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you scream? Why did you stay there?!”

• “You could have been kidnapped! You could have been RAPED!”

• “We may have never seen you ever again!”

I know, I know… That’s not the best type of communication when you’re trying to educate the youth without placing unrepairable fear onto them. You want their innocence intact, while instilling the reality of what really goes on out in the world. One event could have changed the course of her life and we just wanted her to know that she must be careful out here in these streets.

Consider yourself privileged if these fears don’t cross your mind. To life a live so untroubled that you couldn’t even imagine misfortune.

Sadly, not everyone has that same sense of peace. Thinking of my sister, and the thankfulness we feel for her being home, I immediately think of the families who aren’t so fortunate to be on the other side and feel relief when a child returns home.

It’s astounding how little attention is given when a child of color does go missing, compared to our paler counterparts. For instance, in a 2015 study, it was found that though Black children accounted for about 35 percent of missing children cases in the FBI's database, they amounted to only 7 percent of media references. As we all know good and well, people of color – Black people – are disproportionally affected more than the rest, but we don’t get the assistance we need. It is up to ourselves to save ourselves.

I imagine Eli Pope firmly telling our community we have to work twice as hard to get half as much. But for this case, apparently, we have to have five times more despair to get a sliver of attention.

Because of this, we need to stand together. When things happen in our community, we do what we must to do to keep things copasetic. We lean on each other to keep us as safe as we can with resources that we’ve attained.

I may not be entirely satisfied with the way that my family educated my sister on Stranger Danger. I wish it was never a discussion to be had in the first place. But I feel confident that she now knows what to do if another situation like this presented itself.

I guess I say all this to say: it’s difficult having conversations that may take the innocence away from a child, although preparing them for life. But it’s more difficult dealing with the consequences of not having the conversation with a child who was too innocent and unprepared.

So, if all else fails, if the conversations that scare the youth result in them coming home every night, then those are the conversations I’m not opposed to continue having.

Love,

Autumn