And then I heard myself breathe
Lede Fellow Nikka Troy recalls a moment of clarity during protests in New Orleans against police brutality and systemic racism.
By Nikka Troy
numb (adj): deprived of the power of sensation, unable to think, feel, or respond normally; deprived of feeling or responsiveness.
New Orleans — I am no stranger to anger. Still, I was numb when I first heard about the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. I sat on the news for days with no real reaction. Another Black person killed by police? Another Black man? It was nothing new.
The video of George Floyd on the ground with a white police officer’s knee in his neck was circulating everywhere that week. I didn’t watch. I don’t have to see a cell phone video of a killing to know what happened was wrong. Another Black body being murdered on camera. Why is it that we have to see police brutality in our Facebook or Twitter feed in order to understand what is going on?
I am a Black woman. I didn’t need to see the video to feel the crushing pain of Floyd’s last moments on Earth. Every day I bear witness to the crushing pain of countless murders in America that see no justice. Can you blame me for wanting to avoid that video?
May 25, 2020
“Momma! I’m through!” -George Floyd
May 30, 2020
11:32 p.m. — I had just picked my mom up from her shift at a local Walgreens. Usually, we’d go back and forth with the usual post-workday chitchat, but tonight was different. Mom was silent. It wasn’t her usual tired silence. It was heavier. She didn’t have to say a thing for me to know that something was weighing on her back. I dared to ask.
“Mom. Are you OK?”
“Nikka,” my mother replied. “That man called for his momma.”
She said it without hesitation. I knew she was talking about George Floyd.
“Do you know what that does to a person?” my mother asked.
I was taken by surprise. My first reaction was to let out an awkward laugh. Momma was often dramatic. I hadn’t watched the video. I had no clue about the image on her mind and the minds of so many others. My guilt closed in when I noticed her tears. You can’t watch your Momma cry and feel nothing.
We spent the rest of the night talking. She told me that the video worried her. I saw that I had missed about six back-to-back calls from her that day.
She told me about watching the video of George Floyd’s last moments. How the police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck. How she heard Floyd scream for his Momma. She knew in her mind that it was George Floyd who was saying those words. But she heard something different.
“All I heard was your voice,” my Momma said.
May 31, 2020
6:00 p.m. — Half of my friends were already risking their lives to attend local protests, choosing to break social distancing rules in order to spark change, or maybe a revolution. I was scared knowing the risk that I could be exposed to the novel coronavirus and bring it home to loved ones.
Black people make up more than half of those who have died from covid-19 in Louisiana, according to state data. I knew it was possible I could contract the virus going to protests, and that my actions could pose a risk to the elders around me. I was afraid of the virus. But I knew, deep inside, that I was more afraid of the racism that pervades American cities and institutions. Of being killed by someone in uniform who has taken an oath to serve and protect. I’ve known that fear for longer.
The anger of knowing that fear was the catalyst for many of the people out there protesting. We all wanted to make it back home. We also knew the risk that lay waiting for us. Just another day in America.
I remember feeling overwhelmed on my first day at the protests in New Orleans. That day’s march was peaceful, ending at Duncan Plaza across from New Orleans City Hall. People held posters high over their heads. The people pressing into the plaza reminded me of a tidal wave. Voices everywhere, overlapping and clashing. Several demonstrators spoke through an old megaphone that didn’t carry very far. People gathered and listened regardless.
The crowd got louder as the protest started closing in on the plaza. People were yelling. People were angry. I tried to join in, to yell and chant in unison with the other protesters. I had trouble taking myself seriously. I still felt numb, disconnected. If I felt anger, it was directed at myself. Why wasn’t I more angry?
I realize now I was still trying to figure out my fight. That day, I stayed quiet and focused on looking around at the crowd. The protesters were calling for justice for George Floyd, but also so many others.
Justice for Breonna Taylor. Justice for Ahmaud Arbery. Justice for Tony McDade. Justice for Modesto Reyes. All of these names. All of these people. People who look like me. People who look like they could be my family.
June 4, 2020
6:00 p.m. — It was my third day attending local protests and I was actually marching this time. Previously, I had joined in at the end of the demonstration, listening in as various speakers called for changed through a megaphone.
Emotions were running high among those gathered. Up until this point, protests in New Orleans had been peaceful. That changed the previous night when the New Orleans Police Department clashed with protesters on the Crescent City Connection, the bridge that connects New Orleans’ east bank to its west bank across the Mississippi River. Police fired rubber balls and tear gas into the crowd. Protestors were injured in the clash.
Today, the protest organizers were adamant about avoiding another clash with police. People were instructed to stay together and walk behind the organization banners. They were discouraged from confronting police officers along the way. I began to gather items handed out by volunteers along the protest route, a sort of worst-case-scenario toolkit.
✓ Goggles
✓ Hand Sanitizer
✓ One ballistic board
✓ Disinfectant wipes
✓ Water
✓ Rubber gloves
✓ An apple (a day keeps rubber bullets away?)
The marchers around me were peaceful, though I heard some protesters calling for destruction, a literal tearing down of the oppression all around us. Their calls struck a chord in me. Has American ever experienced change — true change — without violence? Martin Luther King, Jr. was the face of peaceful protest, and still he was gunned down in a motel. Violence is the embrace we hate to feel. The mirror that none of us wants to look at.
Just before sunset — It took witnessing the protests firsthand for me to internalize what this was all about. It wasn’t just about demanding that law enforcement officers stop killing Black people. As I marched, the calls for accountability went deeper. Defund police. Protect workers’ rights. How intersectionality shapes our world. I learned a lot as I walked.
The gravity of the moment hit me as we walked the upward slope of the Broad Street bridge over Interstate 10 toward the building officially called the Orleans Justice Center. (The building is the city jail.) Someone pointed out what appeared to be an incarcerated man looking out over the protests from the recreation space at the top of the toward jail facility. We raised our closed fists in salute to those looking down from the yellow-lit windows. “Let them know that this is for them,” someone shouted.
I can only describe what I felt then as grief. Overwhelming grief. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. My heart thumped in my chest. I knew that I was seeing/breathing/tasting what would become history. This was supposed to be the kind of experience I read about in a textbook, not lived through.
I needed a safe space. I needed comfort. A woman standing nearby must have seen me and understood. She asked me to open my hands. I listened. She dropped a pair of earplugs into my palms, which I quickly took and stuffed into my ears. The frenzy of the world around me immediately faded to a murmur.
And then I heard myself breathe.
I breathed deeply. In and out. In and out. For 30 seconds, I heard nothing but my own breathing. Hot tears and sweat ran down my cheeks. I felt exhausted and mucky. But I was alive. I was here. I let go, and my heart slowed in gratitude.
By the time we crossed over I-10, my grief had solidified into anger. I was screaming. I was chanting. I was angry. I cursed the police. I cursed America. The world around me flashed red and blue, lights shooting out from a nearby police car. The numbness I had felt before was now raw pain. I needed to feel that.
July 2020
Today, I wonder if there were others like me out there.
How many people felt numb as they flooded the streets in protest? How many people are numb as they move through the streets now? Numb to a virus. Numb to a country that continues to strip Black people of their ability to respond and to feel and to think. George Floyd’s cries to his Momma flow into a collective trauma more than 400 years in the making.
But I am not numb. Not anymore. I heard myself breathing the breath my mother gave me. And I will not unhear it.
Nikka Troy a New Orleans-native writer, director and performer, and a Spring 2020 Lede New Orleans Fellow.
