Breath. It's the first thing I ponder whenever a new police brutality case, officer-involved shooting of an unarmed victim, or wrongful incarceration is reported to the public. If the victim has died, I think of the dozen or so breaths before the end. Staccato, heart-pounding breaths, caught in a snare of panic, as though the breather senses she is nearing her last and wants to take in as much oxygen as she can in the space between, "Step out of the vehicle!" or "Hands where I can see them!" and the first blow or footfall or bullet. If the victim lives, if he is severely bludgeoned or mauled, over-sentenced or falsely imprisoned, I think of a breath pattern permanently altered: breath held, to mimic death, in hopes that the beating or dog bites …show more content…
Hers, inexplicably, is truncated to "Tish." And Alonzo Hunt, the 22-year-old love of her life, is called "Fonny." He's in jail, Tish soon reveals, before divulging where she is in the book's very first scene: "I was sitting on a bench in front of a board, and he was sitting on a bench in front of a board and we were facing each other through a wall of glass between us...I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through …show more content…
It happens either in the moment when it is made clear that Fonny is in jail, or just two pages later, when the purpose of Tish's visit becomes clear: she's there to tell him she's expecting their child. How Fonny will receive the news, from behind the glass in a jailhouse, is always a point of suspense for me. This is a credit to Baldwin, who's immediately drawn the reader into this couple's confidence, by giving us the names known only to those they love, then ushering us into their most intimate, vulnerable, and helpless moment together. Even as I write this, this first chapter assumes new meaning, as the videotaped murder of an unarmed South Carolina father, Walter Scott, at the hands of a police officer jumpstarts a news cycle. According to the New York Times, Scott is believed to have been running from the officer, when he was shot multiple times in the back, because he feared going to jail for back-owed child support. Chris Stewart, a lawyer for Scott's family, explained: "He has four children; he doesn't have some type of big violent past or arrest record. He had a job; he was engaged. He had back child support and didn't want to go to jail for back child