The 57 Bus Read online

  But then Andrew would remember how Sasha had visited him when he was hospitalized for depression two years before, just after starting ninth grade. Sasha had come to the hospital on Andrew’s fifteenth birthday and they had brought a present, a gift card for an art supply store. It had been so good to see Sasha’s face that day. Sasha had been so upbeat. Not in a cheery, let’s-put-a-good-face-on-this way, but in a God-I’m-so-happy-you’re-okay way.

  Now that the situation was reversed, the least he could do was return the favor. Just show up, for Christ’s sake. He should go. He would go. He’d visit Sasha tomorrow. Next week at the latest.

  But he never did.

  “I had no idea how to even go in the room,” he said later. Because Sasha would be there, in a hospital bed, burned. And the thought of seeing that, of seeing what could happen to gender-nonconforming people, made Andrew’s palms grow slick with fear.

  “I knew I wasn’t in danger by being there—that’s silly,” he said. “But it was just like, ‘This is how it is for people like us. This is the reality.’”

  THE FIRST LETTER

  November 8, 2013

  Dear Victum,

  I apologize for my actions, for the pain that I brought to you & your family. I was wrong for what I did. I was wrong. I had no reason to do that to you I don’t know what was going through my head at that time. Im not a monster, I have a big heart I never even thought of hurting anyone like the way I hurt you. I just wanted you to know that im deeply sorry for my actions I think about what happened every second, I pray that you heal correctly & that you recover and live a happy life. Please forgive me that’s all I want. I take responsibility for all my actions, Ill take all the consequences. I wish you and your family the best of luck. I’m not just saying this because im incarcerated I honestly mean every word.

  Love,

  Richard ____

  INTO THE BRIEFCASE

  Within days of his arrest, Richard’s family scraped the money together to hire a private attorney to handle his defense. They chose Bill Du Bois, a courtly forty-year veteran of the Alameda County Courthouse who had represented a number of high-profile defendants, including one of the men who murdered the transgender teenager Gwen Araujo in 2002.

  At their first meeting, Richard gave Du Bois two letters he’d handwritten to Sasha, the one he wrote on November 8 and a second he wrote on November 11. Du Bois took the letters and tucked them away in his briefcase. Because the letters contained an admission of guilt, he felt he couldn’t send them until the case was resolved.

  It would be fourteen months before Sasha read them.

  SKIRTS FOR SASHA

  On Friday, November 8, everyone at Maybeck wore a skirt. Teachers, students, staff. Even Healy, who didn’t own any skirts. She used a pinafore that she’d worn as a costume in a play. Ian dressed as much like Sasha as he could manage, in a skirt, kneesocks, flat cap, and vest. Nemo wore a tartan skirt over jeans. Michael wore a black miniskirt along with his signature khaki jacket and gray beanie. A photo of Maybeck students holding a sign saying SKIRTS FOR SASHA was taken by a photographer for the San Jose Mercury News and reposted to dozens of LGBTQ and anti-bullying blogs.

  A week later, under the light of a three-quarter moon, roughly 150 supporters, including students from both Maybeck and Oakland High Schools, marched along the route of the 57 bus.

  The march started at the street corner where Richard and Lloyd had gotten on the bus the week before. Television cameras jockeyed for position, nearly knocking each other over in their eagerness to get the best shot. The kids from Maybeck peered curiously at Oakland High School. Most of them had never seen it before.

  “For a minute there was a lot of anger toward Oakland High School at Maybeck,” Michael recalls. “But they were really good at distancing themselves from the guy who lit Sasha on fire.”

  Drums beat in the background, keeping time with the thwup-thwup-thwup of the news helicopters overhead as the marchers tied rainbow ribbons to the bus stop poles between O High and the spot where Sasha usually got off. People carried balloons and glow sticks and signs that said ACCEPT EVERYONE and WE’RE ALL SASHA.

  GET WELL! the signs said. WE HECKA LOVE YOU, SASHA!

  THE SECOND LETTER

  November 11, 2013

  Dear Mr. ____,

  Its me again Richard ____. I just wanted to say that Im still very sorry and I hope your getting better. I had a nightmare last night and I woke up sweating and apologizing. I really hope you get back to the way you were. I went to court yesterday and there still making me seem like a monster, but I’m not. I’m a good kid if you get to know me. Im sure you would have been a nice person to. I regret what I did, I didn’t know that your clothing would catch like it did, even though I had no reson to do it anyways. I don’t know what was going through my head. I’ve commited a stupid act of violence and im going to be punished for that, and I accept all consequences that I receive because you didn’t deserve this I didn’t even know you and I still don’t. I was hoping that I can meet you face to face so I can apologize to you. I am being charged with great bodily injury and a hate crime. I accept the first charge but the hate crime is wrong. I don’t have a problem with homosexual’s I have friends that’s homosexuals and we never had problems so I don’t look at you wrong because of your sexualitie. Honestly I could care less if you like men you wasn’t trying to talk to me in that way. I just hope that you forgive me for the pain I brought you and your family.

  I am not a thug, gangster, hoodlum, nor monster. Im a young African American male who’s made a terrible mistake. Not only did I hurt you but I hurt your family & friends and also my family & friends for I have brought shame to them and our country and I shall be punished which is going to be hard for me because I’m not made to be incarcerated.

  In the Bible (Jeremiah 1:5) it says “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you: I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

  Consecrated means to dedicate somebody or something to a particular purpose. I’m not saying im a prophet. What im saying is God knew us before we were anything and he made a plan for us all, and we know its not evil because God isn’t evil so we wasn’t made to do bad things. I really don’t know why I did what I did but I hope you dont think im evil im actually good. I’ve also been hurt alot for no reason, not like I hurt you but Ive been hurt physically and mentally so I know how it feels, the pain and confusion of why me I’ve felt it before plenty of times so I know how it feels. So get better and Im looking forward to meeting you so I can apoligize, im going to write you at least two letters a week so be expecting them. Also I’ll keep you in my prayers.

  Get well

  Signed,

  Richard ____

  LET’S ALL TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER

  Richard didn’t end up writing more letters. But on November 11, Karl wrote a letter of his own. It was sent to the parents and staff at Sequoia Elementary School, where he taught kindergarten.

  I think it’s really important to keep in mind that none of us can know the mind, motivations, or intentions of the person who set flame to Sasha’s clothing,” he wrote.

  Oakland Police have a 16-year-old high school student in custody, based on video camera footage from the bus. As far as I know, police are the only people who have viewed the footage. I certainly haven’t, so I can only guess at what happened. At this point, I choose to assume that this kid was playing with fire, and that he gravely underestimated the consequences of that. Others may make different assumptions, but it’s important to remember that they are all just that: assumptions. So when I talk to my students about this, I will emphasize the importance of fire safety. “Don’t play with matches or lighters.” And of course “Stop, Drop, and Roll” if your clothing catches fire.

  He also offered language for explaining Sasha’s gender identity:

  Being agender simply means that the person doesn’t feel they are “either a boy or a girl.” I realize this is a
concept that even adults have difficulty wrapping their heads around. (My wife and I frequently slip up in our pronoun usage, much to Sasha’s chagrin!) So I can’t pretend that it’s an issue that all young children will grasp. But what they certainly can and should understand is that different people like different things. Different people dress or behave or look differently. And that’s a GOOD thing. Sasha feels comfortable wearing a skirt. It’s part of their style. They also frequently sport a necktie and vest. Sasha likes the look, and frankly, so do I. It makes me smile to see Sasha being Sasha.

  As I wrote above, none of us can know the mind of the kid who lit a flame to Sasha’s skirt. But I have a feeling that if he had seen Sasha’s skirt as an expression of another kid’s unique, beautiful self, and had smiled and thought, “I hella love Oakland,” I wouldn’t be writing this now.

  Again, many thanks for all of your love and kindness. Let’s all take care of each other.

  __Karl ____

  HOMOPHOBIC

  Richard’s extended family showed up for his second court appearance, on November 15, including Jasmine’s cousin Regis, who is gay. Tall, attractive, and androgynous, Regis didn’t talk to the press. But his presence was a statement in itself—I’m here, I’m queer, and I support my cousin.

  Inside the courtroom, reporters discussed the best terms to use when describing Sasha. Gender fluid? Genderqueer? Gender nonconforming? Agender?

  “I just say he was wearing a skirt,” one reporter offered. He gave a weary shrug. “The terms change all the time.”

  Nothing much happened in court, other than Du Bois announcing his plans to file a motion contesting the decision to try Richard as an adult. Afterward, he took questions from reporters.

  “I’ve met the minor and I can tell you he’s not homophobic, not even remotely,” he said. “First of all, he doesn’t know how to spell homophobic, much less be it.”

  Everyone had their own theory as to why Richard had used the term. Du Bois said when he asked Richard for a definition, Richard had said that it meant he wasn’t gay, that he liked girls. Jasmine said that she thought he was trying to get out of trouble by saying what he thought the police wanted him to say. But whatever his reason for saying it, it was part of the story now. Newscasters mentioned it almost every time they reported a new development.

  “This is not a whodunit,” Du Bois said. “This is not even a ‘what happened?’ This is what frame of mind the kid had.”

  The attorney tended to talk about the case with a mixture of calm and exasperation, as if his powers of incredulity had already been strained to the point of breaking. He argued that the views Richard expressed in the police interview were nothing more sinister than a kid being weirded out by the sight of a boy in a skirt.

  “They’re putting him in the category of skinhead because he admitted to being homophobic. To being ‘very homophobic.’ And they’re saying, ‘We take that as true.’” He bugged out his eyes and dropped his jaw to indicate how absurd this was.

  “Lynchings—they’re hate crimes,” he said. “But the kid who thinks that [wearing a skirt] is anomalous and decides to play a prank is not committing a hate crime.”

  WHAT THEY SENT

  On Sasha’s first full day in the hospital, a stranger dropped off a bouquet of silk flowers—three white roses and four stalks of orange Chinese lanterns. A former burn victim herself, she knew that real flowers aren’t allowed in the burn ward because of the risk of infection.

  That was the beginning. Within days, letters and packages began arriving at the hospital, at Maybeck High School, at Debbie and Karl’s home. An online medical fund set up by Sasha’s cousin raised more than $31,000 in donations.

  “What did I get today?” Sasha asked each afternoon when Debbie and Karl arrived at the hospital with the day’s mail.

  The answer was sometimes surprising. Strangers sent money in small bills. Paper cranes. A soft blanket. Star Wars stickers. A drawing of a TARDIS from Doctor Who. A four-page play written in Spanish. A book of poems by E. E. Cummings.

  A friend from the live-action role-playing community sewed Sasha a skirt and matching vest.

  The East Bay Heritage Quilters sent a vibrant purple quilt.

  People from the conlang community sent letters in their invented languages using beautiful calligraphy.

  People from Canada sent things with maple leaves on them.

  High school Gay-Straight Alliances from all over the country sent cards decorated with rainbows.

  The missives piled up—handmade cards, store-bought cards, folded sheets of notebook paper, e-mails. They came from Colombia, Germany, France, Australia. Get well, they said. Stay strong. Be proud. You are beautiful the way you are.

  Sasha couldn’t concentrate on any of it for long, but they liked knowing that so many people cared. Cards from Sasha’s friends stayed in the hospital room. So did the bouquet of silk flowers. Everything else, Debbie and Karl took home.

  Over the next few weeks, Debbie would periodically type Sasha’s name into Google to see how the story was being covered around the world. Once, the search led her to a neo-Nazi site.

  “They were having a really hard time,” she said. “An African American? Oh, evil! But then it’s this trans kid wearing a skirt. What?”

  “They couldn’t figure out who to root against,” Karl explained. He grinned. “It was a really hard time for the neo-Nazi community.”

  NO H8

  Nobody who knew him could believe it. Richard was a goofball, sure, but hateful? It just didn’t make sense.

  “It blew me back,” Carlitta Collins, the school security officer, said. “It blew my weave back to the fat part.”

  Word was that Richard had set the skirt alight at the urging of another kid. Got played. Fell for the okie-doke. “I just couldn’t understand why he would make such a childish mistake,” Collins said. “But then I thought about it. Like, ‘Oh, he’s sixteen.’”

  But that wasn’t how the rest of the school saw it. Richard had only been there two months, and he didn’t know too many people. For most students, all that mattered was that O High was in the news again, and not for any of the good things that happened there. It was like nobody ever paid attention until somebody screwed up.

  “He was black and he did that. Most of us that go here are black. We’re expected to do something wrong,” explains Emarieay, who played on the football and baseball teams. “People act like, if you go to O High, that’s the baddest school in Oakland. Since that happened, people just thought that all of us are basically the same.”

  It was important to say no. To say, that’s not us. “What our student allegedly did to Sasha is hideous and is not representative of the values we know to be true of the Oakland High community,” principal Matin Abdel-Qawi said in a letter he read over the school loudspeaker. “We are all capable of doing what is right even and especially when it seems impossible. We all have a responsibility to stop acts of violence … The student body at Oakland High is extremely diverse. Our families come from all over the world. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we led by example and showed Oakland what it means to respect and appreciate each other’s differences?”

  A movement sprouted on campus: No H8. Students and staff painted banners that said SASHA WE STAND WITH YOU. A student-led fund-raiser collected more than $800 for Sasha’s medical bills. Students folded a long chain of paper cranes and sent it to Sasha. In December, O High’s Wildcats basketball team played its first home game wearing blue jerseys with Sasha’s name on the back and the words No H8 on the front. The gymnasium was festooned with handmade posters in the blue and white Wildcat colors that said NOT IN OUR SCHOOL and STAND UP TO HATE.

  A number of the boys on the basketball team knew Richard, and they had come to practice after his arrest talking about what happened. Richard wasn’t a bad kid, they said, just a follower. It seemed wrong that he might be locked up for life. But then one of the players pointed out that they should be thinking about the victim too.
What happened to Sasha was horrible. “That shouldn’t happen to anybody,” he said. “What if that had happened to somebody in your family?” That was when the team decided to order jerseys that stood up for Sasha.

  “We’re against hate and bullying,” basketball coach Orlando Watkins said when the team gathered in the locker room before the game, wearing their No H8 jerseys. “This is a big game for us today, not just because we need the victory, but it represents something bigger than just basketball. So let’s go out there today, let’s play hard, let’s stay focused, and let’s take care of business.” The team listened somberly, then gathered in a circle.

  “No hate on me! No hate on three!” team captain Keith called. “One, two, three…”

  “No hate!”

  Y’ALL DON’T KNOW

  Kaprice found it hard to go to school. In her time in the Oakland schools she’d seen plenty of kids drop out or get kicked out, get shot, or get pregnant. But Richard was supposed to be different.

  “I can’t even hardly express the feelings I have, because I knew where he was trying to go,” she says. “I knew he would be the one graduating from here.”

  The NO H8 banners were everywhere, but no one was talking about Richard. Abdel-Qawi, the school principal, had concluded the letter he read over the loudspeaker by reminding students to “show our student, currently in custody, compassion and tolerance.” But Richard’s friends felt that this last bit had gotten plastered over by the reams of NO H8 posters. One by one, they showed up in Kaprice’s office to complain.