Finding Momentum

Ran into Mike on a rainy day in Berke­ley. We finally got a photo together.

Years have passed since I’ve last writ­ten about Mike. I see him every once in awhile in Berke­ley, still. I think about him from time to time — won­der how he’s doing. I catch him out the cor­ner of my eye the week before I leave for vaca­tion, hang­ing around at Gypsy’s. “Mike!” I call back to him, and he turns around with a big grin on his face. The side­walks are soaked.

“It’s my birth­day tomor­row” he tells me, and I remem­ber how close to Christ­mas it is.

We swap phone num­bers. He’s in pos­ses­sion of an Android phone now. “How does this thing work?” he asks and laughs to him­self. He’s show­ing me pho­tos of him­self, now tak­ing classes at a culi­nary school in SF. Some­thing about that seems incon­gru­ous to me and I chuckle inside… but Mike, well I believe he has the gump­tion and work ethic to pull it off. I tell him I owe him a birth­day lunch, and we part ways.

–

Flash for­ward a cou­ple of weeks, and it’s the first Tues­day of the new year. I’ve left on a run and Mike’s left me a voice mail while on my run. I lis­ten to it on the way back, and his voice is hol­low, blue, grief-stricken. “Drew,” chokes the voice on the other end, “they shot my baby girl.”

Damn.

I look up the news arti­cle. Jubrille was 15 years old, wanted to be a teacher, and was on her way to the mall with her sis­ter and another friend. The shooter was another teen.

OAKLAND — A pile of flow­ers, can­dles, teddy bears and farewell notes grew by the hour Mon­day after­noon on a quiet street in East Oak­land, but they were lit­tle com­fort to Mike Harris.

Har­ris, whose long­time fam­ily friend Jubrille Jor­dan, 15, was fatally shot at the site Sun­day after­noon, was awash in tears as he sur­veyed the makeshift memorial.

“She was my sweet­heart. They killed my sweet­heart,” said Har­ris, a neatly dressed man in his 50s, as he wiped his eyes. “What hap­pened? I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Jubrille was Oakland’s 12th child killed in 2012, and its 131st homi­cide vic­tim in one of the city’s dead­liest years in recent memory.

–San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle, “15-year old girl gunned down in Oakland”

She was also Oakland’s final homi­cide of 2012. Mike picks up, and I barely make out his words through the sobs.