'Dark Matter' - An essay from Da'Shawn Mosley

All that research I did—reading and rereading articles from different scientific journals, watching the same episode of Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman six times, Googling general relativity and the Schwarzschild radius and primordial black holes and black hole thermodynamics—and for what? Just so I can tell you something you likely won’t consider profound or new or even relevant to the things you care about? The things normal people care about. Here it is: black holes rip stars from our universe that have been around for billions of years as if they never belonged and swallow them. Black holes devour.

Like I said, you may not care. But I do. I don’t have a choice, so don’t hold that against me. Don’t turn around and carry on a conversation with someone else.

Joan Didion once wrote that writing “is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind,” and that’s what I need right now. For you to sit somewhere that’s quiet and dedicate yourself to flipping a couple of pages and wasting some minutes of your day, listening to me ramble about the things I’ve lost and can’t get ahold of—my brothers, my sister. As if they are like the stars that get too close to a black hole, and before you know it, are drawn into its gravitational pull and disappear. And never return.

My brother Quintae died three minutes after his birth. This was the first disappearance, the first gravitational theft. I was five years old. My mother stocked her bedroom closet with things she thought he would need: pampers, bottles, pacifiers, onesies, booties, bibs, crib linen, a car seat, and a bouncer. But I don’t remember this. She accumulated all of this before the baby shower. But I don’t remember the baby shower, when guests gathered around the ultrasound photos my mother showed them, entranced by the images of my brother. I don’t remember the day my mother went into labor.

I wasn’t in the room, or even at the hospital, when it happened. Someone took a picture of my mother holding Quintae for the first time, only minutes after his newborn heart suddenly stopped beating. When doctors failed to bring him back and scrambled to figure out what went wrong. My mother showed me the photo a year ago.

“You’ve seen this before,” she said. I shook my head No. The memory had disappeared.

Later, I asked if I attended Quintae’s funeral, and she assured me I did. I wore black just like everyone else. I said goodbye.

Black holes devour.

Two years after Quintae’s death my mother had more children—first my sister Jannevia, then my brother Titus. On school days I completed all my assignments while I rode the bus home, so when I got there I could take Jannevia and Titus from her and let her rest. Most days, I carried Titus in my arms while following Jannevia, as she crawled or walked through the house. I wanted to make sure she stayed out of trouble. For the most part, she did.

I wish I could say the same about our mother, but there were robberies. Guns and masks, just like the movies, worn by the sort of people you hear about while watching 48 Hours or America’s Most Wanted. My mom was one of those people. And she drove the getaway car. She got caught.

The night she told me she was headed to prison I lay across my bed, seized a fistful of sheets, and sobbed. She called me back into the living room, wiping her own eyes, so she could tell me to stop crying—because everything would be alright—and ask who I would want to live with while she served her time. I didn’t have anyone particular in mind, nor did I care a whole lot about who it turned out to be. Just as long as Jannevia, Titus and I remained together.

We were left with Jannevia and Titus’s father, and I didn’t mind this at all. A year later, one of our aunts stopped by so she could speak with him. Their conversation lasted only a couple of minutes, and immediately afterwards I was told to pack my bags.

What’s wrong? Why am I leaving? But Jannevia and Titus’s father never answered. He avoided my eyes, kept his back to me, and what else could I do but pack?

I haven’t seen Jannevia and Titus in almost six years.

Black holes devour.

The first couple of months into her prison sentence my mother learned she was pregnant again. I found out and panicked. When she gave birth to Titus, she’d lost so much blood. The doctors gave her transfusion after transfusion. Told her if she ever got pregnant again she would die giving birth.

But she didn’t die. She had my brother, Jakario. When the hospital discharged her, the Florida Department of Children and Families took him away and gave him to a foster family. The foster family wanted to keep my mother in Jakario’s life. On weekends, they brought him to the prison to see her. When he got older, they allowed my mother to call their home to talk to him. The time of day didn’t matter.

I didn’t speak to Jakario until he was five and I was sixteen. My mother wrote the family’s phone number in the top left corner of a letter she sent me. A woman answered, and after I explained who I was—I’m Jakario’s brother. Can I speak to him please?—she called him to the phone.

“Hey, Da’Shawn,” he said.

It was the way he said it, as if there weren’t hundreds of miles separating Tallahassee, Florida from Florence, South Carolina. As if we had met before and he knew what grade I was in and how old I was, even though he asked those questions and more. And I answered them all, even his last one: “Are you coming to Florida?” I listened to the static in the phone, the only thing making noise, while I put words together.

“I don’t know.”

I left it at that.

Black holes devour.

Two weeks ago on a Monday, my sister Ronnaysia was born. I didn’t hear about it until the following Friday. It’s happening again, I thought.

Not now, I told myself. We’re not going to think about this right now.

I visited Ronnaysia and my mother. I even held my new sister, carefully, assuming only my mother’s touch could keep her calm and the second I picked her up she would scream. Instead, she slept. Her stomach rose and fell, and her fingers extended once or twice in search of the tangible. She was beautiful.

She’s not gone yet, I also said to myself.

Ronnaysia stirred in my arms and faced me, and if her eyes had been open, I would have seen a reflection of myself—someone haggard and afraid of the weeks and months and years to come, afraid of the time spent worrying. Will I see Jannevia and Titus again, before I go off to college? Will I meet Jakario before the judge decides whether or not to grant the foster family full custody? Will the state of South Carolina get word that both my mother and Ronnaysia are living inside a one-bedroom house with my mother’s boyfriend and his elderly uncle and take her away, and just like that I forget about her, like I’ve forgotten other things—details, faces, people?

I’ve been known to overthink. Hype the threat. Maybe there is no black hole, and it’s me—I just can’t put all this behind me. And I should want to. My mother is back now. Why dwell on the days when she was gone? Why dwell on the fact that Jannevia, Titus and Jakario are still out there, somewhere?

Why not just enjoy this moment?

You’re holding your baby sister for the first time. This could be the only time.

But let’s not think about that. Let’s not think about anything, except…

How small Ronnaysia is. She must weigh so little.

Weight is the gravitational pull on an object.

It’s what keeps us grounded.

It’s what keeps us here.

Black holes always devour.