Tamir's Grandma pulled herself up a little higher in the seat by gripping the steering wheel with both hands as tightly as the mule leads she handled when she was a young woman. She looked to the right over the long hood of her `76 Buick station wagon, navigating a right turn. She drove intently, deliberately. She heaved the wagon in an arc, avoiding the low, disintegrating curb, nosing the overweight car between potholes and chewed asphalt on the worn curve, and slowed a little to avoid overtaking children who walked ahead, having crossed the street before she reached the corner. She talked her way through the turn with her lips pressed together, making a low sound in her throat. She was captain and crew of her own boat in that car. Her seventeen year old grandson Tamir was her cargo.

Three young men ran in front of the car, one of them passing so close he pushed off from the hood ornament as he leapt onto the sidewalk to her right. The men kept running -- down the sidewalk, around the children and away from the car -- without looking back. Startled, Tamir's Grandma shrieked and kicked against the broad power brake pedal with both of her feet. The wheels squealed once as the car slid sideways two feet. The front left wheel fell into a pot hole, nailing the car to a stop, and hammering back at the car's body as the suspension rebounded. On the bounce, Tamir's six foot frame, snapped back by his seat belt, whacked the passenger door. The old woman's rigid spine hardly leaned forward against the support of her hands and feet, but her head snapped backward six inches against her seat back and then bounced up again, leaving her as upright as a preacher's index finger.

She shouted, "Damn you boys, can't you watch yourselves!" but realized the windows were closed and they'd be out of sight before she could ball them out. She let go of the wheel with her left hand and, without taking her eyes off them, started groping for the window crank, meaning to open up and let them have it. She was hollering and cussing and slapping the door, trying to grab the handle.

Tamir understood her intent. He turned from looking at the escaping men, placed his left hand on her shoulder, and said as calm as aspirin, "Grandma, don't say nothing to `em."

She stopped, twisted right toward him, pushing on the door with her left hand, her right hand knuckles high, still gripping the wheel, both feet still pressed against the brake pedal. She glared at him angrily and yelled, "Why? They can't do nothing!"

Tamir kept on talking calmly, almost petting her shoulder, while he said, "Don't say nothing to them." He spoke as clearly as he could so she'd understand he wasn't exaggerating. "You fail to realize that I go to school right up the street. They going to look at me and if they can't get to you, they get to me."

She took a breath and sat back, letting go of the wheel, the door, and relaxing the brake. The engine had stalled. The car sat dead. "Nah," she said in a sensible voice, "they won't do anything."

Tamir massaged her shoulder and leaned a little toward her. "Grandma, please don't say anything to `em. I really don't want to go to school scared and have to fight, and, you know, one thing'll lead to another, you know, just `cause you cuss at them just `cause they stepped in front of your car." He knew full well what had happened in Richmond, a city only fifteen minutes away, similar to Fruitvale, his part of Oakland. Several people had been shot dead. The fight started when a teenager stepped on another's new tennis shoes and didn't say, "Excuse me."

Tamir and his grandmother sat across from each other spaced at two ends of the century. She was born in Shreveport, Louisiana and grew up sharecropping with people, some of them emancipated slaves. She made it to Oakland as a young woman. Things had been hard enough, but the only crime she really had to worry about was theft, a purse or a dollar here or there. Tamir had to worry about someone running up and shooting him for no reason, for no just cause. Sitting and looking into his grandma's face, he imagined himself armed and heroic, standing between her and a thief. Then he remembered himself and tried to imagine, a day or a week to come, the force of a blow to his head from behind, all because he might not stop her from yelling just then, "You damn boys ought to know better." He knew no one would help. The shooting wouldn't be any of their business. They'd just walk on by. They might want to do something, might even want to talk with the shooter, but they'd remember their own life and the people they cared about. No sense endangering themselves or someone in their family just so somebody who was prevented from shooting Tamir could call it even after all by going after them.

Strange to think that poor people can have a generation gap. Tamir had learned to live in a world his Grandma only heard about. Poverty seems such a stone mason, leveling, bricking over opportunities, walling in aspirations. But Tamir and his grandma were separated by experience. They sat on a car seat two police batons wide, worlds apart.

She pressed her lips together, turned to face front, and reached for the key. The car's engine cranked to life. When she pressed on the gas, the car strained against the blocked wheel but didn't move.

"Why don't you try backing out, Grandma," Tamir suggested. He removed his hand from her shoulder, but didn't take his eyes off her now. She wasn't looking at him. She put the car in reverse and looked in the rearview mirror as she urged the car. The car rolled backward and onto the road surface. No other cars were around. The young men had disappeared down the block and the children went into a house. The car was the only animated object on the street. She backed up a short distance, stopped, and turned correctly down the street. She croaked inaudible orders to herself between closed lips. Tamir turned to face forward and sat back fingering his seat belt with his right hand, then, without thinking, he brushed off the spot on his forehead that almost hit the dashboard.