Growing Up King by Dexter Scott King, Ralph Wiley Page B

there we remain forever. It was our last Christmas together.
    I don’t remember our birthdays that followed in January of 1968 very well, for some reason; Dad’s birthday was typically celebrated
     with staff more than family. The whole Movement family, the Cause—all would do things for him and my mom would kind of incorporate
     family into that, but our mother would do celebrations for all of us individually at home on our birthdays.
    My father and I did get to ride our bicycles together once or maybe twice more. We rode them up and around the gently undulating
     red clay hills in Vine City in January of ’68, with the smell of honeysuckle and the sound of music and children playing replaced
     by winter’s chill and desiccated leaves blowing in the wind between us. I remember chinging my bell, hearing him encouraging
     me to try and keep up, gently saying, “Careful, Dexter, until you get a feel for it.”
    We rode our bikes on the streets of Vine City, past shotgun houses, Egan Homes, Magnolia Ballroom, Flavor Palace, Pascal’s,
     the Bonds’, the Davises’, the Halls’, Mrs. Toomer’s, the Ollie Street Y, Washington Park… our world. My father had insisted
     that we be in an environment where we would be with the people, not be on a mountain talking down to the valley, but in the
     valley, and perhaps go up the mountain together one day, in a perfect world. I remember biking beside my father, him not going
     so fast as to leave me behind. Remember how I said some were afraid to go by Egan Homes? When we rode by Egan Homes and my
     father waved to a few of the people, they waved back and said, “There goes the Reverend King and one of his boys. Spit that
     boy out. Look just like him.” I ended up making a couple of good friends from Egan Homes… Afterward.
    The couple of months after Daddy’s and my birthdays in January of 1968 felt ominous. Martin, Yolanda, and myself asked Daddy
     not to go to Memphis. We might have been worried. Not that Daddy would die… just that he might be put in jail again. He went
     to Memphis two or three times that spring. The first time he went, we didn’t say anything; it was after he came back, and
     planned to go again, that I recall this nagging feeling that something was wrong, something was off. The three of us felt
     it, Yolanda, Martin, and me. Something bad was going to happen. He knew it better than we did. How we picked up on it, I don’t
     know. It was a frustrating period for all of us because we felt we had no control. And when it happened, Afterward, you felt
     death had been hovering over you all along, death seen from a child’s view, and it would always be there, after that. We knew
     things were changing, and not for the better.

C HAPTER 3

Shattered
    S uddenly, he was just—gone. Just like that, his short life like an exploding flashbulb that blinds you momentarily, fixes you
     in time, reveals you to yourself—then expires forever.
    We were watching television. That’s how I learned. TV told me. Special Bulletin. Yolanda says that until this day every time
     she sees one, it’s a shock to her system. Now this is part of her imperial conditioning too. If she sees a Special Bulletin—
     “we interrupt this program for a Special Bulletin from CBS News”—her pulse races, she feels faint, her throat closes, she
     senses death.
    I, on the other hand, feel nothing but numb.
    Martin and I were sitting on the floor in front of the TV. Yoki was there somewhere, but I’m not seeing her or Bunny in this
     picture, in the same room with us. Yoki was twelve. We were sitting on the floor watching TV, I don’t remember what—maybe
     some game show. If it had been on Saturday, earlier in the day, it would’ve been
American Bandstand
. The Special Bulletin came on, and an unforgettable voice said, “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has been shot in Memphis, at
     6:01 P.M .”
    Martin and I looked at each other. We said nothing.
    We both jumped up and ran back