Tasia, they found you hanging in Jackson.
The rainbow pinwheels have not stopped turning. The teddy bears have held the rain for a week. A photograph of a twenty-nine-year-old woman stands among white flowers in the overgrown grass, the pink and white of a nursery for a body that will not need one.
For a body found hanging in Mississippi, the state has a word it is in no hurry to use.
They are still calling you a question.
Tasia Fortune was twenty-nine and Black. Her body was found outside an abandoned house in Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson police said they were “actively working to determine the circumstances surrounding the death.” They have not indicated whether they consider her death suspicious.
The backyard held rainbow pinwheels, white flowers, teddy bears, a photograph of Fortune, empty chip bags, discarded plastic bottles, an open entrance, a tarp, a foam pad, and other debris.
The word “hanging” appears in the wire copy. The word “pattern” does not.
Fortune’s death came after two other people were found hanging from trees in Mississippi in less than a year. Fortune’s body followed in the overgrown yard of an abandoned house, and the police said they were working to determine the circumstances.
Three bodies from trees in less than a year.
Three people who were alive are now not alive. All three were found hanging. All three were found in Mississippi. The circumstances have piled up in front of the state like bodies in a yard, and the state is still examining them one at a time.
You are determining the circumstances. That is a fine verb to use about a body found hanging. It is the same careful language this state reaches for when an independent autopsy cannot settle a cause of death either, the same language that keeps the word the circumstance is built to carry from ever being spoken.
Let me describe the circumstances, since you are working so actively.
She was found in the yard of a house the world had stopped using. A tarp. A foam pad. Debris. An open door. That is the furnishing of a life kept at the margin. I will not tell you what it means. The meaning is in the looking, and you have been looking for a week without seeing.
You have not used the word.
You are a week in, and you have not used the word. Mississippi has found two other people hanging from its trees in less than a year, and the word you cannot bring yourself to say hangs in your throat the way a body hangs in the air.
Swallow it.
It does not go down.
Your throat catches around the statement. Your mouth is dry over the coffee. There is a metallic taste under your tongue when you read the report, and no water clears it. The report is written in the same dry words: circumstances, active, determination. None of them is the word.
The word is hanging.
A third time.
Your breath will not fill when you say the number. Three. Three people found hanging from trees in Mississippi in less than a year. Your chest is carrying the weight of a suspended body now. The pressure settles behind your sternum and follows the rhythm of your breathing, slowing it down.
You cannot say the word that names this, because the word would make it one thing instead of three separate investigations. One thing is a fire. Three separate investigations are procedure. Procedure is how you keep the bodies coming without having to call them what they are.
The rope finds the tree.
The tree holds the weight.
The mouth opens and no sound comes out because the sound that should come out — the word, the name, the pattern — is the thing you are working not to say.
You signed the oath that put you behind the desk. You took the badge that was supposed to make you the first to name what is happening when it happens again and again and again. You are actively working. You are working to determine the circumstances.
The circumstances are that three people who were alive are now not alive, and all three were found hanging, and all three were in Mississippi, and your department is working on each case because one pattern would be too much to hold.
There is a cold place on the back of your neck that was not there last week. It opens at the collar and moves inward. Your shoulders tighten when the shift report arrives. Your gut turns when the number returns. The cold is the temperature of the yard where a body was left, and you cannot warm it because looking directly at it would cost you the word you are saving.
What if it were your daughter in the photograph?
Picture the pinwheels at her memorial. Picture the teddy bears holding the rain. Picture the white flowers gathering dirt. Would you still be determining the circumstances, or would you be on your knees in that overgrown yard, the word out of your mouth before the reporters could write it?
You would not need a week.
You would need the time it takes to run.
Your own blood would be suspicious by nightfall. Hers is a circumstance. That is the whole difference, and it is the only difference that has ever mattered.
The memorial stands in the overgrown yard. The pinwheels turn. The photograph of Tasia Fortune faces the abandoned house where she was found. She is twenty-nine in the photograph. She will be twenty-nine forever because you found her hanging and called it an open investigation while the rope kept finding necks in Mississippi.
The state knows what its trees have held.
It would rather call the weight a question than lift it.
I know this story. The Gospel of Mary knows it. The soul returns and answers the Powers that misname it. They argue over the garment because the garment is easier than the person inside it.
“I saw you. You did not see me, nor did you know me. You mistook the garment I wore for my true self, and you did not recognize me.” — Gospel of Mary 15:8–13
“What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you.” — Gospel of Mary 10:8–9
The rope is not hidden. The bodies are not hidden. The trees are not hidden. What is hidden is the name you will not give to what keeps happening under your jurisdiction, in your custody, to the people whose safety you swore to protect.
I will proclaim it.
She was found hanging. There were teddy bears. There have been others. You are still asking questions. She is still dead.
And the investigating you are doing — the not-saying — is also a deed.
Scripture names it.
“You did not do.”
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” — Matthew 25:45
That is a verdict. It is the one a week of determining the circumstances cannot outrun.