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“Bro,” I would groan, feigning a laugh, “I’m mentally ill.”

Our roles had reversed. In the early stages of our friendship, I had fielded the late-night calls. José called me from a juvenile detention center after he was arrested for stealing cars. He called to ask if he could borrow money when his grandmother’s supply of heating oil was cut off in the winter, and when he needed to be bailed out of jail after smashing a liquor bottle over the head of his mother’s abusive boyfriend. And he called when he was expelled from high school for engaging in gang activity.

“You’re not mentally ill,” José would reply. “If you were, you wouldn’t be able to laugh about it.”

Regardless of the wisdom of this assertion, I couldn’t overcome the crippling pain that wretched spring. And then one night I received a phone call around 3:00 a.m.

I didn’t get the details immediately—José was frantic, talking a mile a minute—but later I put together what had happened. José had been at Regions Hospital, where his girlfriend, Joan, was giving birth. Joan is Anishinaabe, and José is Lakota and Puerto Rican. When the baby was born black, José was the last person in the room to realize he couldn’t possibly be the father. After he cut the umbilical cord, a nurse grabbed his wrist and snipped off the hospital bracelet. No one in the delivery room had the compassion to stop him as he ran out in a state of shock, determined to murder the crack dealer who had likely impregnated Joan.