‘Let’s see y’all again, let’s see y’all again’. From behind the un-steady cam, a mock-inviting voice calls out to the convoy of pick-ups departing the family party scene in Douglas County, Georgia.
That’s July 2015. What date for the next gathering of the clan?
27 February 2017 they were due for sentencing. Namely, Kayla Rae Norton (25) and Jose Ishmael Torres (26), who had said he would shoot the little niggers at the eight-year-old’s birthday party, pointing a shotgun and waving the Confederate flag.
‘Respect The Flag’, they and their friends called themselves, tearing across half the state in half-a-dozen trucks.
Years to serve for ‘street-gang terrorism’: thirteen and six; his’n’hers, both of them banished for ever from the county.
In the 2020s they’ll be coming out to meet their grown-up children. The woman who was pogoing with fear and anger at the time of the incident, now sits head in hands at the thought of a mother parted from her kids for so long; though afterwards she says that justice was done.
‘Not me, it’s not him, it’s not me.’
Long hair pulled back untidily, elasticated face six-year stretched with crying, Norton can’t explain how it was her that day, even while admitting her it was; even when she’s nudged through the courtroom door and down to the cells.
‘Respect,’ they said; but not as in Aretha.