Authors: M.K. Asante
Buck (20 page)
“Want some of this eye-opener, Malo?” His head shoots back like whiplash.
“Pancakes,” Ted says, holding the Xanax pills—zannies. “Syrup,” with a Styrofoam cup full of lean—promethazine and codeine syrup. He drops the pills in the syrup. “Breakfast.”
“Go ahead,” Ted says, and passes the cup to me. “I call this shit the Incredible Hulk.”
I look at it.
Look at them.
Pass.
I’m driving down Broad Street. Ted and Scoop are arguing, but the drugs got them on this crazy delay. Scoop will curse at Ted, but it takes Ted like thirty seconds to respond. It’s like they’re in outer space.
I’m mad at myself for even being here. It’s fish-tank clear: nghz like Ted and Scoop can stay in my heart but not in my life.
Scoop’s elbow brushes my face as he chokes Ted from the back. “Pussy!” Scoop shouts, and sits back in his seat hard. He lights a cig, zones out.
I yell, “Chill!” and focus on getting them back to Olney and the hell out of my whip.
After like a minute, Ted slurs: “You stabbed me, yo?”
I look and see the handle of a knife sticking out of Ted’s chest.
“… the fuck, Scoop?” I scream, swerving like I’m drunk.
Ted’s whole shirt is dark and wet with blood, drenched like how Patrick Ewing’s jersey is from sweat—
“Scoop?”
“Man, fuck that ngh!” he mumbles, taking a cold drag.
Ted just sits there, dazed and confused, bleeding, melting like a candle. I hit the gas, weaving in and out of traffic. I speed in the third lane, the gutter, racing to Albert Einstein Hospital.
“Hold on, man, hold on.”
Woop-woop, woop-woop
.
The police, hyena deep, surround the car.
Never again
, I tell myself on my way to jail.
*
“Nature of the Threat,” Ras Kass, 1996.
The Kite
“Another day in paradise,” the guard says, looking at me like I’m a piece of shit.
They cuff Ted and take him to Einstein, book Scoop somewhere, and take me to a holding cell in the Thirty-fifth. This is the same place Uzi first got locked up at.
Think:
Every wall is a door
.
I’m biting my nails like they’re sunflower seeds.
The cop that brought me in calls me “a piece of shit.” It’s cool. I ain’t even mad at him. I mean, FTP all day, but it’s really on me. On us, playing right into their hands like Play-Doh. Giving the cops and the prosecutors and the judges and the politicians who don’t believe in us anyway exactly what they want.
Decisions lead to options, options to choices, choices to freedom. We all design our own reality, write our own script, build our own house … or prison … or coffin. Me Against
Law and Order is about being a true rebel, pushing against the grain, making my own path. Bucking the system.
I think about this show I saw on the Nature channel the other day about elephants. About how despite weighing up to twenty-five thousand pounds and standing thirteen feet tall, they can still be chained.
How?
I wondered. It starts when they’re babies. Some asshole puts a metal chain attached to a wooden peg nailed into the ground around the baby elephant’s foot. The baby elephant struggles but fails to break free and learns at that very moment not to struggle, that struggle is useless. Later on, even when the elephant can easily break free, it doesn’t. I look around at all the sad hard gray black faces and see elephants.
Reaching for my wallet, RIP Amadou
I’m writing sentences like ya honor do
But I don’t do the judging, no COINTEL
,
I don’t do the bugging, can’t you nghz tell
Email to the system, Re: bel
I’m on some other shit like I’m on the mother ship
*
They say I can go if a parent or guardian picks me up. I don’t want to call my mom—she’s feeling so good, this shit will bring her right back down. Haven’t talked to my dad in forever, so I don’t want to hit him up like this. I can’t call him anyway because I don’t even know his number.
I call Kianna, thinking about all the stories this phone must have. It just rings and rings, dry humming. I leave a message
and wait in the cell. They drag people in all night. One guy, out of his mind drunk, with his forehead split open, is spinning around, spitting up, asking people to believe him.
“Please testify?” he says. “Will you testify for me?”
The only pull you got is the wool over your eyes
Getting knowledge in jail like a blessing in disguise
†
I remember the letter my mom gave me before I went to 10 Gs, the one Uzi wrote to me. I find the envelope still there in my back pocket. I hear Uzi’s voice:
Malo,
Wassup man? Hope everything is good with you, yo. I’m in this hellhole wondering my fate. When they transferred me here I wasn’t 18 yet so I was on the 7th floor, where the other minors who have been transferred as adults are housed. We stayed in our cells 23 and 1, meaning we were in our cells for 23 hours a day and one hour out to take a shower and make a phone call. That shit makes u crazy, u find yourself thinking out loud, standing at your door for hours on end watching the guards watch you. I’ve read the whole Bible like 5 times cover to cover … Psalms is cool, keeps me calm. I’m still trying to get a Koran, but u know, this is Arizona! Haha. I can tell the fuckin time just by the way the sun hits my cell through my sun slit, which pretends to be a window … just by the shadows it casts on my cell walls. I’m on some monk shit.
I still can’t get used to the constant noise in here man,
it’s something I can’t explain, it’s a fucking roar, a constant roar, like hard wind blowing in your ear all the time, u don’t forget about it. People never stop talking, yelling, or screaming in here. I kind of think of it like how a black hole would sound, cuz this place is a void—a fucking hum of pain. The kids in there did some serious shit, mostly murder though. I used to think that a killer was a certain type of person. I now know that killing is an emotional reaction, cuz most killers aren’t crazy people, shit is crazy.
The kid next door to me was an ese named Pelon, in for murder. He’s in a gang outta Phoenix called Duppa Villa, his dad is in it, his mom is in it, this shit is like a right of passage to the eses, they take this shit in stride. When I first got here he gave me some food. Uncle Jabbar said in prison don’t accept nothing from nobody, but fuck that, I was hungry! It was a Snickers bar and a bag of corn nuts, maaan that shit made me feel like I wasn’t in jail anymore—just seeing the wrappers! Ain’t that some shit? He sent it on a “kite.” That’s a long-ass string made from sock thread and boxer-short elastic … and that’s how we send shit from cell to cell, letters, food, and other shit like that. When the guards see u doing it they take ya string from u, mothafukas go crazy when they get their strings took, it’s like losing ya house phone!
On my 18th birthday, at midnight, three guards came to take me downstairs to the main jail general population. The muhfuka told me, “Happy birthday, kid, welcome to hell.” The day before, Pelon passed off a shank to me made out of paper—yes, paper!—the shit is hard as metal and the shit has a spear point on it! Paper, yo! He told me they like to fuck with us young bucks cuz we’re small and
shit. He said if a punto fucks wit me bang em in the stomach right where the navel is. I feel that, but I just want to come home, Malo … but I guess I gotta do what I gotta do, yo.
Man, one thing I learned in here is that killas can be punks and punks can be killas, it don’t matter. Just stand your square, never retreat—fuck that! If somebody wants to steal my respect, they gotta pay in blood, dog.
Pain is weakness leaving the body, Malo, remember that.
So yeah I’m in GP now with the adults, been here for a minute. They got me in the maximum-security block, red card status. It’s better than the 7th floor shit, though. At least I can play ball, walk around, have some real human contact, and watch TV.
Out here on the West Coast they gangbang crazy, shit goes down every day. My cellie is my boy B-Brazy, he’s a Blood from Mad Swan Blood Gang. We look out for each other, the ngh is down as shit. Check this: he never uses the letter C! When he talks he replaces the letter
C
with
B
, and when he writes he crosses out the letter
C
and anything else that reminds him of Crips! Hahahaha. There are like 10 Crips for every Blood, so Bloods be ridin hard with each other, cuz they r outnumbered. Because I roll wit Brazy, I’m what they call Bulletproof, 80 Proof, and Shotgun, meaning not Blood, but bangs with Blood … fuck it!
Uncle Jabbar said I’ll probably do 5 years, I guess I can live with that. It’s better than the 20 years the public defender told me I was facing when I was in juvie! I know one thing though, Malo, the boy in me has died, I’ve been forced to be a man. Mom and Dad can’t help me in here,
nobody gives a fuck about Afrocentricity or African dance in this jawn.
Malo, don’t ever come to a place like this, it breeds violence, hate, and ignorance, and u never relax, u always have to watch what goes on around you, every little gesture, every word can b the difference between chilling or getting ya face tore off man … it’s fucked up. It will change your “eyes”—do u get that? Ya spirit changes. The next time Mom sees me, she won’t see her baby looking back at her, she will see someone else, someone different.
I’ve had a couple run-ins since I’ve been in here. I got into it with this OG Crip dude name Cisco Kaddafi. We were playing ball and the mothafuka kept hacking me. I got tired of it, and I threw my hands up at him. He told me, “Not here, we gonna do this at the pod.” Brazy told me to “soap him,” which means take bars of soap and put them in a sock as a weapon. When we got back to the pod, I b-lined for my hut, but he came to my door and said, “Naw, lil’ loc, we gonna do this like g’z, ain’t gonna be no weapons.” I had to man up. We went to the showers and I just started swinging. Cisco is like 6′5″, 270, but I was connecting! … till he grabbed me though and slammed the shit outta me … but I got right the fuck back up … then the guards rushed in and choked us out on their SWAT team bullshit. They kept asking me if he attacked me, cuz he is known for shit like that. I was like “Fuck no! I attacked him!” even though it wasn’t exactly like that. Haha. They wanted to know if I wanted to transfer to another cell block, or did I fear for my safety? What? Fuck no! I’m not a bitch, and I’m not gonna have a bitch jacket following me … in here u don’t go out like that, even if it’s not in
ya best personal interest. They let me back in the pod and I was chillin. Cisco called me up to his cell, and was like “Yo, homie, I like ya heart,” and he shook my hand. Then he gave two “tailor mades,” which is a full cigarette, it’s like giving someone 10 bucks.
See, Malo! Stand your square … Nghz respect u for that shit, no matter what! If u want my stripes, they not Velcro, u gotta rip my arm off to get them … yahmean!
I’m still writing my rhymes, though, I got this crazy-ass song called “24 Hours.” The hook goes:
24 hours anotha soul loses power
Some bring sun rays, some dark days and showers
Some never see they visions so believe u blessed
Life is just a test u got the right to be stressed
But Malo, on some real shit, I wish I could go back to 707 and being a kid again, chillin in my room doing card tricks for you … hangin with Ted … u know? I wish me and u could rewind and play hanger ball in my room, or tracker wit Akil and Ahmed in the yard.
I’ve seen and heard too much, yo, it’ll never be the same.
Think about the shit u do Malo, don’t dick ride nobody, be yourself, and fuck drugs. Weed ain’t a drug, though, it’s spiritual stimuli … haha.
Protect Mom, pray for me, and sooner or later we will unite again.
Your bro, Uzi
Soul Food
Monday morning my dad comes to get me. He’s standing at the desk, talking to one of the cops. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a minute. I’m happy, mad, excited, nervous, anxious, thrilled, relieved, and angry to see him.
Outside the light hits me hard, squinting my eyes.
I can taste his disappointment. He can feel mine.
“What’s your problem?” he asks me in the car, his angry Georgia eyes just staring straight ahead. The horizon is a trembling orange scarf. He doesn’t even know that Amir is dead, that I’m not hanging with UPK anymore, that I’m writing, that I’m in school and I’m taking it seriously; all he knows is I got locked up. I do have a problem.
“You dumped your problems on me when you left.”
“All separations are painful, it’s the nature of things being ripped apart. When I left Valdosta at eleven to go to the Nashville Christian Institute it was painful. Tearing something
away from something else is like that, but it doesn’t have to be like that forever.”