Authors: M.K. Asante
Buck (8 page)
“I had to borrow money to get this attorney,” she tells me. “A lot of money. Your father doesn’t know.”
She doesn’t have to tell me not to say anything. It’s understood.
“I don’t have the money for this,” she keeps repeating over and over. “I can’t continue to rob Peter to pay Paul.”
At first she tried to front like she didn’t want me to come to Arizona. “You have school.”
“Fuck school,” I blurted out before I could catch myself.
“Khumalo!”
“I’m saying, though, this is more important than school.
God first, family next, everyone else take a number and get in line, right?”
“Right.”
“Plus I don’t want you going out there solo-dolo,” I said.
I already knew my dad wasn’t coming. She didn’t have to tell me. It was understood.
When 10 Gs found out I was going to Arizona, they got mad hype.
“Gotta give him the hood news: Tone got killed down Badlands. Shelly’s pregnant. Kierra just had her second baby. Kirk got locked up. Cool C and Steady B tried to rob the PNC and killed this black lady cop. They gave Steady B life and C is on death row. Gas is up, coke is down, crack is always up, syrup and zannies are up, weed is down … It ain’t good news, it’s hood news!”
“Anything else?”
“Tell him to keep his head up.”
One time I told Uzi I’d go anywhere or anyplace for him. On the way to the hotel, driving through the desert with my mom—passing signs for Indian casinos and wild horses—I’m thinking this is it: anywhere, anyplace. The air conditioner in the rental car is weak and it feels like we’re swimming through the ninety-degree heat. The tips of our noses are beaded with sweat.
“Merry Christmas,” the lady at the front desk says.
“Merry Christmas,” my mom says just to be nice. We don’t really celebrate Christmas at home.
“We can’t celebrate some big fat white man bringing us gifts” is what my dad said when I asked him about it a few years ago. “When? Tell me when has the white man ever brought us gifts?” Guess he’s got a point.
Even though we don’t celebrate it, I know what Christmas feels like, what it sounds like, what it looks like—and this ain’t it. Everything about this picture is off: the hot weather, the cactus in the lobby with sloppy Christmas lights slung over it, Uzi in jail.
“So what brings you to Arizona?” she asks as she checks us in.
My mom’s face says,
Mind yours
.
We don’t even know what jail Uzi’s in or anything.
The lawyer is an old white dude with a comb-over. Every time he talks, his hair moves like a furry mouthpiece. Greasy gold watch strapped to his hairy wrist. His shoes are Armor All shiny.
“I was a cop for twenty-five years,” he says, “so I understand both sides. I’ve—”
“So whose side are you on?” I say.
“I’ve been a defense attorney for the last twenty years.”
“But whose side are you on? My math says we’re down by five years.”
I can tell we’re just another number to him. I see it in the blankness in his eyes, the distance in his glare.
“I’m going to work to reduce his sentence as much as possible.”
Just another pitiful family
, that’s probably what he thinks. He doesn’t know how strong we are, though. Doesn’t know where we come from. Doesn’t know that it wasn’t always like this. I think about how it was when I was young. How my dad would take me and Uzi to the park in front of the Rocky statue. How we’d play football for hours and yell “Cunningham” before each throw. How we’d run up the Art Museum steps before we left. How happy we were.
“They’re going to try to try him as an adult since he’ll be eighteen by the trial date. I’m going to push for getting him tried as a juvenile since he was seventeen when the incident occurred.” He goes on and on and on with the bad weather:
clouds, rain, storms—
“Just stop. I need to see my son.”
Saw the light, caught a case, couldn’t afford to fight
Lawyer white, had to cop out or face more than life
*
“As you know, he’s in solitary,” he says. “Twenty-three-hour lockdown. He’s got one free hour each day. That’s your hour. You’ll be behind glass.”
My eyes tear with pain and rage thinking about Uzi in that black hole all day, wasting away. It’s torture. They’re torturing my brother, torturing my mom, torturing me. I want to break down and weep but I gotta be strong for Moms.
Everything inside the jail—benches, tables, lockers, rails—is metal and shiny. A sparkling hell. All the visitors are women except for me, and they’re mostly black and Mexicans. Mothers, daughters, wives, girlfriends, side chicks. No fathers, though. Not mine, not Uzi’s, not nobody’s.
All the guards are white as bone. Stiff muhfuckas with buzz cuts, sharp square jaws, and Oakley shades.
Uzi on the other side of the glass like Koreans at the corner store back in Philly.
“I didn’t do nothing,” he tells us.
“Well, you did something,” my mom says. “Or else why are we here?”
“I mean, I fucked her, but Ma, she said she was sixteen.”
“And you believed her?”
“You would too if you saw her, she’s like a thirty-six triple D,” showing us with his hands. We laugh a little, just to keep from crying. I see his beard coming in, thick and black like the Sunnis in Philly.
“Get me outta here,” he says, like we have the key somewhere, like we ain’t lost in the system too.
My mom’s face is steely. She’s wearing her mask, trying to hide her emotions, but I’m close enough to smell her pain. She never wears her heart on her face in public.
“We’re working on it,” she says.
“They got me in a dog kennel, yo. Like I’m a Rottweiler! All I can do is squat and run in place! Just please get me outta here.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“But I didn’t do anything!”
“Yes you did. You’re going to have to get over that. The law is the law.”
“Can’t you use your clout?”
“Clout?” She laughs.
“Can’t you and Dad use your clout?”
“Clout, Daudi? What does that mean? Clout didn’t stop them from arresting you. Clout didn’t stop them from putting you in the hole. Clout didn’t make your case a case of youthful indiscretion.” She shakes her head, lost. “They don’t look at me and see an educator, a choreographer that’s traveled the world. They see a nigger. A nigger.” The guard is coming for Uzi.
“We have no clout … just each other,” she says.
Time’s up.
Uzi puts his fist on the glass. I do too.
“One love.” I swear I can feel his knuckles through the glass.
“One.”
In the car on our way back to the hotel, the radio plays holiday hits. My mom hums along to “Whose Child Is This?” The speakers tremble.
“I wish he was in a Philly jail,” I say to my mom.
“Whether he’s here or in Philly,” she says, “jail is jail. Chains are chains.”
Some fortunate, some less fortunate
Some get it, some get acquitted
†
Uzi’s day in court.
“The plan is for him to come back to Philadelphia with us,” my mom tells me on our way into the courtroom. “Dodds said the court can transfer his probation to Philly. That’s what I spent all that money I didn’t have for—to bring Daudi home. I want you to pray on it.”
“Okay, I will.” I don’t pray a lot, but I’m down to try anything. I close my eyes and see the face of Emmett Till.
I try not to think about Till now as I sit in the courtroom. The cold benches remind me of the Meeting for Worship benches at Foes. Mom’s got her hair pulled back tight. I can see all the tiny veins swimming across her temple.
They bring my brother out in handcuffs and shackles like O.J. His light blue button-up tucked into khakis. He looks like he’s on a job interview. He sees me, nods. I give him a strong nod that says,
Everything’s going to be all right
. Then a smile that says,
You’re still my hero, everybody makes mistakes
.
The judge has a face that looks like old, low-hanging fruit. His voice sounds distant, like he’s a hundred miles away.
My dad’s friend Bobby Seale is one of the founders of the Black Panthers. One day in the hallway at Temple University Bobby told me about how the Panthers, strapped with Kalashnikovs and rocking cold black shades, cocked berets, and leather trenches, used to take over courtrooms. He told me that the only justice you get is the justice you take.
“So the concept is this, basically,” Bobby once said in a speech. “The whole black nation has to be put together as a black army. And we gon’ walk on this nation, we gon’ walk on this racist power structure, and we gon’ say to the whole damn government: Stick ’em up, motherfucker! This is a holdup! We come for what’s ours!”
I wish I was a Black Panther right now.
We come for what’s ours … and his name is Uzi
, I’d say.
I strike America like a case of heart disease
Panther power is running through my arteries
‡
“Will the defendant approach …”
I pray the only prayer I know, one my parents taught me when I was little:
We call upon the Most High and the ancestors, far and near …
“Young man …”
Mothers of our mothers, fathers of our fathers …
“Menace to society … burden to this community …”
To render us mercy and to bear witness …
“By the power … Arizona …”
For the liberation and victory of all oppressed people
.
“Hereby … guilty!… Ten years …”
Amen
.
I carry my mom out of the courtroom, onto the plane, and back to Philly. We don’t talk, we can’t speak.
Dear Carole,
Chaka is always saying he needs space. I know what that means. He needs space away from me. And the more space the better.
Space so as not to be reminded that I am broken,
space so as not to be reminded Daudi is broken. Malo is breaking.
I’m broken. “Fix Me, Jesus” is the spiritual that I loved so much when I was a little girl in Brooklyn. “Fix me, Jesus, Fix me.” That’s what sanatoriums were for. Places that “fixed” people with problems. Twice I’ve been committed and twice I’ve returned home feeling the same and seeing the same. The visits were remarkable in their inability to even scratch the surface of what’s wrong, if anything was wrong. If you say something is wrong enough times, everyone begins to believe it, including me. Okay, fix me, damn it! How can you fix someone who isn’t broken? I’m aching, I’m in pain, but broken—no!
No one knew that I was in the sanatorium, just Chaka and Malo. My mom didn’t know. What happens when a person disappears for two months? What do you say? I didn’t know because I wasn’t the one doing the telling. I was being fixed! One of the patients at the hospital asked for something and was denied. She said, “For nine hundred dollars a day, I should be getting more than Jell-O and a blanket.” It was funny to me at the time because I agreed. It was also funny because the young woman was so rational in such an irrational place. I had enjoyed taking walks around the grounds. I could think. I could control those walks. I was safe. Safe but not fixed.
Years ago, I straddled Chaka, beating him in the face, telling him how much he had broken my heart. His response was “That’s it, I am gone.” He didn’t leave that night, but it is just a matter of time. What do I do with “You are sewn into my gut” and “You are the smartest
woman I have ever met”? I treasure his words as always. He had come home late that night, very late, and it was too much. How much more could I take? I didn’t know what to say to him but I wished I had said, “Remember, just remember!”
God, give me strength.
Amina
The Line
“Winning is the deodorant that covers all stink,” Coach says. Tells me as long as we keep winning, he’ll keep Roach away from me. That’s our deal.