[2 of 5] Buck: A memoir, Chapters 10-18. by M. K. Asante (2013)
Author: M. K. Asante
Asante, M. K. (2013). Buck: A Memoir, Chapters 10-18. Spiegel & Grau.
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10
Bail Money
"It's just like my daddy told me," my dad says. "I ain't got no bail money. Not a dime!" He swipes his keys. "None." | haven't seen my dad since my mom got back from the psych ward. He's home now, just for a hot minute, before he goes out of town again.
"If we don't help him, the system will hang him," Mom says. "You know that's what they do to black boys. You know that, Chaka!"
"That boy hung himself a long time ago! Why are you so surprised? He's never done the right thing. Never!"
"He made a mistake. Wrong place, wrong time. He's our son—we will profit by or pay for whatever he becomes."
"He raped a girl."
"Don't say that," my mom erupts, wincing at the very thought.
"A white girl! My enemies will love this."
"Statutory rape!"
"A white girl!"
"It was consensual. He's only seventeen, she told him she was sixteen."
"Well, she was thirteen!"
"He didn't know. My son is not a rapist!"
"He's a thug. You reap what you sow," he says like a southern preacher.
"Please," she pleads. "They'll do him like Emmett Till if we don't."
Something in the kitchen falls. I feel like everything is falling, crashing around me.
"He's not working. He's not in school. Can't you see? He's destroying you."
"You don't understand."
"What don't I understand?"
"What it's like . . . for a mother."
Later on I get on the computer, a Mac Performa 5200. I dial up the Internet and type in "Emmett Till" on this new thing my dad's friend Zizwe told me about called Google. It's dope, you can find anything on this jawn . . . including all the hardcore Afro-Centrix flicks. I read about how in 1955, Emmett, fourteen years old like me, got killed for whistling at a white woman in Philadelphia, Mis-sissippi. But they didn't just kill him. They shot his ears off at point-blank range. Gouged his eyes out. Tied him with barbed wire by his neck. Cut his dick off. Dumped him in the Tallahatchie River. There's two pictures of him. One where he's alive, glowing, wearing a fedora and a boyish grin, looking like Uzi, actually. And another, in his casket, his face deformed like melted plastic. My soul cries for Till like he was Uzi.
I say to my dad, "So you really not going to help my brother?"
"I can't help him. He made his bed, now he has to lie in it. One day you'll make yours too, and you'll have to lie in it."
Dear Carole,
If I could run, hide from bad news, I would be on the other side of the world. Bad news has ridden the hem of my skirts and I haven't been able to dance the news away. Now bad news has arrived big-time and in this midnight hour, when everyone is asleep and only the TV talks, I am speechless but full of fear. Fear for my child. The one that I put on the plane to zona. The child that I wanted to save and didn't know what to do. My firstborn child, who was full of life and too much mischief. He is in jail facing what?
God, give me strength.
Amina
11
Xmas in AZ
Xmas in AZ. Nobody's in this Holiday Inn except me and my mom. We're here to see Uzi. My mom still hasn't spoken to him and no one knows what's going on.
We're supposed to see this lawyer she got for Uzi, Mr. Dodds or something.
"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," | 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
("Trading Places," AZ, 1997.)
"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 indiscre-tion." 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
("Unfortunate," RAM Squad, 1996.)
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 arteriest
( "Panther Power," 2Pac, 1991.)
'Will the defendant approach . . ."
I pray the only prayer I know, one my parents taught me when I was little: We call upon the Mosi 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
12
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.
It's the fourth quarter and we're down by three-54 to 57—to our rivals, Hilltop. Big game. Like twenty seconds left. I'm dribbling at the top of the key.
Championship banners hang above my head like quilts on a clothesline. Bleachers full of parents and friends. Nia's here with one of her girlfriends. Amir's standing with Ryan near the exit.
Basketball clears my mind, takes me away from the bullshit. On the court, I'm the judge.
I play my heart out.
My Jordans squeaking across the blond wood. It's like a high-pitched language-call and response—I speak with my sneaks. They're repeating the lines from a Jordan movie that Uzi got for me a few birthdays ago.
"Once I get the ball, you're at my mercy. There's nothing you can say or do about it. I own the ball. I own the game. I own the guy guarding me. I can actually play him like a puppet." I love Jordan's heart, his determination. I remember Game 5 of the NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz, he had the flu and he played anyway. During every time-out, every dead ball, you could see the sickness in his eyes. The end of the game, tie game, he hit a three to win it. They had to carry him off the gym floor, he was so weak.
Later, they asked him about it: "I didn't want to give up. No matter how sick I was, no matter how tired I was, no matter how low on energy I was. I felt an obligation to my teammates and the city of Chicago to go out and give that extra effort."
I'm dribbling, crossing over, spinning, faking, pumping, passing . . . I get the ball back-dribble, spin, hesitate, reverse, penetrate . . . driving hard to the paint.
Foul.
I'm at the line. Season on the line. Everything on the line.
Coach calls a time-out.
"I need you to come through," he says, both hands on my shoulders. "It's on you. I know you can handle it."
I step to the line, my toes kissing the stripe. The ref, whistle hanging out of his mouth like a Marlboro, bounces the rock to me. I spin the ball in my hand. Bounce, spin, bounce-bounce, spin. Spread my fingers across it like a phat ass. Let my fingertips find the crack, settle in.
The ball leaves my hand
It's up in the air . . .
Dear Carole,
I spent the night in my car. It was funny sleeping in Fisher Park. I come home in the morning and see Chaka as he's leaving for work. He doesn't speak and neither do I. I think he is ashamed of me. It is hard for me to acknowledge this but it is true. He doesn't want to be seen with me. He doesn't say anything but his actions tell me that.
True, I am terribly overweight and I am not the small dancer that he met a long time ago. It is a hell that I seem to have imposed on myself. Why? There are probably many reasons. I resent him for being ashamed and I draw farther away from him. Every houseguest and visitor is my responsibility but our world is a secret. The façade of a marriage and a happy home is just that. Perhaps the houseguests are distractions and keep the attention away from us. I only know that the silence has me basking in invisible rhythms and I have disappeared.
My weight is another mask for the pain. Am I conscious of it? Yes and no. I run away from my image but it follows me, and even when I am not looking, others are looking and sometimes those looks usher in comments. "I didn't recognize you; how did you gain so much weight?" "Why did you gain so much weight?" "How in the world does a dancer gain so much weight?" They were questions I had asked myself a thousand times. "Pain" is all I can say. Chaka hates it, I hate it, but we all dance around it.
God, give me strength.
Amina
13
Midnight Train
The coldest day of the year. That disrespectful brrr. Outside it looks like everybody's blazing big blunts. Swirling dark clouds roll in like waves.
I'm in the living room watching Kung Fu Theater on Channel 48. I hear my mom and dad in the kitchen, their voices rising, falling, crashing like distant thunder.
Maybe all this arguing is good, I think. Maybe it means they still care. Like, it shows they're still willing to fight for each other. Maybe not fighting is worse.
This flick is called Shogun Assassin. Samurais in straw hats sword-fighting in the desert. A little boy flashes on the screen:
When I was little my father was famous. He was the greatest samurai in the empire and he was the shogun's decapitator. He cut off the heads of 131 lords. It was a bad time for the empire. The shogun just stayed inside his castle and he never came out. People said his brain was infected by devils. My father would come home; he would forget about the killings. He wasn't scared of the shogun, but the shogun was of him. Maybe that was the problem. Then one night the shogun sent his ninja spies to our house. They were supposed to kill my father but they didn't. That was the night everything changed.
I hear fists slamming on the counter—my cue to see what's going on.
"He's leaving," my mom screams as I walk in the kitchen. Leaving to go where? I think.
I see my dad. His face looks cold and tight. He's wearing a black dashiki with an ankh on it.
The ankh symbolizes life in Egyptian mythology. Death in Philly reality.
I remember something my dad said when my grandfather died: "He thought of leaving for good every time he heard the long, mournful whistle of the train." He told me it's called "wanderlust"—hat need to go, to bounce—and that all the men in my family have it.
My mom hangs on him like a peacoat. He drags her, slow and determined like a wounded soldier. Mom's tears flowing like the Schulkill River. I've never seen them like this.
"Hold up." I hold my hand out like a crossing guard. "Where you going?"
"We'll talk about it later," he says.
Later? Who does he take me for, hitting me with later, like I'm some little kid? I know later never comes.
"Nah, we gon' talk about it now!" I get loud. His mind is made up, though.
He's rushing to the door, whooshing like wind through vents, gripping a beat-up black leather bag. That bag's been everywhere; it spends more time with Pops than I do.
"How can you? How can you? Leave us . . . like this?" my mom sobs, looking right at me, her heavy eyes begging me to do something. The movement is moving and there's nothing I can do. Fuck am I gonna do? I jump in front of him, try to block him, but he just steps around me.
"I have to go," is what he says. "I just have to go."
"Go where?"
"Just. Go," he says opening the door. "One day you'll understand."
"Fuck one day! Fuck tomorrow!"
Our eyes lock. Tears glisten in his. Rage in mine.
"See?" He looks at my mom, shaking his head. "He has no respect for his father."
"It's my fault? He doesn't respect you because you're never here."
He's at the door now, palming the knob.
I say, "I'll respect you even less if you walk out that door," but it's too late. The door flies open, a cold rush, he's gone.
I feel my veins turn icy and my soul drift into darkness as he turns his back on us and marches into winter.
Mom falls into me, her wet face against my Hilfiger hoodie. The screen door stutters shut. I lift my mom up under the arms. She's deadweight. I hold her tight and feel her back expanding in my palms like dough. I didn't know she was this heavy. You never know how heavy anyone is until you have to carry them.
I wonder if he's leaving because of her weight.
The other day, looking through her journal, I found this old school photo of her from back in the day. She was a dime. Dancer body, silky skin, the glow of a movie star, Lena Horne or somebody like that. Classic beauty. She's a dancer that doesn't dance anymore, not even her eyes. There's no music, just pain. It's hard to imagine that the lady in that faded photo is the same woman I'm holding now. She's all I have.
"Protect me, Malo," she says through a mouthful of tears.
From what? I think. Everything, I guess.
"I will." Putting my hand on her shoulder, rubbing the fist-size knots on her back. She's as fragile as her thin eyelashes.
All night she sobs. I try to comfort her, sitting on her bed, massaging her head. She's just sobbing. She can't even look at me. Her eyes are shut with tears. The cries last forever. The whole neighborhood can probably hear her wailing. When I leave the crib, she's sobbing. When I get back, it's like I never left.
"You need anything, Ma?"
"To die."
14
North of Death
I'm choking this bottle of Henny, taking swigs with Amir and Scoop. The brown burns my whole face up.
"Hennessy make plenty enemies," Scoop rumbles, slugging the gnac down like it's water. Sometimes, like now, Scoop reminds me of Uzi, with his wild energy and crazy stories and temper as sudden as gunshots.
She said, Afrocentricity was of the past
so she got into R&B, hip-house, bass, and jazz
("I Used to Love H.E.R. (Hearing Every Rhyme)," Common, 1994.)
We're in the jaws of the night, in front of this row house on a back block in North Philly near
Diamond Street.
"North side of death," Amir says.
Scoop shows us his new gun, a black Desert Eagle. It's midnight black, fat, and long. "His name is Mr. Nipples," Scoop says, Cookie Monster eyes wobbling. "Turning legs into wheels." It's huge, with a scope on it like something off Terminator.
"Damn, Scoop," I say, a little scared.
"What? You thought I was playing? You think it's a game?" We hear police sirens searching in the distance.
"Just don't get caught with that," Amir says.
"Rather be caught with it than without it. Rather go to jail than die young."
A door the color of Pepto-Bismol, manned by some dude in black shades with a Sunni beard. Scoop daps him and we're in.
Boom boom boom—the bass from Luke's "Face Down Ass Up" is beating up the house, pounding, thumping. Face down ass up / That's the way we like to fuck . .
The steps are dark, steep, and sticky with drink. Scoop's in front walking his superthug walk, fist clenched, marching on some one-two, one-two shit. Pussy ain't nuttin but meat on the bone / Suck it or fuck it or leave it alone . . .
Upstairs is crazier than a Luke video.
Girls, naked or in neon G-strings, dancing everywhere. A blur of clapping asses. A buffet of shapes: teardrops, bubbles, apples, cherries, pears, hearts, and straight-up ghetto booties. Instant wood in my Guess jeans.
Smoke swirls through the darkness, curling slow like storm clouds.
We take another shot of Henny.
A bunch of shady nghz in the shadows. Everybody's way older than us. Me and Amir are fourteen.
The stage is porn.
"Pussy Olympics," Scoop says.
One girl, legs behind her neck like a pretzel, has three lit candles hanging from her pussy, pushing them in and out like a flamethrower. Two other chicks bumping butts with a purple dildo inside them both. Another jawn upside down on a pole.
There's a guy with a mic—the host, I guess—giving a play-by-play and encouraging the girls This is where the ballers come to play and where the players come to ball." He's smoking a Blac & Mild. He blows the pussy candles out —"Lights out" —then puts the mouthpiece of his cigar ir her pussy. "Smoke that," he laughs, making faces as the cigar tip glows orange and her pussy puffs.
Shot.
I feel the Henny all through my body like a 12-gauge shotty.
I'm standing next to a couple of thumping Kenwoods, footprint against the wall. The bass owns me.
My eyes lock on this short, bowlegged girl. She shuffles over and poses for me, bending over and touching the floor with her hands. Her thighs, shiny with baby oil, look like glazed hams.
"You dancin or datin?" she asks.
"Huh?"
"Dancin or datin?" she says, rubbing her pussy.
Datin? You wanna go on a date?" I'm confuse Datin means fuckin," Scoop laugh
"How much?"
"A buck," she says, dropping to the floor. She spreads her legs like a peace sign and flicks her pierced tongue at me.
"A hunnit?"
"Yeah."
"I'm cool."
Amir jumps in. "We get it for free."
"Nothing's free," Scoop says. "With hoes, somehow you always pay. Always."
Three folding chairs crash onto the stage.
"Are y'all ready for tonight's main event?" the host asks.
I'm looking around at the freak show going on everywhere, wondering, How is this not the main event? The crowd howls, hoots, and grunts as three strippers climb onstage.
"Y'all not ready for this," he says, setting the chairs up. "But we gon' give it to you anyway. Listen, I need three volunteers, three volunteers."
Amir bolts toward the stage like it's the halftime shot for a million dollars at the Sixers game. Two more thirsty dudes follow.
"Let's get this dick-sucking contest started!"
Me and Amir lock eyes, like What the fuck? His smile is bright against his black face. Scoop is laughing, nodding, and pulling out wads of cash from different pockets.
"Fellas, take a seat. Ladies, introduce yourselves."
"Buffy."
"Honey."
"Diamond."
"Ain't none of them dimes," Scoop says. "More like fives and sixes with scars and stitches." Diamond is the one on Amir. She's old, at least triple his age, with tits that hang like wet socks.
"Make ya bets right here." The host is taking money.
"A dub on Honey. . . a buck on Buffy . . . fifty on Diamond," different people yell.
Scoop makes his bet and throws a knot down.
It's like the hood version of the stock market. I see the money flapping, the asses clapping, and think about the power of the dollar.
"Hoes, on your marks." Pulls off his watch to keep time. They hit their knees.
"Set." They whip out condoms and roll them on. "Go!"
Everyone in the room is going crazy, screaming and shouting.
"Lawd have mercy, she suckin the earth, wind, and fire out his dick!"
"She suckin the black off his shit!"
It's over faster than a Tyson fight. Amir's girl pulls up and snaps her fingers fast in the air.
"We got a winner," the host announces. "Diamond!" She holds the condom up like a freshly caught fish.
"Official time: one minute, twenty-one seconds."
Dear Carole,
Kianna is still in love with Scoop. He lives around the corner with his sister, Alicia. I don't know what he does but he lives a thug lifestyle. Kianna is the first one besides me to go to college but it is clear to me that Scoop is everything to her. A first love is difficult, particularly for a girl.
Scoop is part of the crew. Ted, Damien (D-Rock), Daudi, and now Malo. Malo and Scoop have became close since Daudi left. Too close! It is a strange connection, as Scoop is around Daudi's age, but perhaps Scoop fills a void for Malo. Malo has always been one to hang with the older crowd with the exception of his best friend, Amir. I know that they all smoke weed but I don't know what else they do. Malo smokes too and that was another thing that I warned him about, but he didn't listen. I know that they are all sexually active including Malo. He doesn't have to tell me. The evidence is all over the place. None of them work and their idea of being busy is getting high. Malo doesn't really talk to me. I wish I knew what was on his mind. The only thing that's clear to me is his pain.
I know Scoop's and Ted's parents through them. I ask about them and they tell me tidbits that give me an idea of their family life. I know Ted's parents are very socially ac-tive. They want to move to a bigger house in Blue Bell. The only thing that I know about Blue Bell is that Patti LaBelle once belonged to a trio called the Blue Bells. When she was asked about the name, she said that she got the name from a very upscale suburb of Philadelphia, someplace that she aspired to live. I know that Scoop's father is somewhat older than his mom. Ted's mom and dad went to Lincoln University and were college sweethearts. Scoop's sister, Alicia, has a young son who is very smart and precocious and apparently his father is a Jamaican drug dealer. I learn all of this knowledge through Malo but it is usually true.
Malo has the best chance to make it, not because he is exempt from mischief and even mayhem but because he is a listener and observer. Like his brother, though, he is choosing a thug life. My only hope is that he is mortified by the consequences of that life.
God, give me strength.
Amina
15
Broke
I go to steal my mom's car and there's already someone stealing it. I've been doing this since I was fourteen, taking my mom's wheel in the middle of the night, driving around the city with Amir.
"You about to get fucked up," yell at the thief.
Next I'm staring down the barrel of his gun, a chrome tunnel to the other side, as he steals the car.
"He didn't steal it," my mom whispers. She winces while she talks, like every word hurts to say. "The bank owns it."
"He stole it," I say. "And all my CDs in the backseat too."
"We're bankrupt."
"How?"
"If you don't understand money, it grows wings and poof-it's gone."
"What does that even mean . . . being bankrupt?"
She's sitting in the La-Z-Boy she never gets up from. Her sadness bolts her to the chair like the Death Row Records logo. She's paralyzed like how my grandfather was. She's faded too, high as a kite, eyes glazed like shiny marbles. White paste in the creases of her mouth like she's been talking way too long. She doesn't say much, though. Pill bottles, Diet Coke, empty Häagen-Dazs containers, and bills form rings around her like Saturn. TV on-Cops as usual. Every night, Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you. That shit creeps me out. Makes me think about Uzi. Maybe it makes her think about Uzi too? Maybe that's why she watches? I see Uzi in her shattered face.
Her purse is like CVS, a blur of brown plastic bottles with X's and Z's. She's got a fistful of pills, all fruity colors like Wild Berry Skittles.
Yo, this ngh named D-rugs, my moms dates him
Swear to God I hate him, if I could I would break him
("D Rugs," Cam'ron, 1998.)
"It means we're broke, Daudi." She pops the orange pill.
"I'm not Daahoud, Mom." She doesn't respond, just looks me over all floatv-eved.
"What about Dad?"
"He's bankrupt too . . . and in trouble with the IRS." Red.
How can people who've been working their whole lives be broke? How can people who've been struggling their whole lives still be struggling? Is this what my dad means when he says the struggle continues? But when does it end? Something's off about this picture. Fuck this broke-ass picture.
"I know, Daudi," she says, like I'm my brother. She keeps calling me that lately. "When it rains it pours." Purple. She's crying without tears. "When you grow up hungry," she says, "you promise yourself you'll never be hungry again."
"I promise to get us out of this," I say.
"I know, Daudi."
"It's me, Ma, Malo," I try to correct her. But she's fading out now like the dope fiends who wash cars on Broad and Godfrey. "I'ma get us out of this, Mom."
"I know, Daudi."
Dear Carole,
I've never seen Malo so angry. He's slamming things. His cheeks are puffy. I ask his coach if something happened. He says that "they lost" but that "Malo played well."
I ask Malo, "What happened?" He doesn't say anything but I can feel him respond.
"I know that you lost the game but I heard you played well." I feel his body hiccup, as if to say, How could I play well if my team lost? I continued, "Sometimes we lose, but if we try our best, that is all we can do." That got a rise out of him. He turned over and looked at me and said in a stern voice, "We lost!"
I know what he means: I lost, Mom, and I don't ever want to lose again! I wasn't going to get much further with "as long as you give it your best."
Losing isn't an option for Malo and it hurt. I understand that for Malo, losing was akin to something that I have never experienced. He was upset at himself because he felt that he could have saved the game and he didn't. He was upset that an event that involved him had not gone well. Never mind his teammates; he had lost and right now that was all that mattered.
Losing isn't the flip side of winning for Malo. It is all or it simply isn't. From the very beginning of his life, it was win by any means necessary. If I tapped him lightly, he responded more forcibly just to make sure if it were combat, I would know that he was ready. Where does he get that? If he fought with Daudi and he was losing, he would change the rules so that Daudi was punished. I'm the unwitting foil in the Malo book of rules. Win at any cost. He will go for the jugular and not think anything about it. When I finally wise up to his tricks, he is not repentant and is already on to bigger and better things. Malo has always been fearless. I pray that this quality doesn't get him into trouble later on in his life.
God, give me strength.
Amina
16
A Hunnit Knuckles
Ted hollers, "These are the Thug Life codes all UPK members shall live and die by." We're huddled in the parking lot behind Cardinal Dougherty High School, under a big gray sky smoky with overcast.
The whole crew—like a hunnit knuckles—rushes me and Amir like a sandstorm.
"One: You got three options: (a) get rich, (b) get sent to jail, or (c) get killed."
I catch a punch to the back of my head. "UPK!" they keep shouting. I squint up at the silver overcast sky, then trip into Amir-we swing on everything moving.
"Two: Your word is your bond."
A dozen flying fists landing everywhere like hail.
"Three: One crew's rat is every crew's rat. Snitches get stitches. We don't talk to police. No fish ever got caught with its mouth shut."
I bust a lip-then get mine bust . . . head shots like tambourines on Sundays.
Gotta put you on your ass to see what it does to you
When you stand up and see that I'm just showin love to you
("Bring It On," DMX, 1998.)
"Four: Money over bitches. Chasing bitches, you'll run out of money. But chasing money, you'll never run out of bitches."
Stumbling backward . . . me and Amir, back to back, sucking air before we go buck . . .
"Five: No slinging in schools . . . Slinging to little children or having little children slinging is against the Code."
Hooks and haymakers.
"Six: In unity, there is strength!" Uppercuts, crosses, and chaos.
"Seven: The boys in blue don't run nothing—we do! We control the hood and make it safe for squares."
Blood flies from my nose.
"Eight: No slinging to pregnant sisters. That's baby killing and therefore genocide!" I'm falling into different-colored rooms—orange/red/purple/black.
"Nine: Know your target, who's the real enemy . . . Civilians are not a target and should be spared in hood warfare."
A body shot takes me to my knees. "UPK!" Amir's blood in my eye.
"Ten: Harm to babies and old people will not be forgiven."
Timb boots stomping me like a welcome mat.
"Eleven: No rape."
I ball up, knees to forehead . . . and then I don't feel any pain anymore.
"Twelve: Respect brothers and sisters if they respect themselves."
I tackle a body, land on my feet, and swing for the hills.
"Thirteen: No shooting at parties."
Nothing but air . . . everyone moves away . . . I cough up gravel and blood. A great big bear hug.orange/red/purple/black.
"Nine: Know your target, who's the real enemy . . . Civilians are not a target and should be spared in hood warfare."
A body shot takes me to my knees. "UPK!" Amir's blood in my eye.
"Ten: Harm to babies and old people will not be forgiven."
Timb boots stomping me like a welcome mat.
"Eleven: No rape."
I ball up, knees to forehead . . . and then I don't feel any pain anymore.
"Twelve: Respect brothers and sisters if they respect themselves."
I tackle a body, land on my feet, and swing for the hills.
"Thirteen: No shooting at parties."
Nothing but air . . . everyone moves away . . . I cough up gravel and blood. A great big bear hug.
"Fourteen: Know the Code. Be a real ngh. Be down with the Code of Thug Life."
I fight out of the hug . . . keep swinging . . . punching, kicking, grabbing, tackling . . . they're trying to get me to stop but I won't, fuck that, I'm out for blood . . . I swing . . . swing . . . keep fighting and fuckin fighting until they're all piled on top of me and I can't move.
"It's all love," they say. "It's over, young buck! You did it."
I keep going . . . keep swinging like my life depends on it.
Later, Scoop tells me my heart is bigger than my chest.
"One more Code. Fifteen: Protect yourself at all times."
Scoop puts a .22-caliber Beretta in my palm.
It's heavy in my hands. I marvel at it. I feel like Pac in Juice or maybe Pacino in Scarface. Nino in New Jack. Everybody else but me. I wonder if I can use this in my nightmares, use it to blow back evil. I think about the cops, the robber, the repo man. Fear melts in the palm of my hand.
I'm a lyrical destructor, don't make me buck ya
Because I'm a wild muhfuckat
("Give Up the Goods," Big Noyd (Mobb Deep featuring Big Noyd), 1995.)
"Is it loaded?"
"No use otherwise."
17
Some Type of Way
My stomach feels like a dishrag. Tongue like a balloon in my mouth. Eyes unbuttoned. Jaw weep-ing. Even the sky bleeds as the sun sets over Nia's crib. She lives on Stenton Ave. across the street from MLK High School.
"But why?" she asks me, patting my face with an ice pack. I'm in her room. It's baby blue and has stuffed animals all over her bed like Jumanji.
" 'Cause," I say slow.
" 'Cause what?" She wipes my face.
I don't know what to say. I don't even know why. Maybe I did it because Uzi's gone and UPK are like my big brothers now. Or because Amir wanted to do it too. Or for protection. Or to piss Pops off. Or because I just don't give a fuck anymore. Or maybe there is no why.
" 'cause, whatever."
She just shakes her head. "They beat you up. What type of—"
"Nah, we got jumped in, plus we fucked them up too."
"I guess," she says, rolling her eyes, "I don't see the point if they're supposed to be your friends."
Nia is like fresh water. She has me feeling some type of way.
"You love that bitch?" Ryan asked me the other day.
I almost ripped his head off. "She ain't no bitch. Chill with that . . . and yeah, I'm feelin her, so fall back."
I just stare at her, stare at her like she's the most precious piece of artwork in the Philly Museum of Art. Her skin is silky and shiny like the outside of a bubble. Each one of her eyelashes shows and curls into forever.
"Look at your little peach fuzz," she says, laughing, touching my bruised chin. She has a smile that stops at nothing.
Her mom's at work—she's all mine.
She kisses me, her lips softer than a whisper. I can feel my heart beating in my dick, stone stiff.
My hands take over like they're possessed. I play her collarbone like a harmonica.
We fuck like our lives depend on it, like we're all we have, and I think it's true.
We're lying on her bed, watching the ceiling fan make circles in the dark. Her neck, smooth and varm, resting on my bicep in perfect til
What's the craziest thing you ever did?" I ask her
Her eyes roll back in thought.
"I know."
"What?"
"Fall in love with you."
"But you don't even know me like that to be falling in love."
"I know," she says, getting back on top of me. "That's why it's so crazy . . . Did you know that love causes the same chemical reaction in the brain as insanity?"
I think about that for a minute—love and insanity, beauty and the beast.
"Crazy."
18
MALO
Scoop hands me a frosty forty of OE. I hit it, then put it on my swollen face like an ice pack. It's all big and awkward, like a traffic cone.
I look down 5th Street: little girls with braids and colorful Venus Williams barrettes jumping rope fast. Little boys juking in the middle of the street, playing roughhouse, shooting at a bottomless black crate tied to a phone pole. Sirens whine in the distance.
"Yo! What you call a pretty girl on Ryan's arm?" Amir asks.
"I don't fuckin know."
"A tattoo! Haha."
"Ya mom!" Ryan says. He's sitting between this girl Tasha's legs, getting his hair braided.
I kiss my mama goodbye and wipe the tears from her lonely eyes
Said I'll return but I gotta fight the fate's arrived
("I Ain't Mad At Cha," 2Pac featuring Danny Boy, 1996.)
This Cambodian kid, Dah, is tatting my arm up. Dah's my age and can make a tattoo gun out of an electric toothbrush, Bic pen, and guitar string. He's doing it right now-sharpening the guitar string against the mouth of the curb like floss. Dah is like Uptown's MacGyver. Give homie some duct tape, a couple of paper clips, batteries, a tube sock, and like two and a half hours, and he'll make a better version of anything they sell at Radio Shack. Once he even made a bulletproof vest out of Kevlar strips he ganked from some old Goodyears.
Everyone comes to Dah to get tatted, twenty bucks a lick. He put a crucifix on Ted's veiny-ass forearm, "Only God Can Judge Me" on Aubrey's back, "MOB" on D-Rock's hand, a teardrop under Scoop's eye, and two cherries on Amber's left titty, and he did way too many RIP tats.
"I use the E string 'cause it's mad thin," he says, his dark anime eyes bugged with focus. "Can also straighten staples for the needle, but I like the E. It plays music on nghz' skin."
"Dah, you ain't a ngh, stop saying ngh, ngh," D-Rock says.
"Eat a dick," Dah says, "ngh."
D-Rock's just fucking with Dah. Nobody cares that Dah says ngh because—forreal-forreal—Dah and all the other Cambodians in Olney are nghz. They look like nghz-dark, thick features; dress like nghz-baggy and colorful; talk like nghz-fast and raw; and are even broker than nghz, with like forty people in a two-bedroom apartment. They don't own shit—no nail salons, no beauty stores, no laundromats, no check-cashing spots, no corner stores, no banks, no takeout spots with cloudy bulletproof glass-just like nghz. I think the other Asians look down on them too . . . just like nghz.
"It hurts like a bitch," Amir says, biting open a grape freeze pop.
"It's the real ngh way. No shop, no license," Ted says. "Just needle to bone."
I don't care, though. I hope it hurts. That jump-in plus everything else with my fam got me numb to pain. I can take it, bring it. I don't feel shit, cold as steel.
"Aight!" Dah says as he tapes it all together and inspects it.
"Damn, that shit is ugly," D-Rock, says staring at Dah's invention. It has a medieval body and a jailhouse spirit.
"Looks ain't everything—like a bad bitch could have that house in Virginia, you never know," says Scoop.
"Essaywhuman?" | say like Black Thought from the Roots.
"HIV, ngh!"
D-Rock, Scoop, and Aubrey are chilling. Blunt smoke slow-dances around their faces. The door to Scoop's tinted-out gold Benz is ajar. Biggie pours out of the Pioneers. D-Rock is draining a Keystone Light.
"Man, all y'all nghz shut the fuck up and throw something up," Ted says, taking his shirt off fast like he's about to rumble.
"Go 'head with all that lifting shit, man."
"You ain't lifting, you ain't living!" he barks. "I'ma show y'all simple nghz how I'm living." He starts doing reps on the bench. He woofs like a dog every time he throws the weight up. And that's exactly what Ted reminds me of: a little hyper pug dog, always drooling at the corners of the mouth, always wild, ready to scrap, loud as fuck. Uzi says he has a Napoleon complex.
Dah bangs the gun against the curb.
"That jawn still works, right?" I ask, laughing. Dah just looks at me, mouth twisted, head tilted.
"What? Name one thing I made that didn't work," he challenges.
I thought about the bulletproof vest he made since—
"And don't say the vest!"
Last year, this kid Edris, one of Uzi's best boys, bought Dah's bulletproof vest. He was rocking it, and on his way home from some girl's house, right there in front of the laundromat on Broad Street—Wishy Washy-they ambushed him. The vest stopped a few slugs from wreaking havoc on his chest, but it was useless above his linebacker shoulders. Shells shatter skull. They went point-blank and shot his nose off like the Sphinx. It's crazy how many people are getting killed throughout the city. Every night someone's son or daughter is murdered and it seems like nobody cares. Death feels like it's around every corner, waiting under the stop signs, looking down from the street lights, creeping out of the sewers.
"They took the elevator on him-top floor. It was a bulletproof vest, not mask," Dah says. "The vest worked," he adds, hitting a switch on the tattoo gun, which suddenly buzzes to life, "and so does this . . . ready?"
Dah's passionate about what he does. I think it's dope to see people who are passionate do their thing, like MJ-either one. Plus out here all you got is your name. That's exactly why I'm getting my name tatted on me.
"Hell yeah," I say, and take off my shirt. "I want Malo right here," pointing to my whole left arm. "Big as shit. Loud. All the way turned up."
"Got you." He writes it out—MALOon a piece of paper in Old English letters. The letters are sharp curves like ninja stars. As I'm staring at my name it hits me that there are two types of people: camels and lions. Camels—the ones that follow and always do as they're told, listen quietly and never question, never challenge. Those that bend every which way to please the world, the authorities, parents, school, government, and follow blindly. Lions—the ones that make their own rules, chart their own path. The lions are the G's and the camels are the bustas.
It's like Scoop always says: "G's do what they want, bustas do what they can."
I shoot up like a rocket.
"What?" Dah says.
"You know how Tupac said THUG LIFE stands for 'The Hate U Gave Little Infants Fucks Everybody'?"
"Yeah."
"MALO-'Me Against Law and Order.' "
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