Part 28 (1/2)

”So I can take you shoppin' fo' some new clothes and s.h.i.+t. Come on.”

”He ain't goin' nowhere, he just got here,” complained Tamu.

”Yeah, bro, she's right,” I said, happy that Tamu had saved me.

”Well,” said Whiteboy, digging into his pocket, ”here, then. But I'll be back tomorrow to get you, nigg-”

”Don't call me that,” I said with my head down, eyes closed, and hands raised.

”What, n.i.g.g.a?”

”Yeah, that's disrespectin' me, brotha.”

”Oh, well excuse me,” Whiteboy said with a feigned look of dismay.

”It's all right this time.”

Everyone looked at one another. They knew that although I had changed my name and reconnected to reality, the 'Monster' still lay dormant.

”Here you go, homes.” He handed me the crumpled bills.

”Thank you, E, and I'll be here tomorrow when you swing by, huh?”

”All right then. Watch yourself, too.”

”I will.”

I closed the door and leaned on it in an exaggeration of exhaustion and told Tamu I'd be ready to go in a minute. I now had $2,100. I gave Shaun $900 of that as he tried to explain what was happening in the 'hood. We had gotten off to ourselves in the back room.

”It's the dope, man, it has tore the 'hood up. Check this out, there are some homies who got a grip from slangin', but they don't come around 'cause they think the homies who ain't got nothin' gonna jack 'em. And the homies who ain't got nothin' feel like those who do got a grip have left them behind. So there is a lot of backbiting, snitchin', and animosity around here now.”

”What happened with Crazy De?”

”Poor De, you know he was having big money, right?”

”Yeah, I heard that.”

”He tried to wait for you, bro. Said he was gonna make it right for you when you came home. Had a car and everything for you. But De wasn't like the others. He cared about the homies and put a lot of the li'l homies down with crack and straps. He got caught up in some bulls.h.i.+t and was gaffled for two hot ones. I miss cuz, too.”

”Yeah, I heard about the murders. Two girls, wasn't it?”

”Yeah, but I don't believe De did it. Cuz is a killa, but he ain't stupid, you know?”

”Yeah, that's right.”

”He's in L.A. County. We should swing down there and check him out.”

”Yeah,” I said, now thinking about something else. ”What's up with the Sixties?”

”Same ol' thing, back and forth. They hit us and we hit them. But the dope has slowed down the war too, in a way. While there ain't that many riders on either side willing to put constant work in, everybody got fullies, so one ride usually is enough now to drop several bodies at once.”

”Have there been any negotiations with anybody over there?”

”Negotiations? Bro, you ain't hearin' me. Nothing has changed, man. The shooting war is in full gear. Negotiations are conducted over the barrels of fullies. Those left standing have won the debate.”

”Still like that, huh? You know who was my neighbor in San Quentin?”

”Who?”

”Lunatic Frank. He taught me Kiswahili. We got along good, too.”

”Yeah, but Lunatic Frank didn't have no fullie in there, either.”

”No, but I doubt that if he had he would have shot me. He has changed.”

”Shot you? No, let me explain what fullies do. They don't blow you up, they don't shoot you, they spray you. Remember when you were shot back in eighty-one, you were hit six times? Bro, Chino just got sprayed with a fullie and he was. .h.i.t seventeen times! Sprays are permanent. They ain't no joke. We got s.h.i.+t that shoots seventy-five times. I heard that the Santanas got LAWS rockets. The latest things out here are fullies, body armor, and pagers. Offense, defense, and communication. This s.h.i.+t is as real as steel.”

”d.a.m.n, that's heavy. And you, what you got?”

”I got a Glock model seventeen that shoots eighteen times. It's a hand strap. Bro, this is the real world.”

The real world. How ever could I have expected anything else. Although prison had been where I'd acquired knowledge of self and kind, it also was a very simple place. Slow and methodic, almost predictable. This new, highly explosive atmosphere was a bit frightening. It's almost as if I had contributed to a structure here, but then had somehow slept through years of its development, and now was awakening to find a more advanced, horrifying form of the reality I had known. It was shocking. Homeboys who were once without money like the rest of us now had expensive cars, homes, cellular phones, and what seemed to be an endless cash flow. All this talk of fullies and body armor made me feel old. I was like Rip Van Winkle-or, more aptly, Crip Van Winkle.

”So, where does the set stand now, I mean in respect to the larger gang world?” I asked Li'l Bro.

”Well, you see, it's difficult to explain, 'cause nothin' is stable-you can't ever make a statement that can sum up what may happen tomorrow. Everything is fragile, more so than ever before, 'cause it's all about profit. Muhammad says that capitalism has. .h.i.t the gang world.”

”Do you have a job?”

”Naw,” he said, his head hanging down, ”I slang dope.”

And so did everyone else who had no marketable skills or who was not already on drugs. So little money in the community came from employment that some elderly people had even gotten into the drug trade just to make ends meet. Before I'd do it, though, I might as well put my combat black back on and go out shooting people, the destruction, in the end, being equal.

I found a job as a file clerk and, from that position, rose to a.s.sistant loan advisor. Working was not as bad as I had thought it would be. Through my teachings and new consciousness I knew that in order to really feel the actual weight of the state I had to be a part of the working cla.s.s. This was no easy decision to come to, as most of the brothas in the pen have this I-ain't-workin'-for-whitey att.i.tude. That goes over well in prison, but it didn't seem to hold up out in society, where I was faced with the very real responsibility of taking care of home, bills, and two children, as in addition to Keonda we now had a son, Justin. Initially my job didn't pay much, but I was managing my responsibilities for those who relied on me. It was by no means easy for Tamu and me. We only had one car, and it was old and had problems. And Tamu had moved to Rialto, which is sixty miles outside the city of Los Angeles, while I was a prisoner. So I had to stay in the city on weekdays while I worked and go home to Tamu and the children only on weekends. This gave me the opportunity to be in the community and talk to folks, while maintaining a refuge for weekends with my family.

Tamu and I had grown very close because she had chosen to come into the Movement with me, which firmly cemented our relations.h.i.+p. She appreciated my change and surmised that any organization that could retrieve me from the almost certain clutches of doom couldn't be that bad. We weathered the week-long separations with nightly phone conversations and did things as a family on the weekends.

One particular weekend, while we were driving along in our little raggedy car, we were pulled over by the Rialto police, who proceeded to write Tamu a ticket. I was sitting in the pa.s.senger seat and Keonda was in the back. Suddenly, out of nowhere, another police officer came up and began knocking on my window. I ignored him, didn't even look over. I was not driving and he had no need to talk to me. But his knocks became so hard that I feared he'd break the window, so I rolled it down.

”Yeah, what's up?” I asked, still looking forward, not giving the officer the time of day.

”Let me see your I.D.,” he said.

”For what? I'm not driving. Why do you need to see my identification?”

”Look, we can do this the hard way or the easy way.”