Lockdown (6 page)
Authors: Walter Dean Myers
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Drugs; Alcohol; Substance Abuse, #Violence, #People & Places, #United States, #African American
The stuff that Mr. Hooft said was scary. For some reason I just didn’t want to deal with it, but it stayed on my mind. Maybe Mr. Hooft thought I was like that guy fighting him, or maybe even one of the soldiers. I didn’t know.
On the way back to Progress I remembered Mom saying I should write to Willis. I didn’t want to but I knew she would keep bugging me. Me and Willis weren’t all that tight, but he was still blood and would get my back if I needed him. He would get Icy’s back too. But he was steady going to thug school and making noises like he was too fast for the streets to catch up with him. One time when my pops wasn’t being too stupid, he said the streets were like
quicksand covered with whipped cream. You knew when they were slowing your ass down, but it always came as a surprise when you got sucked under.
In the rec room they had some paper that had
PROGRESS
printed on it so that it looked like a private school or something. I copped a few sheets and wrote to Willis.
Dear Willis,
Mama came up to the jail with Icy. I don’t know how Mama is doing but I was glad to see them. She asked me to write you a letter and say you should join the army. What she said was that being in the army would keep you off the streets and turn you away from getting into trouble. I was going to write f’d up but you can’t put anything like that in a letter from here.
Anyway, I know there is a bonus if you join and I guess either you or Mama would get it. If she tells you that she’s going to hold it for you I don’t know what to say.
In a way she is right that being in the army would get you off the street. I don’t know if you remember Guy from the Bronx. He lost
thirty-two pounds to get into the army and then he went and got killed in Iraq. He was a hero and they had a special service for him at Mt. Olive. But after the funeral and everything he was still dead and nobody said anything about him that sounded special to me. He went into the army, he was killed, case closed.
So, in a way what I am saying is where you think you wouldn’t mind dying? If you died while you were in the army it would go over big on 116th Street but it wouldn’t mean much on 125th because that street is jumping too heavy to care about just another soldier dying.
Mama said she would like to see you join the army because it would keep you safe. How’s it going to keep you safe if there’s a war on?
I talked to an old white dude who was in one of those wars with a number on it. Maybe they should put numbers on all wars just to see how many they got going and how stupid it looks. If you went all the way back to Bible times it would probably be up to War 302 or something.
The bottom line is that you got to look out for number one, which is you. I know that might
seem funny coming from me writing to you from jail. I don’t know if I would join the army unless I could learn a trade that would get me a good job when I got out. Maybe I could learn to drive a tank and come back and take over everybody’s parking spot in the hood.
If you don’t mind dying here in Harlem then that’s another deal, because ain’t nobody except me and Icy going to make a big thing over it because it’s really not that unusual. Some people would put R.I.P. on their windshields or something to show love, but I don’t know how much love you can show to somebody dead.
So what I’m saying is that maybe you need to be thinking about getting to some place where people aren’t even talking about dying. When I get out of here I got to chill for a few years until I can figure out a way to get paid. I’m not into no quick get overs because I’m tired of being locked up. I was thinking about you and me opening a business. Maybe we could open a grocery store and be like the kind of guys who everybody in the neighborhood looked up to. We could even open up a supermarket and hire
some guys from the hood. Icy could go on to college and maybe run for mayor of New York, and you and me could get all the people in Harlem to vote for her. The newspapers would run stories about why people should vote for some black girl from Harlem but then Icy would come out and blow everybody away with her plans to make New York the best city in the world for everybody (not just for white people) and she would be mayor. I bet that would even straighten Moms out.
Anyway, Moms asked me to write to you but I can’t say nothing too heavy because I don’t really have anything useful in my pocket right now. As you know my situation is definitely not all that tight, either.
Write back if you get a chance.
Your brother,
Reese Anderson
Saturday. Miss Dodson from ACS—Administration for Children’s Services—and Miss Rossetti from Progress announced that instead of our regular Saturday routine we were going to have a basketball game and then a co-ed group session.
Miss Dodson handles kids in the foster system, and I figured that had to be a hard road because they didn’t have a home to go back to when they got out.
“Remember they did the same thing before Christmas?” Play asked. “We’re supposed to be smiling and stuff when we play.”
“Yeah, first they divide us into two teams and run the game,” I said, remembering the Christmas
program. “They video the game and then the whole group thing is about how basketball is supposed to be about life.”
“What they call it again?” Play was eating an apple. “A semaphore or something like that.”
“A metaphor,” I said. “Remember Miss Dodson asked us to show how basketball was like life, and that kind of girly dude said that the ball was round and life was round, and she asked him what that meant and he said he didn’t know but he had noticed all balls were round.”
“That guy was a goof,” Play said.
“Why you eating the core of that apple?” I asked. “You that hungry?”
“No, I’m too lazy to take it over to the garbage can,” Play said.
Miss Rossetti set up the teams with me, Toon, Play, Mr. Pugh, and a skinny kid who was on some serious meds on one side. On the other side they had Mr. Wilson, Diego, Leon, a fat white kid everybody called Lump, and the King Kong dude who was messing with me before.
My team was the shirts, and when King Kong took off his shirt I saw he had a bird tattooed on his
chest with some Chinese writing on it.
He said that it was his name in Chinese letters and that his name was Tarik.
“That’s why it’s got five letters,” he said.
“You know I read Chinese,” I told King Kong. “And it don’t say no Tarik.”
“What it say?” He looked at me sideways.
I got real close and squinted at the letters. “It says, ‘Please flush after each use.’”
Mr. Pugh and Play cracked up, and Mr. Wilson put his hand over his mouth. Everybody was laughing but King Kong Tarik.
The game started and the only real ballplayers on the court were me, Play, and Mr. Wilson. Everybody else was jive. Mr. Pugh was running around knocking people down and walking whenever he got the ball. Me and Play were scoring; all we had to do was to keep the ball away from Mr. Wilson.
Toon was a trip. If he had the ball and you came near him he’d give it to you. We’d be waving for him to pass but he’d panic and give the ball to anybody near him.
When I got into the low post, King Kong kept coming over to me and leaning his body against
mine like he was digging me or something. I put my elbow in his chest a couple of times and told him to back off. He knocked Toon down a couple of times even when Toon didn’t have the ball. He wouldn’t mess with Play and he tried to goof on Mr. Pugh, but Mr. Pugh was so busy with whatever he thought he was doing he didn’t even dig it.
When it went wrong I didn’t even notice it right away. All I know was that King Kong gave Toon an elbow to the back of his head and I automatically did what we did in the hood when some big jokey fool started hitting people on the court. I stomped down on the top of his foot near the ankle.
He grabbed at his leg, then he jumped up and came toward me. I thought he was going to chest me up but he didn’t. The sucker lit me up! He was throwing a lot of punches but he really wasn’t hitting all that hard.
Mr. Pugh grabbed him around the waist and pulled him off me. I put my hand on my mouth and saw my lip or something was bleeding.
“Calm down! Calm down!” Mr. Pugh was yelling. “This is only a freaking basketball game! Calm down!”
I looked over at King Kong, and he was breathing
hard and running me up and down with his eyes like he was ready to kill me.
“Are you calm now?” Mr. Pugh had both arms around King Kong and was yelling into his ear.
“Yeah, yeah!” King Kong said.
It wasn’t really me, but it was somebody in my skin taking a step forward and hammering that fool in his temple with the side of my fist.
Sucker’s arms went up into the air and he flopped down on the ground.
“Everybody here is on report! Everybody here is on report!” Mr. Pugh was screaming.
Okay, so what happened was that Miss Dodson was only there for the day and we were supposed to have group. Mr. Pugh and Mr. Wilson wanted us all back in our cells and locked in, and they were going to figure out if anybody had to go to detention. But Miss Rossetti came up with the idea that this was a perfect opportunity to teach us something in group.
The story was that everything was up to Mr. Pugh and Mr. Wilson. I figured Mr. Pugh didn’t care one way or the other and would follow whatever Mr. Wilson wanted to do. If Mr. Wilson was mad, then me and King Kong would probably be written up
and both of us on our way to 23-7. If I went to 23-7, then Mr. Cintron would definitely tear me up. If Miss Rossetti could get Mr. Wilson over his mad, I had a shot.
We were lined up and taken to the dorm hall, where we had to stand at attention with our hands in the “perp” position, behind our backs as if we were cuffed, for fifteen minutes. Then Mr. Wilson came and got me and King Kong and took us into one of the 23-7 rooms.
“What you guys need to learn?” he asked. “That these steel bars will keep your dumb butts calm if you can’t control your dumb-ass minds? That’s what you need to learn? Or if the steel bars don’t slow you morons down, you know what will? That little chalk mark they put around your body in the street. What’s your pleasure, girls?”
“He started it,” King Kong said.
“I didn’t mean to start nothing,” I said. “I was just having fun.”
Mr. Wilson leaned close enough to me so I could actually smell him and spoke softly into my ear. “Your life ain’t about fun,” he said. “It’s about holding enough of your ass together to walk free
again. You understand that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If either of you so much as cross your eyes in group, I’m going to nail you to a wall just like they do those bear skins,” Mr. Wilson said. “We’re trying to give you a chance to make something of your ugly selves because that’s our job, and we’d like to turn you around so you don’t mess up our lives with your bullshit. But don’t think for a minute that it’s personal, because it’s not. Any of you mess up, we’ll nail you, send you to the next lockup, and move on with our lives and the routine here like you never even existed. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Anderson?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do I make myself clear to you, Mr. Sanders?”
King Kong said he understood.
But when we were leaving, King Kong gave me a look and screwed up his face. Sucker didn’t understand nothing.
“So why do you think I put the chairs in a circle?” Miss Rossetti asked.
“So we can check out the girls?” Diego asked.
There were two girls at the group session, Kat and Eileen, a black girl who worked in the nurse’s office sometimes.
“Because circles are nonthreatening,” Miss Rossetti said. “And the girls aren’t here to be ‘checked out.’ At this session we’re going to see how brave everyone is. What I want us to do is for anyone to start, and tell us two things that they’re afraid of.”
“What’s brave about that?” Play asked.
“Well, let’s find out,” Miss Rossetti said. “Would you like to start?”
“I ain’t afraid of nothing,” Play said.
“Everybody has fears,” Miss Rossetti said. “I think we can all agree to that. Anybody else want to give it a try?”
“I’m afraid anytime I leave Alphabet City,” Diego said. “You can let your mind wander—you know, thinking about your woman or something—and step into another gang’s turf. Then you end up getting shot or stabbed or beat down just for not paying attention. That’s one thing I’m scared of.”
“So you’re afraid of street violence,” Miss Rossetti said. “Would you like to say anything more about street violence? Are you only afraid when you leave your neighborhood?”
“Yeah, more or less,” Diego said. “When I’m on my block, my boys got my back and I know I’m cool.”
“If your boys really had your back, you could walk anyplace you wanted to and nobody would mess with you because they’d know there would be some comeback.” King Kong was looking smug.
“Comeback ain’t doing me no good if I’m being wrecked,” Diego said. “You thinking I’m going to be up in heaven looking down and getting happy over some comeback?”
“Diego, if you die you ain’t going to heaven,” Play said. “Suckers like you die and go to Walmart.
They got a storage area in the back for dead punkeros.”
“We don’t need to make this personal,” Miss Rossetti said. “And we won’t. I think that neighborhood violence is something to be afraid of, especially when you’re young.”
“Another thing I’m afraid of is getting caught up in a stickup or a drive-by with some fool who don’t know how to use a gun just popping off caps and killing everybody,” Diego said.
“More neighborhood violence,” Miss Rossetti said. “And the thing to remember is that violence doesn’t stop affecting us when we get behind closed doors. The threat is always there in our subconscious. Do you agree?”
“Not really,” I said. “Unless some dudes are outside your door and trying to get in.”
“That doesn’t hold true for everyone,” Miss Rossetti said. “And people do handle their fears differently. How about you, Deepak?”
Toon looked up when he heard his name. He smiled, shrugged, and folded his hands. “I’m afraid…sometimes I’m afraid, but not all the time….” He looked around and sort of half smiled.
“Sometimes I’m afraid that my father will be disappointed in me.”
We waited for him to go on, but he didn’t.
“We have expectations of ourselves,” Miss Rossetti said. “And people have expectations of us and sometimes we worry, as Deepak said, about how we measure up.”
“You got a little saying for everything we’re afraid of?” Play asked.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and a lot of people have done studies on adolescent fears,” Miss Rossetti said. “And although I have some insights, I think we all can look at the problem of fear and come to some conclusions. Don’t you think so?”
“I guess,” Play answered.
“Anything else, Deepak?” Miss Rossetti asked.
“Sometimes I think my mother will be mad at me,” Toon said.
Miss Rossetti nodded slowly. She looked around the room and then held out her hand toward King Kong.
“Mr. Sanders?”
“I ain’t afraid of nothing,” King Kong said. “I
can handle my business and everybody knows that. Anybody even act like they want to mess with me, I’ll go to work on their ass.”
“So you’re afraid that people might mess with you?” Miss Rossetti said.
“No, I ain’t.”
“Ladies?”
“I’m afraid of losing my child,” Eileen said. “When I come up here, my case manager was talking about how she didn’t know if I could be a good mother and then she was talking about how my baby could be put with a responsible family. I had a girl friend who went away for eighteen months and…”
Eileen started crying and turned her head away. We waited a few minutes for her to get herself together, but she didn’t say anything else. Miss Rossetti looked at me and gave me a little smile.
“I don’t know what I’m afraid of,” I said. “You know, like you say, everybody’s afraid of something and I guess I’m afraid of something too, but I don’t know what it is. Maybe getting old and dying. That don’t look cool.”
“I’m a little afraid of that myself,” Miss Rossetti said. “My mother lost her memory when she got up
in years and, quite frankly, that frightened me a lot. I even dreamed that I was losing my memory.”
“So they put her baby with this couple—they were like black middle class”—Eileen had started again—“and then when my friend came home they didn’t want to give the baby up. She said that Family Services put pressure on her too.”
“Was she working when she came home?” Miss Rossetti asked.
“No, she was having some trouble. She was using again, but all she needed was some time,” Eileen said. “I don’t want to lose my little girl. She’s all I got.”
“I can understand that,” Miss Rossetti said.
“You got kids?” Eileen asked.
“No, I don’t,” Miss Rossetti answered. “But I can imagine how it must be to have someone in your life you love and then have them taken away.”
“Another thing I’m afraid of,” Eileen said, “is being in a fire. I’d rather be in a drive-by than in a fire.”
“Have you ever seen anyone who was injured in a fire?” Miss Rossetti asked.
“No. I don’t want to see it either,” Eileen said.
“How about you, Miss Bauer?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Kat said. “The only
thing you have to be afraid of is people, and I’m not afraid of people because I don’t care about dying.”
“I think everyone has a secret fear of dying,” Miss Rossetti said. “We imagine—”
“I’m not afraid of dying!” Kat cut Miss Rossetti off. “The guy that got me in here thought he could threaten me and tell me what he was going to do to me, but where is he?”
“I think we need to take a deep breath, Miss Bauer,” Miss Rossetti said.
“He’s dead because he tried to use me like he wanted to use me, and that wasn’t going to happen!” Kat was looking fierce with her mouth all tight and going pale. “If you’re not afraid of dying, then you’re not afraid of anything! And I don’t need to take no deep breaths because I’m not afraid of restraints, either.”
That was the end of group because everybody saw that Kat was going off big-time. Miss Rossetti broke us down and she went with the boys back to our dorm, and Mr. Wilson and the lady guard went with Kat and Eileen back to the girls’ wing.