Unruly (3 page)

“Okay.” I figured if Tyray was doing it, it would be okay for me to do it, too.

Back then, we were break-dancing and we stored cardboard boxes in the stairwells of the Woodhull projects so that we would have a flat surface to break on when we were over there. Tyray had a different idea for the flattened cardboard.

Once we collected the boxes from behind the stairwell, the four of us took the elevator to the top floor in nervous silence. Then we found the staircase that led to the roof, which was never really used. When we all reached the landing, the pungent smell of urine was almost palpable. The flicker of the broken fluorescent lights dimmed the stairwell further, creating a broken-down-disco effect. The stairs were sticky with dried piss, Old English and grape soda. Tyray laid the cardboard down as if he was preparing a bed for queens. He laid the two pieces of cardboard right next to each other on the stair landing, like two twin beds.

There was no conversation, flirting or even introducing ourselves to the girls. They were both noticeably heavy with no makeup or anything. They were plain, but I figured it was the best I could do when I wasn't even looking for sex that day.
Tyray was a funny dude
. Me and Tyray banged those chicks right there. Side by side. It was quick, uncomfortable, and
wack.
It was more about getting it in quickly before someone caught us.

Once I was on top of my chick, I closed my eyes tightly, trying to feel the thing that the homies promised I'd feel. I only felt myself breathing hard like I did when I was shooting hoops, but it was supposed to be like the deep, guttural breathing that I'd seen in pornos. I'm sure the girl was hoping that it would be over soon, too. Tyray knew what he was doing, at least more than I did. It was over before I knew it. Both of the girls looked flustered and embarrassed. We watched them as they slowly went down the stairs to leave the building. We all smiled awkward smiles and waved goodbye.

After a little more practice, I realized that I loved this thing called sex. The chicks around the way wanted to do it as much as I did, so I did it with as many girls as I could. There were so many different girls and everyone was doing it in so many different ways. I had girls agree to do it in the park, up against trees, in elevators, bathrooms, you name it. I loved sex like I loved music. It was something strictly for the senses and it was risky. Sex is the universal escape, so it was always plentiful in the hood.

Moms was also aware of the great escape. She got disfellowshipped because she told on herself. She could have held on to the illusion of her faithfulness a little tighter, but she bravely decided to do what most Witnesses wished they could do, free themselves. She had been leading a double life for too long; going to the Kingdom Hall on Friday nights, even sometimes dragging me with her. Then, she would drop me back to my grandparents, and change clothes to meet her friends and boyfriend at the bar.

When she couldn't take it anymore, Moms called a meeting with the elders and laid it all out. “I'm not living in accordance with the laws and I'm tired of living a double life.” She continued, “God sees everything I'm doing, anyway. The only people I'm fooling are you and the rest of the congregation.”

Silence.

The elders, Cherry included, didn't know what to say. “Debbie, you are well liked in the congregation. We don't have to disfellowship you. We could just put you on
reprove.
You'll just need to turn away from your worldly ways.” Being on reprove meant that she could still attend Kingdom Hall.

Moms boldly said to the elders, “ I don't think I want to stop doing what I'm doing.”

“We have no other choice than to let you go . . .” the elders responded.

Jehovah lost yet another Witness and Moms never returned to Kingdom Hall again.
Free at last
.

 

CHERRY AND MY GRANDMOTHER
saw no other choice but to distance themselves from Moms, which meant me, too. Even her older brother, Bruce, completely cut her off. Moms often asked me with tears in her eyes, “How can they turn their back on me?”

I was proud of Moms, though. I wanted her to know that I wanted to be with her. If she was going to be the black sheep of the family, she wasn't going out like that alone. I had seen things and heard people talking about getting disfellowshipped. I understood the concept, but the practice still made no sense. To this day, Moms is totally turned off by religion. Now she just reads her Bible alone, praying that God can even hear her.

There we were, another Black family divided because of the most lethal drug of them all,
religion
. I know it broke my grandparents' hearts to turn their backs on Moms and me. I could feel that my grandparents knew in their hearts that they had to get away from Kingdom Hall and Hollis, Queens. My grandparents sold their house and moved to Virginia.

I was almost twelve. My grandparents had helped Moms for almost six years. It was time for me to go back to my Moms, where I belonged. My grandparents had taken me through elementary school while Moms got back on her feet. They had gotten me through the worst of it. Or so they thought.

I was heading back home as a young man with some questions churning in my head and heart. I had returned to the hood. The hopelessness hung heavily in the air. Drugs were all over the morning, afternoon and late-night news. The row of stores that we walked by everyday was indelibly printed on my brain. The stores that stayed open late lit the way for all of us to reach our destinations safely. Every day of my life, Moms and me walked past Guzman Foods, the Check Cashing place, Chinese Kitchen, Pizza, Wines and Liquors and the 99-Cent Store, which were the glue that held the hood together. The other side of the street was the dark side, where empty lots were weakly protected by dangling barbed wire fences that only served to create a place for mischievous young men to lurk.

Drugs were all over everyone's life like a sticky glue that we couldn't get off of us.

 

IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL,
my crew was Jason and Kavin. I was sort of the leader of our group because I had the craziest ideas and I was always planning some shit to do. People with ideas tend to be leaders. It was with them that my escapades with partying began. We actually started slowly and innocently. Our first joints were filled with oregano. We didn't get real weed until we started going to Jason's corner store in Laurelton called Pop and Kims, where the older guys hung out. It was a favorite spot in the hood because they stored the 40s in the ice cream freezer, so they were extra cold. One of the older guys offered us some real weed one time, and after that, we never took out the oregano again.

For us to be kids that young we had big personalities. My homies Devin and Jason both had light skin and Kavin was darker. I was somewhere in the middle and we all had fresh flattops or Gumby haircuts. We thought we were
the shit
.

 

SOMETIMES, WHEN MOMS
came home after midnight, on the weekends, she would smell us smoking weed in the lobby of the building. Hiding inside the hoods of our sweatshirts, we all would loiter, holding up the walls, smoking a little weed, talking shit, listening to hip-hop and making plans to be big somewhere and somehow. My boom box was always there, providing the sounds. NWA's
Straight Outta Compton
was the shit.

The old ladies in the building were all scared of the odorous smells and aggressive sounds of young boys with no direction. They repeatedly called the police on us. That meant Moms would have to take time off of work to come and get me. She questioned how many times she would have to come get me out for smoking weed. I felt bad for her having to come and get me. She
couldn't
make sure that I wouldn't do it, smoke weed, and I didn't stop.

The primal beats of our music and the harsh words that we sang reverberated throughout the building, shaking the walls and rattling frail nerves. Our favorite joint was “Fuck the Police” and we knew all the words.

We sipped our 40s and smoked our blunts, getting higher and higher.

There was still no hiding for me. My Moms always dreaded hearing the sound of my gruff, scratchy voice in the hallway when she came home from work after twelve thirty a.m. My unusual voice had always been like that, but smoking all that weed probably made it deeper and even more distinct.

In the hallways, Moms could hear me and spoke softly to me into the darkness. “Jeff, is that you?” I would sink deeper into the folds of my sweatshirt, hoping that she would just go upstairs and go to bed.

I was just a kid that was doing what he saw others doing.

 

*

June 20, 2011

The weekend done came and went and it's now Tuesday. I had fun this weekend on TRF. We're allowed to stay up til 2 AM and 6 AM on Saturday. I dubbed it Club Oneida LOL. We stayed up both nights, me and Q, Smitty, JB and Pito, talking about life and watching movies and shooting the shit. They're good dudes. It's kinda hard to write on the weekends being that we stay up so late. I be tired as hell but it helps pass the time. Me and Hank been busting ass in spades. I haven't lost yet. I'm the champ around here. Ha Ha. I've been speaking to Ish and the kids every day. They all came to see me this weekend along with my Mom, minus Britt. She has her acting classes on Saturday and I don't want her to miss it so I'll be seeing her on Sundays. I was worried about Lil Rule taking this situation hard, but now I'm worried about Britt, she seems to be taking it the hardest. I love them all so much and these are such critical years for a young girl growing up. She really needs her Dad right now and me not being there hurts but she's strong and I know she'll get through it. Times like these build character and you need a good support system to get through.

I was tired as hell on Sunday, going on my visit fuckin wit these inmates all night. We're like little kids sneaking around, for me to get my haircut so I could look half way decent on my visit. Smitty played lookout, smoking cigarettes in the dayroom and then blowing the smoke into the vents so we don't get caught while the C.O.'s are in the bubble. LOL. We also hid bread so we could have extra to make our meals. It's real high school shit. LOL. But fun Nonetheless. Saturday we watched a couple of good movies,
Inception
and
Animal
. While watching
Animal
we all were touched by a dose of reality, because we realized that we're all young Black men caught up in an ugly cycle that's been going on for generations—the Willie Lynch Syndrome—which made me mad at myself for still playing my part in this fucked up game. We all felt stupid as we watched, knowing we were right where society wanted us, in jail away from our family and kids. It's hard to break the cycle when we're not there to teach our sons to be men and our daughters to be women. As I sit behind these walls I'm learning that life is not a game, it's a reality show and every episode is a learning experience, where hopefully you get that second season to right your wrongs after you've made a fool of yourself. It's easy to make excuses, but at the end of the day, it all boils down to the decisions you make. I've made some bad choices in my life, some that could have landed me in here for life. God looks out for children and fools. Lord knows I'm not a child anymore and I promise this will be the last time I play the fool. I started work today, they got me doing lawns and grounds in the morn, then Porter work in the afternoons. It gets me out this fuckin cell. At least it's not hard work and it gets me outside during the day before rec. time. I haven't started school yet, but everyone says that shit is a joke and that the teacher never comes. Shit, Steve been here 4 years and still hasn't got his GED. He gets out in 2 days and now they are telling him he has to get it on the outside. But we can lift weights all day—that's right niggas use your brawn and not your brain. LOL. God forbid we educate you to break the cycle. Education is a good thing. I like to read and write. I don't need that good enough diploma. I was smart enough to make millions of dollars, but it would be nice to have a diploma so when I'm preaching education to my kids they can't say, “Well, you don't have a diploma and made out just fine.” We all know having talent and actually making good use of it is the luck of the draw no matter how hard you work. You know how many talented motherfuckers are working at Walmart. LOL. It's not what you know it's who you know. I started reading this book by Sista Souljah called
Midnight and the Meaning of Love
. It's a good book that got a lot of jewels in it. I'm glad to see that she didn't let the politricks of this bullshit industry discourage her. She's using her pen in a mightier way than she ever could by rapping. Not to say she wasn't a good rapper but kids don't wanna hear that conscious shit in music, they wanna be entertained. I've also been hittin the weights pretty hard. I'm about 165 right now. I plan on leaving this bitch at about 190. They gonna think I was in here lifting Toyotas. LOL. All in all, jail is a place you never wanna be, but it's also a place that is unique. I never would've become one wit myself on the streets because there are too many temptations and distractions. It's sad but some of the greatest thoughts were sparked right here in prison.

 

*

THREE

Hard Breathing

I WAS STANDING AT THE FRONT DOOR OF MY CRIB AND THERE
it was—an eviction notice.
We've moved six times in two years.
There was nothing I could do except take it off the door and give it to Moms. She was inside getting ready for work. I slowly handed the notice to her and she looked at it with tears welling in her eyes. She sat down at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. The sight of Moms' hands shielding her shame tore me up. I hadn't seen her cry like that since my father was in the house.

All I could whisper to her was, “It's going to be okay, Moms. It's going to be okay.” It was up to me to make sure that it
was.
I'd always been a fighter, even though I was one of the smaller dudes on the block. Moms once told me when I was in second grade, “Jeff, you have to
fight
to survive. They should never let your size fool them. If someone hits you, you better hit them back.”

And that's what I was going to do.

 

MOMS AND ME
were the Black Sheep of the family, for real, so we couldn't turn to family. Luckily, my Moms had good friends. We went to stay with one of her male friends who lived in Rochdale Village. Rochdale was one of those high-rise co-ops that tower over Queens, looking a lot like the projects but it wasn't considered one. Rochdale Village has twenty different buildings in five groups. Each building has three sections, A, B or C, and each floor has about fifteen apartments. Even though RV
wasn't
the projects, it was notorious for its drug activity. I could see that there were a lot of customers to serve and money to get.

In high school money and music were starting to weigh heavily on my brain. The chorus from KRS-One's song kept tickling me:
love's gonna get'cha . . . love's gonna get'cha. . . .
Love
had
gotten me; I loved my Moms and I needed to rescue her. The things that I wanted like fly sneakers, new gear or three-finger rings, Moms could never afford. But now with the eviction, our needs were
serious
. I decided to take myself out of the equation by making my own money. The music kept daring me as I walked through the hectic streets of Queens with only one foot in school and the other chasing hip-hop. “Love's Gonna Get'cha (Material Love)” was constantly in my head.

I pull about a G, a week. Fuck school.

But it was the chorus that made up my mind
.

Tell me what the fuck am I supposed to do?

Hell yeah.

Moms was still working the four-to-twelve shift. It seemed like she was always working, so I couldn't really understand why we got evicted. Moms struggled with money like everyone else in the hood. I didn't see her much anymore because of her work and social life. In her absence, I hung with my homies on 1-9-1 every chance I got. That was a lot of fuck-off time for me. All I could see and hear were homies talking about getting money quick, if and when they needed it.

All my homies and me did was smoke weed and talk a lot of shit and get into trouble. My teachers didn't really like me much because they didn't understand Black kids. They certainly didn't understand
me
. They had all decided that I was a troublemaker, which I probably was. I was one of those guys whose favorite subject was gym, and the teachers judged me for it. I was good at math and science, too, but I was more interested in writing rhymes.

Looking back, I wish I had paid more attention in English class. I didn't know then that reading poetry would have been the same as writing rhymes. Reading short stories and novels would have been the same as constructing the storylines in my music.

I had started carrying my lyric book because after writing rhymes on scraps of paper I needed more space. My composition book was empty and it was the perfect size for me to write rhymes in. I carried it wherever I went, constantly scribbling and making sense of shit on paper.

I'm going to show this world my struggle, my pain, my hunger, my hustle . . .

That lyric kept going through my head. I wrote the line down and let it sit for a while until the next line eventually came to me. Thinking about Kristen, I knew I should feel lucky to be alive, but I also knew that life was full of struggle, pain and hunger.

 

IN SPEAKING OF
life and death, this reminds me of some things that happened in junior high school. It went like this . . . “Yo. Peep this,” is what Harold would whisper to Jason and me. His lips trembled as he tried to hide his excitement. His look was a signal for us to follow him down the hall to where his locker was. Harold brought a gun to school. Harold would open his heavy bag carefully and the gun would shine from the bottom like sunshine in the ghetto. The piece was smooth and black. After Jason and I gawked at the thing long enough, Harold would casually throw a book and some papers on top of it, zip up the bag and bounce. We would be left standing there to think about that gun for the rest of the day.

I wanted to see it again. I wanted to hold it. Feel it in my fingers. Bear the weight. Pull the trigger, even. Once I got introduced to guns, I hungered for the rush of power that only a man with a gun has.

Harold's uncles were in the drug game and that's where he got the gun. According to Harold, his uncles had everything they would ever need: guns, drugs, women and money. Harold loved to brag about that shit.

In junior high school I spent most of my weekends at my man Jason's house in Laurelton. He had a nice-sized house with a big basement that Jason made into a little world that was just for us. He even had a private entrance. We would use the basement door to bring girls in and out. Jason's sister was in college and so it was just him and his Moms in that big old house. Jason didn't have a father, like the rest of us. His mother, Ms. LeGrand, never came down the stairs. She gave us
space
and we loved her for that. She would deal with us from the top of the stairs, only.

“Boys! There's food in the refrigerator,” or “I'm going out. Boys, remember to do the right thing!” she would yell down as she left the house. And we would all laugh at what we thought was the right thing versus what Ms. LeGrand thought.

Jason's basement felt like a sprawling luxury condominium. It had different rooms. One had the couches and the TV, the next room had beds in it. There was another small room where we would take turns cutting each other's hair, making our flat tops as flat as we could get them. There was even a cellar door where we could sit on the steps and smoke weed. We would blow the smoke out of the cracks so the smell wouldn't come in. We knew that Ms. LeGrand wasn't coming down, but just in case. . . .

We got into some shenanigans around our way. I masterminded much crazy shit. One of our favorite things to do was going to the Chinese joint and ordering our favorites: pork fried rice, chicken wings, extra ketchup and extra hot sauce. We would always run out with the food, without paying. The little Chinese man would be yelling and screaming after us, but he could never catch us. Chinese people
hated
Black people. We didn't give a fuck. We laughed as we ran out the door, singing “Fuck the Police.” That NWA shit was dope. We loved that radical shit. Fuck the police, for real. We wanted the Chinese man to know that we weren't scared even if he did call them on us.

Eventually, we needed new stuff to do. We started ordering pizzas and holding up the pizza man. We needed a gun if we were going to stick up the pizza man, the right way, getting money and pizza! Harold hooked us up without a problem. We didn't even have to pay him. He said we could use the .38 pistol whenever we needed it. It was just enough heat to get what we wanted without the problems.

Ms. LeGrand was devoutly Christian and the only way that she would let Jason have friends sleep over was if we all went to church with her on Sunday mornings. We would all drag ourselves out of the cots in the basement on Sunday mornings after a night of weed smoking and talking much shit. Our bellies were full of stolen Chinese food and our eyes sagged, heavy with lack of sleep. We regularly took a trip to Pop and Kims to get Old English and we drank as many of those extra-cold 40s as we could carry. The Chinese man who owned the store never asked us for identification. All that mattered was that he got his money.

We all kept our wrinkled church clothes stashed behind the couch in a plastic grocery store bag. Ms. LeGrand never said anything about how wrinkled we all looked. When she passed us, she would only show her concern by pulling on our wrinkled shirttails, reminding us to tuck in our shirts and checking to see if we had belts on. She would tell us to stand up straight and then she would smile like we were all something to be proud of.

On Sunday mornings, Ms. LeGrand would stand tall beside us crumpled boys. She looked regal as a queen. Her perfume smelled of baby powder and soap.

It was fun at Jason's house, I ain't gonna lie. The troubles in my head seemed to melt away when I was chilling with him and the crew. Going to church with Ms. LeGrand was
way
better than going to Kingdom Hall. I didn't really mind church. I could have fun and chill with the fellas and still be with God for a few hours each week.

After the disfellowshipping of Moms, I realized that I wasn't really religious, either. Being raised a Jehovah's Witness showed me that religion was about having a middleman and going to church is to make people feel better about themselves. I could see what it did for Ms. LeGrand. After the Witnesses treated Moms and me so ill, I knew I never wanted a middleman to get between God and me, again. I never needed to hear someone tell me to love God.
I just do
. I didn't want no one to tell me to put my money in a basket. Hell, I didn't have no money, anyway.

 

I REALLY DON'T
think that KRS-One was deliberately trying to get me to start selling drugs but his video was telling the story of my life and the life of everyone that looked like me. The video showed a kid in junior high school, like me, who was trying to do the right thing like doing a bullshit paper route to make money. His Moms was broke, his sister had wack clothes, the family was eating bread, beans and rice and he was the
joke
of the neighborhood until the neighborhood drug dealer showed him the way. The drug dealer had a fly car, a cell phone, cash and guns. When the drug dealer invited the kid to do just one “drop,” suddenly the kid was eating
steak
with his beans and rice. His sister finally got some fresh gear and shit all worked out in the end.

So tell me what the fuck am I supposed to do?

 

I HAD BECOME CURIOUS
about selling drugs. Our first foray into selling was in junior high school. Jason, Kavin and I started putting chunks of Ivory soap into crack vials and selling them for five dollars. We would shave the pieces off of a bar of Ivory soap with a sharp knife. It looked like crack. We were just trying to make a little money to get enough for food and 40s. We were not trying to sell drugs or make big money. We were happy when we made fifty dollars.

We were still playing it safe in Laurelton, around Jason's crib, which was a little less hardcore than around my way. It was the suburbs, for real. We really thought the soap thing was just harmless mischief. When the fiends around Jason's way started to complain about the shit they had just bought, one of the older hustlers stepped to us.

“What the fuck are you little niggas doing? You're fucking up my block. If you're going to do this shit, then keep it
real
with something that niggas
want
to buy. Get some real dope, not no bullshit.”

That scared us, a little. We stopped doing the soap thing for a minute. Besides, we knew that when we were ready to keep it real, it would be easier back on my block, because I knew all the dudes running it.

Even Moms' brother, my Uncle Dennis, who was five years older than me, was out there. Dennis worked for Kurt, who was short and chubby and drove a BMW 325. He was a good dude who got shot in his own house. Uncle Dennis always insisted that I was too young to be hustling. Losing Kurt had been hard on him and he wanted to keep me out of the dangerous shit. I resented that when he said it because I felt that he was trying to block me from getting mine, even though he was getting his.
Fuck that
. I would just get mine somewhere else.

My man Black was also in the game. Chris Black was one of the homies from Hollis. He was a tall dark guy with a low fade and an imposing presence. He was always a prankster and he liked to rhyme, too. He and I were cool.

During high school, I even checked out the burglary thing for a minute. I wasn't really into it, though. I probably did it two or three times. In home invasions, I
could
get a gang of shit: cash, jewelry, tape recorders, which all had some street value, but I could see the unnecessary risks involved. I got my hands on some gate cutters, which we used to use to cut gates and locks and shit in order to bomb the buildings that had the cleanest walls. We were on to some next-level petty crimes.

I remember one day when I was skipping school. I was chilling on my fire escape, getting high. I had been writing in my lyric book and then took a break to smoke. When I got on my fire escape, I looked up. I saw a muthafucka coming down the fire escape after climbing out of a window above me. I was just about to tell that muthafucka to get the fuck outta here, when I recognized him. It was Champ's little brother, L'il D.

“What's up, nigga,” I said.

“Yo, nigga. I just lifted some shit from the crib upstairs.”

“Word?” My curiosity was piqued. “Wait for me.” I wasn't even trying to rob a house that day. I went inside to get my shoes on so we could climb back up there to see if we could find any more good shit. When we got up there, L'il D was wrong. It wasn't much left in there. It was just some petty shit like a hair dryer and an old pager.