His linebacker-wide shoulder leaned into me and I looked at him without pulling away. I didn’t know what to say. I don’t even know what we talked about next. All’s I know is, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel alone. Eating dinner later that day, I chewed my food slow, trying to taste my tongue for Treasure Island poisoning. Does the flu taste a certain way? Can you marinate and grill toxins like you can chicken? Maybe it tastes like chicken, maybe we were tainted from the beginning and everything tastes like KFC—I cain’t call it.
The next time we met, I told DeMichael some of Booker T. Washington’s history of founding Tuskegee University and keeping the cracker happy, and he told me more about his history. Once upon a time when he was an even younger youth, he got locked up and then he went and fucked up and stomped out a kid for gankin’ care packages from fellow inmates. DeMichael was sticking up for the kids who couldn’t stick up for theyselves, went all violent Robin Hood, apparently. What he was unaware of was that the thief was thieving for a gang, not for hisself. When the gang sought retribution, none of the kids DeMichael stuck up for stuck up for DeMichael. Ever since then, my man had had no friends in the pen. “Don’t try and do no good deeds for people. Roll solo, family.”
“I did my last good deed the day I got arrested.”
“On God. Real spiel, blood: Lay low. Do your time drama-free. But if someone do test you, you gotta let ’em know, na’mean?”
“Test me like fight me?”
“Hell yeah, blood. Don’t act new to this here. If all you got when it do go down is these books, you won’t survive.”
“A gang member already stole my care package,” I confessed.
“And I’m not gettin’ it back for you.” DeMichael laughed. His shoulders rose and fell like the green blips on a radio that mark the rise and fall of treble and bass. Between the laughter and the straining sounds made by everything he leaned on, DeMichael was a sound system his damn self. “You know,” he said, lookin’ at the Booker T. book, “what I don’t understand is if niggas like this who wrote these books got so much wisdom to teach us, why is it niggas today stay gettin’ locked up? Why we stay gettin’ hated on? Why we stay gettin’ killed by po-lice?”
“Maybe we don’t read enough.”
“Or maybe it’s nothin’ in these books we don’t already know.”
That line reminded me of Daddy. It reminded me that I missed the old man. I cracked a smile and sat back in my chair. “What should we do instead?”
“Look, when the white folks didn’t like the way the government was treatin’ them, they ran up in the White House with guns and spears and handcuffs and shit. Took that shit over. Ain’t read no book on controlling shit, ain’t listen to no nigga talk about it.” He leaned back in his chair, matching my relaxation. “You cain’t even get what you want in here just by readin’ and thinkin’. Cope, it’d be a smart thing for a smart nigga like you to learn how to fight.”
The next time we met in the library, DeMichael was ready to teach me to fight. Problem was, I was an unprepared student.
“Now, now,” he said, “for starters, see how yo’ feet is, you never gon’ keep balanced standin’ like a ramrod, blood. Loosen the fuck up and bend them knees, fool.”
I studied his every word as he explained the repositioning of my terrified body, then the basics of how not to get hurt, starting with my breath. A couple years later in a private school on the other side of Oakland, I’d take an acting class where the teacher went on and on about our diaphragms and cycles of breath and all that good stuff. It made more sense coming from DeMichael, how if a fight was about to jump off, I would have to breathe deep into the scared places, the heart, the jaw, the shoulders. He had me breathing and settling into myself and standing balanced, and sure and then in the middle of all that good teaching, my teacher swung on me, I guess to put his lesson to the test. I seen his fist coming and ducked away from what was an intentionally wide, weak right cross.
The library supervisor was an ash-complexioned cat who looked like death eating a burrito. He was actually eating a burrito, and he looked up at us with tired, drooping eyes. Neither me nor DeMichael was bleeding. I figured that he figured that that meant that he was doing his job, cuz he chomped his burrito and went back to ignoring us.
I was posed up in my fighting stance, staring at DeMichael. “What was that?”
“Just me wonderin’ if you was payin’ attention, blood.”
“All’s you been teachin’ me is how to breathe and stand still, not duck punches.”
“That’s where it starts, family.” He began to circle me, left to right, right to left, and then taught me how to walk like the newborn I was: “Like this, like this, not like that, like this, side to side, slide, slide. Now if he’s coming sidestep, don’t be fallin’ back like a bitch. Break his rhythm, come forward, flick out that left, just flick it, you got long arms. Ain’t about hittin’ nothin’, it’s about that distance.” He showed me how to confuse a boy’s feet, how to fuck up punching angles, how never to give up somethin’ unless I was gettin’ somethin’ back for it, and only later to let my hands fly. Like I said, DeMichael Quantavius Chesnutt Bradley was a born teacher.
“And if all else fails, family …” DeMichael came close to me and whispered in my ear. “… just get you a weapon. Don’t buy it off of none of these jokers, though.” He gestured in all four di-rections, which I took to include everyone in the Youth Control, and he leaned back and laughed loud as car stereo speakers. “Anybody dumb enough to hand over they weapon’s prolly too dumb to wash it. Don’t wanna get AIDS off a blade while you in here.”
My stomach turnt at the thought, but I was hella thankful to DeMichael: he taught me how to hold my own in there.
*
Despite the fact that the library supervisor never reprimanded us, me and DeMichael got summoned to Masterkov’s office the next day. A summons in the Youth Control don’t mean a letter in the mail and a court date, it meant gettin’ handcuffed and strolled thru the facility at seven in the A.M. That was tiring and embarrassing enough, but it was the anticipation of what would come next that really worked my nerves. Where were they taking me? I wanted answers.
“Where am I going?” I asked one of the escorting COs.
He just looked at me, stitched up his lips, and shook his head. That seemed like a bad sign.
“Yo, DeMichael, you know where we goin’?”
“Jus’ be cool, Cope.”
We entered a great big back room office. The COs sat me and DeMichael down in hard-backed wooden chairs, uncomfortable than a mug. The COs stood back and watched us like we was liable to do a jailbreak. We sat and waited. I looked around at the oak-paneled walls and the Renaissance art portraits surrounding us and the sparkling chandelier above us and the plaques and trophies sitting on the floor. Then a door slammed and Masterkov appeared. This might sound like a cliché or whatever, but old girl was a statue of a woman, tall and thick and righteous and rigid. The tiles rang out against her heels like cymbals hit too hard and offbeat.
“Fighting in the library room,” she began, putting the charge on the table not to be argued but acknowledged. We nodded like two animals already trained. Masterkov had an open folder in her hands which she was browsing as she rattled off our dates and hospitals of birth, our height and weight, hair and eye color, gender and race. She stopped browsing momentarily and looked up at the ramrod-ready COs. “You can go. These boys pose no danger.”
The men left and then we was alone with the boss. I remembered what I had been told about her: avoid her. Instead I had gone fucked up and found this woman.
I looked at DeMichael to see if we should clarify the situation. His face was post-emotional. Masterkov was not a lawyer and this was not court, but whatever we said would likely be used and held and manipulated against us. Better to agree to whatever the punishment was ’bout to be and leave it at that. Anything else risked an escalation of penalties.
“Fighting’s a d
efinite no-no, boys. The purpose of the Youth Control is not punishment but accountability-based rehabilitation. We want the best for you. That’s why we follow the science when it comes to adolescent mental and physical health. We cut spending related to virology and masking because the science changed and we followed it. We increased the budget for psychiatric care because the science changed and we followed it.” She sighed and softened her tone so it wouldn’t sound like metal scraping a voice box. “You two are both nice-looking, talented young men. You shouldn’t be here. You’re here because of poor choices you made and because of things outside of your control, like the intervention of the state to incarcerate you. That is your past. I don’t want you to go backward behaviorally. When our security cameras picked up your sparring session, I figured now was the best time to nip this reversion in the bud. First of all, DeMichael, you’re lucky you didn’t maim this child. You’re twice his size. I’d have to bring you up on child abuse charges at the least, involuntary homicide at the worst.”
I realized that she was telling herself a joke. I looked at DeMichael, whose eyes was fixed on Masterkov.
“You boys want to leave here, graduate high school, go to college, get a degree, meet a pretty girl, live a good, clean life. Am I right?”
DeMichael nodded, so I nodded.
“We need to respect authority and situation and setting. Am I right? I want you to behave, whether you’re in the library or in my office or wherever it is you find yourself in the future. Is that understood, DeMichael? You’re nodding in agreement, but I’m not convinced that you’re convinced.” She snapped her neck at me. “You can go, Copeland.”
In the Youth Control, you get used to gettin’ orders given to you and you get used to doin’ what you’re told. Still, I didn’t jump out my seat and run for the door. I looked at DeMichael next to me. His escape was yet to be approved. Masterkov didn’t sound like she was ’bout to give him twenty-five to life, but I wadn’t sure what would happen once he was alone with her.
“I can go?” I asked.
“Not if you insist that I repeat myself again, Copeland,” she answered.
*
It’s moments like that, when I look back on them, that cain’t sit right with me. DeMichael got wrote up on the regular for his beefs with gang members, his shouting matches with COs; there was even a few punches thrown in anger on his record. I worried that Masterkov might over-punish big bruh. But only a few minutes after I returned to my cell, I seen DeMichael returning to his, uncuffed and unaccompanied, just like I had. And just like I wouldn’t suffer no penalties for my actions, neither would he.
That made me feel better about leaving him behind by hisself, but it also surprised me. I was a first-time offender, but brother man’s records had records. I knew punishments tended to be cumulative, with the bad shit you perpetrated previously playing against you when they decided how hard to whack you over the head for your latest infraction. But not with DeMichael. I started to see that keeping to hisself, not socializing with nobody, musta put him on the good side of the authorities, cuz he never got time added to his sentence or mandated to his cell 24/7. It was the type of thing that, once I seen it, once I looked at it long enough to realize it was a pattern playing out, I couldn’t help but have questions. If we woulda been older and the crimes worse, I probably woulda wondered what po-lice paperwork my man had his name on. Once in a while, someone would ask me what I thought of DeMichael, since it was clear to everyone that I was the only person he could clique up with, and my answer was always the same: we was cool, but I ain’t seen, nor heard, nor knew shit about whatever they was asking me about the brother. I kept my questions to myself. If any unwritten rules existed in that piece, the number one was not to get involved in nothin’ that I didn’t need to, not to ask no questions that wadn’t mines to ask, and keep to myself as much as possible. And steadily, over time, I turnt out the light on that questioning part of Copeland Cane. I stopped wondering why this and why that and commenced to do unto DeMichael and every boy in that mug exactly the way that I did the authorities: I kept my head down, followed they rules, regulations, and the rest of it, and bounced as soon as they let me go.
*
My best inmate trait was that willingness to follow rules. I made my bed, kept things clean, didn’t carry no contraband, and never spoke unruly to the COs. All this was notated day to day for 365 days straight in the logbook which they kept on me. They kept a log like that for every inmate. But where other kids had they records full of infractions, the only issue they had on me was my clinical depression, to which I say: Of course a nigga’s depressed. A hundred percent of the boys up in there was clinical depressed. Hell, I bet if you put the CEO boss lady and her COs on the psychiatrist couch, they’d come up depressed, too. Every single person inside that institution was a depressive either by nature or by nurture. I was not unique. But where I had the other depressives beat was in the details: I followed the rules to the best of my ability, which was considerable, best of all being I was on time for everything—every bed check, every cell search, and every meal, which meant I was always first in line for lunch, which meant I grubbed pretty good in lockup and put on weight till I was muscles on muscles, rocked up like that river in Los Angeles. But it also meant I wadn’t woke to what was going on behind my back till it was too late.
“DeMichael’s boy.” His voice rasped into my ear like a thousand years of weed smoke.
“My name’s Cope.”
“Nah, it’s DeMichael’s boy. You that faggot’s boy. You a faggot.”
I knew Shawn Barnes was right behind me. I weighed my options. Now, it’s a lotta talk about how in jail you cain’t let nobody punk you, this, that, and the third. I cain’t speak for big-boy jail, but in the Youth Control it was beaucoup bad shit done went down that I won’t speak of as it did not pertain to me. Lemme put it to you like this, I knew who not to squabble with and who I had to stand up to. I didn’t really care that this future felon was pulling my card. The reason I turnt on him and put my chest straight into his chest was cuz of what he was sayin’, or at least damn near sayin’, ’bout DeMichael.
The boy didn’t budge a step. We stood there chest to chest.
“Don’t speak on DeMichael. He’s a good dude.”
“Where’s the good dude now?”
I wadn’t ’bout to look around for DeMichael. He never ate with the inmates at lunchtime. Everyone knew that. The boy was just wanting to distract me so I would leave myself open to an assault.
“He’s my friend,” I said, with my eyes right where they needed to be. “Fuck outta here.”
I moved quicker’n a hiccup, shoulder rolling away from the force of the boy’s first blow, just like DeMichael had instructed the smaller man should do. I felt the left coming and ducked it, too. I had seen this boy Barnes, high off prison-smuggled K2K, beat the dog shit outta enough inmates to know he wanted to get his hands around my neck and then start in with the knees to the stomach and related brutalities. I stayed low and drove into him at his waist and rose up with old boy on my back, and for the first time, y’all, I felt like a superhero. I had caught cousin mid-move, in the midst of lunging at me, so when I lifted him it was really his own momentum that did the throwing, even though to the untrained eye it probably looked like I tossed him over my shoulder and into the table and chairs behind us on some Superman steelo. I heard the crash of his fall and the “oooohs” and “oh shits” of the other boys. I turnt and looked at him lying there, sober as a dead body, and I considered jumping on him, hitting him hard enough to trademark his face. But I couldn’t do it. Ain’t have it in me to be that way.
Then the COs, who could be downright neutral and cool when things was tranquilo, immediately turnt into riot cops. Arms locked together and moving in formation, they tear-gassed us. The smart kids had cigarettes stashed in they socks and put them shits in they nostrils to filter out the fumes. The rest of us dummies cried for our mothers and hit the floor, gaggin’ and chok
in’. I just stood there watching kids crawl toward the bathroom. Then someone rabbit punched me in the back of the head and I went down hard, chest-first. I could hear the officers behind me herding people by race and gang affiliation into separate corners. I crawled for the bathroom and had almost made it when someone grabbed me by the ankle and pulled me back and climbed right over me. I took a knee to the head as he scrambled into the bathroom. Then another, heavier dude took the same route right across my spine. I checked to make sure I wadn’t paralyzed and kept crawling. My head contacted someone’s shoe and I scaled over him like was done to me, and then I finally wedged the bathroom door open one finger at a time. At least three of my fingers, I later found, got bruised black and blue from people slamming the door on them shits as I tried to claw my way in. It was like an evil rock climbing game where the climbers decide to push each other down the fuckin’ mountainside instead of helping they brother make it to the peak.
Jacq, what I’m fittin’ to tell you is a kiddie prison thing that don’t nobody talk about. As inmates we never even spoke on it amongst each other. It was too stupid, too gross, too degrading. Inside the bathroom, kids was throwing hands like straight razors, aiming for vital organs, trying to clear a path to the toilet so they could take a dunk in the same place where we took our shits. I was afraid I would end up in a stand-up fistfight with a kid with sharp eyes who seen me throw Shawn and knew what I would try. I didn’t really have no backup fight plan. I decided not to go hands. I kept low, put my head down, and scrambled toward the toilet. Right as I came within reach of the lid, I headbutted the backside of a boy with hubcaps for haunches. I went down again, face-planting into a hundred years of bathroom bacteria. The tear gas snaked underneath the door and made me weep just for breathing. I got up, half gagged, and put a shoulder into that ass and was knocked back again by the wall that was old boy’s butt. This was not the ass of a teenage inmate, I realized. This was the ass of a twenty-somethin’ asshole who ganked little kids for they care packages. As I fell back from him, an object fell from the waistband of his jumpsuit. I watched as it clinked and skittered around on the ground. It glittered up at me thru the waves of gas: a spearheaded plastic tool.
The Confession of Copeland Cane Page 9