I am Nothing.
What if that’s it? What if I haven’t heard from Reginald because I lost his respect? Supposed to be setting the example for him, but it seems like all I am now is a cautionary tale. What will happen to us when I leave this place? Will he visit me like before? Will we live together like I’ve always wanted?
Will we ever be a family again?
“Hey, where’s your head, young brother?”
Bembry’s voice snatches me back to the shop.
“Huh?”
“You got paint all over your hands,” he says, shaking his head.
My palms are covered in green, the streaks on the plates uneven.
6KD-101. 6KD-102. 6KD-103. 6KD-104.
“Uh, yeah,” I say, clearing my throat. “Still a little under the weather, that’s all.”
It wasn’t much of a lie. Bad flu going around, everyone catching and passing it like a baseball. Fevers, chills, vomiting, and diarrhea, our whole unit had it. Four of the older men were sent to the nurse’s office but only two came back. A guard said there ain’t no use wasting medicine on us.
During Ella’s last visit, she said I looked grayer than an elephant. She’s been writing letters nonstop, begging for my transfer. But what’s the use. If we couldn’t free Mom out of that hospital when I was still free, what makes anybody think they could free me?
Mid-shift, we’re allowed a five-minute break. Most of the other cats hang around, stretch their legs, or grab a quick smoke in the hallway. Others sit by their stations, minds heavy. Myself included. The fight was a little over a week ago, and Chucky’s been hemming and hawing about his debt. Knew I shouldn’t have trusted him.
Bembry sits on his stool by his station, holding a wrinkled piece of beige paper, the folds sharp as a soldier’s pants crease.
“Takes me a while, sometimes, to read my brother’s letters,” he says without looking at me. “Not that I can’t read. Just my eyes ain’t what they used to be.”
From afar, his brother’s cursive doesn’t look so bad. Mine could use some work.
“It’s good to keep in touch with your family,” he says. “Keeps you balanced. Reminds you that you’re you. A man can lose himself in here without even knowing it. Family’s important. Probably the most important.”
“I write letters, too,” I blurt out. Don’t know why, just felt the need to share. Something about Bembry makes me nervous, almost afraid to say something wrong around him.
“Oh yeah. Family ever write back?”
“Uh, most of them,” I say, thinking of Reginald. If I come up with enough excuses, I can start to believe that he’s just been too busy to write me. But still, I write.
CHAPTER 7
Fools try to ignore facts, but wise men must face facts to remain wise. Fools refuse to change from their old silly ways and beliefs, but the mental flexibility of the wise man permits him to keep an open mind and enables him to readjust himself whenever it becomes necessary for change.
—MALCOLM X
At the first sign of spring in Lansing, a cavalry of beautiful invaders always surrounded our home. Butterflies—blue ones, white ones, yellow ones—climbed out of their cocoons, spread their wings, and took flight.
The monarch butterflies were my favorite. They looked like freshly erupted volcanos, hot lava streaming down black mountainsides. Their wings were massive yet they made no sound as they fluttered and landed in the patch of black-eyed Susans that grew on the side of our house. One flew right past my nose. Inching toward the patch like a lion, I held my breath and pounced, cupping the butterfly in my small hands.
“Got it,” I yelped, its wings tickling my palms. Perfect catch for my new collection.
Mr. Wallace told me all about collecting butterflies. He owned the fabric store in town and had his own collection framed in his store window, about a dozen at least. His own miniature rainbow of delicate insects. I had to have one for myself.
“See, you have to catch them with a net,” he had explained. “So you won’t ruin their wings.”
The only net we had was for fishing, not fine enough to stop them from slipping through. “Just use what you have,” Mom had said, wiggling her fingers at me.
Gently, I peeked inside my cupped hands and the monarch grew frantic at the sight of light, bouncing against my fingers, frightened and panicked. In an instant, my skin grew cold, overcome by a wave of sadness. It thinks it’s back in its cocoon, I thought. After all the work it did to move freely in the world, it’s trapped again.
And as much as it pained me to lose a good catch, I opened my hands. The butterfly fluttered, danced above my head, then flew away and up toward the sky.
“Higher!” I screamed to it. “Fly higher!”
Fly all the way up to God.
* * *
A whistle shrieks in the early morning light. Guards run past, shouting at one another.
“Cell 118. Open up!”
“You got him?”
“Shit! No. He’s gone.”
I press my face into the bars of my cell, trying to peer down the row. Dark hands reach out through the bars of neighboring cells, waving.
“What’s going on?” Norm shouts.
“Don’t know, can’t see,” someone says, his voice distant.
Hysteria fills the air. I hold my breath, afraid to catch it.
“Hey! What’s going on down there?”
“I think it’s Jimmy … I think he hanged himself!”
“What! Oh no, Jimmy!”
“Jimmy!”
Metal plates and cups bang against the bars, a chorus of cries. I sit on my bed, listening to everybody’s voices echoing at once.
That you again, God? Some God you are.
* * *
A man hanged himself today, I write in a letter to Wilfred. It’s the only thing I can do.
During the night, death came for Jimmy. He lynched himself using his bedsheets, leaving a letter to his lady by his uniform. You can sense it from the protocol, the way the guards react, the way they make us walk past his swinging body toward the mess hall … They were used to this. Just another day.
“Why you leaving him like that?” someone in the line cries. “He a man!”
“Shut up!” a guard shouts back. “One more word and I’ll throw every last one of yous in the hole!”
I haven’t seen a lynched body since I was on that bus leaving Lansing headed to Boston. I was fourteen. Saw so many of them just hanging limp and blowing in the wind. I didn’t understand what they did or why they had to die that way. Most days, I didn’t want to think about it. So I pushed those questions deep inside. Feels like a million years ago and I’ve lived a million lives since.
“Slow! Walk slow!” they shout, poking our backs with batons, making sure each and every one of us sees him.
I try to shut my eyes, pretend I am home, back in Mom’s garden, chasing butterflies. But hearing the sheets creak, my lids refuse to merely listen and they stretch open. His body dangles, swinging soft as a willow tree in the breeze, tied to the sheets that once crumpled across his thin cot. His eyes are closed, jaw slack, lips purple like a bruise.
My stomach contracts, fighting to keep the few pieces of bread sitting at the bottom of my stomach from shooting out my mouth. Just ahead, Norm keeps his head and shoulders slumped, dragging his feet.
“My God,” someone whispers, and we keep walking, the air of a funeral, a silent service as we file into the mess hall for the repast.
Death slows down time in this place, makes the seconds tick like hours. Ghosts work along with us. They never leave, never go home. They are stuck within these walls of hell.
A thought that tastes like the sweetest whiskey sprints through my mind …
He found a way to escape. He found a way to be free.
What if I follow that man’s lead? What if I could be just as free as he might very well be?
That night, I write to all my brothers, telling them of the man who found a way out an
d how a part of me envied him.
* * *
With Jimmy gone, I slip the kitchen crew two nickels for two matchbooks of nutmeg. I need more than a measly seasoning that barely takes the edge off, but this is the best I have.
I sit at a table with a couple of other cats from the shop, eating silently, then their faces harden. Across the mess hall, Chucky sits alone, pretending not to see me eyeing him. He has yet to square up for that fight. Where does this fool think he’s gonna hide in here?
Norm drops his spoon on his tray. “I just don’t see what killing yourself is gonna do.”
The other men at the table glance up at him, then return to their soups.
“Leave it alone, Norm,” someone says.
“It’s just foolish,” he carries on, looking for an audience.
“What was he in here for?” I ask.
“Dodging the draft,” Bembry says with a huff. “They don’t take kindly to that.”
Walter shakes his head. “Bembry, you think he really killed himself?”
“Who else could it be?” Big Lee asks, scratching his bald head. “Another Negro? The guards?”
Bembry sips water, taking his time with the words. “Wouldn’t be the first time a man was hung and they say he did it to himself.”
Something cracks like an egg and shatters inside me. I swallow back thoughts of Papa. How the police swore he threw his own self on the tracks when everyone knew otherwise.
It was no suicide. They killed Papa ’cause Papa was sharp. He wasn’t scared of anybody. He was a God-fearing man. They killed Papa for being bold, smart, and speaking truth. For doing the work that would wake us all up. Negroes respected Papa. White folks, too. I remember that all the town, Negroes and whites, were at his funeral.
Up, up, you mighty race!
The truth killed him. Could it have killed Jimmy, too? I think of how he tried to save me in the chapel and shiver.
“Ha! Man, you foolin’,” Norm chuckles. “Only person who carried out that sin was Jimmy.”
“Norm’s right, you know,” Big Lee says. “Don’t know what be possessing folks. Killing yourself ain’t the answer. You know if you kill yourself, you don’t get into heaven.”
Walter snorts. “Who told you that?”
Big Lee is so outraged, he could spit. “Well it’s right in the good book!”
“The good book? You mean that book written by the white man,” Walter says.
“Careful now! You sounding like Satan!”
Satan is not my name, I want to shout back at every single one of them.
“Last I read,” Bembry says without looking up, “God didn’t talk about killing yourself won’t get you into heaven. He talked about finding salvation. Whether in this life or the next. That depends on you.”
The table quiets, and I’m in awe of how Bembry silences a room in just one breath.
“So, you really think he killed himself, don’t you?” Mack stands at the head of the table, his face damp with sweat, voice raspy. We all freeze, not used to seeing him anywhere but the kitchen during the day.
He leans forward, face inches away, slurring and spitting as he talks. “Let me ask y’all something. Have any of you seen an empty cell around here?”
Everyone looks at one another, shrugs abound.
“No,” he demands. “There are no empty cells. Beds don’t stay cold more than a day before they’re occupied again. And there’s a reason.” He leans in closer. “The more of us they have, the faster we make them money.”
Folks squirm, mumbling among themselves as my mouth goes dry. Norm cocks his head to the side, indignant.
“What you talking ’bout? We don’t make them money!”
“Oh, you think them license plates y’all making are free? Them rocks you chopping down to nothing and them roads they building out there cost nothing? You getting paid for that?”
The room feels colder and my body goes numb. I glance down at my fingernails, at the green paint dried underneath, and think of Papa.
Norm waves him off. “They just putting us to work ’cause there’s no sense in us just sitting around like it’s a picnic. Might as well be useful. We strong and able. Gotta do something with these lowlifes.”
I can’t help but blurt out something I know everyone is thinking.
“Wouldn’t that make you one, too?”
Norm scowls.
“I done told you for the last time,” he barks, pointing a finger at me. “It ain’t nothing but a misunderstanding.”
“A pretty big misunderstanding if you ask me. You’ve been in here longer than I have.”
Norm presses his lips together, as if holding in steam boiling up.
Mack stares at him for a long moment, then cackles. “You one stupid little nigger.” He taps the table, letting out a sinister laugh as he hobbles back into the kitchen.
* * *
When death comes to Charlestown, it drops on our heads, bringing back memories and images of other men who’ve been lynched, inside and outside this place.
Wild thoughts flood my mind. I think about that first bus ride from Lansing to Boston. The smell of the man named Earl (same name as my father), who was squeezed next to me; the bumps on the road; the roar of the engine; the silhouette of a man swinging from a tree in the distance, leaves falling around him.
Jimmy lynched himself. Living here can force anyone’s hand to do the same. Or maybe this place is lynching all of us, slowly. Maybe Mack is right about it all.
Wonder if it hurt or if he had second thoughts or was it instant. And if there’s no God, would the other side be any different from in here? But anywhere seems better than here.
What would everyone say about me? Probably something like: He went home, went back to where he’s from. Thank the Lord he’s gone. It’d be a relief to most, given all the trouble, pain, and embarrassment I’ve caused. Shorty probably wants me dead.
No one would miss me.
I start counting things I’ve counted a dozen times before: The bars in my cell … twelve across, five rows down. Over and over again, I count them. Do they need so many bars to contain me? To contain any of us?
My hand shakes as I try to write a letter to Ella, what may be my last. Struggling to scratch out every word in the low light.
What if the guards are reading my letters, tearing them up so no one knows about the dead bodies? Or the old men they say are dying from the plague? The mold in our food or the way we’re thrown into a dark hole with no hope of seeing light? We were sent here to rot like fruit in the summer sun. How does that teach us right from wrong? What lesson are we to learn?
What if death comes for me next?
My heart beats like a hammer in my ear; I hug my knees to my chest, rocking on my bed, jumping at every small sound. The sheets feel so warm under my hand. Soft. If I were to take them off the bed and—No.
NO!
Pacing, I hit my head with my hand a few times, feeling the tip of my hair, the end of the conk, the end of my old life. Need to stay awake. Need to keep the nightmares away.
This isn’t real. This place is a dream. I’m dreaming.
But if I’m not dreaming, I never want to wake up again.
I can’t be here, I can’t be here, I can’t …
“Little! Mail!”
I hear my name called, bursting through the zipping thoughts.
“Huh?”
“Mail,” the guard says again, frustrated.
As soon as the letter touches my fingertips, I recognize his handwriting. Reginald. I palm the letter like a lifeline.
At lights-out, I sit on my bed, thinking of all the reasons why it’s taken so long for Reginald to write. What if he’s angry with me? Would it be in this letter? Will it be the straw that breaks my back, sending me over the edge?
Quickly, I open the envelope. The letter is nothing more than a few short sentences, but it fills my heart with the type of hope I haven’t felt in years.
Malcolm,
> When you’re ready, I can free you from prison. First, don’t smoke any cigarettes. Don’t take any drugs. And don’t eat any pork.
I miss you. I’ll show you the way free.
Your Little Brother,
Reginald
PART 2
CHAPTER 8
By any means necessary.
—MALCOLM X
“Lansing! Lansing! Everybody off.”
The bus to Lansing was smaller than I remembered. Or maybe I had grown several inches. I had just about outgrown all the clothes I bought the year before. Still had the same baby face. Pretty boy, the gals called me. Never thought being called pretty would be such a compliment for a man.
I slept for most of my journey. But somewhere along the route, the heat went out and the cold smacked me sober. I watched the sun come up, light bouncing off the miles and miles of snow-covered fields as we turned down the familiar roads into the old blue bus depot. With two steps, I was back on Michigan soil, the icy wind flicking my ears, welcoming me home. I grabbed my bag from the undercarriage, flipping up the collar of my coat to block the brutal Midwestern wind.
Across the road, Philbert stood by the door of his black Ford Pilot, made in a factory in this very state. He had his hands in his pockets, and his hat sat low as he scanned the small crowd.
“Excuse me, there!” I called out to him, grinning. “What’s happening, daddy-o? You looking for Detroit Red? ’Cause if you are, then here I am!”
Philbert eyed my conk and both eyebrows arched to the top of his forehead. “What on earth did you do to your hair?”
An uneasy silence hung between us. So I put my fist up, quick jab, jab, uppercut through the air, just like Joe Louis. Philbert didn’t move.
“What? No love for your brother?” I asked with a laugh, trying to cut the tension.
Philbert stilled, his face unreadable, before he swung and punched my arm, sending me flying.
The Awakening of Malcolm X Page 8