by C. E. Morgan
“Young.”
But you’re too scared to look at who said it. You stare straight ahead, stoic, try to look tough.
“Cigarette?” someone says, and squeezes in beside you.
“Naw.” You firm up your shoulder. You can’t accept nothing from no one. You can’t owe nobody nothing. But the guy isn’t leaning into you, isn’t pressing your space, isn’t trying to insinuate. You realize it’s some old dude, hopefully harmless. Maybe. But you don’t look him in the eye, you keep staring straight ahead, because you can’t trust yourself not to break down. Grief is blocking up every orifice—can’t shit, can’t piss, can’t cry, you wouldn’t be able to eat if there was anything to eat. Your mother is six days in the ground. Everything inside you is paralyzed.
“What they bring you in for?”
Grand theft auto, speeding, driving without a license, resisting arrest, possession of a controlled substance, there’s more but the words are all running together and it’s confusing, it’s like you’re trying to read left to right or something.
“You got previous arrests?”
“Yeah.”
The man nods. “They gonna send you up then.”
“I’m seventeen.” The words jet out, almost indignant. High with disbelief.
Dry laugh. Then he just says, “Well, they gonna send you to juvie first. But then, you going in. Me, I been in and out since I was twelve. Trust me, you be all right if you play. But hear me, Young: Niggahs always gonna try. Got to be on the awares. Fresh meat. Know what I’m saying?”
Stricken, you dare to glance at the man.
The man purses out his lower lip. “You gonna figure it all out, but you got to be wise like a serpent. You ain’t small but you ain’t big neither. You got a hard face, that’s good. That’ll get you mad respect if your fists as hard as your face. So when you get up in there, you gotta act a man. Get some cat in your stride. Straight up rough. No motherfucking hesitation. Don’t nobody care if you a teenager except the niggahs that aim to turn you out.”
Then the man settles into himself, crosses his arms over his chest, looking sleepy. He’s done, his wisdom imparted. But that’s it? There isn’t anything else? You turn and stare through the bars, but you’re just one of a dwindling many—they keep getting hauled off for their arraignments or let out on bail. You stare in desperation at the guards like maybe they’ll recognize you, see the little kid in you. But the guards are white, glassy-eyed, they’ve seen it all before, years and years of it. You all look alike. You aren’t Allmon anymore, Mike Shaughnessy’s son with the Reverend’s hands and Marie’s soft nature. You’re just a black boy neither big nor small with a fat nose and 3b hair, a body with no past and no future. A notevenreallywannabe thug. Nothing. Less than nothing.
When they close that rumbling thundering deadening door of steel bars, you’ve officially passed through the gates of hell.
Now, today, here in this car on this May evening, all you got is the memories flooding in … and pain. Can’t lie to yourself anymore. It’s here. It was always in you, Marie’s lost life making a wild wail of your joints and eyes. And you thought you had got control somehow—in this world where they murder mothers! But, Allmon, Marie got used and abused by Mike Shaughnessy just like Henrietta got used and abused by you—no, don’t think, can’t think. This isn’t even about that, it’s not even about your child, who got tricked out of your arms; this is about simple survival now! When Henry Forge takes away the future, he doesn’t just take away money, no, he takes away your chance to go to the doctor and say, “See I got this little problem, just a setback, but I know you got medicine for me. I know you can save me and you will save me. Because I got money now. That’s the key to survival in this country. I got money, so in this great nation that means I deserve to live.”
I’m talking to nobody at all, am I? No one in the living world is listening. They kill your most precious thing, then close their ears to you. But I’ll say it anyway:
The trial is in a plain, nondescript room, nothing fancy, some grooved paneling on the wall under fluorescent lights, an oak desk—you’re freaked out by how normal everything looks, how empty the room is, not like on TV—with a white guy behind that desk watching all impassive as the prosecutor argues and your attorney, who you never talked to before five minutes ago in the crowded hallway outside, counterargues, and you get on the stand for maybe four minutes and begin to haltingly describe what has happened to you, Northside, juvie, your momma, her dying—no, wait, I was something else before all that, I promise, the Reverend can back me up—but the man says, “If your list of infractions wasn’t so extensive, I might be moved by your story. But, frankly, I am not. In fact, I’m tired of it. For the life of me, I can’t see what distinguishes you from so many identical young men who parade through these chambers and ask for leniency, day after day, year after year, all with a sob story, all seemingly repentant but right back here in two months’ time if I let them go, all a burden on society—or, as in your case, a threat to society. If your experience in juvenile camp did nothing to curb your … enthusiasm for criminality, then I see zero call for leniency. I have no more patience for so-called kids like you. I’m sentencing you as an adult. You made your choice, Mr. Shaughnessy. You made all of your choices a long time ago.
“You are hereby remanded by the Kentucky Department of Corrections for the term of twelve years. Because you are seventeen, you will spend four months in a residential facility, then you will be transferred to Bracken. You will serve six years before being considered eligible for parole. May you be an example to others.”
Take it away. Clasp its ankles in manacles to hobble it. Place a chain around its waist. Now weave cuffs through the chain and secure its wrists in the cuffs. And drive it away just like you’re driving now.
Ice is breaking on the surface of the river. Allmon wants to hold all the floes together, reassemble the solidity and stolidity secured by the dead cold, but he can’t, it’s coming apart under him as he’s trying to cross with his son in his arms; he can hear it whining and moaning as it cracks. It’s because he’s running too hot with this disease his mother gave him, the disease maybe he gave to his son, the disease Marie was cursed to bear because of her black burden of a body, black as river as grave as starless sky
Allmon’s mouth is filling with water, but there’s still room for words.
The youth offender facility is: nothing really. Not scary, just boring, trifling, you’ve done this before. It’s like being a senior in high school; nobody fucks with you anymore, and it’s not as intense as you think it’s gonna be.
But the penitentiary is: Anarchy. Your worst fucking nightmare, only all day every day, 24/7, no escape. It’s not where they house men, it’s where they make animals. After they wash you down, delouse you, spread your cheeks and root around in your anus, they walk you for the first time along the tier of the main line to your cell, and all those eyes, black eyes brown eyes blue eyes, from the dayroom up the four dizzying floors, turn to watch you, and suddenly the rooster crows, the dogs start their barking, there’s sheep and screaming birds and yowling cats, the sound rises, shriek piling on shriek until it crescendos to pure madness and you’re more than halfway to panic. The sound of wild animals is so horrifying, your body would run away out of pure instinct if you didn’t have a guard right at your back. That cacophony is worse than the sound of your cell door closing the very first time, which is a casket closing.
Six years in a cage is six lifetimes.
Your body is eighteen years old
you say when your grizzled old cellie asks. Shakes his head ruefully, doesn’t say nothing, ignores you thank you god thank you god thank you god thank you
because you don’t even know what it means to look tough anymore. You don’t know what it means to act hard on the inside. Up is down and hell is on earth in this inverted world. For the first time you are thankful for your naturally unfriendly face—a tough face only a mother could love—but it’s sm
all change next to these dudes six-five and up, cannon arms, cockstrong terrifying motherfucking extraterrestrial power in barely human form. You force yourself to look right at them, show them you’re not scared, but you’ve never been so scared in your life. Your time back in Northside when you ran with small-time thugs, that was just playacting. This is the worst, realest life.
That first night, you can’t sleep, think you’ll never sleep again, you’re just staring out in the dark and trying to stay alert. It’s not long before you hear some wicked sound across the way, across the open space on the opposing tier, scuffling or sobbing, gagging and retching, you have some idea and it’s making you sick, you’re sitting up on your mattress when a guard runs down the tier and shines his flashlight directly into the cell opposite yours and burned into your retina you see a big white monster fucking some skinny white dude up the ass, and there’s blood on this big man’s yanked-down drawers and his fat hand is wrenching open the mouth of the bottom, saliva glistening to the concrete floor, the man’s terrorized eyes looking like they’re going to fall out of their sockets. And now the animal cries are rising up the floors again, the jackals, the dogs, the crows. These two men—or one man and one animal—get hauled out by five guards, one sent to the hole, one sent limp as a rag to the infirmary. You think you’re gonna throw up, but you don’t, because you can’t.
You make a decision right there: That’s not gonna be you. You’re gonna survive. Whatever it takes. You’ll cut someone’s throat if you have to. So first thing, you make a shank out of a soda can by folding it and wrapping it around itself and stomping on it. You keep it in your trembling hand. Until the first shakedown, which is when they inevitably find it. They give you a pass this first time, seeing as you’re young and fresh, and they don’t send you to the hole. They’re barely out of the cell when you’re busy making another.
You do it right there in front of your bemused cellie, who says, “Ain’t got to worry about me, I ain’t gonna fuck with you.” It takes a few more days of unrelenting terror before you actually believe him, because he does in fact—thank you thank you thank you god—leave you alone. All he ever does is sit on his mattress and drink hooch. He works in the cafeteria and somehow manages to make potato wine without any actual potatoes. But he never seems drunk, just deflated as an old balloon. His cheeks sag down to his neck.
“How come that shit don’t make you sick?” you ask him.
“Been drinking it for years. Till I get out.”
“When you getting out? Where you gonna go to?”
“Heaven, dawg,” the man says. “Or hell. Either one better than this place.”
Yes. The forty-foot walls, cell blocks running the length of a football field, gun towers, razor wire, guards with their twelve-gauge shotguns who bang their flashlights on the bars all hours of the night, waking everybody up, plus the motion sensors and the shakedowns, the mad labyrinth of gangs and allegiances you can’t navigate because you’re nothing but a scrub fish. But none of that’s the worst of it.
You’re so used to thinking it’s the white man who fucks you that it’s just instinct to get under the wing of these black dudes. What your naïve ass doesn’t realize is they fuck down color lines here; mad-dog Aryans on scrawny white boys and blue-black brothers on black. How the hell were you supposed to know? So the first black dude who’s decent, who nods and says what up from a respectful distance in the cafeteria, is somebody you acknowledge once. Smile with one corner of your mouth while trying to look hard. Like that’s possible.
But no, Allmon, you’re an idiot, a fucking idiot a motherfucking idiot idiot IDIOT!!! That’s the same man who just grabs you two days later and throws you against a wall like you don’t weigh a thing—six feet and 185 pounds but you’re nothing, there’s always somebody bigger than you—and as your head cracks against the tile, he says, “Your cunt.” Doesn’t even have to finish the sentence. “Fuck you,” automatic out of your mouth. But just as quick he punches your windpipe with one hand, slams your temple with the other. And walks away as you sprawl down the wall. And people are just standing there watching it happen, watching you ragdoll. Which is worse than the insult, you know that instantly.
Life inside the migraine. You can’t go to the infirmary. You can’t snitch. You can’t confront him, he weighs like 275 pounds. You can’t go anywhere but back to your cell, where your cellie knows, ’cause that’s how it works here, everybody knows everything while it’s still happening. He sighs like he’s almost too tired to tell you anything, but finally says, “Talking shit ain’t gonna cut it. Just feathers against bullets. He still gonna turn you out.” And he points to the combination lock on your cell locker. “Put it in a sock,” he says very quietly, and makes a swinging and slamming motion like he’s bringing down a hammer.
You rear back. “That’s murder one! They’ll send me up for life.”
Your cellie shrugs. “You in the slaughterhouse now. Cut or get cut.”
So there it is. It’s not a matter you need to consider deeply. Your body’s going to go for the Hail Mary pass, and you know it, because to refuse to choose is also to choose. But here’s the thing: You know if you do it in front of people, you’re caught for sure. If you do it in private, that won’t send the right blood message. In the end, you just pray a message you do send is loud enough. Like the loudspeakers that holler at the prisoners all day, every day.
So, you carry it on you, two socks tied together around your waist under your khaki shirt, lock just hanging there like a big, cold eye. You figure out quick you can’t just go attack him in his cell while he’s napping because someone will see you do it—plus, he sleeps on a top bunk. Your only option is to get him in the shower. He likes to be the first one in the showers in the morning. So, very next day, when the unit’s still dark, he trundles down to the washroom, big, hulking beast in nothing but a snatch of towel, and you slip out of your cell as soon as you see him turn from the dayroom into the showers. You can’t follow him in there—the cameras that point at the sink catch the silhouette and sometimes the face of anyone who enters. You need a blind spot. So you have to wait out in the dark dayroom by the trash can, praying no one else follows and catches sight of you. But you don’t have to wait long, which is good because your terrifying reality is tightening like a noose around your neck, blocking air and blood and maybe your ability to act. You don’t even know if you can feel your arms anymore, but, sure enough, the body does what’s necessary. When that big motherfucker comes sauntering out of the shower, you step out of the shadows and bring a swift cracking blow to the back of his skull.
He drops straight down to the waxed floor, his cheekbone cracking audibly when he hits. You expect to feel an overwhelming urge to run, but you don’t. You’re steady and levelheaded, as if the first blow has strangely relaxed you. You raise your hand again. One more blow to the head would probably kill him. Hard blows to the body will put him out of commission and, if you’re lucky, get him transferred. You land swift, sickening blows to his back, wracking that metal against his backbone, because you want to paralyze him, not out of revenge, just good sense. Five or six blows and your internal sensor says that’s it—wrap it up. You fling the socks in a trash can and scoot back to your cell, draping the lock back on the locker. You slide right back in bed.
Your cellie is watching you, wide awake, just lying there. You can hear him breathing. You try to match your breath to his and pretty soon it’s almost back to normal and then the uproar comes and it’s crazy loud, so you run to the steel bars with him to peer out, and the two of you holler at the guards like everyone else, make all the mad animal sounds, and then you simmer down and act normal as can be all day, don’t change your body language or any of your habits—except in the cafeteria. When you walk in there, you straighten up and stroll with a new confidence through that fraught gauntlet, looking every single one of those men in the eye—every single motherfucking one—and see how more than a few nod at you? Feel how the air is changed a
nd silent? That’s the sound of respect. Your ability to inspire fear is the only currency you will ever have in here.
And now you know how to survive.
Six years, six lifetimes.
You look around you sometimes at the living nightmare, at the blacks and the poor white trash so country they almost sound black, and you think somewhere out there it’s not like this. There’s black lawyers and professors and ambassadors and businessmen. Somewhere. But those are just words inside your mind and your mind is inside.
And even if those fancy blacks do exist, you fucking hate them anyway. You understand now why the Reverend used to rail against them. They don’t give a fuck about you any more than white folks do. In fact, they’re worse than white folks; they’re traitors. The way you walk, talk, spend your cash, rent-a-center house you live in, tricked out car you drive, your whole life—it all embarrasses the shit out of them. You are their living, breathing shame. They’re the ones who still call you nigger. The whites don’t have to anymore, because the state does it for them.
Who’s gonna change this world? Most of these inmates won’t ever get out. The ones that do, most of them will be back.
They grow failure here like flowers.
They say there’s gonna be a black president someday. Maybe. Or maybe just black skin. Either way, you won’t ever get to vote in Kentucky. Won’t have a place to live, ’cause you won’t qualify for Section Eight housing to get your feet on the ground, won’t ever serve on a jury to keep a brother out of jail, won’t ever get a good job once you X the little felony box, can’t legally carry a gun to keep some crazy racist from killing you, and there was never any protection against the cops to begin with.
Men like Forge can get away with anything. But you? It’s over—no money, no life, no hope. But that was always in the script, wasn’t it? That’s how they wrote it. If anyone has eyes, they can read it. It’s written in black blood on white paper.