Took another hit.
Deeper hit.
Kept that shit inside. Held it. Let it swim up through my brain so it could straighten out my thoughts. But my thoughts were getting more crooked with every puff. My thoughts were saying, “The sky is screaming your name. Get your ass inside.”
So I finished off the joint and went inside. Went to my cell and sat there, eyes closed, trying to see pretty pictures and hear pretty music. Instead I heard this chanting. Sounded like all the bitches in the Cut were chanting my name, saying, “Snoop’s high. Snoop’s high. Snoop’s high.” When the guarded passed by my cell, she looked at me like she knew.
Everyone knew.
I’d been high before, so I realized paranoia is part of being high. But for some reason I couldn’t call this paranoia. I had to call it the truth. This was real. The chanting was real. I heard it distinctly. Came right at me.
I put my hands to my ears but the chanting got louder. When I tried to lie down on my bunk, my skin felt all bumpy. I was getting bumps. I’d study one bump and it looked like it was getting bigger. Bumps all over me. Bumps and that fuckin’ chanting. I started itching. Started scratching. Bumps started blowing up. Looked in a mirror and saw my eyes bulging out. Felt like my goddamn eyes were about to pop out of my face.
Now I was getting scared.
Now I wanted the high to stop.
But I was still going up, not down, and the chant had turned into screams—bitches screaming my name—and the screaming wouldn’t stop and I went to the bunk and curled myself up like a baby and started crying to myself, crying ’cause I was scared I wouldn’t come down from this fucked-up high, crying to myself ’cause I was scared to cry out loud ’cause I was ashamed of crying and ashamed that a lousy joint had wacked me out.
I was crying when a CO came in the cell and saw me there.
“You okay, baby?”
I looked up at her. She was pretty. Her eyes were soft.
I sucked in my breath and tried to act strong, but she saw me falling apart. She put her hand on my forehead.
“You gonna be all right,” she said. “Sometimes it just gets that way in here. But it’ll pass, sugar. You’ll be fine.”
I let her touch me. I liked her touching me. I liked when she held my hand. Didn’t want to tell her that I was high on some crazy weed, but I figured she already guessed that. She didn’t care. But she did care about me. She sat with me for a long spell. When I started shaking, she held me.
“I’d take you to the clinic,” she said, “but you’re better off here. They’ll give you blood tests in the clinic. You don’t want no blood tests.”
The CO was a sweetheart.
That night she became my sweetheart.
That night she got me through the worst trip of my life.
CO became my first and only love in the Cut.
CO
Falling in love in Grandma’s House is a different kind of falling in love. You’re not in the world. You’re in jail.
You ain’t going to the movies and ice-skating or taking a walk in the park. You’d like to snuggle by the fireplace or book a room at the Hotsheet Hotel. But there’s no fireplace and not much time to snuggle. You got to sneak, and sneaking ain’t easy in the Cut.
Truth is, me and CO never did make love. We made out. We kissed in the dark corners and found some time for hugging, but straight-up screwing never happened. Neither of us wanted her to get fired. That would be the end of our relationship and the end of the only romance I was having.
CO did me favors. One big favor was getting me a bunch of colognes and perfumes from the outside so I could sell ’em on the inside. Had me a good little business going.
Bitches all over Grandma’s House came to know me as the perfume lady. Had me a bunch of different brands—one for every taste.
CO was a lady. Naturally I was the man in the relationship. I would have loved to have been fucking CO, but just the idea that another woman was caring about me and loving on me made a difference. She’d slip me little notes that told me to meet her here or meet her there. Then she started writing letters about her life on the outside. How she was lonely. How she’d never met anyone like me. How, once I got out, she could see us hooking up forever.
“You mean it?” I said.
“With all my heart.”
But hearts are changed by the Cut. Once inside, you don’t have the same heart you had on the outside. Least I didn’t.
At age eighteen, my heart had hardened.
It was hard to begin with, but seeing what I saw and hearing what I heard, my outlook on life got even more basic: Life was shit. So fuck it. Get what you can.
I know that folk talk about rehabilitation in jail, and for a while I thought maybe I’d become a different person. But forget about it.
Maybe if I had had a good teacher to inspire me—maybe that would have made a difference. But the truth is that I had this one teacher who made my life miserable. She had the opposite temperament of CO.
She had it out for me. She called me all kinds of things.
But I had only word for her . . .
BITCH
Bitch look at me and say, “You got your homework?”
“Yeah, I got my homework.”
“Read it.”
I read a little essay I wrote about basketball players.
Bitch say, “I didn’t tell you to write about basketball.”
“You said to write about what I like on television.”
“Television shows,” Bitch says, “not television sports.”
“Well, a game is a show.”
“Tear up your essay.”
“What!”
“You heard me—tear it up.”
“But I wrote it real carefully.”
“You wrote it real sloppy.”
“How you know that?”
Bitch say, “’Cause everything you do is sloppy. Now write a new essay and present it in class tomorrow.”
I look at the bitch like she’s crazy.
Problem is, I believe she’s crazy in love with me. I truly believe she likes girls, and she has the hots for me in particular. But because she don’t like liking what she likes, she takes it out on me. She knows I ain’t ashamed of being gay. I like it. I’m proud of who I am. Meanwhile, this bitch is scared of who she is. So she makes life in Grandma’s House miserable for as many girls as she can.
Next day I come into class with something I wrote about The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
I say something about how Will Smith has a funny point of view that makes everyone laugh, regardless of whether they’re rich or poor. He’s a homeboy that everyone loves.
Bitch says, “You missed the point.”
“So what is the point?” I ask.
“The point is the contrast between life in the affluent suburbs of Los Angeles and the ghetto attitude of a boy from Philadelphia.”
“Isn’t the point that Will’s funny as hell?” I ask.
“But what’s underneath the humor?” Bitch asks.
“What’s underneath your piss-ass mood?” I ask.
“I’m going to have to cite your negative behavior,” she says.
I say, “I’m going to have to cite your lousy sense of humor.”
“You’re making it worse for yourself.”
“You ain’t helping none, bitch.”
Bitch say, “That does it.”
I say, “I hope so. You kicking me out of here?”
Bitch say, “No, you’re not getting out of the final exam.”
I took her fuckin’ final exam and got all the answers right. Except she changed my answers around and failed me. She rigged it to make it look like I didn’t know anything.
On top of that, she reports me to the supervising administrator.
“Your teacher feels that you’re uncooperative and disruptive,” says the supervisor. “Plus, you failed the exam.”
I say, “Fuck that bitch. She switched my answers to make me fail. S
he’s a dyke who don’t know it. That ain’t my fault.”
Supervisor tells me I have to change my attitude or I’ll never get my GED.
“Fuck that too,” I say.
And with that, I go back to my cell.
That damn teacher sets off a bad period for me. For weeks afterward, I skip my classes. That teacher turns me against book-learning.
I go through this heavy-duty anger period.
I see anger all around me.
Old woman inmate who been living in the Cut for years gets angry at her cellmate. Cellmate won’t stop talking shit. Cellmate badmouths this old woman night and day.
Then one day in the rec room, the old woman throws a pot of boiling water at her cellmate and disfigures her face for life. That stops the bitch from talking shit.
I get angry at my own cellmates.
One of my cellmates says I gotta cut her hair. I don’t wanna bother with her hair.
“You got to,” she keeps saying. “I seen how you cut that other bitch’s hair and I liked how it looked. Now cut mine.”
I can’t get her to shut up, so I figure it’s easier cut her goddamn hair than listen to her yap.
I do it. I design a little style for her.
But she hates it.
“You got me looking like Mr. T,” she says.
“I like the way it looks,” I tell her.
“You did it to spite me,” she says.
“Fuck you. You were the one who kept after me till I did it. Well, I’ve done it. This ain’t no beauty salon up in here.”
“Fix it!” she starts screaming. “You gotta fix it!”
“I don’t gotta fix shit.”
“I ain’t going out there looking like Mr. T.”
“Exactly where you going?” I ask. “You in prison, bitch. Ain’t nowhere to go.”
“I’m telling you to give me a different cut,” she keeps saying.
I’m through arguing. I start walking away. She grabs my arm.
“Let go,” I say.
She won’t let go. I pull away.
Then she makes a mistake. Big mistake.
She slaps me.
I see red. I go off. I take the clippers and go across her face. She starts shrieking. Blood everywhere.
She never asks me to cut her hair again.
Supervisor calls me in again.
“You’re going to have to do something about your behavior.”
“What?” I ask.
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You mess up in school. You cutting up your cellmates.”
“That one cellmate was fucking with me. That’s the only reason I cut her.”
“You’re headed for more time not less. Is that what you want?”
“I just wanna be left alone,” I say.
“And I want you to correct your conduct.”
I roll my eyes up and study the ceiling.
“Look,” says the supervisor, “is there someone from the outside you’d listen to? Your mother, for example.”
“She dead.”’
“Your stepmother.”
“I don’t want her here. I don’t want her to see me in this mess.”
“Anyone else?” she asks.
I think for a while.
“Call Uncle. He can talk to me. Uncle can talk to me any time he wants to.”
BRAIN DEAD
Sitting there across the table from me, he looked beautiful. He put a smile on my face.
“Girl,” he said, “looks like you haven’t smiled in a while. Looks like they done turned you mean in here.”
“Why you say that?” I asked.
“That’s what they told me.”
“Who told you what?” I wanted to know.
“The supervisor said you turned against your classes and turned against your teachers.”
“One teacher,” I said. “One bitch that has it in for me.”
“Why’s that?” Uncle asked.
“Closet case. She hates that I’m out and she’s in.”
“Sounds like you’ve been taking psychology classes,” Uncle said.
“I don’t need no psychology to see what she’s about.”
“Whatever she’s about has nothing to do with what you’re about.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” I said.
“That’s what you’re saying but it ain’t what you’re doing,” Uncle explained. “What you’re doing is fucking up your education over one teacher. That don’t make good sense, does it?”
“I don’t need to kiss anyone’s ass.”
“I ain’t telling you to kiss ass, Snoop. I’m telling you that you’ve been in this place two, three years already. You’re eighteen years old. You’ll walk out of here in another couple years. You’ll walk out educated or you’ll walk out brain dead. That’s what it comes down to.”
“The Cut will kill off your brain cells no matter what.”
“Not if you change your attitude it won’t,” said Uncle. “Right now you’re all negative up in here. You done made that choice. No one made it for you.”
“Except the bitch,” I said.
“The bitch is a bitch. That ain’t gonna change. But how you react to the bitch is up to you. You can let her throw you off or you can go your own way.”
“What way is that?” I asked.
“Well,” said Uncle, looking at me square in the eyes, “there’s only two ways. Up or down.”
“And you saying I’m going down?” I ask.
“I know it. I see it. You got to check yourself, girl, or you don’t got a prayer. You’ll get more bitter by the day, and by the time you look around you’ll be nothing but a crazy angry bitch yourself.”
I started to answer back, but Uncle stopped me. He said, “Just think about what I’m saying.”
I thought about that expression “brain dead.”
Who the fuck wants to be brain dead?
“You serious about this brain dead shit, ain’t you?” I said to Uncle.
“Serious as a heart attack, baby. You got to take advantage of what this place got to offer. If you can get your GED inside here, grab it. You’d be a fool not to.”
We spent another half hour or so talking ’bout what was happening back on the block.
“You all right?” I asked uncle. “The shops in good shape?”
“The shit is always crazy,” he said, “but you don’t gotta worry about that. You just gotta worry about keeping yourself in good shape. You a jewel, Snoop. You a valuable jewel. When you get outta this joint, you gonna shine.”
I had to hug the man for saying that.
I had to hug the man for coming down to the Cut to set me straight.
No one else could do that except Uncle.
LOOKING UP
Uncle was right.
Up’s better than down.
Looking down you see nothing but concrete.
Looking up I see that window.
I look out that window.
Little buds are popping out all over the branches of the trees.
Soon the buds will burst open into leaves.
Soon spring will be warming us up.
Flowers will start blooming and things will smell sweeter.
Longer days, brighter light, more time to play in the yard.
In the Cut, winter’s a motherfucker. Spring’s a breath of fresh air.
Winter can make you crazy. Spring can make you hopeful.
After Uncle’s visit, I was ready to get hopeful.
I needed that turnaround. I needed to put myself on a sensible course of learning something besides making dildos in three different sizes.
I needed Uncle’s energy and the knowledge that he really cared for me, no matter what kind of mess I got myself into.
I needed all the help I could get. Some of that help came from another piece of good news. This one was a surprise. I learned that my godmother, Denise Robbins, another big supporter of mine, had train
ed to be a correctional officer and was coming to work at the Cut. Denise was family and having family inside Grandma’s House couldn’t help but keep my spirits high.
She couldn’t do me any special favors, but just seeing her from time to time did me a world of good.
Denise was another reason I started to turn the corner from negative to positive.
Around this time, a negative came up.
Word came down that the mother of the girl who had gone after me with a bat—the girl I killed—was being sent down to the Cut. Word came down that the woman would be looking for me.
I wasn’t worried. I knew at Grandma’s House they put people like that in protective custody—and that’s just what they did with her. The woman had a lot of emotional problems. From time to time, I’d see her pass by, but she was always with an officer. She never said shit to me, and I never said shit to her.
Did I feel bad about what I’d done to her daughter?
Of course I did. I felt horrible about it. I felt deeply remorseful. If there had been some way to undo it, I would have. But in my heart I knew that what I’d done was done out of self-preservation. It was kill or be killed. There was only way to save myself—and that’s what I did.
The women in the Cut knew what was happening. They kept the girl’s mother away from me and, for the most part, out of my sight.
So I went my way without fear.
I kept my head up, my eyes open.
I went back into the classroom, where the teacher no longer bothered me. She tried her best—she was still a bitch—but, after Uncle’s visit, I was a different person. I wasn’t taking none of the bitch’s attitude personally. She could dog me all she wanted. I didn’t care. I was reading deep into the books. I was learning my lessons. I had the answers before anyone else. History class. English class. Math. You name it. Snoop was on the case.
When I met CO in a secret alleyway where no one could find us, when I held her in my arms and gave her a kiss, when she told me that she loved me and was proud of the progress I was making, I said, “Baby, everything’s changing now. Everything’s changing for the better. This here is the best day of my life.”
THE WORST DAY
OF MY LIFE
When my dreams start getting crazy, I start to worry.
Grace After Midnight Page 8