“Everything there?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, sign these papers, right quick.”
As his new cellie busies himself signing property papers, C-Boy glances in the open locker boxes. Damn, that nigga got a box fulla stuff. Okay then, my nigga. I’ma let you make it…for now.
“Say, where you from?” C-Boy asks when the C.O. leaves.
Silence.
“Man, I know you ain’t deaf.”
Silence.
“Look, if we go’n live in here together, we go’n have to communicate, my nigga. Understand me?”
Nothing. The dude fiddes with the seam of his white jumpsuit. He pulls something out, but C-Boy can’t catch what it is.
“Say, brah,” C-Boy starts. He’s ’bout fed up by now. “What yo’ name is?”
The youngsta looks up with a straight face and says, “My name Lil Chris. You get loaded?”
C-Boy smiles. Puts his hands to his mouth and yells out, “Say, Sarge! We need a mattress in cell 4!”
Luckily for the two of them, they both make good cellies. Lil Chris, born in ’79, is a year older than C-Boy. Both are built on the same frame. About five-ten, not tall, stocky. Shuck-chubby, as they say in the south. Both have enormous egos and are pretty good with their hands. Yeah. It’s good that they hit it ofF. ’Cause if not, then the cell wouldn’t be big enough to hold but one o’ them.
The best thing about it is that they’re both out of Port City. Shreve-port wit’ that. Lil Chris is from Lakeside. C-Boy is from up on the Cooper Road, right around the way. So, although they’ve never met, they know some of the same people.
“Man, I’m tellin’ you, your cousin, Tab, is my boo,” C-Boy insists.
“Tab wouldn’t fool wit’ you, nigga. You a young buck.”
“C’mon, mayne,” C-Boy says, agitated. “Don’t start the foolishness.” He’s sensitive about his youth.
“Well get on back, then. Don’t play wit’ me ’bout my people,” Lil Chris returns.
One of the hardest things for Lil Chris to get used to is stickin’ his hands in the toilet. The sink is little more than a shallow bowl with about five small holes in its base. Anything extremely dirty or greasy tends to cause the water to collect fast and drain slow, usually leaving grit and grime behind. So, as a necessity, the sink is only used for hygiene: washin’ their hands, brushin’ their teeth, and washin’ dishes. Even then they have to fill the plastic containers up and dump them in the toilet once or twice to get most of the food and grease out of the way.
Everything else is toilet action. If they send their whites to the laundry, they come back brown. It’s the toilet or to the shower with them, and in the blocks they only have 15 minutes to get in and get out. Then, there is work call to consider. When they come in the cell dirty and sweaty, it’s ill advised to jump in the bunk and soil the sheets they have to sleep on. They can only wash sheets every four days. If the sheets are funky, so is the cell. Strugglin’ to breathe in a funky cell? That’s a quick way to fall out with your cellie.
Then, too, in the blocks, they can’t just shower when they want to. They’re in cell 4. If the shower starts at the back of the tier, they’re stuck out until late. So, if they go out and play basketball during the morning yard, or come in dirty from work call, there is only one other option besides sitting on the floor for hours, what convicts call a bird-bath. To soap and bleach the toilet, strip down, and have at it. Good luck finding the bleach! And, after the bath is over, there is the issue of going back in the toilet to wipe up the mess with a floor rag.
C-Boy doesn’t have a complex. He works out a lot so he takes two or three birdbaths a day. Lil Chris … well, Lil Chris has been in the cell for three weeks. He’s spent the majority of his time sitting on the cell floor.
It’s Wednesday. About noon. The cellblock fieldlines have just come in from the first half of the day’s work call. Lil Chris is sitting on his footlocker next to the cell bars. C-Boy has folded his mattress back and is sittin’ on the lower bunk’s metal beddin’ rack. Both of them are tired and hungry. Waitin’ for noon chow carts to come down.
It’s fried chicken day. Hopefully the cooks have not messed over the red beans and rice. Nothing worse than having to pick over a meal when there is a whole other half of work call left to be done.
Lil Chris has his peeper resting on the cell bars, but he’s not payin’ any attention. All of the sudden, someone yanks the small mirror with its toothbrush handle away from the bars. The C’ster looks up with a start.
“Damn, lil one, didn’t I advise you to stay out of trouble?”
Before Lil Chris can answer, C-Boy says, “Ah man, whuz up, Rise?”
“Say, brah, can I get my issue back,” Lil Chris says with a scowl. “You don’t know me like that.”
“Listen, lil brother—” Rise starts.
“—Damn, Rise, you know this nigga,” C-Boy cuts in.
“What I ask you about that word?” Rise switches his attention to C-Boy.
“What word? ‘Nigga’!” Lil Chris interrupts. “Damn. What kind o’ shit is that? He tryna tell you what to say? How to talk? Come on, now.”
A sober C-Boy says, “Nawl, man, check … he … he tryna help me elevate.”
“What?! Fuck outta here!” Lil Chris is incredulous.
“For real, kid,” C-Boy insists. “Straight up. I’m givin’ you the uncut.”
Lil Chris ain’t feelin’ him. He’s g’tting’ ready to set in on C-Boy for being what he sees as soft. By his standards, that’s serious rib action.
“Yeah, you givin’ him the real, but can he respect the real?” Rise says, adding a serious note, throwing a monkey wrench in Lil Chris’s mix.
“A real nigga can’t do nothin’ but respect the real,” Lil Chris shoots back.
“Oh, so that’s what you is … A real nigga, huh? Another one of these real niggas—”
“No! Another nothin’. I stand alo—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I heard all o’ that before. You stand alone. Yeah. Uh-huh, they got real niggas all over this camp. Real niggas. Niggas for life. Life’s niggas.”
“Go on with that,” Lil Chris feels strangely uncomfortable. There’s something in the way he says that word. “I’m serious, brah. Go ’head on wit’ that.”
“Uh-uh, nigga,” Rise says with venom. “I wanna talk about what these cats do ’round here. I’m tah’m bout y’all that call yourselves niggas.”
“What you mean, ‘y’all?’” Lil Chris interjects.
“Yeah, you too. All y’all call ya’selves real niggas, huh? No? But, anyway. We see real niggas ’round this cut every day. They the ones that disrespect themselves and compromise their manhood. They jack off on the lady in the guard tower. Hide in the TV room, or the showers, gettin’ off on the free lady sittin’ at the desk. Either entertained or appalled, still offended by these fools. These real niggas. Stand-alone killahs, killin’ theyself. Then they go get with they other real niggas and brag about how they got that bitch. Major accomplishment. Real niggas rat on they homeboys and get ’em sent south of Egypt. More than just gone till November. That nigga get his boy on death row then turn around and call hisself a real nigga. He rolled over and he wasn’t facin’ nothin’ but a misdemeanor burglary, a parole violation, and he ain’t wanna back his time up. But, you real niggas embrace each other.”
“Say, man, don’t put me in the same category wit’ a rat—who you think—”
“No! You did that for me. Remember? You a real nigga. I don’t know you. But, I know you call yourself a real nigga. Shit, that’s the same thing they call theyself … And I know them! Been round them sorry mu’fuckas for years!
“The real niggas, I know, they the functional illiterates. The ones can’t do sixth-grade mathematics. Can’t read on an eighth-grade level. That’s real. They got 13-year-olds smarter than them. Is that real? Ain’t it, mayne? But, y’all stick together, though. All you … real niggas. Real niggas done just took over. A
in’t no more fake niggas. All the niggas real.
“On the streets, you commit the most courageous feats … against each other. Stand in the middle of the asphalt and shoot it out. Automatics, high-powered assault rifles. But when two police come, yell ‘Freeze!,’ ya drop ya guns and run off. Then, meet back up and brag about how you ran off. Retreated! But ya got away, huh? Real niggas. The same ones that go back there to them Camp J cells and slang shit on each other.
“Well, I don’t know about everyone else, but you real niggas disgust me. I’m sick o’ you real niggas,” Rise says. The look on his face says even more.
Silence. Lil Chris just stares, close-mouthed. Frowns at him.
Rise stands at the cell bars for a few more heartbeats. He decides to leave before the youngster can say or do something that will lock them into conflict. His words, it is what it is.
Rise turns to go and almost falls over this nerdy-looking inmate pushing stacked footlockers down the tier.
“Wayne,” Lil Chris calls out. “Whuz hap’nin’, nigga!”
The nerd stops and looks dispassionately toward Lil Chris’s cell.
“Mayne, what you standin’ there lookin’ crazy for? Come holla,” Lil Chris beckons, with enthusiasm enough for both of them.
The most life he’s seen out of this one yet. Rise is nonplussed. Everything about the guy is nondescript. Average height, average weight, peach fuzz on his chin and upper lip. Some extra-conservative horn-rimmed glasses that may or may not have cost a little money. And judging from his posture and carriage, he may or may not be in a world of trouble moving into these cellblocks. Wonder what’s the connection between those two, Rise thinks, noting the way they interact at the cell bars.
“Hey! Catch ya cell,” the C.O. yells from the front of the tier by the keybox.
“What cell they got you goin’ in?” Lil Chris asks as his friend turns back to the boxes.
“Cell 11,” Wayne says before shoving off.
As Rise heads towards the front of the tier, he looks up to see Major Mercury, Sergeant Bohannon, and a cadet. They have all apparently been standing there for some time.
What draws his attention, though, is Bohannon. A nice-looking white woman with big hair—damn near an afro. A brunette. Expressive, smoky-gray eyes. A mature woman with a tough body that speaks of her background in college softball.
Bohannon is a regular in these blocks, on this shift. Rise hasn’t figured out what she finds so interesting about him, but there she always has a catty smirk on her face when he comes to make his rounds on her cellblock. This is his thought, or at least what he’s trying not to think about, as he steps through the tier gate and out into the lobby with the three officers.
Boom! The cadet, a young, white lad, slams and locks the tier gate in one motion, rattling the cast iron bars. “Hey,” he says. “What were you doin’ in front that cell down there?!”
Rise turns to the green kid with a vaguely amused, bewildered look on his face, as if to say, “What are you, jokin’?” He knows he’s not.
“I said,” the cadet stresses. “What were you up to in front of that cell just now!?”
Rather than answer, Rise looks to Major Mercury and Sergeant Bohannon to see if they’re going to call the kid down.
“This officer asked you a question,” Major Mercury says in his slow drawl.
“Yeah,” Rise returns. “And the two of you know I make rounds twice a week in these blocks. I was doin’ my job down there.”
“And what’s that?” The cadet steps in his space.
“Teaching,” Rise says, simply. Solid. Holding eye to eye with the kid. Refusing to shuffle.
“This officer says he heard you down there yelling about niggers,” Major Mercury puts in. “What was that about?”
None of your fuckin’ business, Rise thinks. But he says, “I was teaching.” A bit more forceful. Always an ordeal to hear them say that word.
They’ve reached an impasse. Calm, Rise still hasn’t allowed the cadet’s energy to infect him. For some inexplicable reason, he spares a glance at Bohannon.
“Well, I’ve smelled weed smoke a time or two when I’ve passed that cell,” she says. “Ah, Lil Chris and Calvi, C-Boy, right?”
That hurt. Can’t deny it.
“Step in the closet over there,” Major Mercury says.
Rise holds his composure as best he can. Sets his books and backpack on the sheet metal serving table and backs into the small utility closet. Mercury and the cadet crowd the doorway.
“Strip,” Major Mercury commands.
Rise pulls his shirt over his head and immediately feels the closet’s stagnant air on his skin. As he hands over his shirt he sees Sergeant Bohannon standing by his personal effects, thumbing through his notebooks.
Rise grits his teeth, slips off his jeans, and hands them over. As he stands there in his underclothes, the cadet scowls at him. Rise straightens his back, lifts his chin.
Major Mercury tosses Rise’s jeans to the side and holds his hand out. “Hand ’em over.”
Rise pulls off his tank top. Next he hands over his boxers. Finally, he slips off his socks and stands flatfooted on the cold, polished concrete. The chill working up through his legs has his ass shivering. Still, he stands straight and looks the officers in the eyes. Bohannon watches over their shoulders.
“Turn around,” Major Mercury commands. “Hold your feet up. Squat down and cough.”
Rise stoically complies. Then he calmly faces them again. Eyes the cadet.
“Turn back around, bend over, and spread ’em.”
Rise doesn’t move. Isn’t going to.
“I said turn back around, bend over, and spread ’em,” the cadet nearly screams.
Rise just looks at him, knowing that his turn to go lay in a dungeon cell has likely come around. He’ll take his ride.
“Are you refusing a direct verbal order?” Major Mercury questions.
“You asked me why I was on the tier. I gave you a valid—”
“I said are you refusing a direct—”
“I’ve already submitted to a strip search.”
“So, you’re refusing.”
“I’m not doin’ it.”
Silence.
“You want me to get the gas, sir?” the cadet asks.
Silence. They all just stand and stare at each other.
“Get your clothes on and get out of here,” Major Mercury drawls.
With that, he tells Sergeant Bohannon to let him make his rounds. They leave Rise standing alone.
Once he has himself situated, he stands by the door and waits. After a few heartbeats, some keys come jingling down the staircase and Sergeant Bohannon pops out. She takes a moment to look Rise over, as if inspecting him, then unlocks the door and opens it just wide enough for Rise to slide through.
He doesn’t move.
She opens the door wider and Rise takes his leave. As soon as the door bangs closed behind him, he exhales. He hadn’t even realized he was holding his breath.
As he walks down the walk he’s so mad he’s trembling.
One of the orderlies stops by Lil Chris and C-Boy’s cell. “Mayne, yo’ homeboy Rise a mu’fucka. Check this out …”
“Hello,” a rich, feminine alto answers before the recording kicks in.
“This is MCI. You have a collect call from—” Rise’s voice, pre-recorded, says, “Oschuwon”, “—an inmate at Louisiana State Prison. If you wish to accept the charge, say ‘Yes’ or press 5. If you do not wish—” The recording abruptly stops. Silence.
“ … Your call has been accepted. Thank you for using MCI.”
“Hello? Rise?” Shonda’s voice is urgent.
“Yeah. How you doin’ baby?”
“Your momma and I went to see the lawyer today. We gave him the papers you sent. He’s gonna let us pay the rest of the money in monthly installments.”
Silence.
“Rise?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, say so
methin’, man. Let me know you—”
“I appreciate y’all,” Rise cuts in. “That’s really gonna be a big help for me.”
“You know I’ll do anything I can for you, don’t you? You know that, right?”
“Yeah, Shonda. I love you for that. I kinda thought you would back up once Shonetta left for college.”
“I’ll never leave you. You know that.”
“For sure. You’re like a sister to me.”
Silence. He knows what he just did.
“Oschuwon, why you always doin’ me that?” she says. Her tone is sweet and plaintive, and also hurt.
“What’s that, boo?” he asks. Feigning ignorance.
“I’m not goin’ through this with you, tonight, Won.” She’s aggravated. “You need to stop that.”
“Stop what?” The smile is audible in his voice.
Silence.
“Love, I told you,” Rise starts. “I want more for you than I can give you. I want you with someone that’s go’n appreciate and do right by you—”
“Boy!” She’s exasperated.
“No. Listen. I’m caught up in this place. I know you love me. And I love you too. If I was out there on them streets it would be different. But, I ain’t finna have you doin’ this time with me while your life just passes by. I want you to live, love.”
“I can’t live without you.”
“You are speaking with an inmate at a state correctional facility. This call is subject to monitoring and may be recorded,” the voice recording interrupts.
CHAPTER TWELVE
My eyes drift past
The vantage point
Of what’s immediately around me.
I am
Transfixed
No longer
Can these circumstances
Confine me
I define my shine
My outlook
My … neue sachlichkeit
My sense of being
My person
I am
Transfixed
I have transcended.
RISE STANDS UP TO ADDRESS the membership. As he looks over the crowded room, he realizes, again, just how large this callout is. Too large. Some of them will have to leave, eventually. Others will mature with time.
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