This Sunday in church with Grandma, when the preacher called people to the altar, I was the first in line. I think I want to get saved, to get baptized for real this time, not like when you a kid and you don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what happened to me. I just started crying and I couldn’t stop. I was mostly thinking about how I was going to go to hell for having sex outside marriage, for lying to my mother. Then, I thought about how maybe that was God’s punishment for you was to put you in jail because we sinned. And I just couldn’t stop crying and shaking and then my legs got weak and I fell to the ground and I was crying and screaming and people started fanning me and putting their hands on me and the holy women started singing and the organ started going real fast and loud in my head, and I heard somebody scream “Save this child Jesus” before I passed out.
Love,
Natasha
February 11, 1990
Dear Baby Girl:
You looked so good this weekend I thought about just saying fuck it and trying to fight my way out of here. I thought that maybe if I just lay low and act all sweet and innocent that these co’s will let their guard down around me, and I could pull a fast one on them like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. My mother used to make me watch that shit all the time when it came on late at night on cable, and I remember the first time I saw it I cried cause he didn’t get away in the end. I bet I could get some of these older cats to help me out. They call me young blood cause I just made seventeen. It’s two named Mookie and MGD who kinda look after me. I eat and lift with them and shit. They call me Bird because they say I got a bird chest, and I told them motherfuckers that’s all right cause I’m gonna be eighteen and I’m gonna keep drinking my milk and grow up and whoop all they asses. But for real though, you looked real sweet and luscious in all that pink. I see you wore that little Karl Kani shirt I bought you. I got XS so it could fit just like that, all tight around your tatas. I wished nobody else was there so I could put em in my mouth for a minute, suck them like you like. And I like your new do, all braided tight and long down your back. That shit is hot. But the kiss was nice, it was enough to hold me over for a minute. It was so soft and sweet and wet. It felt like wet grass between my toes when we let the hydrants loose in the summer, or soap bubbles before you squeeze them too tight. I love your lips. I can’t stop thinking about them and I still got that lip gloss flavor on em cause I won’t wash it off—I think this time it was peach and not strawberry like you normally wear. I smelled it in my sleep so I dreamed about us. You coulda gave me a little bit more you know, but I understand if you was embarrassed, with my mother and cousin and brothers and shit all around. You gonna have to come by yourself one day, if they let you. If you dress up and put on some makeup you could look eighteen, you would just have to think of something to tell your mother and your stepdaddy.
I’m gonna have to finish this letter up because my lawyer is going to be coming here any minute now, and he wanted me to write down a minute by minute account or some shit like that of the day before it happened. I’m saying “it” and not murder because I ain’t no murderer and you know that so we don’t have to go over it again. But I haven’t done it yet. I don’t know why, I guess I just don’t wanna think about it right now. So if I don’t finish it then he can just be mad at me. I don’t care if he get mad at me because he ain’t gonna do shit but huff and puff and fiddle with his glasses and swirl that one long hair he got on his head around his bald spot and grab his briefcase and run out and say something like, Antonio I’m here for you, I’m trying to help you. If you don’t want my help then fine, or some other crackerjack talk. But before I go, I want to tell you Natasha that I love you with all my heart and a man don’t say that often so when he does, he means it. And you don’t have to worry about me turning into no gay faggot. I’m 100, no fuck that, 200 percent strong Black man. I do love you, that’s why if I find out that you messin around behind my back, giving it up to somebody else while I’m in here, then you won’t have to worry about me going to jail because I will just kill myself. I’m serious. I will find something to slit my throat or hang some sheets from the ceiling or make one of these big, swole niggaz in here so mad at me that they break my neck. To answer your question from the last letter, or I don’t know if it was a question but I’ll respond, what we do together is not a sin. It’s a sin when two people get down and they don’t love each other and they in it just for the thrill of the moment, for a little bit of pleasure. But see me and you is like a team, like Adam and Eve in the Bible, so how can that possibly be a sin if we love each other? You’re right, lying is a sin and fucking is too. But we don’t fuck, we make love.
Love always,
Antonio
PS. You know what? I’m sick and tired of McDonald’s and bologna sandwiches. Remember how me and you used to cut Mr. Lombard class every six and seventh period so we could go to McDonald’s and get a vanilla shake and large fry and Big Mac to share? Well, Mr. Lombard don’t have to worry about me skipping his class for Ronald McDonald no damn more. You know they feeding us Mickey D type shit, right? Every day and morning and noon and night. Mickey D’s. In the morning we have them sponge pancakes and nasty eggs, and at lunch we have shitburgers and at night we have shitburgers again. Sometimes they’ll substitute a bologna sandwich. When I first got here, I had to do number 2 all the time cause of all the Mickey D’s. I was embarrassed, but everybody told me not to worry about it cause they all did it too. But know this much, when I get out of here, I don’t want to see the golden arches ever again in my life!
February 14, 1990
Dear Sweety Pie Honey Bunch Baby Love Strong Black Man Antonio,
Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy Belated Birthday! Bonjour. Comment ça va? Je suis très fatiguée and sad and missing you a lot. Okay, I tried a little bit of French. If Madame Girard come over and snatch this note I’m writing to you, she can’t say it don’t have nothing to do with class. But I said bonjour, which means hello or good day. Then I said how are you and I’m very tired and you know the rest. Thank you for my card and the teddy bear and everything. It was so sweet. When Black gave it to me this morning and told me that you told him exactly what to go out and buy, I started crying a little bit, I ain’t gonna lie. I’m glad you liked the way I looked this weekend. Me and Laneice stayed up all night doing my hair and I wore that shirt you bought me on purpose. Antonio, you so nasty asking for a kiss in front of your mother. You right, I was a little shame at first, but I forgot about them real quick when I felt your tongue in my mouth. On the way back, you know Trevon and Black was making fun of me, making sucking noises and shit. But your mother just looked at me and then looked at them and then looked back at me and smiled that little smile she does when she know me and you ain’t been to the movies like we said. And she was just like, “Ain’t nothing wrong with a little bit of kissing, nothing wrong with a little bit of love.” When you get out, I’m giving you all the love in the world. And you getting out of there soon baby! Did you hear on the news that this man in South Africa named Nelson Mandela got out of jail after 27 motherfucking years for some shit he didn’t even do? Can you imagine being locked up for 27 years for something wasn’t even your fault? Mr. Lombard made us sit in a circle and shit and get all cozy and talk about it, and here everybody go looking at me. Like I know about it just cause you in the joint. All I’m thinking is, it gotta be some hope for you Antonio if this man can hold on for 27 damn years and not break. You can stay strong for the few months it’s gonna take to get you out of there. You know what the best part was? His wife was waiting for him when he got out, just like I’m gonna be waiting for you.
But I guess you wanna know why I’m tired? Same old shit, different night. Mommy and Roy got into it last night—again. The worst part is I think it’s my fault. You remember when I told you about those new houses that they’re building? Well, I thought my mother wasn’t paying attention to me and wasn’t listening, but I guess she was. She called the
number last week and went down to this place in Midtown where they help people like us, you know without any money, get houses. Well, Roy found out about it the other night cause me and my mother was at the kitchen table trying to figure out the paperwork. She needed me to help her understand stuff like combined household income and assets and net worth and all that stuff we learned in econ. So anyway, we sitting at the kitchen table with our pencils sharpened and the calculators out and going, and this nigga come in the house smelling like weed and acting a fool. He is just so ugly to me Antonio, with them big red bubble eyes and those little nasty braids sticking up on his head like ant legs. Mommy keep trying to tell him he ain’t never gonna grow no dreads because he’s losing his hair, that he just gonna have one or two locks hanging on for dear life, but I guess he’s like Jesse Jackson and trying to keep hope alive. Me and my mother was having so much fun too. She was laughing and she had pulled out some of her old tapes, stuff like Chaka Khan and Patti Labelle and Regina Belle. She was even trying to sing a little bit, and she had just promised that she would do my hair for over the weekend. My mother hasn’t done my hair in so long Antonio, so I was getting excited just thinking about sitting between her legs while she parted my hair and rubbed my scalp until I got sleepy like a baby. But Roy messed all that up real quick, just like he been messing shit up for the past two years he been in our lives. He came in the kitchen and sat in the chair all backward. He said, “Denise what you doing?” and my mother just told his ass, “Nothing Roy, it don’t concern you,” which made me think that if we get this house he won’t move in, which would be perfect. So he was like, “What you mean it don’t concern me? Why you gotta be all bitchy? I just asked a question.” So she lit a cigarette, which meant she was getting nervous cause Mommy only smoke when she nervous, and she told him, “I’m thinking about trying to buy me something.” And Roy was like, “You need all them papers just to buy something? Must be a pretty big something.” Then she said, “It is big. I want to buy a home.” And he started laughing, howling really, all loud and sloppy and exaggerated. And I was thinking it really ain’t that funny so he must be just trying to hurt Mommy. And I was right, cause he started going on and on about how nobody was gonna give her a house cause she didn’t even have her high school diploma and couldn’t pass the GED and she couldn’t pay for a house and then she started saying that he wasn’t no better and he couldn’t help her do shit and she could do bad all by herself. Before I knew it, she had scooped all the papers up and stuffed them in the kitchen junk drawer. That was the end of that.
I just got up and went into my room and shut the door and turned up my Queen Latifah record real loud so I wouldn’t have to hear all the arguing. I pulled out a picture of my daddy when he was alive and when I was first born, you know the one I showed you that looks kind of orange, with me and Mommy and Daddy and those fake trees in the back and I had those two Afro puffs and a sailor suit on? And I was mad at my daddy, mad at him because he had to leave me and my mother and die. Then I got mad at the world for the fire that took our building and my daddy. I mean Antonio why did MY father have to die? Out of all the daddies in the world, God just had to take mine. I was only eleven. Eleven years ain’t no time with your father. It’s not fair. It’s not right. And I got mad at you too, Antonio. Mad because you couldn’t talk to me about what was happening in your house and what was going on so I could have tried to help you, so you wouldn’t leave me too. Sometimes, I wonder what the point of loving somebody is, if all they gonna do is turn around and leave you in the end. I hope you got a good lawyer, because I can’t stand the thought of you being locked up for life. Because in that case, you might as well be dead to me. I’m not trying to make you feel bad, but I just don’t know how much more I can take. I’m real lonely out here in this world, on the outside like you like to call it.
Au revoir (that means until I see you again and I will see you again soon),
Natasha
PS. J’adore Antonio ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
February 18, 1990
Dear Natasha,
Okay there is not much I can say in this letter. I’m gonna have to wait until I see you again because like I told you, these crackers read my shit and I don’t want to say anything that might incriminate me. My lawyer told me not to talk to anybody about anything, because it could all be evidence against me in the end. But baby, please don’t be mad at me right now. I can’t take you being mad at me right now. That thought is like a dagger in my heart, or swallowing a razor and shitting it out. Remember when we were at the library and you found that book showing how white folks threw slaves in the ocean with anchors and chains around their ankles, so they could sink and never come up again? That’s what you made me feel like, a slave in the middle of the ocean with a anchor around my feet. Like I was in some deep dark ocean where nobody loved me or cared about me, like I was in the dark with water all around me and inside of me. Like I should just give up and not even try to fight or struggle anymore. When I read your letter my stomach got all twisted and I got a taste in my mouth like the cod liver oil my mother used to force down my throat when I was sick. You all I got right now, you and my mother and that’s it. Maybe Trevon and Black, but it’s a different type of loyalty we have. I ain’t a punk, but the only thing I can say right now is that I need you, Natasha. I never thought I’d say I need no female, but I need you right now and I can’t stand the thought of you being mad at me. I can’t tell you totally what happened the night Daddy died, and I wish I could because I know that it would help you believe in me. Let’s just say it’s not what you or other people think.
All I can say is that my lawyer is a good guy and I think he really working hard for me. He joke with me all the time about how I’m going to be back in school and back on the courts in no time. He told me that all we have to do is get my story straight and argue that I snapped from seeing my father hit my mother one too many times and I couldn’t take it anymore and that’s why I did what I did. And that’s the truth, it’s not a lie. You’ll hear in court what happened, the truth will come out when I have my day in court. They want to try me as an adult because I’m seventeen now. He told me that he’s trying to persuade the judge that I shouldn’t be tried as an adult, and he said that he is sure he can do that for me. Which means, Natasha, that the longest I can be locked up is until I’m 21 and that’s not a long time for us to be apart. When I’m 21, you’ll just be 20. When I get out we can get married real quick and start a family and buy a house where you can do hair or make clothes in the basement and I can have a music studio or sumthin down there too. We can do it. We can get through it and this can happen for us. I just need for you not to be mad at me and not to leave me, just to stick by me and not to leave me. Write me back as soon as you get this.
Love always and forever,
Michael Antonio Lawrence II
February 28, 1990
Antonio, I’m so sorry that it has taken me so long to answer your letter. I know you wanted me to write back as soon as I got it, but the truth is, Roy had your letter and was keeping it from me. Yeah, he read your shit. I saw an envelope with NEW YORK STATE INMATE CORRESPONDENCE SERVICES balled up on the dresser in my mother’s room when she sent me in there to get her purse so I could go to the corner store. And I snatched it off the dresser and came out demanding to know who opened my shit and who read it. And my mother looked like she didn’t know what I was talking about, and then Roy started laughing that ole stupid laugh of his. Talking bout, “Girl calm down. I just wanted to know what the little nigger was talking about. You better write him back soon, cause I don’t want the young’un drowning in the ocean.” I don’t know what happened, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had to do something. I had to hit somebody. I hate him Antonio. I hate him so much. I just started screaming and kicking, and my arms were swinging around like the fan blades and I was saying, “I hate you I hate you I hate you!” over and over again. He was laughing at me the whole time, grabbing my arm and liftin
g me up off of my feet like I was a rag doll. And my mother was screaming, “Don’t hurt her Roy! Don’t hurt her please don’t hurt my baby!” and then he finally put me down. I just left the house in a daze. I don’t know how, but I ended up on the 2 going to the Bronx. I stayed at my grandmother’s house this weekend. I’m not leaving. I’m not going back there. Drew was smart getting the hell out of that house when Roy came. I don’t care what my grandmother say about trying to get along. I’m not going back.
So Antonio, I’m sorry that I didn’t write back soon. I didn’t get your letter and I thought you weren’t thinking about me because you were too busy getting ready for your trial and stuff. Write me back soon. Or try to call me collect at my grandmother’s house cause this is where I’ll be for the rest of my life.
Love,
Natasha
March 1, 1990
Dear Whore:
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