Upstate

by Kalisha Buckhanon

  Natasha you are a stupid bitch. You don’t care about me. All you know how to do is think about yourself. You don’t think about me waiting for your letter every day you don’t think about me calling your house and you’re not there and I don’t know where you are if you dead or alive or if you got somebody else. You’re selfish and you get on my nerves bitch bitch bitch hoe hoe hoe bitch I hate you

  With hate,

  Antonio

  March 14, 1990

  Dear Antonio,

  I don’t know what’s going on with us. I don’t know why you’re treating me like this but you need to chill. Stop breakin’ on me for something that wasn’t my fault. Antonio, I miss you so much my stomach been hurting and I can’t eat no more. I was even throwing up the other night and Roy black ass gonna tell Mommy, “You better go get the girl a piss test and see if she pregnant.” I told him, “Leave me the fuck alone,” and called him a gorilla-looking son of a bitch under my breath. Why he always on my case? But I miss you so much Antonio, I’m gonna die. I swear I’m gonna just lay down and not get back up. I think I lost about ten pounds, maybe even more. Them tight skirts you used to like on me ain’t even tight no more. I don’t have a belt tight enough to keep em up. Antonio, I’m so worried about you I don’t know what to do. I NEEEEEEEDDDDDD to see you. I don’t know why you not calling me. What did I do to you? I can’t even eat and I can barely sleep because I’m so worried about you and scared that you hate me. I had to leave Mr. Lombard class the other day because I was crying again. He tried to talk to me after class again, telling me that he was always there to talk and asking me if I needed counseling or some shit like that. I don’t know why that white man always trying to be my friend after class when he treat me like shit in class, but whatever. I don’t know if you got beat up in there or what. I talked to your mom and she said that you were calling the house. I asked her if you had asked about me and she said that you said you were through with me. She asked me, “What did you do to my son?” and I told her I didn’t do nothing. I explained to her about why I didn’t write you back, about Roy and stuff, and she just nodded her head and said something like, “Antonio just acting real sensitive right now.” I don’t think she believe me because she been acting funny now when I stop by, so I don’t stay long no more. Or maybe she just sad, real sad that you ain’t there and Mr. Lawrence is dead and Tyler and Trevon is asking her why they daddy gone and they big brother is locked up. So I didn’t ask if I could go with them to see you this weekend. If your mother’s mad at me and you’re mad at me, then I didn’t want to place myself in a uncomfortable situation.

  But I just want you to know that I do love you. I’m sorry if I wasn’t thinking about you and what you’re going through. I guess I shoulda wrote to you even if you didn’t write me, and I promise it won’t happen again. I promise you I won’t ever hurt you again or ever cheat on you in life. The prom is coming up and I swear to you I’m not going with anybody. Me and Laneice and some of my cousins might all go together and wear the same colors, but that’s it. You’ll be there in my heart. I’ll put your picture in my purse. Write me back soon or call me when you get a chance. I’m back at home now with my mother, so you can call me there. I will sit at home all week if I have to and wait for your call.

  Love,

  Natasha

  March 17, 1990

  Dear Natasha,

  Baby, I’m so sorry for everything I ever did to you. I’m so sorry for making you upset and making you cry and I promise I will never do it again. When I heard your voice on the phone the other day I just felt so stupid and mad at myself for treating you the way that I treated you and saying the things that I said and returning your letters. You better keep your promise and send them back because I want to read each and every one of them and write you back for each and every one. I was so relieved when you picked up the phone and took my call. I thought that you would hate me after the way I treated you and how I acted. MGD and Mookie was laughing at me when I was talking on the phone with your ass, calling me whipped and sprung and shit cause I was apologizing so much. They was like, Youngblood got it bad, youngblood got the jones. But I didn’t care. I love you. You’re my woman, my lady, my girl, my heart. Nothing else mattered when I was talking to you. My trial is about to start soon, and it’s gonna be over quick because everybody gonna see the truth about what happened. And when they see the truth and see I ain’t no monster and that I’m a real person with feelings who wouldn’t kill his daddy for nothing, they gonna let me go and then we can be together forever. We can be with each other forever. I want to marry you. Natasha, will you marry me?

  Sincerely,

  Antonio

  March 21, 1990

  Dear Antonio,

  Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Love, Natasha

  March 26, 1990

  Dear Natasha,

  Nubian Princess

  Always got my back

  Totally real and fresh

  Antonio’s woman for life

  Smile like sunshine

  Hair like silk

  All the Woman I need

  Love you forever,

  Antonio

  March 30, 1990

  Dear Antonio,

  Your mother is real excited about us getting married. She told me that I should make you buy me a big diamond ring when you get out—in a few weeks, she said. You didn’t tell me baby you was getting out in a few weeks, did you? Anyway anyway, it’s this place up on 125th and 7th where I know we could get a big diamond real cheap. It might be stolen from somewhere, but it’ll still be cheap. I’m sure if you got about a hundred or two dollars we could get one. After the rings we can get a car, then an apartment to call our own, and then a house. Remember when Black had stole that Malibu on 145th, by the library, and we drove up and down FDR all night? You looked so fine behind the steering wheel. I was shocked that you could drive. You never told me you were that good behind the wheel. Then you promised me you would teach me.

  When I was smaller and my feet couldn’t even reach the pedals, my daddy used to let me sit on his lap and take hold of the wheel while he put his hard hands on top of mine. One time I drove almost all the way down 125th when it was Christmastime. I counted all the lighted Christmas trees hanging above the streetlights. That was one of the only ways I even knew it was the holidays. I counted seven Christmas trees in the sky before my daddy bounced me off his knee real fast. He had spotted this cop pulling up behind us when we passed 5th and he was worried about getting pulled over cause his license was suspended. Daddy slowed down, turned off the radio, and I swore I could hear his heart beating as loud as mine the whole way, and I kept looking back to see if a police car would be behind us with its lights flashing and then the cop would pull us over and throw my daddy on the car and handcuff him while his head was down low and I would have to walk to my uncle’s house around the corner on 124th and Lenox and maybe just maybe somebody I went to school with would see me walking and ask me why or see my daddy in the police car and ask me why and I would have to tell them and be laughed at the next day at school. We was quiet the whole way home until we made it to our building, where my mother was looking out of the window on the fourth floor, waiting for us with Drew in her arms because he was still just a baby. She couldn’t start dinner until Daddy came home with the groceries, and I remember how happy my daddy looked bringing the groceries up the stairs, staring at my mother like he couldn’t wait to make another baby with her. We were a regular happy family back then, before the fire, before Roy, before Drew left to live with Grandma. Me and you gonna have a family like that one day, we gonna start all over again and get it right.

  With love,

  Natasha

  April 5, 1990

  Natasha,

  Baby, I’m scared. I don’t think I want you to come to the trial. My lawyer said that he might call you to testify, to talk about my character and to talk about my relationship with my mother and father. But he said that most likely he w
on’t need you, since you can’t—what was the word—substantiate any abuse or anything. He asked me if you knew about it and I told him you didn’t know shit about it because I wasn’t trying to expose you to anything. Tyler and Trevon definitely gonna have to talk, maybe Black since he my best friend and he was in our house a lot. I don’t think I want anybody I know to come to the trial. It’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, things that have happened to me in my life that I’m embarrassed to have people know. My lawyer been practicing with me, he been schooling me on what to say and how to act and how to look at the jury and the judge and all that so they can be sympathetic for me. He told me that it was only about five of us on the jury, you know, black people. He said that he tried to get more, but he couldn’t. He said that he tried not to pick no old people or no Christians because they was the worst when it came to feeling sorry for somebody, especially me since people think that the worst thing in the world is killing one of your parents. He said if it was my mother, I could have hung it up, but since it was my daddy—a man—that I have a big chance. He said that I have a real chance. I really ain’t never talked about God a lot or went to church, mostly cause my family didn’t, but I guess you should pray for me. I think that’s gonna help.

  Love,

  Antonio

  April 8, 1990

  Dear Antonio,

  How can you ask me not to come to your trial? Baby you KNOW I gotta be there for my man! How you gonna ask me to not come down there so I can see you every day? I’m gonna get on the train and come to the courthouse every day. Fuck school, cause I ain’t learning shit in that dump anyway. Everybody been looking at me at lunch, in the halls, in the courtyard, talking bout “Ah-hah, yo man locked up.” Like you was a nobody or something. These the same motherfuckers used to laugh in your face, used to be your friends. And to think, we actually worry about who like us and who don’t, when even the people who act like they like you ain’t got your back when you need it. Plus Mommy don’t care if I go. All she can think about is Roy, so she won’t know no better. I told you that your lawyer and the popos and everybody else been trying to get me to talk, but I told em I don’t know shit. But if they want me to say something good, I’ll be there. I wouldn’t miss that for the world. I’m gonna look real good for you too, baby. Every day I’m gonna have a new outfit, something fierce and sexy, so you can have something to think about at night when you can’t sleep cause you thinking about being with me. And don’t worry about me hearing anything at the trial that’s gonna make me stop loving you. THAT is never going to happen. I ain’t never gonna stop loving you as long as I live. So, make sure that you look for my face out in the audience, whenever you thinking about giving up or thinking the judge don’t like you, know that you got somebody out there who love you and got your back.

  Love, your wife,

  Natasha

  April 12, 1990

  Hey boo,

  Never thought the infamous Antonio Michael Lawrence would be saying this, but God I miss school!!! I miss that punk ass principal Mr. Diggs, I miss them damn security guards chasing my ass around and making me go to class, I even miss those nasty slices of pizza at lunch. Yo those things taste like rubber, but I don’t think anything could be worse than McDonald’s all the damn time. I miss wilding out in the hallway and joshing with Black in class, casing on people and shit. Talking about each other’s moms and each other’s dicks. I even miss my teachers, a little bit at least. I miss driving them up the wall. Madame Girard still crazy, still running around with them bright ass colors on talking about she celebrating Mardi Gras? Yo that bitch was crazy. I know she used to be cussing me out in French and knew I hadn’t studied that shit so I wouldn’t be able to tell. You said Mr. Lombard getting on your nerves? What’s new? Mr. Cook still bringing in his whack ass rhymes, trying to get us to listen to that shit? He need to stick to teaching English and leave hip-hop to the pros. But I guess I really liked Mr. Cook cause he came to work looking nice every day in his suits and shit, although I don’t know why he was dressing up just for us. But he used to tell me all the time, Antonio, you gotta dress for success. That’s what he always used to say when I rode him about them tight pants and his shoes shining like new money. I mean, his wife is mad fine, so I don’t know why she didn’t dress him better. He used to say with that funny ass voice, Black man got hard enough boat to row in this country without being harshly judged for their appearance. You need to pull your pants up and tuck your shirt in young man. Or he used to call me son sometimes, and I imagined he was my daddy. Member all that “Crackdown on Putdowns” shit he tried when he got sick of us making fun of him for that Jamaican accent? That week, I musta got put out about forty or fifty times cause I couldn’t stop making fun of that motherfucker when he was up there trying to teach us that Catcher in the Rye shit. Now that I’m locked up, I kind of wish I woulda listened to him a lot more.

  I didn’t want to tell nobody, but I really did like that book, The Catcher in the Rye. Yeah yeah yeah, I know I told you I didn’t read it and I made you write that damn narrative essay or whatever the hell it was for me. But I did read it, matter of fact I read it twice. I was really feeling all that Man vs. Society and Man vs. Self shit that Mr. Cook was telling us Holden was going through. Like I was really identifying with the part when he fell down the steps and slipped on them peanuts or cashews or whatever the hell it was, cause I thought that meant that it was easy for you to kind of walk into stuff in life that could make you fall, that could trip you up just when you thought you couldn’t get any lower. That’s what I used to think before this shit, but now I’m like Holden Caulfield slipping on peanuts. Shit only got worse for me. I’m gonna tell you a little secret that you can’t tell nobody and you better not show nobody this letter cause then they’ll know. But remember that part in the very end of the book, when Holden sister, I think her name was Phoebe, was on that carousel and he couldn’t stop looking at her and he started crying because he thought she looked so pretty? And then it started to rain, and he couldn’t even move because he was just so happy looking at her? I had started crying on that part, cause I was thinking about this one time that my mother had took me and Trevon all the way to Coney Island to walk on the boardwalk and ride the Ferris wheel. I had stood down at the bottom cause you could only ride two at a time and Trevon wouldn’t ride with nobody but Ma. But she looked pretty like that, with her bright red lipstick on and them big doorknocker earrings and her baseball cap. She looked like mad young and I had looked at her in a different way that day, like I could see why my daddy fell in love with her. I had wanted to write about that for my narrative essay or response or whatever that shit was called, but I guess I didn’t want to worry about the fellas laughing at me.

  Yeah, I miss that place, never thought I’d say that shit but it’s true. Most of all, I miss looking at your fine ass every day, passing notes and shit, sneaking feels in the stairway. I can’t wait to get back. I’m gonna be a different person. I mean that Natasha. If I get out of this shit, Michael Antonio Lawrence II is gonna be a new man. I made a promise to God that if he let me out then I’m gonna be the person that him and my mother would want me to be. I promise I’m gonna do all my homework, I’m not gonna make the subs cry, I ain’t gonna crack on nobody in class, I ain’t gonna cheat off my boys work. Matter of fact, I’m gonna make them start studying. Imagine that, me and Black and some of our other cats in the library or at the crib with a book open and the TV off. I can’t wait to see that one. But I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna make it happen. I’m gonna change, cause if me and you gonna do this man and wife shit, then I gotta get my shit together. That’s on the real. I gotta go to college, get a good job, make sumthin out of myself so I can do right by you and the kids. I ain’t gonna fuck up like my daddy did. I ain’t gonna have my kids living in no projects, wearing hand-me-down shit and lying to folks over the phone cause I can’t pay my bills. I ain’t gonna drink myself silly and beat my wife and my kids cause I ain’t a man and
I can’t pay my bills. I ain’t gonna fuck no young tricks in my wife bed cause I don’t have respect for her. I ain’t gonna do none of that. I’m gonna be a good man.

  Love, your husband,

  Antonio

  April 19, 1990

  Dear Antonio,

  You looked so good today in the courtroom. I ain’t never seen you in a suit before and you sure looked fresh in it. It made me think that maybe if we went to church like my grandmother always trying to get me to do, I would have seen you in a suit before. And maybe if we went to church, God would smile down on us more like my grandmother say and this wouldn’t have happened. But, oh well, it did happen so here we are. Anyway, I helped your mother pick out that suit. We went all the way to Macy’s to get it. It cost almost 150 dollars, Antonio. Your mother said she had used some of the money she got from people after the funeral to buy it. She had wanted to buy you some of them corny ass loafers to wear with your suit, but I told her Antonio IS NOT gonna wear them shoes. She tried to challenge me, and said, “Little girl, I think I know my son better than you do.” So I had to break her heart and let her know she didn’t. I told her about them no-name jeans she used to get you from Conway, remember the ones with the pockets all high to your stomach and them thick cuffs at the bottom? I told her you used to take them jeans off in gym and wear sweats hanging down all day. She looked hurt about it, but at least she took my advice and we got the black sneaks. Who braiding your hair up in the joint? It looked all nice and neat and fresh. Let me find out you got a “girl”friend up in there! I’m just kidding. I know you wouldn’t never leave me and go that way. I was surprised that things was so short today. I thought we was gonna be there a long time. I thought it was gonna be a lot more screaming and yelling and the judge banging his gavel and stuff like that. But everything was pretty chill, which was cool. The less action the better in this case, right? I think your lawyer real good. He did a good job talking to the jury about you, he made you sound real good. Not that you ain’t real good anyway, but it seemed like you was going through some shit you wasn’t letting me in on. I didn’t know you was going through it baby. Why didn’t you tell me? If we gonna be husband and wife, I’m gonna need to know these things. I’m gonna need to know about what’s going on with you at all times, so no shit like this don’t ever happen again.