Upstate

by Kalisha Buckhanon

  My grandma even said that she been praying for you Antonio. And my grandmother is a holy woman. I mean she don’t smoke, she don’t drink, she don’t cuss, she don’t dance unless she in church. She said Granddaddy the only man she was ever with in her whole life. Just like I’m gonna be with you, you gonna be the only man I’ll ever let love me like that. But she said that at her prayer meetings on Wednesdays, they been praying for you Antonio. Her and a bunch of holy women like her. I been to their prayer meetings before. All the times I ran away to live with her, she made me go to church. She made me go to the prayer meetings with her. All the women look just like my grandmother—their skin shiny smooth and dark like the sky at night, gray hairs on their chins, bodies that look like men from behind, but when they turn around you see their breasts and stomachs so big from having so many kids. They don’t even talk really at the meetings. Sing and pray. Sing and pray. That’s all they do. When you walk through the door everybody singing without music and you just join in and start singing too. Then the oldest ones start praying and shouting and screaming and crying and they don’t stop until everybody is sweaty and tired. They doing all that for you Antonio, probably while I’m writing this and while you reading it. So see, you got my grandma and her church, me and my mother, your family, the teachers at school, our friends. You got all these people pulling for you and all of us together can move a mountain. Where there’s a will there’s a way. We all can’t be wrong.

  Love,

  Natasha

  May 3, 1990

  Dear Natasha,

  My lawyer talked to me today. He asked me if I wanted to make a plea. I asked him why and he said that things wasn’t looking too good. The biggest problem, aside from the fact that I blew my testimony, was that they went through my desk at school and found my notebook—you know the one Mr. Cook gave me with Malcolm X on the front. Remember when the prosecution showed them all the drawings I did when I couldn’t concentrate in class cause my mind was on what was going on at home—pictures of me choking my father, stabbing him, pointing a gun at his head. They even found one part where I was supposed to be taking algebra notes but instead I was writing down how I was gonna shoot my daddy with a gun from Black’s cousin. I tried to tell him that all of that was just make-believe, but he said it looked very real under the circumstances. I showed him your letters, and told him that you thought things was going cool and that things might go my way. He said that you wasn’t a good judge of what was going on because you was biased. Remember we learned about bias in legal studies? Just in case you forgot, that mean you was on my side naturally cause you knew me. But he said that in his opinion, the way I acted on the stand hurt me. It hurt me real bad. He said that things was going great when I cried in front of them and everything, but he said that I was too hostile on the stand. He said that I came across as too angry, not apologizing for what I did, and like it was natural for me to do something like that again. I didn’t think I was that bad, but he told me that I should think about pleading to involuntary manslaughter. He said that’s a much lesser charge, and that I won’t get as many years as if I was to get convicted of first or second-degree murder. Plus, he said the judge might have some sympathy for me because of my age and what I been through. He could intervene and not sentence me to a lot. I don’t know what I should do. I don’t have that much time. I think it would be better to plead guilty and hope the judge would have some mercy on me, right? MGD and Mookie both been in the joint before. They said that their juries weren’t shit, even though it was a few black people on there, and then they said the judge threw the book at them. They said they wasn’t trying to scare me. Just keeping it real with you, Youngblood, first time around you should know. Maybe with manslaughter he’ll let me out when I’m 21. Maybe I won’t have to be in there for no 15 or 20 years like if I get second degree. I don’t know what to do. My lawyer telling me one thing, my mother saying I shouldn’t. She don’t believe that people would think I was wrong for what I did, but my mother can be a little cuckoo sometimes. Ma is one of those people who always wanna give others the benefit of the doubt, she always want to try to see the good in people and not believe that they can do evil things. That’s why she wouldn’t leave my daddy. But see, I know better. I know that some of those people would love nothing better than to send a little no-good nigger like me away for life. They wanna put me under the jail so they won’t have to worry about their purses or their big old rings being snatched. One less thug to fuck up the world. I think my lawyer might be right. I think that if the jury don’t like me, then it’s no hope. Baby don’t be mad with me, but I think I’m gonna plead guilty and see what happens.

  With love,

  Antonio

  May 5, 1990

  Dear Antonio,

  Please, listen to me real good, about pleading guilty. Please Antonio, I’m begging you not to do this to yourself, to us. I think you making a big mistake. I think you should wait and see what the jury gonna say. I think you should just wait and see. I know you worried. I know you scared. I know you think you gonna go away for years and years and years, but I really think that they can let you off. I really think everybody believed you. Remember when you first wrote to me and you asked me what I thought? If I thought you killed your daddy? Well, at first I did. I didn’t want to tell you, but at first I thought you was wrong. I thought there was something you coulda done to change it, and I was mad at you for going away and leaving me. Then I said, well dawg, would Antonio do something to me if I make him mad? But maybe after going there and seeing you every day and hearing what everybody had to say about you, I don’t blame you. I don’t think you did nothing wrong. I promise I don’t. I think you did all you could do. I think you are a wonderful, smart, beautiful, and brave person. I think you are a hero. Please, don’t plead guilty to anything. Don’t do this baby. Don’t forget that you a hero. Write me back as soon as you get this.

  Love,

  Natasha

  May 5, 1990

  Dear Natasha,

  Well baby, that’s it. It’s done. I told my lawyer that I didn’t want to take the chance. That I wanted to cop a plea. I’m scared Natasha. I know that you don’t think I get scared, that I put on this front for you and my boys. But I get scared too. I get nervous and everything too sometimes. And I’m telling you, baby, I ain’t never been scared about anything in my whole life as I am about this. I’m gonna go ahead and take the plea. Involuntary manslaughter. 10 years. Upstate. It’s done.

  Yours truly, A

  PART TWO

  May 19, 1990

  Baby Girl,

  I’m cold. I’m so cold I can feel my bones inside of me, holding my body together. I want to pull them out one by one and rub them together like they taught us to do sticks in day camp at the PAL, make a fire inside of me to keep my body warm. I feel alone, like I’m on the outside of the world looking in. Like I’m in a rocket ship going to the moon, staring out of the cockpit window at the earth all pretty and blue and alive below me. I’m gonna die in here. I’m so alone, I’m gonna die.

  The first day I got here, they shaved my hair. They cut it all off. You know how long me and my moms been trying to grow my hair? It was almost down to the middle of my back, and they cut it all off. I ain’t had my hair cut, other than the ends, since I was in the fifth grade or something like that. They took everything else from me—my clothes, the pictures I had put up, my box of letters, my belt so now my pants sag, my shoelaces so I’m walking around tripping all over myself. They say they gonna give it back to me, but I don’t believe em. They had to take a man’s hair too? I felt like Samson in the Bible, you know the strongest man who had ever lived? His woman tricked him into cutting all his hair so his enemies could capture him and break him down. See, and you thought I didn’t know nothing about church. But that’s what they did to me baby. They broke me down when they did that, robbed me, took my manhood. I didn’t mind them making me squat and sticking their fingers up my ass as much as I minded them taking
my hair. I remember cats coming from the clinic talking about the doctor doing that to them all the time. My turn just came up. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I just blocked it out and it was over in a few seconds. But my hair, I can’t never get that back. Ever. Well, at least not for a long time. When it gets to be more than a few inches, I gotta start braiding it. No fros or long ponytails in here. They worried about you hiding weapons or contraband in your hair, so you gotta show some scalp all the time. I can’t call up Laniece the way I used to though to braid it. But I don’t know if I’m gonna want nobody touching me in here, not even the barber they make you go to.

  I miss MGD and Mookie. I miss them brothers a lot. They kind of looked out for me, like I was their little bro or something. I liked that, being the youngest one for a change. All my life, I felt like it was kind of my responsibility to look out for Tyler and Trevon. I was their big bro, the one they looked up to, the role model. I was God. Plus, I knew that if anything ever happened to my daddy, then I would automatically be the man of the house. So, in a lot of ways I never got to be the kid I wanted to be. I always felt like I was the one who had to help my mother with the cooking and the groceries and the laundry and defending the house and everything else. I always felt like a little man trapped inside a boy’s body, like I couldn’t fuck up. Maybe that’s why I acted like a fool in school and started hanging out and shit. I don’t know. In here though, I can’t feel like a little man. I gotta feel like I can handle anything, like I can take anything a motherfucker wanna give me. I only seen a handful of whites—only about ten inmates total in my wing. But they still running things cause it’s only a handful of us in blue. Most of the guards is white, mean, red-faced motherfuckers who talk like they ain’t from New York. In here, black stick with black, Puerto Rican with Puerto Rican. Just like life. Everybody got they territory—imaginary lines in the mess hall, the showers, the phones, the yard. Separate but UNequal, just like life. It’s a few exceptions to that rule, a few cats in here who go “that” way. But not too many.

  After a day of analyzing me and shit, they decided I should go to a Level 2, medium security block. First few days, I just ate by myself. I walked around the yard by myself. I didn’t talk to nobody. I pretended like I was deaf and dumb. I would nod my head and that was it. I was focused on maintaining the mental. I wanted everybody to think I was crazy so I could get my respect. So they think I’m one of them niggers who seem all quiet and innocent like, but who’ll cut your throat in a minute if you make em mad. That’s what I wanted people to think about me, just in case they was planning on trying to fuck with me. And nobody bothered me. They left me alone. Didn’t try to kid with me. I know I promised you I never would, but I’m thinking about getting with a gang. If you ain’t gotta squad when you come in, you don’t get no props coming through the door. You gotta fight for that shit like your life depends on it, cause it does. So I don’t want to, but I’m thinking I need some protection. Until then, I’ll just keep being quiet and crazy.

  We get up everyday at 6, lights out at 10. That’s how it is in here. It’s actually kind of boring up here. It’s nothing like you see on TV. It’s no fights, no beating up with the guards, no screaming and yelling against the bars like animals in cages. When we go out in the yard, or the rec room, people just kind of hang with the same two or three cats all the time. I’m glad it’s not like that. I was really really scared at first about being here because I thought that’s how it was gonna be.

  It’s two of us in my cell, which is really like a tiny room. Two grown niggaz and one toilet that’s real low to the ground with a rusty-ass sink on it. I’ll piss in there or whatever, but I won’t do a number two. I can’t do it. Not even when my stomach hurt so bad I think I’m gonna throw up. I just wait until it’s time for the showers or the yards, and I get one of the guards to escort me to one of the bathrooms. There’s no door on the stalls, but at least it’s a space between them, and if nobody in there I don’t have to worry about them smelling on me. I would be too embarrassed. Plus, the guards be too busy talking or reading a girlie book anyway to pay attention. But my cellmate act like he don’t care, like it don’t bother him. He blow up the spot every day, and I just act like I don’t see it or smell it.

  But in my cell is this spic named Benito and right next to us is this cat named Mohammed. Benito real quiet and shy, like a little kid on they first day of school. But he try to conversate once in a while with me, mostly about music and shit on TV. He love to talk about girlz too. Claim he got all the mamis in Harlem riding his dick. When he do talk, it’s mostly about pussy. He be telling me about some girl he been with, where he fucked her, exactly how he did it. He told me how he did it in Central Park, the Cloisters, the Bronx Zoo, the Times Square McDonald’s. He told me to name a place in New York and he said he bet he would have done it there. I said Coney Island and he said Done. Then I said the Statue of Liberty and he said Done. I said my address and he said Done. Then we both started laughing. I shouldn’t have been surprised then when I found out he was in here for raping somebody. But he don’t seem like the type, cause he one of them shy, Puerto Rican boys with that thick curly hair. The kind of guy all the girls like, the type who don’t have to pull the panties down cause they slip down for him. But then I guess he is obsessed with sex. I know he beats his stuff every night. He in the top bunk and I hear the covers moving back, you know, in that beat we make when we doing something. Sometimes I hear him making noise too, whispering Gloria or Laura or something like that. I don’t know, maybe that’s his girl and who he be writing letters to like I write to you.

  Mohammed don’t say shit to us when we talking about that stuff. He one of those Hebrew Israelite or Nation of Islam people. Him and Benito gotta love-hate thing, like a old couple. They slide mirrors through the bars and stare at each other’s reflections and kick it once in a while. Other than that, Mohammed don’t speak much. He just read his books and write in these notebooks and shit. He got a thousand books and notebooks, and Benito hold onto some of it for him. Him and Benito got into it one time. The very first day I got here, about all of Mohammed shit. They almost went to blows, but the guards came over and settled the shit. I told Mohammed I didn’t care if he took my space. They gave me my pictures and letters back. That’s all the stuff I got right now, barely enough to fill my property box. I got my pictures on the wall, and my letters and stuff under my bed. I ain’t trying to collect too much more than that. This place ain’t my home, so I’m not even gonna get in that mind-set of making it all cozy. Mohammed claim he ain’t never done nothing wrong, he claim he ain’t killed nobody. He in here for armed robbery or something like that, but he said it wasn’t him and he was framed or whatever. Well, regardless of what he says, he in here for a very long time, and he said he trying to be on his best behavior so he can get out when his parole come up.

  I’m sorry this letter so long baby. It’s late at night and I can’t sleep. And I’m sorry it took me so long to write you. The truth is honestly, and don’t take this the wrong way, I was trying not to think about you and your pretty face because I would tear up, I miss you so much. And the wrong thing to do in a place like this is cry and seem soft. I ain’t spoken to my mother either. When I did call her, she cussed me out for waiting so long. I tried to explain to her that I didn’t want to be calling all the time, running up the phone bill and being a burden on her. Daddy gone, so she got enough on her mind to do without paying for my collect phone calls. She told me that was the stupidest thing she ever heard me say, so I promised her I would call her twice a week right after Wheel of Fortune cause I know she at home watching that and she’ll pick up the phone. And baby, I promise I’ll call you and write to you too. This is the last time I’ll ever go this long without communicating to you. That’s a promise.

  Well, I gotta wrap this up because it’s almost time for roll call. The sun is almost up. I can tell cause the little bit of sky I can see through this tiny window is that electric blue color, so
I only got about two hours left to sleep. Plus, I think Benito up there beating his shit again and I ain’t trying to hear that. So, I’ll write you later. Write me back soon baby.

  Love,

  Antonio

  May 22, 1990

  Dear Antonio,

  The prom was Saturday at this real nice restaurant downtown, by Battery Park and the water. We could see the Statue of Liberty from the place cause it was on the twentieth floor or something like that. They had punch, cake, and stuff like chicken wings and meatballs and little hot dogs wrapped in dough. It was almost like a wedding. Everybody had a date but me. Well, probably not everybody, but that’s the way it seemed to me. Me and Laneice both wore black and white. Her mother made our dresses. They were all long and Marilyn Monroe like with a lot of ruffles at the bottom. Mine was strapless and Laneice had spaghetti straps. We both had high slits going up the thigh. Her mother found both of us some polka-dot shoes and a polka-dot purse to match, and Mommy let me wear lipstick. Laneice daddy drove us to the prom in a nice black Lincoln cause you know he part owner of this car service. We got there in style, cause most people took the train. Laneice went with Black, if you can believe that shit. I knew they liked each other. I don’t know why they was always pretending like they didn’t. They danced with each other all night and he brought her cake and punch and they took pictures together.