Upstate
Page 8
Well he was gone for a while before my mother came in the room with a towel wrapped around her head and she sat on my bed I guess expecting me to say something, but I just looked at her like, “What?” And she said, “Natasha, can’t you just try to stop fighting with Roy? Y’all driving me up the wall, I swear.” And I didn’t even feel like talking about it, so I just sighed real loud and then she kept looking at me and I was like “What?” again. And she said, “Well, girl answer me,” and I said, “I didn’t know there was a question,” and she just said, “Watch your mouth.” I just told her, Antonio, that I didn’t like him, matter of fact I hated him and I couldn’t wait to leave and I was going to France and not coming back. Then I told her about Laneice’s mother and father, about how they didn’t scream and fight and holler all the time and that was why I liked to go over there so much. I expected my mother to say something to that, but she didn’t for a while and when I finally looked up she had her head down and she was crying. I didn’t know what to do, so I just started crying too and I hugged her and told her I was sorry. She just said, “Natasha, when your father died I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I really didn’t, especially since we had nowhere to go. Roy came along and made me feel like a woman again and it had been so long.” Then she kind of embarrassed me cause she said, “I know Antonio make you feel like a woman, that’s why you love him so much. I ain’t stupid.” Then I said, and I wasn’t trying to be smart, Antonio, I really wasn’t, “Is that a question?” She didn’t get mad though, she just got up and said, “I don’t ask questions when I already know the answer cause that’s a waste of God’s time.” Then she turned off my light like she used to do when she tucked me in the bed and before she walked out she told me, “I know you miss your daddy. I miss him too.”
Then I was in the dark all by myself, swallowed up by the black night, swallowed up by a floating lonely, swallowed up by deep down dark that’s inside you and not just around you and likes to tease you and say look at me I’m here and I ain’t goin nowhere so you better get used to it.
Love your lonely girl,
Natasha
July 18, 1990
Hey There Lonely Girl! (You know that song, don’t you?)
But anyway baby, don’t feel like you alone. I wish I could say I feel you but I can’t cause I have grown niggaz snoring all around me so I’m feeling quite crowded right now. But for real though baby girl, cheer up. I can’t stand the thought of you feeling lonely. I can’t live with it. And the reason why is because I know it’s all my fault. I know it’s on me why you alone, cause I ain’t there to hold you or for you to call me on the phone and bitch about him. Tell you the truth, if I was there I would punch his ass for you, but I ain’t there so I can’t. Maybe it’ll cheer you up to know that Ms. Harris answered my letter and she put my name on the list for an appointment with her. I ain’t gonna give you the copy to read cause I wanna keep it since it’s so nice and I keep all my letters to read when I’m bored or whatever, but here’s what it say: “Antonio, I accept your apology and understand why you may have acted the way you did. I was a little hurt by your actions, but it is not the first time something like that has happened to me and I’m sure it won’t be the last. But you sound sincere in your letter, so with that maybe you and I can start fresh. Why don’t we start our new beginning with you writing a book report for me? I want you to finish a book that you find interesting, and then write about it. You can write anything you want—a summary, response, critique, or review. This will help me assess your skill level and then decide where we should begin. I look forward to receiving that and seeing you again. Thank you again for your apology. Ms. Harris.”
Now wouldn’t you know that this same day I got this note, Mr. Cook came up here to see me? Come to find out, he got a nephew in the joint. I couldn’t believe a man like Mr. Cook would know somebody here. Then again, he knows me. He said that he definitely wanted to see me in person so he could tell me not to give up on my dreams. I gave that cat hell in his class, but I guess he used to kids like me. I was surprised because normally we have to put all the people we expecting to come visit us on a list, but he said he had some connections. I’m wondering what kind of connections a man like Mr. Cook could have in the joint, but then again I guess you can’t judge a book by its cover. I mean, the man did rap in class so maybe he a little bit tougher than we think. But anyway, he told me that he came to bring something that belonged to me. It was my copy of The Catcher in the Rye. He said that he had held on to it for me cause he had thought things might be different and I would come back to class. I asked him why he think to bring me the book, and he said I could tell that you liked it. I don’t see how he could tell that since I flunked every quiz he gave us on it, but he is a really smart man I guess when it’s all said and done. He said he couldn’t stay that long cause him and his wife and kids was gonna see some family she had up in Connecticut, so he had to go cause he had left them at the IHOP to come see me.
I didn’t do nothing all day Sunday but read that book again so I could write my report and get it to Ms. Harris so I could get in the class. I mean, it ain’t no coincidence that he brought me the book and she wanted a report. That’s a sign from the Most High as Mohammed put it that I gotta get it together, don’t you think? I’m gonna write that report tomorrow, and I’m gonna do it all by myself. You remember how I used to always ask you to write my shit for me? Well, this time I’m gonna do it all by myself, with no help from anybody. I might ask Mohammed to look at it for spelling and puncutation, and that’s it. I promise I’m not gonna disappoint anybody anymore.
Love,
Antonio
July 27, 1990
I’m sorry I took so long to write back to you, but I had to sort out some things I wanted to say to you. You know what Antonio, sometimes I feel like you don’t even be listening to me or caring about what I have to say. I know you try to cheer me up, but I think you need to realize you ain’t gotta be locked up to be lonely. I have a lot of problems and a lot of things I think about and want to do myself. It’s like lately I been feeling your letters is all about you and you ain’t interested in me no more. And I think you trying a little too hard to impress this Ms. Harris so I’m wondering if you got feelings for her. I saw your mother the other day and she told me you sent her the paper you wrote and all the good comments Ms. Harris had wrote on it, and I got a little bit upset cause you ain’t said nothing to me about it. What, you got sumthin to hide? You need not be worried about Ms. Harris. You need to be worrying about your mother. Antonio, the truth is she don’t look too good. She done put on a lot of weight I can tell you that. You ain’t seen her in a while, but the next time you see her you’ll see what I’m talking about. Now Mrs. Lawrence always had them hips, but it’s like her stomach got big and her arms swelled up and every time I come over there she just sitting on that couch with a bowl of dried-up food on the front table, smelling up the room. She just flip channels over and over again, from Oprah to People’s Court to Days of Our Lives to whatever. I keep asking her when she gonna go back to her job and she keep saying she ain’t ready. Tell you the truth I think she fired and don’t want to accept it or admit it. I don’t know where Tyler and Trevon be half the time. It’s the summer, so I guess they be out on the courts or riding bikes.
But anyway she took all Mr. Lawrence pictures down, and on Saturday me and her took the bus down to 125th to the Salvation Army to donate some of his clothes. I guess she finally accepting that he gone. Now, if you don’t want her to take your pictures down and give your clothes away (starting with the kicks), you better start showing some concern for somebody other than yourself. Like about time I started thinking about myself for a change. I’m starting to turn out just like my mother, thinking about everybody else and not myself. Well, that’s about to change. I’m going to France in less than a month and I asked for more hours so I could save up some money for my trip, so I’m not gonna have that much time to write. Go ahead and keep yourself busy w
ith Ms. Harris while I handle my business.
Best wishes,
Natasha
July 31, 1990
First of all Natasha, no you do not know what it’s like to be me. You do not know what I been through and what I go through every motherfucking day of my life. You don’t have a clue what it’s like to smell another man’s shit or to be scared to look somebody in the face for fear you might get clocked for nothing or to have to do the same thing over and over every day at the same time every day or to have somebody watch you take a piss or wash your nuts. You don’t know how heavy a dead body is and how no matter now hard you try you can’t get that wide eye look out of your head and that soggy water smell out of your nose and the gargling noises it make when it’s trying to breathe out of your dreams at night. So when you know all of that get back to me and criticize me and accuse me of not giving a fuck. And don’t worry about my mother. I got that. Let me take care of that. You don’t think I talk to her, you don’t think I know what’s going on? I don’t need you to tell me shit.
Antonio
PS. If I did like Ms. Harris (which I don’t and I don’t know where the fuck that came from) you ain’t making it no better by going loco for nothing. She understanding me a little bit better than you are now so I hope you think about that while you enjoying your free life and trip to France. Suck my dick. I hope you was just on your period when you wrote that shit.
August 1, 1990
Dear Antonio,
Well, baby, you right. I guess I did fuck up. I was real mad when I read your letter and thought about giving you your ring back. I even told Laneice, “Fuck that nigga.” But then I showed my mother and she explained to me that I might be a little bit insensitive. I don’t know what you are going through and I don’t know how it is for you. I was just a little bit upset and disappointed and worried that me and you wouldn’t be able to be together. I’m just scared, Antonio. I’m really scared about us growing apart and not seeing each other. I don’t know if I can handle it. I’m not saying I don’t love you, I’m just saying that this is a lot for me too. I just need to know that you think about me the way I think about you. I need to know that you ain’t gonna change and come out all hard and scarred up and painted from head to toe with nasty ass tattoos and shit. I see niggaz when they get out of lockup, some of my cousins or peeps from the block. And Antonio, they ain’t the same. They meaner, more quiet, don’t joke as much, smile real stiff, can stare you down til you feel like a pile of salt waiting to blow away with the breeze. And I guess I just don’t want you to be that way. I’m scared you not gonna be the same man I knew before. I really want to see the paper you wrote. That’s all. I just wanted you to share it with me too. So why don’t you get it back from Ms. Harris and let me see it too, okay?
Love,
Natasha
August 4, 1990
Natasha,
Well, here it is. I hope you like it. It’s probably not good as what you could do, but Ms. Harris liked it enough to get me in the GED class that’s gonna start in the fall. And she ain’t the only one trying to school me. Mohammed saw me reading Catcher in the Rye and asked me why I was reading shit that didn’t have nothing to do with me. I told him I had read it in school and my teacher took the time to bring me my book and I was gonna read it and appreciate it just like the books he had. So he gave me one of his books from the milk crates he got all over our room. I heard of it before. Autobiography of Malcolm X. I told him I wasn’t stupid and I knew about Malcolm X from learning about him in Black History Month and going on that damn walking tour with Mr. Cook where he showed us places where he lived, and from movies on TV. I thought him and Benito was gonna get into it when Benito said Don’t be corruptin the youngun with your angry black man bullshit that ain’t got you nowhere but in the pen. Mohammed told Benito to shut up and read the dictionary so he could learn English. Then he told me I got a new teacher in town, and it was about time I started reading something that was relevent before it was too late. He was telling me that Malcolm X was uneducated before he went in, but he came out a genius cause he read the dictionary back and forth a thousand times. Now, I ain’t doing nothing like that. I might do it once, but that’s it. So between Ms. Harris and Mohammed I’m gonna come out here a professor and shit. Lawyer already told me I’m supposed to be a genius. It might be some truth to that shit. Mohammed found a Rubik’s Cube in one of his crates. I ain’t seen one of them things for years. It was all fucked up and he said he had been trying to get it back to normal for years. I did it in two days. My partners on the block started coming down here fucking that shit up all crazy, I mean turning that thing for two and three hours trying to get it to the point that I couldn’t solve it again. Every time they fucked it up, I put it right back together again. Inmates and guards from other blocks heard about that shit and started coming down trying to catch me up. It’s like a battle almost. Mohammed call it a “meeting of the minds.” You know he gotta say some intellectual shit, but yo this is fun. I get to see things all fucked up and coming back together again and plan five, six, seven steps ahead. I wish I could have done that on the outside, with my life.
Love,
Antonio
Holden and Me: What I think about the book
The Catcher in the Rye
By Michael Antonio Lawrence II
The first time I read The Catcher in the Rye I got mad at my teacher, Mr. Cook, for giving us something that at first seems like it’s about nothing. For one thing, the main character is a boy named Holden Caulfield who seem like he have it all. He go to this fancy school named Pencey in upstate New York when the only time most cats I know go upstate is for this, the pen. At this school he got a dorm room and they eat stuff like steak for dinner every Saturday when most people I know only have steak on their birthday. Well he basically get kicked out of school and go back to New York where he from—the fancy part of Manhattan maybe—and instead of going home he choose to explore the city and hook up with old girlfriends and prostitutes and other people of that nature. It seem to me that all this white boy did was complain complain complain—about his friends, the teachers, the food, his parents, girls—or babes is what they used to say back then. The way he looked at everything was negative. He had a chance at something most kids would kill for. A chance to live away from home and go somewhere different and be on your own and get an allowance. But he chose to focus on the negative instead and by page fifty I was through with him. Also the fact that he was always lonely or depressed or crying and not knowing why, like he was a bottle of soda ready to explode with all this emotion but nobody had even shook the bottle. But something kept me reading this book. I think it was the fact that Holden was lonely, that deep down inside he felt like nobody was understanding who he was or that he wasn’t making a real connection with anybody. It’s one part in the book when he says that New York is a terrible place when somebody laughs on the street late at night and when you hear that laugh you get so sad because it makes you feel so lonely and depressed. I remember thinking when I first read that how could somebody get lonely in a place like NYC where everywhere you look its people people everywhere? People behind you on line, people in front of you making you late, people hogging up the seats on the train, people bumping into you while they on the go and not even saying I’m sorry. I had to come here to figure out what he really meant by that. Because I find myself surrounded every day all day by grown men, angry men older than me with wrinkles and scars and yellow eyes to tell you where they been. And I don’t want to get sucked up into that lonely, a part of that place that feels like a sewer filled with dreams flushed away. So I stopped hating Holden and starting feeling for him when I saw him floating around our city, with no place to really call home and no friends to help ease the ride. One thing that help him through is thinking about his sister Phoebe, cause even though she only nine, Holden knows that she understands him and got his back no matter what. That’s how I feel about my moms and my girl, like if I was halfway a
cross the world with no place to lay my head and rest that there is someone that would always welcome me home with open arms. Whenever I think about them, I get like Holden and start bawling as he put it. I’m gonna be like Holden and say I don’t know why that is. It just is.