by Trick Daddy
At Brownsville, his name was Mr. Tuttle.
Tuttle was the music teacher. No one ever took his class seriously. We sat there staring off into space, daydreaming, and waited for the bell to ring. I think Tuttle knew his class was the last pain in the ass for everyone and reveled in it. The fat bastard made us sit there until the very last minute. I’m sure everyone had such a class.
“Come on, everybody, on one again,” Tuttle would say. “Let’s go, and one and two and three . . .”
As much as we hated his anal ways, we disliked even more the way he accentuated his T’s. Let me explain. The only sound that rivaled the flamboyant trumpets in that band room was Tuttle’s voice. He was of that persuasion. I don’t discriminate against anyone’s choice for love and affection. I frankly don’t give a damn if a dude has a certain curve in his step, if you know what I mean. That’s the problem with folks. People always try to lash out against those who are different. Go clean the bones hiding in your closet before you throw a stone at your neighbor. I’m not here to judge. Diversity makes the world a better place. The best salad has a wide array of fruits and vegetables. One of my sisters is more of a dude than I am, and I love her to death.
But back then folks who were of an alternative sexual orientation had it rough. They were bashed. We’ve come a long way since those days as society has learned to accept folks for who they are. However, try explaining to a class of middle schoolers in Liberty City why their music teacher had a certain sway to his swag. . . . You get the point. Looking back, I think Tuttle tried to send a message.
His flamboyance was beyond anything in the ordinary. The guy used to hit high notes. A typical class entailed sitting through soprano ballads. The more we twisted and turned in our seats, the more Tuttle sashayed across the room. I can’t blame the guy for being bold in his sexuality. When a person is accustomed to being attacked, his natural defense is to put up a front. I guess Tuttle was going to force people to accept him whether they liked it or not.
He chose me as his sounding board.
I said it before and I’ll say it again. I’ve always been suspect. Imagine going to a comedy show with a sellout crowd. The comedian readies his routine that begins with his making fun of someone in the audience. Who does he put the spotlight on? Maurice Young.
About ten minutes were left in the class when Tuttle turned the spotlight on me. I usually sat in the back, where I could stay off the teacher’s radar. I noticed Tuttle had grown fond of calling on me when he saw I wasn’t paying attention. I was already having a bad day as I was short on my re-up money to buy more weed, which meant I would be spending the evening gambling in the Beans.
“Mr. Young, come to the board,” Tuttle told me. “Come on, hurry up. We don’t have all day.”
“Sorry, I don’t know the notes,” I replied.
I wasn’t getting off the hook that easy.
“I’m not going to repeat myself. No one is leaving until you come to the chalkboard,” insisted Tuttle. “I said move it!”
I gazed at the floor. From the corners of my eyes I caught a glimpse of my classmates. I knew if I did what Tuttle demanded, I’d be viewed as a sucker. Worse, it may have sanctioned me as his bitch. Kids in middle school can be harsh. I got up and shuffled toward the board. The taunting ensued.
“You gonna let that punk talk to you like that?” someone whispered. “Told y’all he ain’t hard,” another kid chimed in.
A million thoughts raced through my mind. I was just expelled from Charles Drew less than two months before. If not for my lack of interest, I could have gotten straight A’s. In fact, I don’t think I was being challenged. A bell rang in my head. Obeying Tuttle would most definitely strip me of my manhood. I couldn’t let that happen. It meant every other kid in the Beans who thought he was tough would try me. Then I would definitely have to shoot someone. I turned around. I felt a hand grab my shirt collar. I wasn’t the only one trying to assert my manhood. Tuttle was apparently trying to do the same. I gazed at the lead pipe positioned at the base of the classroom door to keep it ajar.
“Let go of me!” I yelled.
“And if I don’t, what the hell are you gonna do?” Tuttle fired back.
The sad truth is I never disliked Tuttle. We had something in common. I never fitted in anywhere either. Like Tuttle, I was a misfit. I’ve always been determined to do my own thing regardless of the status quo. If the crowd went left, I bolted right. At that moment my rebellious DNA led me to the pipe.
In seconds Tuttle was laid out on the classroom floor. I hit him squarely upside his head. I needed my manhood more than Tuttle did his. My hustling depended on it. I held the lead pipe over him as if I was the HNIC. He pleaded and covered his face as I taunted him. The class cheered. Minutes later I was in handcuffs. Again.
This time the cuffs weren’t so painful. I could not have cared less about going back down to the detention center to be processed. Tuttle got what was coming to him. He tried me. On the way down to the center the officer gave me the usual lecture about the dangers that come with the path I was heading down. I didn’t give a damn. I was ready to travel that rocky road. Besides, inside those fenced walls I got time to think. No one came to get me for a week or so. By now folks in my life were getting fed up.
When my mother finally came to get me, she didn’t give a speech. She didn’t even whup my ass. That’s when you know you’re losing. When folks are hard on you, it’s because they care. Start worrying when you become invisible. I couldn’t blame Pearl. She had ten other kids to worry about. If Maurice wanted to throw his life away, why waste energy on him? In the hood single mothers play lotto. They look at their kids. Chances are one of their sons will most likely die from a gunshot not too far from their doorstep. Another will inevitably be hauled off to state prison. If fate felt sorry for her, one son would stay at home, serve burgers for a living, and raise his family in that cramped apartment. At least he’ll be alive.
She hit the jackpot if one son went to college. The scene from the movie Boyz N the Hood depicted it well. Ricky’s mother fainted when he got shot. Doughboy was left, but who cared. Those are the slots played by mothers in the Beans and other projects throughout the United States. I wasn’t exactly Doughboy. I was the kid Pearl knew had potential, but was throwing it away. So she focused her attention on her other kids. I was expelled again.
I took to running the streets. The time out of the classroom while educators sought a suitable alternative for me left me with hours to dedicate to hustling. My crew had the Beans smoking like a chimney. Word had spread that my weed was straight from the mountains of Herbland, Jamaica, the place where every weed head dreams about going to. It’s where a half-naked big-butt vixen rolls your blunts while another massages your back. Well, I know it’s a stretch. But a place like that would definitely be dope.
By the time school officials found an alternative program for me to attend, I was totally dedicated to pushing my product. Wherever they sent me I was determined to make my cash cow. They chose Jan Mann.
Jan Mann Opportunity School was a hustler’s dream. Let’s just say it was like literally taking candy from a baby. Teachers at regular public schools in the hood don’t give a damn, so try doing a survey on morale at the alternative programs. The American public school system has a hierarchy. Take an educated guess on where alternative programs fall on that totem poll? If you answered at the bottom, you hit the mark.
Some teachers in those crap shoots are dedicated to making a difference in the lives of those little aspiring felons, but they never get enough credit. The system is broken from the top down, but the teacher in there who’s being subjected to threats and all sorts of other harm always gets the blame for failure. I actually used to feel sorry for some of the teachers at Jan Mann. How could society expect them to play the role of teacher, counselor, parent, and protector? Their backs were against the wall. It was a stressful place for kids and educators alike. So I did what any other concerned student would do to
lighten the load. I got folks high as a kite.
At Jan Mann, who was going to tell? The school sits in the heart of Opa-locka, where shots from the Blues projects ring out daily. It wasn’t unusual for a shoot-out from the projects to spill out into the school. Officials would have to lock it down while cops chased the shooter through our campus. The area known as the Triangle was put on the map as the most violent zip code in America. Former mayor Robert Ingram barricaded the neighborhood with a triangle-shaped fence to contain the area’s violence. He actually had to cage those folks in.
Given that information about Jan Mann’s locale, do you really think the school’s staff was worried about Maurice Young’s weed supply? I turned that place into the set from the movie Half Baked. I had the general run of Jan Mann. While security was busy chasing down real crooks, yours truly flooded the halls with the good green.
At lunchtime I served some of the dudes from the neighborhood. I gave one of the security guards a couple dollars so he could wave me through the metal detectors. Of course I still carried my fire. A dope boy’s pistol is like a preacher’s Bible. He should never leave home without it. But like any young, foolhardy kid, I got overconfident. I got ahead of myself. The pickings were just too easy at Jan Mann. I decided to start bringing in larger quantities of my supply. The idea was to start employing runners. A couple of the cats in the Blues wanted in.
I knew I could use the help to grow my business, even though my better judgment should have told me that in any enterprise one should keep his profits within reason. Anything beyond a quick flip leaves one swimming with the sharks. Up until then Darryl and O’Sean were the only dudes I broke bread with. We trusted each other. I let foolhardiness get the best of me and started outsourcing my supply to dudes I didn’t know who could get my product outside the walls of Jan Mann. The extra help meant I needed extra weight.
“Seventy-five bags of marijuana?!” The look on that judge’s face when they hauled me into juvenile court for the third time that year was classic. “Somebody explain to me how a twelve-year-old manages to get seventy-five bags of marijuana into a public institution of learning?”
School officials shook their heads in embarrassment. I was quite proud of myself. I was willing to give the judge the breakdown on exactly how I did it, minus snitching on my cohorts of course. Even back then, I got a rush from giving the law my ass to kiss. They were the ones who had left us fucked-up and broke in the Beans. That judge wanted to condemn those poor teachers for my bullshit? They weren’t the problem. Hell, all he had to do was lock me up. That wasn’t any skin off his back. Those teachers had to go back to Jan Mann and convince the one or two kids in there who really wanted to turn a corner that their school wasn’t a joke. They had to explain that the school wasn’t just some garbage bin where the Miami-Dade public school system dumped their trash.
Looking back, I didn’t realize just how many problems I caused. That’s the thing about living in a world in which we’re all connected. Research even proves that babies born in the same nursery absorb each other’s pain. When one starts to cry, the others start wailing as well. I don’t care if it’s a hard pill to swallow. You’re responsible to someone. People can’t just go around pissing wherever they want. It will stink. Your actions affect the lives of others. The superintendent’s office launched an investigation. A public school’s funding depends on the success rate of its students. Grants, loans, new computers, and all that were decided on how well the kids are doing. They preach that every kid in America has a right to a free education. It’s a bunch of politically correct bullshit. In much the same way America’s civil liberties are designed to benefit some and leave out others, so is the public school system. Keeping the Maurice Youngs in school directly lowered success rates and indirectly decreased the cash flow. Don’t get it twisted. In America every decision ultimately revolves around the dollar bill. It’s why the previous two schools were so eager to get me out of there. You’re fucking up our money, young blood. It wasn’t personal. I can’t even blame them. Some kids attend school to learn. I didn’t.
“You have anything to say for yourself, Mr. Young,” the judge asked.
First off, I think the American juvenile justice system is all bullshit. I think your laws are bullshit. If I could, I would come up there and smack the toupee off your cracker head. It’s like you guys get off on locking up young niggas instead of giving opportunities. You don’t think I’d rather watch cartoons than sell weed on the corner all day? Fuck you, Your Honor. Kiss my black ass.
That’s what I wanted to say, but I was fresh, not stupid. Standing there in my oversize, orange jailhouse jumpsuit, shackled from head to toe, my world was shrinking. The windows of possibilities for Maurice Young were closing. My public defender sat next to me in a world of her own. She probably graduated with a subpar GPA from the University of Miami’s law school and passed the bar exam by a thread. Now she was stuck defending a kid on a direct path to death or the chain gang. She couldn’t wait for the arraignment to end.
The judge gave a good speech: “It always tugs at me that young men such as yourself never realize what you’re doing to yourself and those that love you until it’s too late. Every day I come into this courtroom and see lives being thrown away.”
Sighs echoed throughout the room. The older dudes waiting on their arraignment had heard it all before. They yawned and stared off into space. You always know who just caught their first case. He’s the dude all dressed in his Sunday best. He’s talking his lawyer’s ear off. The seasoned cats stretch their feet out and lounge until the bailiff motions them to the bench.
“Is there a guardian present with your defendant?” the judge asked my public defender.
“No, we were unable to reach Ms. Brockington after several attempts. Her phone seemed to be disconnected and there was no place of employment listed for her,” my lawyer replied.
“Figures.” The judge shook his head.
They carried me through the steel door that led to the corridor behind the judge’s seat. In the long, winding hallway kids sat on an iron bench before they were called in. If a guardian came, the kid was taken back there to be processed for release. The Miami-Dade Juvenile Detention Center was merely an adult prison with children in cages. You would assume a facility that houses kids ages eleven to eighteen would be more suited for adolescents, but there are no classification mandates there. A kid charged with a minor offense could end up sharing a cell with a killer.
The main difference between the center and adult prison was that we attended class. We sat in open spaces called mods. With no chalkboards, the teachers got creative when giving the lesson plan. They tried hard to make the best of a bad situation. Class was routinely interrupted when the buzzer sounded. It meant a classmate was up for arraignment. The steel door opened and a correctional officer stepped in.
“Inmate twenty-nine, you’re up!” he would yell.
“Good luck, homey,” a classmate would say. We shared daps when the kid walked by. He was thoroughly searched before exiting. As you can imagine, it was hard to focus on textbooks with your fate hanging in the balance. Across the yard, in the girls’ dorms, things weren’t much different besides some larger mirrors in the bathrooms. After class we retired to our six-by-nine-foot cells.
The first time Pearl left me in there, I knew she was trying to teach me a lesson. This time around was different. The days got longer. When the buzzer to the steel door finally rang and my number was called, I was relieved. I had stayed in that dungeon for about three weeks. I couldn’t wait to get home.
12
Straight Up
PEARL DIDN’T COME TO GET ME. MY UNCLE STOOD outside his Cadillac, which was all tricked out. It was drenched in more chrome than Cinderella’s slippers. He was a longtime hustler, the kind that didn’t take kindly to busters. I was confused. It wasn’t that I minded seeing him, but I expected my mother.
“What’s up, young blood?” he asked. “I see you’re holding
down fort like a young G.” My father was locked up in federal prison on drug-trafficking charges, so my uncle pretended he was him to come get me. It hit me. I knew why Pearl didn’t come to get me. Remember what I said earlier about a person’s actions and the domino effect it caused? When we got to the Beans, Ms. Ridley was inside my apartment trying to console my mother. Pearl was on her knees sobbing.
In the projects if a kid caused trouble, the welfare folks could evict the family. The memo to single mothers was written in clear, straightforward language:
All you had to do was lie on your back all these years and get knocked up by deadbeat dudes. We covered the tab. The least you can do is keep those little niggers tame. Tie them with a leash if you have to. If you can’t manage to do that, we’re taking back the freebies and kicking your ass out.
Ms. Ridley looked up at me. “Maurice, I know you’ve been playing man of the house.”
“Bullshit! This is bullshit!” I shouted.
“Boy, I already told you about using foul language around me,” my mother warned.
Life is ironic, I guess. It brought me back to that desert, the one that hope dragged me out in the middle of. I couldn’t win for trying. I was on those streets hustling, trying to make home a happy place. I made sure my younger siblings wouldn’t have to take those risks. I chalked it up for what it was. My brothers had some change to go on a field trip. They wouldn’t have to be the subject of everyone’s jokes. If I ended up dead or in jail, they could use the couple dollars I had stashed up in the vent.
Now the system was telling me the means by which I used to escape the cage they put me in was close to uprooting my family. My uncle nodded. The inevitable was about to happen.