by M. K. Asante
Reading was wild, and even though I wanted more freedom, this was a life that was full of chaos and violence. My cousin Junie was the only child and he was wild. I saw him pick up a butcher knife and chase his mother with it. He was my age and he already had a baby. My uncle Franky and aunt Patrice ran a speakeasy on the weekend so there were lots of people coming in and out from Friday night to Sunday. They sold liquor, drank, argued, and fought a lot. This was all new to me, as my mother didn’t drink. The only fights that I saw in my home were my aunt Jaime and my mother arguing. The worst that they said to each other was to call each other a bitch. My aunt called my mother a “yellow bitch” and my mom retaliated by called my aunt a “black bitch.”
But this was on a different level. Knives and alcohol and cussing were an everyday thing, and on the weekend, it was all day. I enrolled in school and that was a culture shock. It was mainly white. My high school in Brooklyn was mixed but this school was basically white. But I think that I could have handled the school if the home situation wasn’t so volatile.
Two things happened that brought my stay in Reading to an end. My aunt took me with her one afternoon to a “friend’s” house. She told me to stay in an outer room while she went into a bedroom with a young man. I was her alibi. She would tell my uncle Franky that she was with me, and that would be the end of that. I had seen a lot but this was something that she chose to do. Then my aunt accused me of trying to be with Uncle Franky. Reading, PA, made cream sodas that were red, and this absolutely delighted me as I loved cream soda and the idea of red cream soda was wonderful. Uncle Franky would bring me cream soda when he came home from work and I loved it. My aunt took this as a flirtation with my uncle Franky. There was no such thing going on in my mind. And mind you, this was the woman who took me to a house where she had a rendezvous with a lover.
So after three months in Reading, I called my mother and asked to come home. I don’t think that my mother said a word to me all the way home.
Malo and I don’t speak either.
God, give me strength.
Amina
* * *
* “Out on Bail,” 2pac, 1994.
† “By the Time I Get to Arizona,” Public Enemy, 1991.
10
Bail Money
“It’s just like my daddy told me,” my dad says. “I ain’t got no bail money. Not a dime!” He swipes his keys. “None.” I haven’t seen my dad since my mom got back from the psych ward. He’s home now, just for a hot minute, before he goes out of town again.
“If we don’t help him, the system will hang him,” Mom says. “You know that’s what they do to black boys. You know that, Chaka!”
“That boy hung himself a long time ago! Why are you so surprised? He’s never done the right thing. Never!”
“He made a mistake. Wrong place, wrong time. He’s our son—we will profit by or pay for whatever he becomes.”
“He raped a girl.”
“Don’t say that,” my mom erupts, wincing at the very thought.
“A white girl! My enemies will love this.”
“Statutory rape!”
“A white girl!”
“It was consensual. He’s only seventeen, she told him she was sixteen.”
“Well, she was thirteen!”
“He didn’t know. My son is not a rapist!”
“He’s a thug. You reap what you sow,” he says like a southern preacher.
“Please,” she pleads. “They’ll do him like Emmett Till if we don’t.”
Something in the kitchen falls. I feel like everything is falling, crashing around me.
“He’s not working. He’s not in school. Can’t you see? He’s destroying you.”
“You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“What it’s like … for a mother.”
Later on I get on the computer, a Mac Performa 5200. I dial up the Internet and type in “Emmett Till” on this new thing my dad’s friend Zizwe told me about called Google. It’s dope, you can find anything on this jawn … including all the hardcore Afro-Centrix flicks. I read about how in 1955, Emmett, fourteen years old like me, got killed for whistling at a white woman in Philadelphia, Mississippi. But they didn’t just kill him. They shot his ears off at point-blank range. Gouged his eyes out. Tied him with barbed wire by his neck. Cut his dick off. Dumped him in the Tallahatchie River. There’s two pictures of him. One where he’s alive, glowing, wearing a fedora and a boyish grin, looking like Uzi, actually. And another, in his casket, his face deformed like melted plastic. My soul cries for Till like he was Uzi.
I say to my dad, “So you really not going to help my brother?”
“I can’t help him. He made his bed, now he has to lie in it. One day you’ll make yours too, and you’ll have to lie in it.”
Dear Carole,
If I could run, hide from bad news, I would be on the other side of the world. Bad news has ridden the hem of my skirts and I haven’t been able to dance the news away. Now bad news has arrived big-time and in this midnight hour, when everyone is asleep and only the TV talks, I am speechless but full of fear. Fear for my child. The one that I put on the plane to Arizona. The child that I wanted to save and didn’t know what to do. My firstborn child, who was full of life and too much mischief. He is in jail facing what?
God, give me strength.
Amina
11
Xmas in AZ
Xmas in AZ. Nobody’s in this Holiday Inn except me and my mom. We’re here to see Uzi. My mom still hasn’t spoken to him and no one knows what’s going on.
We’re supposed to see this lawyer she got for Uzi, Mr. Dodds or something.
“I had to borrow money to get this attorney,” she tells me. “A lot of money. Your father doesn’t know.”
She doesn’t have to tell me not to say anything. It’s understood.
“I don’t have the money for this,” she keeps repeating over and over. “I can’t continue to rob Peter to pay Paul.”
At first she tried to front like she didn’t want me to come to Arizona. “You have school.”
“Fuck school,” I blurted out before I could catch myself.
“Khumalo!”
“I’m saying, though, this is more important than school. God first, family next, everyone else take a number and get in line, right?”
“Right.”
“Plus I don’t want you going out there solo-dolo,” I said.
I already knew my dad wasn’t coming. She didn’t have to tell me. It was understood.
When 10 Gs found out I was going to Arizona, they got mad hype.
“Gotta give him the hood news: Tone got killed down Badlands. Shelly’s pregnant. Kierra just had her second baby. Kirk got locked up. Cool C and Steady B tried to rob the PNC and killed this black lady cop. They gave Steady B life and C is on death row. Gas is up, coke is down, crack is always up, syrup and zannies are up, weed is down … It ain’t good news, it’s hood news!”
“Anything else?”
“Tell him to keep his head up.”
One time I told Uzi I’d go anywhere or anyplace for him. On the way to the hotel, driving through the desert with my mom—passing signs for Indian casinos and wild horses—I’m thinking this is it: anywhere, anyplace. The air conditioner in the rental car is weak and it feels like we’re swimming through the ninety-degree heat. The tips of our noses are beaded with sweat.
“Merry Christmas,” the lady at the front desk says.
“Merry Christmas,” my mom says just to be nice. We don’t really celebrate Christmas at home.
“We can’t celebrate some big fat white man bringing us gifts” is what my dad said when I asked him about it a few years ago. “When? Tell me when has the white man ever brought us gifts?” Guess he’s got a point.
Even though we don’t celebrate it, I know what Christmas feels like, what it sounds like, what it looks like—and this ain’t it. Everything about this picture is off: the h
ot weather, the cactus in the lobby with sloppy Christmas lights slung over it, Uzi in jail.
“So what brings you to Arizona?” she asks as she checks us in.
My mom’s face says, Mind yours.
We don’t even know what jail Uzi’s in or anything.
The lawyer is an old white dude with a comb-over. Every time he talks, his hair moves like a furry mouthpiece. Greasy gold watch strapped to his hairy wrist. His shoes are Armor All shiny.
“I was a cop for twenty-five years,” he says, “so I understand both sides. I’ve—”
“So whose side are you on?” I say.
“I’ve been a defense attorney for the last twenty years.”
“But whose side are you on? My math says we’re down by five years.”
I can tell we’re just another number to him. I see it in the blankness in his eyes, the distance in his glare.
“I’m going to work to reduce his sentence as much as possible.”
Just another pitiful family, that’s probably what he thinks. He doesn’t know how strong we are, though. Doesn’t know where we come from. Doesn’t know that it wasn’t always like this. I think about how it was when I was young. How my dad would take me and Uzi to the park in front of the Rocky statue. How we’d play football for hours and yell “Cunningham” before each throw. How we’d run up the Art Museum steps before we left. How happy we were.
“They’re going to try to try him as an adult since he’ll be eighteen by the trial date. I’m going to push for getting him tried as a juvenile since he was seventeen when the incident occurred.” He goes on and on and on with the bad weather: clouds, rain, storms—
“Just stop. I need to see my son.”
Saw the light, caught a case, couldn’t afford to fight
Lawyer white, had to cop out or face more than life*
“As you know, he’s in solitary,” he says. “Twenty-three-hour lockdown. He’s got one free hour each day. That’s your hour. You’ll be behind glass.”
My eyes tear with pain and rage thinking about Uzi in that black hole all day, wasting away. It’s torture. They’re torturing my brother, torturing my mom, torturing me. I want to break down and weep but I gotta be strong for Moms.
Everything inside the jail—benches, tables, lockers, rails—is metal and shiny. A sparkling hell. All the visitors are women except for me, and they’re mostly black and Mexicans. Mothers, daughters, wives, girlfriends, side chicks. No fathers, though. Not mine, not Uzi’s, not nobody’s.
All the guards are white as bone. Stiff muhfuckas with buzz cuts, sharp square jaws, and Oakley shades.
Uzi on the other side of the glass like Koreans at the corner store back in Philly.
“I didn’t do nothing,” he tells us.
“Well, you did something,” my mom says. “Or else why are we here?”
“I mean, I fucked her, but Ma, she said she was sixteen.”
“And you believed her?”
“You would too if you saw her, she’s like a thirty-six triple D,” showing us with his hands. We laugh a little, just to keep from crying. I see his beard coming in, thick and black like the Sunnis in Philly.
“Get me outta here,” he says, like we have the key somewhere, like we ain’t lost in the system too.
My mom’s face is steely. She’s wearing her mask, trying to hide her emotions, but I’m close enough to smell her pain. She never wears her heart on her face in public.
“We’re working on it,” she says.
“They got me in a dog kennel, yo. Like I’m a Rottweiler! All I can do is squat and run in place! Just please get me outta here.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“But I didn’t do anything!”
“Yes you did. You’re going to have to get over that. The law is the law.”
“Can’t you use your clout?”
“Clout?” She laughs.
“Can’t you and Dad use your clout?”
“Clout, Daudi? What does that mean? Clout didn’t stop them from arresting you. Clout didn’t stop them from putting you in the hole. Clout didn’t make your case a case of youthful indiscretion.” She shakes her head, lost. “They don’t look at me and see an educator, a choreographer that’s traveled the world. They see a nigger. A nigger.” The guard is coming for Uzi.
“We have no clout … just each other,” she says.
Time’s up.
Uzi puts his fist on the glass. I do too.
“One love.” I swear I can feel his knuckles through the glass.
“One.”
In the car on our way back to the hotel, the radio plays holiday hits. My mom hums along to “Whose Child Is This?” The speakers tremble.
“I wish he was in a Philly jail,” I say to my mom.
“Whether he’s here or in Philly,” she says, “jail is jail. Chains are chains.”
Some fortunate, some less fortunate
Some get it, some get acquitted†
Uzi’s day in court.
“The plan is for him to come back to Philadelphia with us,” my mom tells me on our way into the courtroom. “Dodds said the court can transfer his probation to Philly. That’s what I spent all that money I didn’t have for—to bring Daudi home. I want you to pray on it.”
“Okay, I will.” I don’t pray a lot, but I’m down to try anything. I close my eyes and see the face of Emmett Till.
I try not to think about Till now as I sit in the courtroom. The cold benches remind me of the Meeting for Worship benches at Foes. Mom’s got her hair pulled back tight. I can see all the tiny veins swimming across her temple.
They bring my brother out in handcuffs and shackles like O.J. His light blue button-up tucked into khakis. He looks like he’s on a job interview. He sees me, nods. I give him a strong nod that says, Everything’s going to be all right. Then a smile that says, You’re still my hero, everybody makes mistakes.
The judge has a face that looks like old, low-hanging fruit. His voice sounds distant, like he’s a hundred miles away.
My dad’s friend Bobby Seale is one of the founders of the Black Panthers. One day in the hallway at Temple University Bobby told me about how the Panthers, strapped with Kalashnikovs and rocking cold black shades, cocked berets, and leather trenches, used to take over courtrooms. He told me that the only justice you get is the justice you take.
“So the concept is this, basically,” Bobby once said in a speech. “The whole black nation has to be put together as a black army. And we gon’ walk on this nation, we gon’ walk on this racist power structure, and we gon’ say to the whole damn government: Stick ’em up, motherfucker! This is a holdup! We come for what’s ours!”
I wish I was a Black Panther right now.
We come for what’s ours … and his name is Uzi, I’d say.
I strike America like a case of heart disease
Panther power is running through my arteries‡
“Will the defendant approach …”
I pray the only prayer I know, one my parents taught me when I was little: We call upon the Most High and the ancestors, far and near …
“Young man …”
Mothers of our mothers, fathers of our fathers …
“Menace to society … burden to this community …”
To render us mercy and to bear witness …
“By the power … Arizona …”
For the liberation and victory of all oppressed people.
“Hereby … guilty!… Ten years …”
Amen.
I carry my mom out of the courtroom, onto the plane, and back to Philly. We don’t talk, we can’t speak.
Dear Carole,
Chaka is always saying he needs space. I know what that means. He needs space away from me. And the more space the better.
Space so as not to be reminded that I am broken, space so as not to be reminded Daudi is broken. Malo is breaking.
I’m broken. “Fix Me, Jesus” is the spiritual that I loved so much when I wa
s a little girl in Brooklyn. “Fix me, Jesus, Fix me.” That’s what sanatoriums were for. Places that “fixed” people with problems. Twice I’ve been committed and twice I’ve returned home feeling the same and seeing the same. The visits were remarkable in their inability to even scratch the surface of what’s wrong, if anything was wrong. If you say something is wrong enough times, everyone begins to believe it, including me. Okay, fix me, damn it! How can you fix someone who isn’t broken? I’m aching, I’m in pain, but broken—no!
No one knew that I was in the sanatorium, just Chaka and Malo. My mom didn’t know. What happens when a person disappears for two months? What do you say? I didn’t know because I wasn’t the one doing the telling. I was being fixed! One of the patients at the hospital asked for something and was denied. She said, “For nine hundred dollars a day, I should be getting more than Jell-O and a blanket.” It was funny to me at the time because I agreed. It was also funny because the young woman was so rational in such an irrational place. I had enjoyed taking walks around the grounds. I could think. I could control those walks. I was safe. Safe but not fixed.
Years ago, I straddled Chaka, beating him in the face, telling him how much he had broken my heart. His response was “That’s it, I am gone.” He didn’t leave that night, but it is just a matter of time. What do I do with “You are sewn into my gut” and “You are the smartest woman I have ever met”? I treasure his words as always. He had come home late that night, very late, and it was too much. How much more could I take? I didn’t know what to say to him but I wished I had said, “Remember, just remember!”
God, give me strength.
Amina
* * *
* “Trading Places,” AZ, 1997.