by Tracy Brown
In the beginning of his bid, Anisa had held him down. She came to visit, put money on his books, sent him books and magazines, food, and some clothes. But it wasn’t long before those things began to dwindle, and Anisa seemed to disappear into thin air. He called from time to time, and she didn’t answer her phone. Born wasn’t completely surprised. He had half expected her to forget about him once he got locked up. He had known in his heart that she wasn’t cut out to be loyal, and to make frequent visits upstate. But still Born was bothered by her absence at a time when he needed her most. He thought back on how much time and money he had spent with her, and wondered if he’d ever find a woman who reciprocated for once. Born chalked it up as another reason women couldn’t be trusted. Doing time was hard, but he saw every day he spent in jail as being one day closer to going home.
When his six months in the program were done, Born was released into the general population, and he came face-to-face with a blast from his past. Martin was also an inmate there, housed in a separate dorm, but still in close proximity to his former best friend. Since Born’s departure from the crew, Martin had never stopped harboring the feeling that he had been slighted somehow. He was still a little pissed that Born had never looked back when he started making major moves. Some of their animosity had been resolved at Born’s father’s funeral. But still there was uneasiness between the two that had been hard to penetrate over the years.
But up north, Born found himself relieved to see Martin’s familiar face. And Martin, being the live wire that he was, had established quite a reputation for himself. Born was happy to align himself with his childhood friend. And as the months slowly passed, the two of them bonded again in the prison yard, or the mess hall, and soon they were close once more. It was like old times again.
During the time he spent in jail, Born lost sight of Jada, and had no idea how far she’d fallen after their split. But some news from home did reach him.
Soon, via the ghetto grapevine, Born learned that his stronghold in the streets of Staten Island was no more. Chance and Smitty had allowed some new niggas to take over their neighborhood drug trade. And to make matters worse, Smitty and Chance were now working for the new kids on the block. They were a disgrace in Born’s eyes, because all they really had had to do was to maintain what he had already established. He was disgusted. Upon hearing this news, Born tried to stay to himself in order to avoid anybody pissing him off, and causing him to get in trouble. Any little thing was capable of setting him off. So he stayed away from everyone else, and kept his head in a book to escape. Martin was also irate because of the news that his boys—his brother most of all—had let the block go to some unknown. He and Born both wallowed in regret for making decisions that had cost them both their freedom and their empires. Born stayed in his bunk day after day, and only joined the other inmates when it was time to eat dinner. That was when all hell broke loose.
Born had found out that the man who had killed his friend Bobby years prior, during his crew’s shootout with A.J., was now housed in the same prison dorm as he was. The guy was in for drug offenses, and Born wanted badly to keep himself out of trouble. So he had steered clear of the bastard, hoping not to catch any unwanted charges while he waited out his sentence. He figured that the guy, whose name was Ray, would get what was coming to him eventually. Born didn’t need the attention that an altercation with another inmate would surely bring. He was still sore about what was going on back home, and filled with worry for his mother, and how she was maintaining out there on her own. The last thing he was expecting was for some old beef to come and provoke his inner monster.
But as he walked past Ray’s table in the mess hall, Ray tripped Born on purpose, and caused his food to go flying across the room as he stumbled, trying to regain his balance. Ray sat there and laughed right in Born’s face, and Born rushed the man with all his might. Ray wasn’t faring too well in the fight, and tried to pull out a makeshift shank he had hidden in his waistband. Born saw him going for it, though, and every ounce of anger, every ounce of rage, fueled his fight. He had never felt as strong as he suddenly was. His adrenaline pumped through his veins. They fought savagely, locked in a ferocious battle, as the correction officers closed in to break it up. By the time they pulled Born off of the man, Ray was bleeding from his stomach. Born was holding a bloody screwdriver he’d taken from his job as a porter in the administrative building. He had liked that job because it allowed him access to the visiting room, and to tools such as the rusty screwdriver that he’d used to stab Ray four times in the stomach. Born’s intention was to kill the man. That way he wouldn’t have to deal with him for the rest of his bid. He had known that, with all the bad news he’d received in the past few weeks, whoever he put his hands on would be in trouble. The officers tackled Born to the floor, and wrestled the weapon from his hands. They dragged him off to the box, and shut him in for the night.
He was transferred the next day to a facility in Comstock, New York, where he spent the next eleven months of his sentence in solitary confinement. Ray had survived, though he was reduced to using a colostomy bag for a long time. And Born knew that this was another beef that would follow him for as long as Ray was still alive.
While in solitary confinement, Born was subjected to twenty-three hours of lockdown in a cell the size of a small closet. They only allowed him one shower, one phone call, and one visit each week. He was allowed one hour of recreation in the yard each day, by himself, usually at five or six o’clock in the morning. And when the guards felt like being assholes, they would tell him that he had overslept and missed his hour in the yard. So Born learned not to look forward to it, so that they wouldn’t have the power to deny it to him. He would outthink them, he decided. Half the time it was too cold anyway, he’d tell himself. His hours in his cell were spent either reading or jerking off. He read no less than four books a week. When he could use the phone he called his mother most of the time, and Dorian’s brothers as well. He liked to check in on DJ. every now and then to see if he was doing okay. Dorian’s brothers and the rest of the crew held Born down while he endured his sentence, sending him food packages, cigarettes, money, and clothes, and he was grateful to them for that.
By the time they let him out of the box, Born emerged looking like Saddam Hussein, unshaven and grimy. He felt like an animal. His time in the box had been designed to break him, designed to dismantle his spirit. He wanted out of prison. He listened to his mother when she told him that he better start thinking about what direction his life was headed in. He saw the wisdom in her advice to turn over a new leaf.
He enrolled in violence-management and parenting classes, and continued to read—now, about two books a week. The parenting classes showed him just how dysfunctional his own upbringing had been. He learned that children interpret and understand what’s going on in their environment long before parents usually think they do. He learned that children mimic their parents, and that was certainly true for him. He had patterned himself after Leo from the time he was small. They taught him about good parenting, and until then he hadn’t really realized how unorthodox it was to be the child of an addict. To witness drug abuse up close from such an early age. All his life he’d worked with the hand he had been dealt, and never took the time to really see it for what it was. He realized for the first time that so much of who he was, so much of how he lived his life, was attributable to his upbringing. It finally dawned on him just how dysfunctional his childhood had been. The odds had been stacked against him from the very beginning. The ease with which he had merged into the fast lane came from watching his father, and from seeing how Leo had handled power. He had studied and watched his father, and became his duplicate. He realized that, all the while he thought that he had the game figured out, and that he knew how to play it, the game was playing him. True, he hadn’t become a drug addict, as his father had. But he was in jail, and there was no victory in that. He thought about the fact that he could have wound up dead instead, and he w
as grateful that things had turned out the way that they had.
Born began to pay close attention to his fellow inmates. He began to listen when they griped about their lack of family, their lack of a sense of direction, and the fact that they had no plans for their future. But there was one man who was incarcerated with Born who would forever change his life.
Earl “Ace” Frasier, an older cat, was incarcerated alongside Born. He watched as Born took part in classes and read books like crazy. Ace was observant, and he watched in silence as he saw a slow change begin to occur in the young hustler they called Born. Born was also observant, and being a seasoned hustler, he could tell simply from Ace’s mannerisms that he was or had been an addict. But despite Born’s suspicion, he still found Ace to be a likable enough guy. Ace hollered at him one afternoon, as they both left the visiting room.
“I see you been reading a lot, youngster. Going to all kinds of classes and shit. Tryin’ to change your life around? Or are you up for parole soon, trying to make a good impression?”
Born didn’t know why he felt comfortable answering the older man’s questions. Ace was a tall black man in his forties, who—judging from his prison I.D. number—had been locked up since the early eighties. He was well respected in their dorm, and could often be found giving sage old advice to the younger inmates from time to time. Born had never really socialized with Ace much, outside of the occasional card game. But this day, when he looked at Ace, he decided to answer his questions. “I guess it’s a little of both,” Born said. “I want to turn over a new leaf. You know what I’m saying? But it don’t hurt that the board will see all the stuff I’ve been doing to change my life around.”
Ace nodded his understanding.
They went through the demeaning ritual of being cavity searched as they returned to their dorm, and when they arrived, Ace picked up their conversation where they’d left off. “You know you’re not really like the rest of these niggas in here,” he said.
Born frowned. “What you mean?”
“There’s a certain energy that you have that a lot of niggas in here don’t have. I’ve been in here for a long time. And when you walked in, I could see that there was no bullshit with you. A lot of these niggas around here purposely try to walk hard, talk hard, and act tough. But, you don’t seem to be trying. Your shit is natural. You walk with confidence, but there’s nothing extra about it. You talk hard, but it ain’t hard to tell that it ain’t just talk. I see a lot of these dudes around here come and sit by you whenever you come back from your classes. It’s almost like they anticipate you coming back, so they can sit around and soak up your aura.”
Born laughed, and shook his head. “Whatever! The shit ain’t that serious.”
Ace smiled. “But it is, though. I can tell the fakes and the phonies. You strike me as a real nigga. That’s why the fakes gather around you, trying to soak up some realness.”
Born smiled, feeling like he was being flattered unnecessarily. “What you in here for, old-timer?”
Ace shrugged his shoulders. “All kinds of shit. But mainly homicide. I killed my brother, and then set his house on fire.”
Born stared at him in silence, digesting the information
“I was on crack. Strung out, needed money. I went to my brother’s house in the middle of the night to get some. I was hoping that, even if he didn’t give me the dough, he would let me in so I could steal something, and sell it to get some dough. It was all about getting high for me that night. So my brother came to the door, and I asked him for money. He wouldn’t give it to me, wouldn’t let me in the house, and I snapped. In my mind I thought that he was turning his back on me when I needed him, that he thought he was better than me. I stabbed him in his chest about seven times. Then I went in the house, stole some shit I could sell real quick, and then set the whole shit on fire. I never realized that my brother’s kids were sleeping upstairs, and I left the house to burn down. By the time I was blocks away getting high, the neighbors were trying to get my nephews out of the house as it burned to the ground. The cops figured out it was me, and I was arrested that same night and charged with murder, arson, endangering the welfare of a child, all kinds of shit. Got sentenced to twenty years.”
Born shook his head, his suspicions confirmed about Ace’s addiction. He was at a loss for words.
Ace continued. “But the time I’ve served in this prison is nothing compared to the sentence of having to live with that guilt for the rest of my life. I can never get the image out of my head—the look on my brother’s face when I stuck that knife in his chest. I can’t escape that. So they can lock me up for as long as they want. I’m serving my own sentence in here.” Ace pointed to his head, and looked Born in his eyes. “I can never bring him back. And that’s the worst punishment. It ain’t like I killed him for betraying me, or for stealing from me, or for fucking my wife. I killed him so I could get high. My own flesh and blood. That’s the price of being hooked on that fuckin’ crack. You sell your soul for that shit.”
Born nodded. “Tell me about it,” he said. “My dad was hooked on that shit. So was my wifey.”
Ace looked at Born intently. “Yet you still sell this shit to someone else’s father and someone else’s wifey?”
Born shook his head. “You sound like my moms. I guess you got a point, you know what I’m saying? But I always felt like, if I didn’t sell the shit to somebody, another hustler would.”
“That’s true,” Ace said. “But if everybody thought like that, what good would that do? If you let yourself think about every fiend after you serve them, you would feel what I’m talking about. You never let yourself feel the guilt of what you’re doing. You get cold to it. You never let yourself feel the desperation of the person willing to give you their body for a hit. If you can imagine how strong a drug must be to have you choosing it over your loved ones! You gotta make a decision for yourself that selling that shit ain’t what you want to do anymore. Fuck everybody else.” Ace leaned forward, speaking with sincerity. “I talk to a lot of young niggas in here like this. Most of them don’t hear me, though, ‘cuz all they want is to get out of here and go right back to getting money. They want to get back to the block, back to the fiends, the cash, the hoes, and all the other shit that comes along with it. They don’t really want to change. But I see you around here going to classes, reading books, staying out of trouble. And it looks to me like you might really have what it takes to get the fuck up outta here and never come back. I fucked my life up. Ain’t no hope for me. Most of these young niggas in here are hopeless. They don’t know nothing else, and they don’t want to learn nothing else. Period. They’ll get out of here eventually. But they’ll be coming back. Or if they don’t come back, they’ll end up six feet under. But you’re a natural leader, Born. I can tell by how these lil niggas follow you without you even asking them to. And I think if you want to walk out of here and leave this shit behind, you just might be the one who can really make that change. Real talk.”
Born listened to Ace talk more about his own life, the depths to which he’d fallen at the hands of the crack he had used. He told Born about the pain he lived with daily, of how he’d destroyed his family, along with any hopes of living a life not plagued by demons. Talking to Ace made Born look at his surroundings through new eyes. He realized how right Ace was. Born wasn’t like the rest of the guys he was incarcerated with. There was something about Born that set him apart. He was incarcerated with men who didn’t know how to read, men who had never been outside of the cities and towns in which they’d been born. He began to see that there was more to life than what he had limited himself to.
Each afternoon, Born would sit and talk to Ace for hours. Born soaked up the old man’s wisdom and life experience. Ace reminded Born of Leo in a way. The fatherly advice he gave made Born miss his old dad even more. At Ace’s urging, Born became interested in the notion of higher learning, and this is what he used to deter him from more trouble. He stayed out of further dram
a and became a model prisoner. Before long, the end of his sentence was near. He gave all of his books and tapes to Ace, promising to keep in touch once he got out. By March 1999, he was going home. Born made a vow to himself and to God that he would never look back.
33
DOUBLE CROSSED
Some folks in the hood wondered if Jamari had ratted Born out. The timing was sure convenient. Born’s arrest closely followed his argument with Jamari. Jada never questioned it, though. She had no reason to suspect Jamari of that type of treachery. Not yet, anyway.
When she heard that Born was in jail, Jada couldn’t understand why she felt sorry for him. Especially after all he’d done to distance himself from her. She was hurt that Born had tossed her out, with his mother’s help, rather than helping her fight her demons the way Dorian had helped Sunny. She was hurt by the things that Jamari had told her Born had said about her in the barbershop. Jada was hurt that Born had abandoned her so coldheartedly. He had thrown her out. Then he moved on with another woman, all while Jada was still sick without him. Born had moved on with his life without her. And she felt that it was time she moved on as well. Yet, she still had love for the man, and her heart went out to him. But she was caught up in her own bullshit. Too caught up to really focus on anything else.
She and Jamari dated exclusively for close to three months. Jada was high every day, and she still had not been in contact with Sunny, or with her sister Ava. Her only family, her only friend, was Jamari. He fed her habit, and that was all that mattered to her. For Jada it was more about companionship than love. But it was mostly about the drugs. Jamari was her pusher, and she depended on him for that. When her savings were depleted, he let her move in with him. She was so far gone that she didn’t see that as a setback, but rather as a more convenient way to get high. Now she would be living with the drugs, and she could be high as often as she wanted. She was happy to be living under Jamari’s roof, and he was happy to have her there.