by Jason Lee
I mourned Rodney mostly by myself. I didn't have a relationship with my mom where I could receive comfort from her. I couldn't mourn with my dad because I didn't have that relationship with him, either. Calvin was still a part of my life, but he didn't really know how to support me. Of course, he would check on me, but I was so angry and so ready to snap that people just gave me distance. They didn't get in my way. When Rodney died, my whole disposition in life was “fuck it.”
I was grief-stricken and I was angry. It was like I flipped a switch and became a lot colder to people and a lot less trusting. I shut down and didn’t allow people to get close to me anymore, so my relationships suffered a lot. There was one person who I opened up to about my brother—Dana. She had lost a brother, too, so she was able to relate to a lot of what I was feeling. She stayed on the phone with me, encouraged me, and she returned every call that I made to her to try to process what was happening to me. Dana was the person I leaned on. She let me come and visit her—she was accessible. I had eventually pushed people away with my shitty disposition, and for a while, I didn’t care. There was more drinking and more wallowing in my loss. I would reminisce about something crazy Rodney would say or do and get pissed. There were people responsible for his death, and I needed a way to make them feel the pain that I felt.
***
I made a mental list of all the people my brother was at odds with, and I made it my promise to avenge him. The night before Rodney died, there were some girls who were trying to break up his relationship with his girlfriend, and they started to be a huge problem. I remembered that he told me about the situation, so I arranged for some rough girls from the south side to find the other girls and beat their asses. The day after Rodney died, I was having a nervous breakdown, so I decided to go to the club to try to regain some type of sanity. First, I headed to the mall, but I got bombarded with people who had heard about my brother, and I was trying my best not to snap.
I went to the club, and I was “The Walking Dead”—not much life inside of me, but still trying to function. I was a complete mess, but then I happened to run into the girls who my brother had mentioned a few days before. Fire erupted within me.
I walked up to them and I said, “I know what y’all did to my brother. Before you leave, I'm going to have some girls beat your ass. You’re not going to leave here without getting your ass beat.”
They tried to sneak out, but the south side girls were at the club, too. They caught the other girls and beat them up so bad, but I didn’t even care.
Then, my brother, Kristopher, told me about some guys who had robbed Rodney during a dice game a while back, so we were getting ready to handle them, too. I called one of my military friends, his friend, and my brother-in-law, Norman. We all got guns, hoodies, and masks, and we went to one of the guy's houses. I had my friend park on the street.
“This where these niggas stay?” I asked Kris.
“Yea,” he confirmed.
“I don’t give a fuck who in there,” I declared, “I’m blasting everybody.”
I could feel darkness infiltrating every sense of morality I had. We walked up to the building, went all the way up the stairs, and walked down the hallway. We were so cold-blooded and enraged that if anybody would have walked out of their apartment that night and seen us all walking in the hallway, they probably would have died.
We knocked on the door. Kris had a bat, and the rest of us had guns. These were real guns, too—I had a 40 magnum, my brother-in-law had a 357, and then my other friend had another type of gun that wasn’t that easy to obtain. I pointed my gun directly in front of the door, and I made up in my mind that I was going to shoot whoever opened it along with everybody else in the room.
We were on a rampage. The sadness of my brother’s death was always coupled with anger. As bad as I wanted to take out all my emotions on Samima, the girl who killed Rodney, I knew that I couldn’t. She was locked up. No one answered the door, so we left. I was pissed, but had somebody answered the door, everybody in that apartment probably would have died that night for sure. I’m actually grateful that our plan failed. I would have become a murderer, and my brother would still be dead. I would have been locked up for the rest of my life and thrown my entire future away.
***
Things were getting worse for me after Rodney’s death, and I felt like Death was unrelenting. I felt like I was losing everyone around me. My friend, Jerry, got murdered a week after Rodney died. I was at a club with his cousin, who was my brother's best friend and one of the pallbearers at his funeral. I went across the street to get a burrito, and Jerry was standing outside. I was like, “Hey, what’s up?”
“I’m chilling, man, what’s good with you?” he replied. I went into the spot, got the burrito, and when I came out, he was lying on the ground bleeding from a gunshot wound to his head. The blood made a shallow pool on the curb.
The Eastside Boys killed him. When I came out, they were standing right there and were sliding along the wall trying to get away before the police arrived. I had to go back in the club across the street and tell my brother's best friend that his cousin had just been shot in his head outside. It was crazy.
***
Steve’s death hit me hard as hell—partly because I felt responsible. I had a friend named Japora, who was married to a girl named Cynthia. Japora was in prison for a drug-related crime when she met Cyn. She sold dope and was a well-respected baller in our community; because we were so cool, she would let me borrow her car from time to time. One of the times Japora gave me her car, I called my friend Steven and said, “Yo, Steve, I'm about to come pick you up.” He was down, and I was on my way.
On the way to pick Steve up, I got caught up and lost track of time, so I was a little late. I was heading to the southside to pick him up; the southside was an area where all the ganstas and dope boys used to hang out. I never had any problems there because they all knew my brothers. There had been a few conflicts with other people, but I’d never known anything too crazy to pop off there.
When I pulled up to where Steve said he would be, there was yellow tape surrounding one of the buildings. Yo, what's happening? I thought to myself. I didn’t see Steve anywhere, so I went to his house to find him and get the scoop on what had gone down. He wasn't home. I went back up to the turf to find out who was killed, but I was so nervous because I knew it was probably Steve. Apparently, he was shooting dice with a guy in a wheelchair named Denzel, another person from the hood who had been shot and paralyzed. Denzel and Steve got into an argument; he thought Steve was trying to play him because he was in a wheelchair. As the argument escalated, Denzel rolled back and pulled a nine-millimeter out from under his chair and shot Steve nine times.
He killed him over $10. I felt guilty because I was late. I felt like if I had been there on time, he wouldn't have died.
***
Jovon was a kid who I will never forget. I was attending Delta College when Rodney was murdered, and I had met Jovon there. He was young and attractive—he was flashy with his clothes and jewelry and was a “flyboy” who sold drugs. We would see each other at parties and mixers around town; he was cool for the most part. We were about the same age and I had been around drug dealers all my life, so I recognized his vibe.
When Rodney died, I tried to go back to school and resume my life, but I was just crying. I was severely emotional because it was extremely overwhelming. During one of my breakdowns, Jovon and another guy walked up to me and he said, “Hey, bro. There ain't no time to cry. Life is what it is, and you got to toughen up. You got to just deal with this shit.”
It was the most insensitive thing anyone had said to me. There were actual Bloods offering their condolences to me, so him saying that really pissed me off.
“You need to stop being soft,” they continued. “These are the streets. You know what it is.”
I looked at them like, Are you fucking crazy? I get it: most of us were very desensitized and we had no emotion because of t
he ruthlessness in our community. We were surrounded by so much violence and death that many of us became numb. But this one really hurt, and it didn’t just hurt me.
A few months later, I got a call from my friend, Bernice. She was frantic and she told me something that I couldn’t believe: Jovon had been murdered.
“What?” I yelled. I got more information from her and immediately went to the scene of the crime. There was yellow tape all around the apartment complex. Bernice told me that Jovan was at home when a guy knocked on his door asking to buy crack. Apparently, Jovan opened the door and the dude immediately stabbed him with a knife. Jovan tried to get away, and he was running down the hall, dripping blood, and calling for help. As he was running, the guy was still stabbing him and he cornered him in the bathroom. He had stabbed him 33 times and then hit him in the head with a hammer. After he killed him, he went back into Jovan’s apartment and robbed him. There was blood all over the walls and all in the bathroom. It was so traumatic how he died, and I couldn’t believe that happened to him.
A few weeks later, I saw Jovan’s friend—the same friend who had told me to stop being soft and that this wasn’t the time to cry. When I saw him at school, he was a wreck. I walked up to him and offered my condolences and said, “Now you get it. Now you feel what I feel.”
***
I was losing friends left and right, either by someone else’s hand or due to betrayal. Tanisha’s death was one that affected me in multiple ways. She was a friend who I had known since middle school; we were in the same math class together. She used to always wear red beads in her hair. She was a sweet girl, and everybody liked her. I didn’t have many friends in middle school, but she was one of the few people who would be nice to me even when everyone else liked to fuck with me.
Tanisha and I were attending a graduation party, but when we walked in, we noticed that there were all white people. They were looking at us like we didn't belong there. My friend, Sandra, was also there and she could also sense the uneasiness in the room. She casually pulled out a little black lighter to light her cigarette, only it was shaped like a gun. To a person who happened to glance in her direction, it looked like she had flashed a gun before she put it back into her purse. We could tell that they didn’t want us there, and the event was becoming more and more tense. We decided to leave, and so we headed out.
As we started to leave, a guy named Roger showed up with a bunch of people. When Roger arrived, the white people from the party came outside with a gun and started shooting into the air. I was chatting with Tanisha, who was standing outside of my friend Aaron’s car. As soon as she heard the gunshots, she took off running. More gunshots followed, Aaron hopped in the car, and we drove off. We didn’t know what happened to her or anyone else, but a few hours after, the police came to my house accusing me of shooting Tanisha. Tanisha's family thought that I was involved with her death because I was the last person she was seen talking to. I was shocked that she was dead and that they thought I did it.
Tanisha was dating Rodney's best friend, Brandon, at the time. Brandon also questioned if I had something to do with Tanisha’s death, and I told him that I didn’t. I cooperated with police and told them what I saw that night, and then I found out that the police arrested Roger as a possible suspect. As a result, Roger’s friends were on the hunt to find out who had snitched on him, and for some reason, Aaron had given them my name.
The night that Roger’s friends confronted me about Tanisha, I was out with Kris, my roommate—a Panamanian dude whose name I forgot but was crazy as fuck, and my best friend, Tasha. We were sitting around chilling when I got a call from Aaron.
“Where are you at?” he asked.
“I'm at El Torritos watching the game,” I responded. A little after we hung up, he pulled up with a few guys who were obviously Crips. My brothers were Bloods, so I was already uneasy about this whole situation.
“Yo, can you come outside?” Aaron asked. I didn’t suspect anything crazy, so I came outside.
When I came out, the guys got out of the car and started to confront me: “Yo, cuz, we heard you snitched on my nigga!”
I didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. All I knew was that Tanisha was dead. I didn’t know who did it or why. Roger’s friends said that they heard I had said something about Roger and that Roger was in the car with us that night. I found out through the newspapers that Tanisha had run away from talking to me, gotten caught in the crossfire, and allegedly shot by Roger on accident. I didn’t see any of that; my only knowledge of what happened was based on what I'd seen on the news.
“Nigga, snitched?” I defended myself. “First of all, why would I snitch? Y’all already know I'm a real nigga.”
They were like, “Well this is what we heard, so what the fuck you gotta say about that?” They were really pressing me. There were three of them, and my friend Aaron was sitting in the car with a goofy ass look on his face. I was thinking, Aaron you brought these niggas here to get me? I felt like he betrayed me.
“Okay, tell me this,” I retorted, “who told you I snitched? Because if they told you that, let’s all get in the same room together and let’s talk about it.” One of them looked at Aaron, and that’s all I needed. I had plans for his ass. I'm gonna get this nigga when they leave. You brought them to me like this. You set me up.
I was already looking at Aaron sideways, so I said, “Who snitched?” They looked at him, and so I looked at him. I said, “Nigga, you told them that I snitched?”
Aaron got out and ran to the other side of the car. I had a knife in my pocket, and I pulled it out and chased him around the car. I guess this was the time in Stockton for niggas to be getting chased with knives. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I caught him, but I knew I was going to get his ass. He was running around, so finally I was on the opposite side of the car, and I started stabbing one of his tires. Then I scratched his car with the knife.
“No! Stop, stop!” Aaron screamed. “You're fucking up my car!” I didn’t care.
My friend and my roommate came out to me, and they were both yelling, “Jason put the knife down! Jason put the knife down!”
Then I yelled to Aaron, “Nigga, I'm gonna put the knife down, but you got to stop and catch an ass-whoopin'.”
He stopped where he was, and I threw the knife down. I ran around and I beat the shit out of him outside of El Torritos. I fucked him up: I had a knee in his face, his head was in the ground, and I was punching him. I broke my thumb, and I ended up going to the hospital. I told him that he needed to come to my house and get his ass whooped because he had fucked up my pants. Well really, I fucked up my pants because I beat him up, but I didn’t care. I still called him:
“Aaron, come over here to my house because I'm gonna whoop your ass.” I was serious. I was going to fuck him up again.
“What are you talking about?” he questioned me. “Why are you tripping?”
“Aaron, come to my house and get this ass whoopin’ right now! You're gonna get it one way or another.”
Aaron brushed me off. “You ain't the same no more. Ever since your brother died, you been on some real crazy shit, bro.”
I wasn’t trying to hear anything he had to say. About a half hour after I had gotten off the phone with Aaron, our friend, Chae, called me.
“Hey, Jason. Aaron called. He said you called him and you was gonna whoop his ass.” Aaron’s punk ass had the nerve to call and snitch on me…again?
“Yeah, I’m gonna whoop his ass,” I confirmed. “It ain't none of your business, so don't worry about it.” Chae was trying his best to reason with me and talk me out of it, but there was nothing he could say to change my mind.
Aaron eventually talked me out of whooping his ass, and he ended up buying me some new pants. We didn't get in a fight again, but I had stopped talking to him.
***
Chae and I remained close. One night we went out to a club in a small nearby town, Angelino's, and this guy got into
an argument with Chae. I was like, “Yo, my man, I'm really not for all the yelling. All the arguing, and all of that, let's bring this to a conclusion. Meet us at the gas station down the street.”
There was a Chevron on the corner, so the guy was like, “Yeah this is whatever. We gettin’ there.”
We all got into the car and headed to the gas station. Without missing a beat, I got out of the car with my brother’s 40 Magnum. I popped the gun, pointed it at him, and was dead set on shooting his ass.
He looked at me and said, “Nah.” My friend JP and his brother, Jay, were also there. JP shouted, “No, no put the gun down! No, don't do that!”
I didn't shoot him, but I was really with all the shit when my brother died. I didn't care. There was nothing that anybody could do to make me give a fuck about life, and every day I was led by my emotions and ready to be reckless.
8 Forgotten
After the police investigation and after overwhelming support from the neighborhood and everybody who had witnessed the shooting, Samima was charged with 1st-degree murder. I had awaited the day that she would get what she deserved, and I couldn’t wait to look her in the face while the judge put her away for the rest of her life. She was reckless and irrational that night, and because of her lack of judgment, my brother was gone. I honestly wanted to see the bitch fry.
On the morning of the first hearing, I felt heavy. There was an eerie feeling of darkness that threatened to overtake me even though I was hoping that there was going to be some type of closure to Rodney’s death. I dressed the best I could for court—I didn’t have too many suits laying around, so I managed with a button-up shirt and a pair of slacks. I hoped that the jury and the judge would take me seriously when it was my turn to testify. I hope that they would believe me when I said that Rodney had not attacked Samima and that she had acted in a way that placed everyone’s life in danger.