216
Of Preachers and Prisons
“Taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning…either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature…To be the one kind of creature…is joy and peace…to be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”
C.S. Lewis.
Loletta,
I rocked this c.o. today, I was being processed and some guards were standing around talking shit and one mad dogged me playing the role grilling me so I rushed him dropped to my knees and popped him right in his kneecap and he slumped fell back against the wall and slid down to the floor his keys clattering and a salty, embarrassed look on his mug.
Now I’m in the hole. Lucky for us the one guard Sgro is from down the hill and gave me this paper and the pencil I write with.
Guess it ain’t a proper way to start off a basic-ass 11 month bit, but I couldn’t let dude look at me like that, like he’s livin’ the life and now I’m gov’t property and his life all hunky dory and I got it rough now like he’s played the game better than me up to this minute. Shit he might be free but he gotta explain to his girl and his boys how his hard ass got trashed and how he gonna like reconcile what just happened and how he fronts for all the land and all the world.
Shit I’ll be back. This is just a minor setback, the cost of doing business. You ain’t gonna be able to visit for a minute. But keep me in your dreams and keep that shit tight for me, don’t be givin’ my pussy away to no other dudes. You know I’m only playing with you. You’d never do that. You my heart.
John
Lord, I’m scared, I woke to gunshots again, I woke and looked out the window and the trees kept swaying and the stars still shone coldly in the sky I could almost hear their brightness like they were the guns blasting out there but all this went on and people still slept and only I alone seemed alarmed by it all. I am your servant. And that is why I’m here a thousand miles from home. You know what I miss most about home Lord? The sprinklers on the lawns of my town, spritzing so predictably, consistently, and the grass only bending slightly in the breeze, the already shaded vast shimmering paths where you can see where the mower went up and back against it earlier. I miss the order of it. It is, you are, still here, too, though God. I look at the oak trees their flaky skin, the camouflaged patches of worn thin tan bark on the oaks and I think only here, only here in all the trillion miles of dead black space does life burst up eternal undiscouraged by death or cold or fire. The scientists say we are a galactic backwater but they search in vain for life across the reaching darkness. We are yours truly, stewards of this ecstatic experiment. But many do not see it or know it or care and so I am here. I will pray and sleep and wake to your work.
Love,
John
Loletta,
Remember when I promised you everything would be all right? I don’t know anymore. Spent a week in solitary. Said before they could cage me but never tame me. Just gotta re-adjust my swag change up the flow fast to slow. Different pace here, smaller area, movement is limited, options…shit there always options, already copped some pills got me a cigarette hustle killing time throwin’ spades tradin’ war stories, you know ‘em all, you know me better than I know myself. I’ll never forget where I come from. Wild races down Industrial Highway. Pool hoppin’ in the ‘burbs on sticky summer nights. Ole’ E’ and Newports all day evr’y day. In clubs on Delaware Ave forty deep beatin’ the shit out of whole security squads just for lookin’ at you girls wrong. From dimes to quarters, ounces to kilos. Used to cop off dude now I’m supplyin’ him. The first time we fucked we snuck up on rich peoples’ roof deck in the ritzy ass Art Museum section of the city overlooking the river. You were all fired up on Boone’s Farm Wine, it was your idea, I don’t like heights and all that climbin’.
Taggin’ “pig” on all the 23rd precincts cop cars
Doin’ wheelies goin’ seventy on our bikes on the expressway.
Buyin’ my mom a house at age 21.
That takes it. Oh yeah hittin’ that boy who pulled a burner out on me so hard he dropped the piece and then I lit him up so bad he had to go to the hospital on top of catching a case for the heat.
We gonna live it up like we used to when I get out baby I promise. Sweet dreams. One.
John
Lord, you know me better than I know myself but if I tell you what you already know maybe I’ll begin to understand it. When I talk long enough you begin to speak through me, they say how can you pray, when there is no answer, its one way communication, but I say I hear what you want me to coming right out of my own mouth if I talk out loud to you or write to you like I am right now.
So where do I come from? Isn’t that what I must ask myself before I can understand how I got here, how I came to carry your word in this city, to this city? How am I going to be able to do it when only being here a week I haven’t left the house and am ready to go back to Indiana?
Home. Dad was strong, solid and quiet. His thin beard a steel gray. He taught me how to deal with the recoil from a firearm, respect its power, but control it, hold it strong but gentle like a container does water, not wild so it spills, don’t spill the gun hold its power like the rush of a river.
Mom made the food, cookies dissolving in mouths, flaky breaded chicken, she brought in the sunlight just right through the curtains and the arrangement of the white chairs soft in the afternoon in the sitting room in the front of the lawn. We respect your sun God we let it work for us. We faced the west.
We liked to drive out into the endless cornfields in our pickups and lay in the bed of the truck and look at the stars, the hum of the insects and the shimmering hum of the wind in stalks all around us, a mild mesmerizing music and we joked, half boys half girls in our group, but always an equal number of each, we knew right and never left two alone, but we could tease and flirt a little and even swear here and there and know that you’d forgive us. We talked of futures, Florida, California, beaches and jet skis skydiving and other dreams of practical adventure. If missions were brought up it was Africa, East Indies, never Filthydelphia.
Here I am. They are probably leaving youth group now on their way to the praise show. Hold your hands out and feel his Love, sing to your Glory. They once thought rock was devil music, you can make all whole and instruments for your good even someone like me.
I’m microwaving my fifth TV dinner in as many days, my pastor comes, knocks, slips me an encouraging note under the door. He’s being patient for now, but money’s being spent and I can’t spend all my time here locked away in my room.
Give me the strength to face this place and carry your news to those who need it.
Love, John
Loletta,
I know you miss me but you gotta hold it down for me out there. We gotta roll with the punches. You are my queen.
In here it’s the same. The sameness is the pain of it. They try to beat you down with the boredom, so you’ll be like ‘never again, I’m a come out and be a square, won’t even bust a yellow light, I’ll strap on the seat belt, go to church every Sunday ‘stead of sleepin’ in, work for ten an hour over the table’. That ain’t me. If you think its gonna be…then you always free to bounce. But you knew who I was from the beginning. No saving me. No changing me. O.G. here. Long as I’m alive I’m a live illegal. Mobb Deep said it. Thug life, like ‘Pac, high till I die, ‘loc till they smoke me.
I seen this homie from Southwest up in here, must have been doin’ dirt in the burbs like me. You ‘member that boy Boo? Its funny he’s a spook and they call him Boo. I seen him. We had beef with him and his boys before. Matter fact he comin’ right now.
Lord, I do love you and I’m trying my best. My best isn’t good enough I know, all I can do is try harder.
Pastor Keith, as you know, is a good man. He took me with him today down to the train station to pass out tracts and bottles of water. It seemed like it would be easy but it wasn’t. People in this city are downright rude. Keith just lets it slide right off him and keeps on going. He perseveres. He told me to read Paul’s letter to Timothy. He said I am like Timothy. I took this as a great compliment. But his encouragement wasn’t enough. I am timid; fear is Satan’s most effective weapon. I blushed and wanted to run and hide when someone told me to get the blank out of their way when I tried to hand them a tract. I tried to remember the days at home doing work like this, but the people there aren’t like this.
I swear this city is in the grip of sin.
Keith, when I said this to him smiled and said
“Aren’t we all though, John, aren’t we all?”
So that boy Boo came up to me in the TV room. I thought it was on. I stood up. My boys stood up. Boo motioned for his boys to stay sittin’.
It was weird. Boo didn’t look like he wanted to fight. His face was blank, but he did have all the body language of someone about to throw down. He was standing tall, look straight at me, not blinking at all. I didn’t know what to do. If I didn’t hit him it might look like I was scared and you know me I ain’t never scared. But I almost felt bad about it.
So I decided to ask him a question that could be like interpreted either way, good or bad and see where we went from there.
See his cousin and me scrapped before, no one really won so we kept kickin’ fair ones off and on for years.
“How’s your cousin?” I said.
“He alright.”
“What up then.”
“Ain’t nothin’. I came over to holla at you. Maybe now not the best time.”
“Now or never homie.”
“Nah it can wait.” He said and walked away. I was comin’ down from some percs I ate earlier and it got me heated him fuckin’ with me like that. But I just went back to watchin’ the Bourne Identity and whatnot.
Lord, I don’t understand Pastor Keith. He’s white but I think he thinks he’s black.
The world is with him Lord, but at the same time its not. He has one of them low-cut hair cuts with lines and points accentuating his forehead the kind you need to get re-done three times a week to maintain. We ran into some black friends of his and they did this strange handshake hug thing and I think he asked them how they were doing but the dialect was so heavy I couldn’t really tell.
And women, Lord, women love him, but he doesn’t seem to blink when they come up to him. I can’t look them in the eye, I shouldn’t be staring at them anyway, but he talks to all of them even the sloppy dressed ones, the homeless ones the same. He doesn’t seem eager to leave when they smell or seem crazy and he doesn’t even respond when the beautiful ones we see around seem to be hinting they want to have a social date with him. He deflects this attention and still leaves them smiling.
How did he learn all this without sinning severely in the process, Lord?
I got a chance to holla at Boo this week, its like he’s psychic or some shit, cause you know what we have out there that you gonna start handlin’ for me and I was plottin’ on somethin’ in here, tryin’ for a come up, it’d be nice to kill time make dough etc. and it turned out that all that was what Boo wanted to holla at me about.
He
was real cool at first, he gave me a soul clap and this put me at
ease and he was like
“I’m just gon’ put it to you straight.
I’m asking if you might consider not hustlin’ up in here, I know
what goes on and know you…”
“You don’t know me.” I said.
“I know you and I got respect for you, like all the times you and my cousin fought fair ones you never tried to dip on him or cut him or clap at him, and you coulda easy done that, but you should remember we caught you alone couple times and we kicked you fair ones too we didn’t fold on you slice you or bang at you either.”
“What’s that gotta do with the price of heron’ in the county? I’m a do me. I ain’t tryin’ to tell you how to run your business. What you find church or some shit, family?”
“I’m askin’ not tellin’” He said.
“Well its whatever, you ‘member that boy Prodigy from Mobb Deep when he said ‘I’m tryin’ to tell these young niggas crime don’t pay, he looked at me and said “Queens niggas don’t play do your thing I’ll do mine kid stay outta my way”’”
“Alright playa.”
“That’s right its all right homie”
I’m sayin’ though it was bug the whole thing. Homie didn’t even act like he was gonna do anything if I didn’t listen to him. ‘Ask’ me, what kind of shit is that? Who asks a hustler not to hustle? Only thing people in this world understand is force. But it was still weird. I’ll write you more soon.
Lord,
After the fiasco handing out tracts, Keith sat me down and explained some things to me.
“I know you have faith. But faith is not intellectual; it’s not even emotional. I know you believe Jesus died for your sins. I know you’re confident you will enter the Kingdom of Heaven when you die. But I see you losing faith here in the present in the face of even the slightest adversity. You must understand the source of your strength and call on it daily or even minute by minute in order to use it. Even then, being a human, you will fail. Read the Word, it gives tremendous strength. Pray more, fast. And allow yourself to fail, don’t focus on the failure keep on moving, dust yourself off and go forward knowing the Lord is with you”
He then asked what I could do that I did well that we could use to build bridges with the community. I told him I had a nice jump shot.
“Tomorrow we’ll go to the playground and all you’ll do all day is play basketball. No tracts, no mention of our church, nothing. Just play basketball. We have to establish a presence first, like a beachhead. When we invade a country we don’t just rush in with everybody, we conduct surveillance, we consult intelligence, then we send a small advance force, the Marines usually, to size things up before the rest go in. We have to look at this like that.”
Loletta, girl, I do miss you, I feel like all these letters from the last month or so I only talked about me. What’s goin’ on with you? How’s the hair dressing? Do you miss me? When I’m finally allowed to have you visit I need you to do that thing for me.
All in all I feel good. Just gotta wait out my sentence, simple but not easy.
I asked around about Boo. They told me he’s been out of the game for a minute, that he had a girl and a crib in the suburbs but he caught his girl cheatin’ and he hurt the boy. Apparently, he don’t even drink or burn trees anymore. I knew dude had found church.
Anyway got somethin’ I gotta handle, write you soon.
Lord,
Keith dropped me off at the playground today. He said he’d be back.
When I got there no one was playing basketball. A bunch of older teenagers were sitting on the picnic tables under a pavilion. They were laughing and talking loudly. Then they saw me. They got quiet.
Lord, it took everything in me to walk over the grass to the courts. I had a wedgie from rushing to put on my under shorts and my ‘swishy’ shorts that morning.
I felt eyes on me and the blood rushing to my head. All I could hear were the trees and distant car alarms and yelling streets away.
I made it to the court. It had a chain net, but the lines for the key and the box were fresh white. I bounced my ball, took it and threw up a shot. It missed everything, an ‘air ball’. I heard laughter. I rebounded the ball, tried a bank shot, it bounced awkwardly off the backboard, a ‘brick’.
“White boy got game.” I heard someone say facetiously.
Finally, I made a lay up and I just kept shooting, the kids on the picnic table went back to their raucous exchanges and a group of younger kids came up with their own ball and asked me if I wanted to play ‘roughhouse’. I didn’t know what it was but I wasn’t going to admit it, so I just nervously watched everyone else start the game. I soon realized it was an every man for himself game and I did well.
The day wore on. I had a bottle of water with me unopened and when I looked up I saw a kid had taken it, opened it, and was drinking it. I didn’t know what to do. I was thirsty but I suspected if I called attention to the theft violence might result. So I played on but it bothered me. I looked and saw the boy had put the bottle down so I went up, took a long drink from it and set it back down as if to say it wasn’t his or mine but ours.
The day went on. Keith never came back. I began to feel more comfortable. No one was rude or mean but they were rough when rebounding or defending me, I figured that was where the term ‘roughhouse’ originated from.
Finally, we set up a full court game and I was picked last, really only included I surmised because they were only ten people and that’s how many we needed.
This was my moment I knew. The earlier game had warmed me up. We went back and forth up the court, no one passed to me so I knew in order to participate I would have to get rebounds on both the offensive and defensive sides.
I grabbed a rebound from a shot my teammate missed and suddenly I felt my lungs seize up. One of my opponents had come up and pretty much punched me in the stomach, I stumbled, but I realized I was still dribbling and the other team had relaxed out of their defensive stances thinking I was down for the count, so I dribbled up and laid the ball in and ran back to defend my side like nothing had happened.
If anyone was surprised, they didn’t let on. Next series I snatched a long rebound and I saw my teammate streaking down the court I heaved the ball with all my might, it fell short but bounced a couple more feet right into his hands and he scored.
By this time, noon, the playground was hopping. We had people waiting on winners to play and I was determined to stay, to win. The score was tied, we were playing to 22 by ones but you had to win by two or the game would go on. Finally I got a pass from a trapped teammate. I dribbled to the top of the key and drained the jumper. The other team didn’t even guard me. We were now up 21-20.
After the inbound pass the boy bringing up the ball started talking to a girl on the sideline. He was still moving the ball up, but slowly. I ran up and stole the ball from him and scored the winning shot.
I got the feeling they didn’t see many white people around here but no one really cared or showed they did. It was like nothing fazed or surprised anyone.
A fight broke out under the pavilion, and we only stopped for a second, I think because I heard the people I was playing with wonder out loud if the combatants had guns. Someone said “neither of them boys is ever strapped” and we played on.
I smelled something funny and saw people smoking what appeared to be marijuana right in front of a bunch of little kids, like huge clouds of it coming out of their mouths. A cop had someone pulled over just on the other side of the fence and he must have seen it, but he just did his paperwork and returned the stopped driver’s ID and drove off.
After a few games where my team won we finally lost and I sat out, realizing the team up next wasn’t going to include me. Patience, I told myself. I was tired anyway.
I sat on my ball sipping tiny drops from the bottom of my water bottle. It was almost empty. I scanned the park for Keith but saw no one.
I watched the game and listened to the elaborate insults and excited boasts and I felt a peace come over me.
I came out of my reverie and noticed a girl looking down at me standing next to me.
“You got nice hair.” She said. I have dense, curly blond hair, my sister always said I was lucky because it’s naturally soft.
“Uh, thanks.”
“You ain’t from around here.” It wasn’t a question.
“No, I’m not.”
“Where you from?”
“Indiana.”
“What you doin’ ‘round here?”
Either she didn’t know she was being a little rude or didn’t care.
I was about to tell her about my mission, but remembered what Keith told me about not saying anything right away.
“I’m going to school.”
“What school?”
Then I felt something massive and painful come from behind my head like a wall of force I fell forward tripped over my ball scraping my knees. I turned jumped up and heard
“why you talkin’ to my girl?”
I saw a short, thin really dark-skinned boy in an undershirt with a wavy short hair cut standing there his hands up in a boxing stance I’d never seen before.
“You hear me, white boy?”
I rushed him, he tried to back away swinging wildly hitting me in a glancing way I was too close for a good shot, I grabbed him and lifted him and tackled him to the ground.
I had wrestled in high school.
I put my knees on his chest yelling “I don’t want to hurt you” but the rest is jumbled blur.
Loletta,
Hey girl, I miss you. I think about you all the time. Things here are what they are. Its prison. That boy Boo is my new celly. How that happened I don’t know. We can scrap now and not even worry about the guards and the hole and time added on to our sentences. We can rumble all night if he want. He don’t want it though. But on the flip side he ain’t scared either. He’s only been here a couple a days and he already talkin’ craziness.
Last night he said, “you got a girl, Jay?”
“Yeah why?
“Figure we gon’ be cellies we might as well talk, conversate pass the time.”
“I get enough conversatin’ from you other fools out there on the block, I’m cool being quiet.”
“Your girl bring through a package yet?”
That’s when I knew he wasn’t scared.
“If you would ‘prefer’ me not hustling’ why you wanna know?”
“I got my own thing up in here.”
Now I thought he was on some church tip, but turns out it something else altogether.
“So why you come at me with that whole deal? If you don’t want the competition why would you ask, why not try some strong-arm shit? You know asking never gets you no where.”
“I was testin’ you, boy.”
“Testing me?” I was getting hyped about to hit boy.
“Yeah. I figured if you backed down you was a punk but if you came at me you was too wild, either way I wouldn’t put you down.”
“You wanna put me down.”
“Yeah, so when your girl comin’ thru with the package? The more the better. I got trouble gettin’ enough thru, and you need me to help get rid of the shit.”
“I don’t know when. My girl lives at home, so I can’t call the crib, her parents hate my ass. They pay for her cell and check the bill. I send letters to her girl’s house. I’m tryin’ to get her to come through ASAP but I got put in the hole when I first got here and my visits were taken away, I only been getting the letters out through Sgro.” I didn’t know why I was telling him all this, I didn’t trust him, I knew he wouldn’t snitch, and I mean what would he tell anyway, he knew I was trying to come up in here you couldn’t keep word of that from leaking out.
“What about a pre-paid joint why ain’t you just cop her one of those?” It was almost like boy was doubting our thing, like suggesting you had moved on. “What about letters? She write you?”
“We can kick a fair one right now if you want. It’s like you provoking me instigating and shit. I ain’t gotta explain myself to you.”
“Well when you figure out when you can get a package thru, I’ll put you down.” Boo just rolled over facing the wall in the bunk and I was left sitting on the edge of the toilet wondering… Baby, he’s right you haven’t written or visited, I never been a jealous mother fucker but...
Then he dropped some more shit on me. “Your boy CJ ain’t got no more pills. I know that’s your twist. If you want ‘em, you gots to cop them from me.”
Lord, I came to and saw a black man grinning at me with the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. He was smiling evil like saying something to me in a language I’ve never heard.
“Asalamulakum.” It sounded Satanic. I started praying out loud
“Jesus Christ, you are my Lord and Savior…”
“Boy, we aren’t going to hurt you.”
“I have to find Keith.”
I looked around the small living room, it had deep cream carpeting, leather couches, one of which I sat in, dark exotic statuettes and goblets of incense burning all around.
“Keith, he is presently with my sister, the girl Caesar hit you for talking to.”
“What?”
“Listen, boy, I brought you here after Caesar and his boys ran up on you. My friends and I pulled them off of you. You were bleeding. We would have taken you to hospital but it didn’t seem necessary. If you like we can go now.”
I felt my head. It was bandaged. My brain ached.
“I have to find Keith, only he can take me.”
“Keith, my friend, is very busy.” The man almost spit the words.
He wore a cap on his head and had a long curly beard that jutted from his chin many inches.
“I need to go.” Then I realized I didn’t know where I was.
“One of my friends can escort you back to the Christians’ house. But I believe you will not like what you find there. If you wait…No better for you to see for yourself…Omar!” The man yelled and a boy my age appeared wearing the same cap, beard, and long garment that showed his ankles. “Omar, take this boy back up to Diamond Street, you know where the Christians live.”
The boy grabbed my arm gently yet firmly and up I went staggering.
“Omar, also please provide my mobile number to this boy.”
Omar nodded and we left the house the sun shocking me as we went out the heavy door, the stink and noise of the street assailing me. We walked a while still dizzy and finally arrived at the oak-ringed house I had before called home.
Loletta, my bad for not writing for so long. I haven’t gotten a letter from you, maybe it was lost. I tried to collect call Sara’s house, but there was no answer. I’m allowed to have visitors now. You should come up. I gotta be honest. I got that broad Gina to bring up a package. My boys had been putting money on my book for a minute but one got popped in the city and the other ain’t answering my calls, so I got low on dough and had to make a come up. I don’t care about Gina; I had to pretend like I did to get her here so if you hear some sideways shit I’m here now to squash it.
I’m beginning to think you may have moved on. But damn you could at least write to tell a nigga. I don’t know. If its about my whole thug life hustling you should know I been re-thinking it. I want to retire from the game eventually and I’m even gonna stop popping pills while I’m up in here and when I get out kill the drinking and smoking herb. A lot has happened since I last wrote. I’ve changed. But I gotta go. I’ll write you again tomorrow. Even if you have moved on I’m a still keep writing you, you are all I got out there and writing you keeps me alive in here.
John
Lord, I’m so lost now. What’s happening? Please help me. I’m here at the bus station writing this thinking about going home. I don’t even have money. I’d have to call home. Where to start? You know what happened, you made it happen, but if I tell you the story maybe I can understand.
Dear Loletta,
I guess you moved on. Wish you’d give me an explanation. If I could just talk to you I might could explain what I’m tryin’ to do now here and when I get out how I don’t want to live that old life anymore. I know you read these letters so I guess my only chance is to state my case, evade my fate.
Baby, I got sixty days clean, can you believe it?
Boo got me to hustle for him at first so I could cop from him, but eventually he schooled me to his new way of doing things. He told me his story and it was so much like mine, I started to re-think everything he was like, “Jay, I know it seemed grimy the way I did you getting you to bring a package thru we could sell so you had someone to cop from, but it was the only way to bring you in, I like your heart, boy, but getting high was fuckin’ you up, you can’t hustle high, you gots to have a clear head.”
You see eventually Boo refused to sell to me, after I had brought in my package, so I had a week until my next visit from Gina with another package, and I didn’t want to do dope anyway, but I would have, but after a few days withdrawing, after brawling with Boo, us whooping each other, like no one won the whole night long fight, I came to my senses. We squashed the beef and Boo brought me to one of these meetings these people from the outside bring into the institution like these dudes who for free take time out from their weekend to come to a fuckin’ prison to help scumbags and criminals like us stop getting high. And the one dude like made a speech at the meeting. But he didn’t seem all high and mighty, he just told a story like Boo did, about how he once was a hustler but became his own best customer and lost everything and how he’d always acted tough but couldn’t get over his mom dying and he didn’t visit her before she passed, just like me with Dad, and he didn’t even fuck with his family no more, and he couldn’t be by himself. He always had to be out and about runnin’ and gunnin’ and partying but it wasn’t a party at the end he was just like me popping pills in jail about to start snorting H when the pill connect dried up and then someone like him brought the message to him in prison that he could stop getting high. He got out and didn’t have to be all soft but he got a job and a girl and a nice whip and he stayed out of trouble and started realizing that he didn't miss
being all paranoid from weed and sad or hyped up from liquor, getting into fights seeing his friends get shot over some bullshit at a bar. He felt good and I heard dude and he wasn’t lying ‘cause you know me I can spot a phony, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter, and so now Boo’s my sponsor and it sounds weird like a cult but it ain’t, it just a way to stop getting’ high and I feel better I look better and I’m getting’ dough even up in here and when I get out in nine months I’m a be stronger and quicker and I’m a take over this shit.
But that ain’t what you wanna hear, but it’s the truth. Like I’m sure you left me ‘cause the whole hustlin’ thing on top of me getting high all the time, but I’m here telling you that when I get out it won’t be forever, me hustling, and I’ll be so thorough being dead sober I won’t make no bad moves like the one that got me here and we’ll be able to buy a house like Boo did and go on trips and all that. See Boo told me it was a lie that he fucked up dude for messin’ with his girl, he actually fucked up one of his boys who was hustlin’ for him who stole a stash. But Boo was so slick and the suburb cops didn’t even know Boo was still in the game, Boo had his girl call the cops and put on an act saying “My boyfriend beat up my friend, he came home and thought we were cheatin’,” and the cops came and Boo took the charge on the chin knowing he could still slang from jail and set an example for his crew that he wouldn’t tolerate thievery and the cops never knew a thing and Boo could have never pulled it off without being sober. That’s what I’m saying, when I get out, it’ll be all good. I’m sayin’ baby, at least holla at somehow, call visit write please.
I love you
John
Lord, I went back to where I was living that day, my head aching, the Muslim boy leaving me at the corner without a word only a slip of paper with a name and a number on it. I went back to that big three story Victorian house and went up past the wrap around porch with a swing on it creaking in the faint breeze and into the foyer and up the stairs to Keith’s room.
I stopped. I heard noises. Lord you know I’ve never known a woman, but I’ve heard enough about sex to know it when I hear it. Moans and the sound a bed moving came from inside Keith’s room.
I waited, shocked, and finally prayed to figure out what to do. “Wait”, I heard from my mind’s depths.
So I waited and soon enough the door opened and out came the girl I had been talking to at the playground, Keith right behind her.
Loletta,
Fuck you. I hate your ass. You just up and leave a motherfucker while he’s strugglin’ to do his bid. I got high again . I had ninety days clean and Boo got out and the dude he put in the hospital found him and shot him. Yeah, Boo’s dead. And Boo’s girl is with dude right now.
So my sponsor’s dead, Boo’s crew ain’t fuckin’ with me, half ‘em got pinched dealing.
I got no money for extra food, magazines, pen and paper.
I’m all alone. All I got is one day clean.
And you.
Well not you no more.
It’s fucked up, all those years getting high I never knew anything else, didn’t care, didn’t want a square’s life, now I try to stop and I can’t. I like didn’t even want to get high and I did anyway.
Fuck it. Why am I writing to you? You don’t care. I’m dead to you.
And you are to me.
I hope your life sucks.
Lord, that girl came out, little crystals of sweat on her forehead, her clothes half-on. She smiled at me and went downstairs and out into the night.
Keith saw me and nodded, not even surprised, he said “John, why don’t we sit down and talk.”
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m going to call my parents and they’ll call your sponsors and you’ll be fired.”
“No you won’t.” Keith said simply. “They won’t believe you.”
He was right.
He continued. “You are young. Some things you just don’t understand yet. I believe in God. I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The Bible talks about adultery. I’d marry that girl in there but my superiors wouldn’t approve and I ‘d lose my job and the ministry I’ve worked so hard to build in the last four years. So I love her how I can. You can’t judge me.”
“But you left me to get assaulted in that park!”
“You needed that. Do you know now they’ll respect you? You can’t carry the Gospel with weak arms. They’ve seen so many goody-goods come and go, so many people come here and try and help but leave the minute they get scared. These Christians are weak and full of fear, self-righteous and full of judgment and in love with the comforts of their suburban worlds. Do you know I’ve been stuck up dozens of times?” He pulled up his shirt to reveal a scar, light purple, bug-like where the six stitch holes had healed. “I’ve been stabbed, shot at, beaten up. I’ve beaten back too. The Bible says not to murder, not not to kill, murder is illegal, self-defense is not murder. So yeah, I fought back with force, fierce enough to kill, because God wants me around to carry his word. I spoke to these scum in a language of force, the only one they speak, and people saw it, spoke of it, and I earned respect and my church grew.”
I was quiet, thoughts racing. He went on. “So no you won’t call your parents unless it’s to tell them you’ve given up, that you are a quitter.”
I thought about my Dad and how he’d beat me senseless and put me out of his home and the how the whole town would shun me. My chances were better here, but not right here.
I got up and went into my room and packed my seven days of clothes and my toiletries and my Bible. Keith followed me, saying “and if you intend to tell anyone about my thing with Tia…”
I wasn’t scared. I wouldn’t tell, so it didn’t matter. He was right. No one would believe me and what good would it serve?
Keith said “I thought you had heart, but I guess I was wrong.”
It was the last thing I heard him say as I left steeling myself for the three-mile walk to the bus station.
Loletta, baby, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me, but just know I love you, I need you, I want you. I’m changing. Getting locked up and meeting up with Boo in here was the best thing that ever happened to me, and now he’s gone and I’m alone in this cold white cell.
It’s so white this cell.
So clean and empty.
I’m in a unit they just built, they gotta keep building more and more prisons.
I barely talk to anyone. Sgro stopped fucking with me. Good thing I’m allowed to send letters legitimately.
I hate my rap magazines. My candy bars. My ‘chi-chi’ – Slim Jim and Ramen noodle soup mix. I hate my jailhouse tattoo ‘innocently charged’ it says. I hate movies.
Everything is lifeless, slow, means nothing.
Even the fast- talking, quick-to-scrap inmates seem in slow-motion, their chatter like a Spanish soap opera to me, full of emotion I don’t understand and could care less about.
But this is right where I’m supposed to be, that old life was vain, going nowhere, all fire no light, the self-destruct button built-in, a super heated whirling machine spinning pointlessly out of control, bashing and smashing into everything, maybe only entertaining to an evil God up there playing pranks on lives he made, once loved, and has now grown bored with.
Is that it? Are you bored with me? Have you moved on to the quieter days, happier nights, full of sitcoms and sweetly decorated sitting rooms, plush throw pillows and the occasional white Zinfandel? Have you found a new man, hard-working, handy around the house, maybe a balding welder from West Chester, who is strong and silent, good in bed and never late with rent, who can pick you up and carry you upstairs to the bedroom you styled with money he gave you for your birthday?
I need you. At least read this. Let me believe that you read this that someone is witness to this other than that God I spoke of earlier who is now laughing at me, laughing across infinity.
Love,
John
Lord, I sat on the hard bench in the bus station that had so many shades of dull brown and dirty gray, I sat and watched the tourists and the hustlers and the crazies do their busy parade, the station a sped-up version of the insane march of this world, chasing pleasure, evading pain, a circus I had always been a part of myself but had only noticed coming here to this city. We may march slower in Indiana, but we march still, a chase after ghosts, specters of prestige, apparitions of affluence.
There had to be another way. I couldn’t believe in Keith’s can’t beat ‘em join ‘em approach and I couldn’t go back to Indiana and preach to the choir, try to convert the corporate types in convertibles.
I had seen too much, invested blood. I had seen a desperation verging towards violence unlike any of the quiet discontent I witnessed in Suburbia.
I had to prove Keith wrong.
I dug the Muslim’s number out from the grubby bottom of my pocket, approached the battered payphone and dialed.
Loletta,
Being as you moved on I stopped writing you.
My new sponsor said it couldn’t hurt to write you as long as I didn’t get my hopes up and shit. He said I should be writing about how I feel and whatnot but it feels pointless with no one to read it.
I only know how to write to you.
Six months I’ve served.
Three months without a chemical.
Eighteen more months to go. I maxed out at 24 months for hitting that guard, for some reason dude didn’t want to see me do longer, I coulda done three more years upstate for that dumb shit.
I can’t get high ever again.
A lifetime one day at a time.
I can’t help but look ahead, where will I be in five years? Can I maintain? I can get drugs in here again but its not the same as the outside, like on Friday night, gleaming cars rolling by my crib, knockin’ their systems, everybody headin’ to the club and I’m home alone watching movies.
And then I look back. All the crazy times. I was all over the place, Jersey, NY, even Cali, white people, hit houses, blacks, mansions, racin’ with Asians, actors and dealers, businessmen and carjackers.
I had no rules. I could do anything, go anywhere at anytime. Free. But then I got put in here.
Its time to sleep. At least I can sleep now and dream of you, both past and future yous.
Lord, the Muslim, his name was Cali, answered my call from the bus station payphone and said “Come on through boy.”
So I went, walking up past Center City’s office buildings seeing rushing people mumbling to themselves, unsure if they were schizophrenic or using hands-free cellphones. I went through neighborhoods where people sat nodding on stoops and younger men gathered on corners yelling both angrily and gleefully to each other.
I made it to Cali’s house. I knocked, he answered, and invited me in. He took me up to the front bedroom that was bare save a sleeping bag, a desk and a chair. He didn’t say much and I felt awkward, but you Lord spoke to me and told me he would help me.
“John, you can rest here the night, the week or longer. If you plan to stay longer we can discuss it when the time comes.”
He left me to unpack my few belongings. I placed my Bible next to the leprechaun green Koran, that I saw was an English translation, on the rickety desk.
Later, after I prayed, we ate out of wooden bowls brown spicy rice in his newly tiled kitchen.
“You should call your parents. Keith may come here with the police if not.”
I asked if his phone had a blocked number and he said yes.
My mother answered, an expectant “hello?” still full of her warmth though its tone was soured by worry.
“It’s me, Mom.”
“Oh John! Where are you?”
“I’m with friends.”
“Keith called and said you vanished. He’s called the police and is looking for you.”
I wanted to say Keith knew why I’d left but thought it wouldn’t help things.
“Mom, I’m not going to be serving with Keith anymore.”
“What do you mean? Are you coming home? Quitting? A lot of people gave money to allow you this opportunity, you can’t just-“
“Mom, I can’t explain it. But I just can’t go back to Keith. I’ll be fine where I am and I’ll call you.”
“Where are you? What’s the number there, this one is blocked.”
Then I heard my father in the background. He shushed my mother and took the receiver from her.
“John, I want you to explain yourself this instant.” My stomach turned.
“I can’t Dad.”
“You can and you will.”
“Father, you are just going to have to trust me. I’m grown now-“
“You’re talking back. If I was there I’d-”
I hung up and went upstairs to talk to you alone Lord.
Loletta,
My sponsor says he knows you. He goes to your salon to get his hair cut. He says you are a nice girl. I asked him if you talked about me and he changed the subject.
He’s a thorough dude. I collect call him hella often. I think he’s starting to get annoyed paying the charges but I’ll get him back when I get out.
I thought he was corny at first, like one of those church people trying to save your soul all friendly at first but then threatening you with hellfire and damnation. He was too ‘smiley’. That’s what I call him now, ‘Smiley’.
I asked around about him and some people knew him. He pretty much just sold weed before he got clean, but he used to move weight, like pounds of kind bud, and he also bought burners for people and then was eventually smoking crack and bangin’ dope in his arm. In that way he was worse than me.
Its hard to even imagine him copping burners and moving weight, but I double checked and it was definitely him and it like gave him some credibility with me. I couldn’t just like dismiss him, like say ‘he ain’t from where I’m from, and he ain’t like me so he can’t help me.’
The boy got me praying. I told him I wasn’t with it, but he kept at it, talking about his relationship with God and eventually I thought ‘what the fuck’ how could it hurt and I tried it. It don’t work, or maybe it does ‘cause I was thinking maybe I’d feel worse if I hadn’t prayed, like I only know right now how I feel, what if I hadn’t tried it?
Maybe I’d a copped some pills or scrapped or popped a guard again. Who knows.
I’d ask you to write but spons’ said to let it be, so I’ll let it be as long as you don’t tell me to stop writing you, I’ll just keep writing and maybe you’ll see the changes in me and we’ll…forget it for now. I love you
John
Lord, you know how I have no doubt you exist?
You brought me to Cali.
It’s been so strange. Cali doesn’t speak much to me. I join his little family of young men in meals, I pray when they pray, and we go on walks, like little pilgrimages, across the ghetto. They don’t say much to me or even to each other. There is a quiet kindness during these moments in the air in which I recognize your presence, Lord.
The three young men who live with me here are Abdul, Basir, and Omar. Basir is the oldest and I think he doesn’t favor me. He never shows it around Cali, but sometimes I hear him mutter ‘white boy’ or when he speaks in Arabic I see him motioning in my direction.
I don’t know how long I’ll be here. I know Cali said I’ll have to do some more things if I plan to stay longer. But it doesn’t matter. I feel such a peace here, like I’ve never felt before even in vast fields back home where only tall grass moved and insects chattered.
Loletta, girl I can’t take this anymore I fiend for you worse than any drug, I remember holding you sticky against me after we were done fucking, your soft parts wedged against my muscle, I remember my spine trembling as I came over you, you not rushing to wash it off like other girls, but letting it soak into you knowing it was me.
I miss your cockiness, how you said you’d hit my Dad, before he died, when he let my stepmom talk down to me when we visited them for a Memorial Day BBQ. I said, “you don’t want to hit Joanne, you want to sock my Dad?” and you said you’d take them both on.
I miss your haircut, you using the straight razor to box and edge my points and lines and you would even use the clippers to trim my eyebrows when they got too bushy.
I miss your thickness, and I know you’ll hate me for sayin’ it, you’ll think I’m sayin’ you’re fat, but you weren’t a twig like those other broads, I could crush them. I fell into you you had substance, unmoved by life.
Lord, Basir pushed me today, I was in the kitchen and I guess I was in his way and he wedged his body between me and the counter and bumped me out of the way. I wanted to tackle him like I did that guy Caesar but I hesitated, I don’t know whether out of fear or principle.
Instead I just went up to my room and prayed.
I felt like leaving, going home and begging my father’s forgiveness. But I hadn’t done anything wrong, so asking for my father’s forgiveness would be like lying, like allowing my father and Keith to continue lying to themselves and everyone else.
God, Cali came home and apparently heard what had happened and he knocked on my door.
I let him in and he came in and opened my Koran and pointed out a passage to me.
Loletta,
“Love never dies a natural death, it dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness, errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds. It dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.”
John
Lord, please don’t be offended by me, but this is the Koran verse Cali showed to me.
“Those who believe (in the Qu’ran) and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures)
and the Christians and the Sabians any who believe in Allah and the Last day and work righteousness shall have their reward with their Lord: On them shall be no fear nor shall they grieve.”
He read it to me, smiled, and hugged me close.
“I love you my little white Christian brother.”
Then he left. I heard him raising his voice to Basir in Arabic downstairs.
Lord, it was the first embrace I’d ever received from a man.
John
Loletta,
I know its been a minute since I wrote, I’ve been caught up here, growing, changing, finding out who I really am. I never thought time could pass quick up in here, time is what they give you, like ‘here try to deal with this’ boredom depression loneliness claustrophobia, but me and Joe been doing work together. I haven’t gotten high in six months, I copped my keytag even though I ain’t got keys, I wear it on a piece of string around my neck, its never far from my heart.
I showed Joe that quote I sent you in that last letter a few months ago. He told me why love dies. God is love and without a connection to him to replenish our love for ourselves and others love turns to infatuation, obsession, it becomes like a faint reflection of its former glory, it becomes an animal thing, like monkey’s painting pictures, we humans trying to imitate the divine, and we are able to to a point, because we once had this divine love flowing through us. When I could understand this idea, that I had to learn to let God love me and love him first, to let him love me then love myself, then you, when I understood this I had taken my third step and I haven’t wanted to get high ever since.
I’ve been reading and writing on these steps Joe gave me, like all the time, and I feel better everyday. I’m getting my weight up, doing calisthenics, I read the newspaper. I don’t even play cards or watch those dumbass movies anymore. I do talk to people and they respect me even though some ain’t tryin’ to hear this rap about God and not using no more but they say “good for him, happy for that cracker,” and they laugh. I tell them how I changed and they can’t deny it, they can lie to themselves, but when they alone with God the truth is revealed. I hope all is well with you. I love you and will continue to love you whether or not you are meant to come back into my life.
Lord, it’s been several weeks since I’ve written. I know we talk everyday, five times at least now but writing you is different, you are with me as I write, like I wrote before, you talk to me as I talk to you. What I write in some ways is already your response, for for you there is no time, no time save always forever.
I don’t know what to call you, Lord and Allah are the same I know but Jesus is not the same as Allah. I know you moved through Jesus, Jesus could only move through you, it says so in the Qu’ran, but if Jesus was God himself I do not know.
I’ve learned to appreciate things like water, the dense texture of pita, so unlike puffy white bread. I chew on chewsticks, sort of twigs with flavor that are good for your teeth.
Cali, when I told him I wanted to stay, Inchallah, for as long as God permitted, he sent me out to sell incense and oil with his boys.
I have been peddling for a month now. We pick places where there is foot traffic and no one else selling the same things and we stand and wait.
Lord, it surprises me how many people buy oil and incense. The oil is blessed, though an imitation of popular colognes and perfumes, it lasts longer and mixes with your skin’s natural oil so it lingers, unlike normal colognes that cost ten times as much and are alcohol-based so they evaporate soon after you spray them on you.
Basir told me people buy incense to cover up the stink of marijuana, then he smiled furtively.
I believe he takes drugs Lord, and therefore becomes part of the fire, this punishment for such an offense is not permanent for Allah is oft forgiving and merciful but it is dangerous.
Alcohol is much worse I’m told, because other things come in its wake, lust, wrath, and worst of all pride. Drunken people, of whom I witnessed a lot, seem to feel Godly. They are so far from being submissive, so far from practicing Islam and the temporary high they experience is rapidly replaced with a devastation the opposite of peace. In Hebrew the word shalom means peace and I think it no coincidence that it sounds like the Arabic word for peace – salaam- which also is the root of the word Islam and the word Muslim. When you obey God you experience peace.
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