Monster

From what I was able to gather, Tray Ball, along with two or three other homegirls and two members of the Compton Crips, were in the shack—Tray Ball’s backhouse—getting high. Tray Ball started playing roulette with a .38 snub-nose. One round in the chamber, a quick spin, put the barrel to the temple, and click or boom. After several successful attempts—or unsuccessful, depending on the players’ disposition, and I don’t know what Tray Ball’s mind-set was that particular day—he became bored with the game. He exited the shack and went into the house. While he was gone, thinking he was through with roulette, someone put five more rounds in the chamber. When Trayball re-entered the shack, he immediately picked up the gun, put it to his head, squeezed the trigger and BOOM! No one had time to tell him the barrel was full. Everyone fled the scene. Tragedy has no mercy.

Our first thought was of foul play. My initial instinct was to kill everybody who was there, including those from Compton. Later, I knew this was an irrational call based on emotionalism. I remained bitter the rest of the week.

When Tamu and my sister, Kendis, came to visit my brother and me on Sunday, I told them about Muhammad and the way he talked. I asked Bro to accompany me Monday night to services, and he agreed to.

On Monday Muhammad did as he had the week before, only this time he spoke more about the Black Panther party and its threat to the U.S. government. Seeing me and Li’l Monster there, he intentionally expounded on the lives of George and Jonathan Jackson, both members of the party. Jonathan was murdered in a heroic attempt to liberate three prisoners, including the Soledad Brothers—of which his Brother-Comrade, George, was one. Comrade George was assassinated the following year in a bungled attempt to escape from San Quentin.

“How old are you?” Muhammad asked, pointing at Li’l Monster.

“Seventeen,” replied Li’l Bro.

“Jonathan Jackson was seventeen when he walked into the Marin County Courthouse and took the judge and D.A. hostage.”

He paused a minute for effect.

“What set you from?” Muhammad asked me.

“Eight Tray Gangster,” I replied.

“George Jackson was the field marshal for the Black Panther party. He was eighteen when he was captured. He was given one year to life for a seventy-dollar gas station robbery. He served eleven years before he was killed by pigs. He was twenty-nine years old.”

He turned to Li’l Monster. “What you in here for?”

“For murder.”

“Who you kill?”

“Some Sixties—”

“Black people!” Muhammad shouted.

“Yeah, but—”

“George Jackson corrected, not killed, corrected three pigs and two Nazis before he himself was murdered!”

Muhammad seemed possessed.

“This is what I’m trying to tell you. As you kill each other, the real enemy is steadily killing you. Your generation has totally turned inward and is now self-destructive. You are less of a threat when you fight one another, you dig?”

We sat upright, clinging to his words.

“Jonathan knew chemistry, demolition, and martial arts. He was a man-child, a revolutionary. He felt responsible for the future of his people.”

We sat there, stunned by the parallel between us and George and Jonathan Jackson. What made us sit up and take note of what Muhammad was saying about our self-destructive behavior was that he never talked down to us, always to us. He didn’t like what we were doing, but he respected us as young warriors. He never once told us to disarm. His style of consciousness-raising was in total harmony with the ways in which we had grown up in our communities, in this country, on this planet. Muhammad’s lessons were local, national, and international.

I put the word out that all Crips should come to Muslim services and hear Muhammad talk. Within three weeks attendance increased from nine to twenty-seven to forty and finally to eighty! The staff became alarmed, asking questions and even sitting in on some of the services, trying to grasp our sudden attraction to Islamic services. They never caught it.

Islam is a way of life, just like banging. We could relate to what Muhammad was saying, especially when he spoke about jihad—struggle. Of course we heard what we wanted to hear. We knew that Islam or revolution was not a threat to us as warriors. Muhammad didn’t seek to make us passive or weak. On the contrary, he encouraged us to “stand firm,” “stay armed,” and “stay black.” He encouraged us not to shoot one another, if possible, but to never hesitate to “correct a pig who transgressed against the people.” After every service let out, it was a common sight to see fifty to eighty New Afrikan youths mobbing back to their units shouting “Jihad till death!” and “Death to the oppressor!”

The Protestant following totally evaporated. Reverend Jackson could not figure out where his constituents had gone. In these times, gang conflicts involving New Afrikans were at an all-time low. Mr. Hernandez began to pull on the strings of his informants, which, without fail, led him to me.

One day he called me into his office for a fact-finding chat. He offered me a seat, but I declined. He then began his little probe.

“So, Mr. Scott—or is it Abdul or Ali Baba?”

I said nothing.

“Yes, well anyway I have called you in here because it is my understanding that you have been trying to subvert the institutional security.”

The term “institutional security” is so far-reaching that whenever there is nothing to lock a prisoner down or harass him for, staff, correction officers, and most any figure of authority in any institution will pull out this ambiguous term. It is precisely this wording that has me locked deep within the bowels of Pelican Bay today. I am a threat, and proud of it. If I wasn’t a threat, I’d be doing something wrong.

“Institutional what?” I asked, not yet familiar with the terminology.

“Security, Scott, security.”

“Man, you trippin’—”

“No, Scott, you are tripping!” he yelled, slapping both hands hard on the table.

“I don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout,” I answered with a blank stare.

“Oh, you don’t, huh? Well how do you explain twenty-three Eight Trays, fourteen Hoovers, eleven East Coasts and a lesser assortment of other bangers cropped up in Moslem church for the past month, huh? Explain that!”

“Man, I ain’t explainin’ shit.”

“Oh, no? Well how ’bout if I keep your bad ass on the Rock forever, huh? How ’bout that?”

“I already been there two months for some shit that didn’t involve me—”

“You are a damn liar, you ordered that boy Layton to jump on Cox. And you been involved in a host of other shit. So don’t tell me what you ain’t done.”

“You know what, Hernandez, do what you gotta do,” I said low and slow, to let him know that I wasn’t hardly giving a fuck about what he was stressing on.

“Yeah, I’ll do that, I’ll just do that. But you remember this when you go up for parole.”

“Can I leave now?” I asked, bored with his threats.

Actually the Rock wasn’t all that bad. I ate all my meals in the cage, showered every other day, and came out once a day for an hour, usually in the morning. I was able to have my radio and a few tapes. At that time I was exploring the blues. Jimmy Reed was my favorite. I still got my weekly visits, though I couldn’t decide who I wanted to have come. At Y.T.S. they allowed prisoners to have only one female on their visiting list, other than mothers and sisters. Tamu really was not my first choice, China was. But she didn’t have the mobility to be there every week, and riding the bus was suicidal. So I took her off my visiting list and replaced her with Ayanna, who was also from