Monster

wash it off, ya know? So he was feelin’ pretty fucked up inside, and wit’ a punch now and again, sheeit, fool ready fo’ anything.”

“Where you learn that from, Rat?”

“Slavery.”

“Slavery? Nigga, you ain’t never been no slave, fool.”

“Naw, but I read that in a book befo’, ’bout how the slaves wasn’t ’loud to have clothes or wash they self so they lost they self… esteem, yeah, that’s it. So I took his self-esteem, see?”

“Yeah, I seen that.”

And when I looked at B.T. his expression was one of utter helplessness. I felt a little sorry for him, but I was a hard-line conservative and felt that this was the life he’d chosen. Unlike the slaves, he had joined the Crips. He knew the job was dangerous when he took it. Module 4800—this testing ground—was for some a breaking station. We had started calling it Forty-eight Hours, because if you could survive the first forty-eight hours—the noise, fights, stabbings, cross-burning by the pigs, tribalism, set tripping, interrogations, and being crossed, doubled-crossed, and triple-crossed—then you were in. B.T. couldn’t handle it and froze up on the first occasion of hand-to-hand and knife-to-body combat. He’d left his homies out there alone—a fatal mistake. Now his homies left him to Fat Rat’s desires.

“Monsta, you can go on to sleep now, cuz. I can handle it from here.”

Fat Rat said this as if I’d actually been helping him work B.T. over.

“Yeah, I guess I’ll kick on back now. I’ve seen enough for today.”

I knew what Rat was up to. He was ready to sodomize B.T. and felt reluctant while I was awake. It made me feel like a conspirator. I hadn’t said a word in protest to Fat Rat about his treatment of B.T., and by not saying anything I felt like I was condoning it. Silence gives consent. When I opened my eyes to protest, Fat Rat had B.T. out from under the bed and was ready to rape him.

“Naw, Rat, I can’t let you trip that hard. Don’t do cuz like that.” I’d swung my legs over the side of the bunk and was looking directly at Fat Rat.

“Aw, Monsta, this ain’t got nuttin’ to do wit’ you, homie. Hey look,” he said, grabbing B.T. on the ass, “he got enough ass fo’ the both of us, Monsta.”

“Stall cuz out, Fat Rat. You done already ruined him in the gang world. He can’t go home. Now you wanna take his manhood, too? Stall him out, Rat.”

“Damn! Monsta…”

Fat Rat looked genuinely disappointed. I guess he figured he had done all of this and rightly deserved a piece of ass. But I couldn’t let that happen, not while I was in the cell. Fat Rat slid B.T. back under the bed and went to sleep.

The next morning he untied B.T., broke his jaw with a short right hook, and put him out of the cell. Twenty minutes later our names came blaring over the module’s P.A. system.

“Kody Scott, Ray Davis… roll it up for transfer.”

“Damn, Fat Rat, now look what you done,” I said. “Fool went and told.”

“Goddamn!” exclaimed Fat Rat.

Now he looked awfully silly as his pride over what he had done shrunk to a peevish little glare. We rolled up our property and went to face the music

We got our customary whacks from the pigs, a few stomach blows and a slap across the head, which we could do nothing about as we were handcuffed. They sent us to the Hole for ten days. We were given “joot balls” during our entire stay. These are brick-shaped blocks of all the preceding days’ leftover food mixed together. They were terrible!

I had my gray jumpsuit on the bars one day and a Blood, who was also in the Hole, came by, snatched it, set it aflame, and threw it over the tier. He shouted to his comrades that he had burned up a “trashman uniform.” Long before we had recognized and taken gray as one of our colors, the Bloods had zeroed in on it as symbolizing Crip. So my gray jumpsuit was just as good as a captured blue flag to the Bloods.

We were allowed out of our cells one at a time to shower. When I came out for mine I threw a milk carton of urine on the Blood who’d burned my jumpsuit.

“Burn this, slob!” I shouted and gassed him full in the face with my warm piss.

“Aw, Blood!” he cried, running to the back of his cell.

“Aw-my-ass, punk. Shut up,” I said and kept on stepping.

That day he was let out of the Hole and I got no additional flack from the others. In fact Pee Wee from Swan was my neighbor, and he and I got along fine. He had given me the names of some East Coasts that were telling on him. He said one of them was in Forty-eight Hours. I told him I’d get on it. A rat was a rat. Pee Wee was charged in the deaths of two East Coasts. He eventually got the death penalty.

When we got back to the module things had changed. It had only been ten days, but as soon as I came in the door I sensed it and saw it on every face in the rotunda. “They” were here, is what the faces said. I began to sweat a bit as I wondered about B.T. What if he really was hooked up?

I went to Denver row, and Fat Rat went back to Charlie row. I was assigned to Denver-7. My cellmates were Sam from Santana Block, Killer from 107 Hoover, and Li’l Bubble from Six-Deuce East Coast. I had known Killer from the street and Li’l Bub from the hall. The conversation inevitably came around to B.T.

“What happened?” Killer asked seriously.

“Fat Rat just dogged dude out,” I said.

“Did he fight back?”

“Naw.”

“Did y’all fuck him?”

“Hell, naw! I ain’t into that shit.”

“Oh, ’cause that what we heard. I just wanted to be sure ’cause people been askin’ ’bout him.”

“Who?”

“Just some people…”

Damn, B.T. was hooked up! I wondered what this meant. Were Fat Rat and I—the silent observer—going to be blue-lighted?

“Was B.T. under the constitution?” I asked Killer, who had been to the pen.

“No, but he was one of our prospects.”

“Our? Are you in, or under it?”

“Yep,” he said proudly. “Been in the organization for three years now.”

I had one right in my cell! I didn’t really know how to talk to Killer after I learned he was in the organization. It all took on an air of mystery. No one really knew much about it, and most were reluctant to speak about it. This only caused more confusion and hyped speculation surrounding the means and goals of the organization.

I didn’t want to ask Killer outright about the group for fear he would take it wrong, so I just observed him for a few days. His attitude had changed tremendously. He had none of the old craziness that I remembered him for when we were growing up. He had gone to camp back in ’79 for kidnapping a Nine-0 when the war broke out. His demeanor now was humble and sure, with an air of confidence. He was respectful to the point of being almost silly. “Excuse me” and “please,” he’d say, and instead of thank you he’d say “asante,” which is Kiswahili for thank you. I was tripping out on his actions. Every morning he was the first one up, cleaning the cell, wiping the floor with a wet rag on his hands and knees! And each morning he’d say “Habari ya asubuhi”—good morning in Kiswahili—to Elimu (Honey Bear from Venice Sho-line) and Ronnie T. from West Boulevard. Throughout the day they’d speak to one another in Kiswahili over the tier. When they did so, the whole tier would fall quiet and just listen. They were upright, respectful, physically fit, and mentally sharp. They used “Afrikan” in place of “Black,” and never said nigger. They were socially conscious like Muhammad, but they weren’t Muslims. I finally asked Killer about his change one day when we were alone.

“What changed you, Killer?”

“Actually the process took some time,” he said. “At first it seemed strange to me. You know, having someone tell you what to do or how to act, what you can say and what you can’t say. But by reading about our Afrikan heritage I learned that the things that my comrades were saying were right and that most of what I learned in school or in the ’hood was wrong. Through our heritage I learned what it really means to be a Crip. A