strong. That’s why they can’t see you out in the street. In here, you organized, unified, and uncontrollable, so you gotta be put in the Hole. Be cool, man, or you’ll be in the Hole for your whole seven years.”
“I’ll try, man.”
I wanted to say more but couldn’t articulate it. I wanted to know why “white folks” hated us so much, were so afraid of us. I had a thousand questions, but Ballard was still a pig, New Afrikan or not.
I was put on the first tier in the last cell. My neighbor was Chocolate from Four Tray Hoover. He was also a C.C.O. member, as well as one of the Hoovers who had stabbed the East Coasts in 4800. He had two knives. I told him what they had me for and we talked about other things. I asked if he felt that he’d be in trouble with the organization for participating in tribalism. He said that he didn’t know, but that he had been worried about it. He had a pretty good grasp on Kiswahili and said he’d help me with mine.
Not an hour later, after Ballard had gone home, an American pig with an enormous belly came to my cell.
“Scott?”
“Yeah.”
“We made a mistake by putting you over here, you belong in Cypress Deep Seg, so—”
“Deep Seg?” I said in a what-the-fuck-is-that voice.
“Aw, cuz, it’s fucked up in Deep Seg,” Chocolate said. “Man, why y’all doin’ him like that, he don’t belong in no damn Deep Seg,” he said to the pig.
“Get your shit together, Scott,” the pig ordered, ignoring Chocolate. “We’ll be back in five minutes to get you.”
He walked away.
“Eh, comrade, what is Deep Seg?” I asked, perplexed.
“It’s only four little tiny cells way in the back of Cypress on the first tier. It’s fucked up back there. It’s for total fuck-ups.”
“Damn! I don’t know why they trippin’ on me like this. Talkin’ ’bout a mistake. That’s bullshit!”
“Scott, you ’bout ready?” said the pig, who had returned and was standing in front of my cage. He’d been gone for forty seconds.
I didn’t say a thing, just backed up to the bars so he could chain me up for the escort across the hall to Deep Segregation. The pig tried to make small talk, but I didn’t respond. How could he make conversation, and expect a response, with a man he was putting in a Hole inside a Hole?
I was marched through so many gates and doors that I felt like Maxwell Smart. It was depressing. When we finally got to the small cage—and I couldn’t believe how small—I was made to strip and go through the degrading motions. One last stab at my humanity. I was locked behind a series of bars, then a door with a heavy plate of steel that, when closed, could isolate me from any light whatsoever. There was no light in the cell. There was an opening in the upper left corner, and from the back of the cell an outside floodlight stuck through, protected by wire mesh. The bed was a hard, concrete slab no wider than a child’s little red wagon. The sink and toilet were attached together and both reeked with atrocious fumes of bile, defecation, urine, and God knows what else.
Before he left I asked the pig if I could have some cleaning material for the cell, and he replied that I wouldn’t be able to see anything no way and that I’d get used to the smell in a few days. And with that he closed the big door and let down the heavy metal covering over my window, leaving me in total darkness.
“Hey,” I hollered, reaching for the bars in front of me. “Hey, turn on the lights. Hey! I know you hear me!”
But I got no response.
I felt my way over to the bed and sat down. I thought long and hard about what Muhammad had called repression, about what Elimu had taught me about resistance, and what Ballard had said about the white folks’ fear of us. I thought that I hadn’t even resisted yet, but still I was being treated like this. Little did I know that I had been resisting all my life. By not being a good black American I was resisting. But my resistance was retarded because it had no political objective. I was an unconscious resister.
Repression is funny. It can breed resistance, though it doesn’t mean that the resistance will be political, positive, or revolutionary.
So I sat there in total darkness, in total silence, repressed to the max. I had nothing to feed on that could explain this level of action to me. There was no mattress on the concrete, so I lay back on the hard slab and went over the words in my head that, while unconnected, didn’t have any meaning to me whatsoever. As I lay there I remembered my mother coming to Y.T.S. to see me, crying and shaking her head.
“Baby, I got something to tell you. Something you are old enough to know now.”
“What is it, Mom?”
“Scott is not your father. Baby, your last name isn’t supposed to be Scott. Oh, Kody, I… listen, do you remember seeing this book?”
In her hands she was holding a blue-and-white book with a football player in uniform on the cover.
“Yeah, I’ve seen that book around the house.”
“Well, this is your father, baby. His name is Dick Bass. He played football for the Rams.”
“Wait a minute, Mom, I’m confused here. Who is Scott, then? I mean whose father is he?”
“He’s Shaun, Kerwin, and Kendis’s father. Kevin and Kim have the same father, but he’s not Scott.”
“But…”
“Wait, let me explain. When I was pregnant with you, Scott and I were not getting along. Dick and I had met through your godparents, Ray and Della.”
My godfather was Ray Charles, the famous musician.
“Dick was there when I needed him,” she went on. “Scott knew you were not his child and asked me to get an abortion, but I refused. I wanted you, Kody. This is why he and I would fight all the time. He hated you, baby.”
“That’s why he never took me anywhere like he did Kerwin and Shaun?”
“Yes, baby.”
“So, where is… Dick?”
“I don’t know. He…”
“Mom, I’m not even gonna worry about it ’cause I’m a man now. I don’t
“Kody, I have tried my hardest to raise you guys up right. But I had to work hard every day just to feed you by myself. You know Scott and I got a divorce in 1969 and there has not been a man in your lives since. I wonder if that’s how I lost you and Shaun to the streets. You guys have turned from my darling little ones into savage little animals and I just don’t know what to do no more. I really don’t.”
“But Mom, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault,” I said over and over.
As I lay on that slab I now said it over and over to myself. “It’s not your fault.” And I hated that muthafucka Scott and Dick Bass. What could Mom do? She could only be our father for so long. I do remember not being taken on any trips like the others and being treated differently by Scott. When the others were on trips, I would be alone and sad. Sometimes Della would come and take me to different places, or I’d spend the weekend at Ray and Della’s house. My only consolation for not being treated like the others was that Ray Charles was my godfather, so I’d always have new toys, new bicycles, and Hot Wheels.
Mom would pretend that the reason I couldn’t go on the trips was that she wanted me with her because I was her favorite. She tried very hard to keep my spirits up, even when hers were down. Scott would take the others to Houston to visit his mother, their grandmother. But I was an illegitimate child and he was ashamed of me, hated me, Mom said. I never met my grandmother.
I fell into a rough sleep and don’t know how long I’d been out when someone started beating on the steel covering over the window in my door.
“Get up,” said the voice, distinctively American. “Get up!”
Irritated by being awakened, and generally mad, I shouted back. “What, muthafucka, what?”
“Hey, I got some paperwork for you to sign, Scott.”
“I ain’t signin’ shit, and my name ain’t no fuckin’ Scott!”
“Are you refusing to sign?”
Not only did I refuse to sign, I refused to talk anymore. Why? What else could they do to me if I didn’t? I
