stretched my sheets out as best I could and tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness and I could at least see my hand in front of my face, though barely. As I lay there I could hear rats scurrying across the cell floor. It sounded like there were a lot of them. I cursed the pigs under my breath.
The next night I was given a mattress. When the lights came on, ten rats darted for cover. The only reason I knew a whole day had passed when they brought the mattress was that they’d brought me three meals before that. The pigs expected me to beg or snivel about the conditions, but when they opened the door, I walked to the bars to receive the paper plate of food they slid under the door and took it without saying a word. Can’t stop, won’t stop.
I fed myself on the strength of the C-Nation, on seeing and knowing of the existence of a unified, organized Crip Nation. I tried to feed on what Muhammad had taught me, but it was too complicated. The words were too political, so I went with what I knew best and had seen for most of my life. And I endured.
I was kept in that cell, in the dark—except when they brought meals—for a week. One morning an American pig came to feed me and when he turned the light on I gave an involuntary moan.
Since I was always in the dark, the bright light hurt my eyes. It hurt so much that I couldn’t open them to get my meals. After three days of ice-pick pain through my brain from the stabbing light, I’d decided it was better not to try to adjust to it. I knew that to stand straight up, turn ninety degrees to my left, and take three steps would put me at the bars. I’d feel my way down the bars until I’d find the paper plate, and then I’d retrace my steps to the bed. Most of the time they’d turn the light off immediately after they’d closed the door. I’d eat with my eyes closed till they doused it. They wouldn’t say anything to me and I wouldn’t say anything to them.
But on this day, I had been caught with my eyes open, and the light blasted my brain into little pieces. The pain was overwhelming, and I moaned in response to it.
“Hey, Scott, you all right? How long you been back here?”
I didn’t say anything. I just walked blindly to the bars, retrieved my paper plate, and ate with my eyes tightly closed. He stood there and watched me. I knew he was there, I felt him in my space, looking, thinking. But there was no room in my space for him. He was an intruder, a violator. He had to be expelled.
“What you lookin’ at, man?”
Startled, he stammered and said, “How’d you know I was here if your eyes were closed?”
“I feel you. Will you leave now?”
“I’m gonna get you outta here, Scott.”
I gave no reply and waited for him to leave before I continued to eat.
I finished my meal and took my morning walk—three steps to the front, turn, four steps to the back. I’d repeat this for a few hundred steps, then sit back down for an hour or so and listen to the rats eat the remains of my food. We had come to an overstanding, the rats and I. When I was on the floor the rats yielded. Like in Congress: the rats yield the floor and recognize Monster Kody from the Crips. And when I got on my red-wagon slab bed, I recognized the rats from Deep Seg. I like it like that—mutual respect.
Suddenly the rats stopped abruptly and darted for cover. This told me someone was coming. Sure enough, the spear of light shot out like some damn lightning bolt, but I’d prepared for it and it missed me.
“Scott,” said the voice of my earlier invader, “gather your things, bud, you’re outta here.”
“Can you turn the light out when you leave?”
“Leave? No, Scott, we are letting you out of Deep Seg and putting you in Palm Hall.”
I sat there and waited for the door to close, a cruel joke played on a repressed man. But it didn’t. He was still standing there.
“Who is that with you?”
“It’s me,” said a female voice, “the M.T.A., Scott.”
This was the prison nurse.
“Am I really leaving here?”
“Yes, Scott, you been back here too long.”
I gathered my things: two sheets and a worn blanket. I rolled them, sleeping-bag style, and backed to the bars to be chained up. I was escorted slowly across the hall to the normal Hole. The nurse examined me, telling me to open my eyes to let them adjust to the light. When I did, the pain was not as intense as it had been in Deep Seg. The floodlight in that tiny space was one thousand watts—deliberately so. I hadn’t been in prison two weeks and was already subjected to this type of treatment. From the start there was perfect hate. I was grateful for a shower and a change of clothes.
From Chino I was sent to the prison at Soledad. I was taken off the bus and put directly in the Hole. I was put in the cell with my li’l homie, Li’l Rat. I taught him the small amount of Kiswahili that I knew. He asked if I was hooked up and I told him I was. He was curious and wanted to be in the organization, but I told him to be certain that it was what he wanted to do. Just because I was in didn’t mean he should be in. I told him to think about it.
That day I was let out to the general population. Li’l Spike, C-Dog, and Rattone from the set were out on the mainline and greeted me cordially. We talked and kicked it about old times, but they sensed something wasn’t right when they found me reluctant to speak on the war between the Sixties and us. I told them I wasn’t into the set tripping—tribalism thing anymore. I told them that it was now all about the unification of the C-Nation under the government of the C.C.O. They freaked.
“Cuz, you hooked up?” Rattone asked. He’d been down since he and my brother had been captured in 1981 for the payback killings in response to my shooting.
“Yeah, I’m in. You?”
“Naw, never was my style. I know all of them, though. Where they hook you up at?”
“The County.”
“Damn, cuz,” said Li’l Spike, “why you go out like that?”
“What you mean out like that?”
It was the first time I’d heard someone say anything remotely against the C.C.O.
“I mean, the set is the only organization you need,” he continued. “It held you fine till you came to prison. So why it won’t hold you now?”
“I ain’t left the set, I just think that we could be stronger combined as a nation than as a little set. After all, we all Crips.”
“I kill Crips,” Li’l Spike declared. “I’m a gangsta.”
“He’s right, Monster,” added Rattone. “Remember what Rayside used to tell us ’bout that—”
“Fuck Rayside!” I exploded. “Where is he now, huh? That shit was cool out there as long as we had guns in our hands and dope in our systems. But that Sixty, Nine-O killa shit ain’t gonna work for us here, cuz. It ain’t gonna work! We got too many other enemies to be trippin’ on one another. Too many! Until Rayside come to prison and walk on the yard and see what we gotta deal wit’ daily, monthly,
“I don’t know, homie,” C-Dog said. He was the youngest of us all.
“How many Sixties here?” I asked them.
“Three.”
“How many Nine-O’s?”
“None.”
“How many Mexicans from the south, and how many Nazis?”
“Shit, ’bout three hundred or so, but—”
“You see?” I said.
“But they ain’t killed no Eight Trays,” Rattone countered.
“They’ve killed black people… they’ve killed Crips. It’s just a matter of time, Ratt. You been down five years. You know!”
“Yeah, you right.”
“I’ll always be from Eight Tray, that’s my neighborhood. But I was born black.”
“Monster, you trippin’,” Li’l Spike said.
“Naw, Spike,
