Monster

“Yeah, but I don’t believe De did it. Cuz is a killa, but he ain’t stupid, you know?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“He’s in L.A. County. We should swing down there and check him out.”

“Yeah,” I said, now thinking about something else. “What’s up with the Sixties?”

“Same ol’ thing, back and forth. They hit us and we hit them. But the dope has slowed down the war too, in a way. While there ain’t that many riders on either side willing to put constant work in, everybody got fullies, so one ride usually is enough now to drop several bodies at once.”

“Have there been any negotiations with anybody over there?”

“Negotiations? Bro, you ain’t hearin’ me. Nothing has changed, man. The shooting war is in full gear. Negotiations are conducted over the barrels of fullies. Those left standing have won the debate.”

“Still like that, huh? You know who was my neighbor in San Quentin?”

“Who?”

“Lunatic Frank. He taught me Kiswahili. We got along good, too.”

“Yeah, but Lunatic Frank didn’t have no fullie in there, either.”

“No, but I doubt that if he had he would have shot me. He has changed.”

“Shot you? No, let me explain what fullies do. They don’t blow you up, they don’t shoot you, they spray you. Remember when you were shot back in eighty-one, you were hit six times? Bro, Chino just got sprayed with a fullie and he was hit seventeen times! Sprays are permanent. They ain’t no joke. We got shit that shoots seventy-five times. I heard that the Santanas got LAWS rockets. The latest things out here are fullies, body armor, and pagers. Offense, defense, and communication. This shit is as real as steel.”

“Damn, that’s heavy. And you, what you got?”

“I got a Glock model seventeen that shoots eighteen times. It’s a hand strap. Bro, this is the real world.”

The real world. How ever could I have expected anything else. Although prison had been where I’d acquired knowledge of self and kind, it also was a very simple place. Slow and methodic, almost predictable. This new, highly explosive atmosphere was a bit frightening. It’s almost as if I had contributed to a structure here, but then had somehow slept through years of its development, and now was awakening to find a more advanced, horrifying form of the reality I had known. It was shocking. Homeboys who were once without money like the rest of us now had expensive cars, homes, cellular phones, and what seemed to be an endless cash flow. All this talk of fullies and body armor made me feel old. I was like Rip Van Winkle—or, more aptly, Crip Van Winkle.

“So, where does the set stand now, I mean in respect to the larger gang world?” I asked Li’l Bro.

“Well, you see, it’s difficult to explain, ’cause nothin’ is stable—you can’t ever make a statement that can sum up what may happen tomorrow. Everything is fragile, more so than ever before, ’cause it’s all about profit. Muhammad says that capitalism has hit the gang world.”

“Do you have a job?”

“Naw,” he said, his head hanging down, “I slang dope.”

And so did everyone else who had no marketable skills or who was not already on drugs. So little money in the community came from employment that some elderly people had even gotten into the drug trade just to make ends meet. Before I’d do it, though, I might as well put my combat black back on and go out shooting people, the destruction, in the end, being equal.

I found a job as a file clerk and, from that position, rose to assistant loan advisor. Working was not as bad as I had thought it would be. Through my teachings and new consciousness I knew that in order to really feel the actual weight of the state I had to be a part of the working class. This was no easy decision to come to, as most of the brothas in the pen have this I-ain’t-workin’-for-whitey attitude. That goes over well in prison, but it didn’t seem to hold up out in society, where I was faced with the very real responsibility of taking care of home, bills, and two children, as in addition to Keonda we now had a son, Justin. Initially my job didn’t pay much, but I was managing my responsibilities for those who relied on me. It was by no means easy for Tamu and me. We only had one car, and it was old and had problems. And Tamu had moved to Rialto, which is sixty miles outside the city of Los Angeles, while I was a prisoner. So I had to stay in the city on weekdays while I worked and go home to Tamu and the children only on weekends. This gave me the opportunity to be in the community and talk to folks, while maintaining a refuge for weekends with my family.

Tamu and I had grown very close because she had chosen to come into the Movement with me, which firmly cemented our relationship. She appreciated my change and surmised that any organization that could retrieve me from the almost certain clutches of doom couldn’t be that bad. We weathered the week-long separations with nightly phone conversations and did things as a family on the weekends.

One particular weekend, while we were driving along in our little raggedy car, we were pulled over by the Rialto police, who proceeded to write Tamu a ticket. I was sitting in the passenger seat and Keonda was in the back. Suddenly, out of nowhere, another police officer came up and began knocking on my window. I ignored him, didn’t even look over. I was not driving and he had no need to talk to me. But his knocks became so hard that I feared he’d break the window, so I rolled it down.

“Yeah, what’s up?” I asked, still looking forward, not giving the officer the time of day.

“Let me see your I.D.,” he said.

“For what? I’m not driving. Why do you need to see my identification?”

“Look, we can do this the hard way or the easy way.”

Now Tamu was bending over and craning her neck, trying to see the officer who was talking to me.

“Hey, Miss,” said the officer who was writing her the ticket, “over here. You got a problem or something?”

“No,” she said, “I haven’t got a problem. I just want to see who is talking to my husband.”

“He’s an officer, and that’s all you need to know.”

I still hadn’t looked over at the one who was talking to me.

“I don’t see what my I.D. has to do with any of this,” I said, feeling my anger rise.

“If I have to ask you again there’s going to be a problem. Now let me see your I.D.!”

And for the first time I looked at him, though I’d already pictured him in my mind. He was a young American male, cocky, full of adrenaline and perhaps an unfocused hatred for me, even though we’d never met. I knew his next move would be to draw his weapon and, with shouts and threats, order me out of the car and onto the ground. Naturally, I didn’t want to subject Tamu and Keonda to such treatment, so I handed him my I.D. He took it and went back to his car to run a make on my name. In minutes he returned, clearly agitated.

“What’s your real name?”

“Sanyika Shakur,” I replied matter-of-factly, knowing that Sanyika Shakur had no record whatsoever. When I was first released I’d had my name changed to Sanyika Shakur, so I could now honestly answer that that was my name.

“No,” said the officer, “your real name before you changed it.”

“Sanyika Shakur,” I said, holding fast, knowing that the only way he could find out that I was once Kody Scott would be to fingerprint me, and he had no cause to take me to the station.

“What was your name before you changed it?” he asked again.

“Sanyika Shakur,” I answered once again.

And then from the back seat Keonda said, “No, Daddy,” thinking she was offering a helpful tip. “Your real name, that Mommy used to call you.”

I turned a few shades darker. I couldn’t believe it: Keonda had given me up. Although I wasn’t a fugitive, it was the principle of the thing. Simply because Sanyika Shakur was not in the police computer the officer had become suspicious—after all, every young New Afrikan male had to be in the computer! When I looked up at the officer he had a expression on his face that said, Now was that so hard? I was boiling mad.

“Kody Scott,” I said grudgingly, knowing what they’d find under that name. It didn’t take long.

“Well, Kody Scott, you are on state prison parole and you are fifty miles from your parole office, which means that I can run you in for violating your parole. But since you have your family with you I won’t, this time. But if I stop you again in this town you’re going to jail. Do I make myself clear?”