I didn’t answer.
“Here you go,
When we got home I had a father-daughter talk with Keonda. She certainly didn’t know any better, but would have to learn. After all, this was the real world.
Kershaun and I were given AK-47s for Christmas by a homeboy who had somehow secured a truckload of them. He had gone around the entire neighborhood passing them out—brand-new, still in the boxes—to O.G.s. When he asked Li’l Bro if there was anyone he thought he shouldn’t give one to, Bro replied, “Yeah, Darryl Gates.”
Shaun and I began to frequent the firing range weekly, practicing the use of our AKs. Eventually we were able to organize a small shooting club. Meanwhile, I began looking for a job closer to my family, one that afforded me the opportunity to spend more time with the children. It didn’t take too long to find employment out in Rialto. And although my parole officer had forbidden me to live there and the police had threatened to jail me if they stopped me again, I had a responsibility to my family. I’d just have to risk it.
I was driven to take risks with my freedom by the frightening thought of being the type of father mine had been to me. Absentee fatherhood was despicable, and I vowed to get to my family when and wherever I could. Being a prisoner for great lengths of time helped in one very real sense: it had prevented me from having multiple children by different women. All of my children are by Tamu. I can’t imagine having children and not being able to raise them, to live with them.
The job I found was directly behind our house. I worked for a security firm owned by a New Afrikan man. My job was to simply watch the construction equipment and building materials so that they weren’t stolen. My hours were from 11 P.M. till 7 A.M., which gave me most of the day to do things around the house.
My motivation was grounded in being an upright father to my children, a proper husband to Tamu—though we weren’t yet married in the traditional sense—and a revolutionary symbol for my people. I went from college campus to college campus passing out pamphlets I had written on Tamu’s typewriter. I still held small backyard lectures for the young Eight Trays at my mom’s house. But the hardest thing I had to do was go to the Los Angeles County Jail and see Crazy De, I tried everything to avoid going. I made excuses and appointments and outright lied to myself several times in useless attempts to avoid what I knew would be perhaps the most painful thing I’d had to face in some time. Crazy De and I had talked on the phone a few times, and I could almost hear the certainty of the future for him in his words. He’d urge me to come see him and I’d tell him I was busy that particular day or say something else to change the subject. But I believe he knew all along what I was going through. My phone number had gotten out, and soon every one of the homies with murder cases were calling me. I began to function like sort of a counselor to some of them. Others wanted me to neutralize their witnesses. But De, all he wanted was for me to come and see him. I resisted right up until he sent his mother to get me and bring me down to the county jail. When Alma, De’s mother, came over, I couldn’t refuse. I had to go and face my road dog in jail, where perhaps he’d be trapped for the rest of his life.
Alma and I made most of the trip in silence. I had to gear up psychologically to deal with the police-state atmosphere of the L.A. County Jail visiting room, where some of the officers would take liberties with hassling those visitors they felt were coming to see gang members. Sympathizers, girlfriends, supporters, and especially affiliates were discouraged from being regular visitors. One’s dress code often brought down the wrath of the deputies. I no longer dressed like a gang member, but I didn’t dress “normal” either. I usually wore a red, black, and green fez, a black t-shirt, and black fatigues bloused over my combat boots. This was my standard attire in 1988 and 1989, long before hip-hop made it fashionable.
Alma and I waited in line for our chance to sign up to see De. I scanned the waiting room, focusing on the women, mostly young New Afrikans and Chicanos, with their children running happily about the filthy room. I began to recall memories of times past I had experienced with Crazy De, my loyal companion. It was De who taught me how to persevere under police interrogation. It was he who’d advised me to stick with Tamu over China because, as he’d explained it, Tamu would teach me things that we could only dream about from where we were then. It was De who’d accompanied me when I visited my godparents’ home in Windsor Hills. I’d left him in the van, high on PCP, only to come out with my godmother and find that the van had rolled backward down the hill and onto someone’s front lawn. When we got down the hill and opened the van door, De stepped out like an embalmed zombie, in full Crip gear, never having realized that the van had moved. He’d smiled and said, “Nice to meet you, godmama,” and Delia had damn near fainted. My “dog.” I remembered seeing his electric smile through muzzle flashes on many missions. I recalled hearing his hardy laughter echoing off the shack walls in reaction to a good joke. I’ve seen him in tears of joy, pain, and rage. He taught me how to cry with dignity, with strength, and with pride. That I had learned to express emotions was attributable to De. If I was the epitome of the militarist in the ’hood, then De symbolized the most multifaceted gang member. De was one you wished to have around you at all times, under any circumstances. He was a leader of leaders, with the potential to be a king of kings. But I couldn’t get to him in time enough to show him a new path of expression, a meaningful way of achieving realistic goals. A path that emphasized knowledge of self and of kind, while not requiring the dehumanization of anyone else. De would have liked that.
“Visitors for Denard,” said a metallic voice over the P.A. system, and Alma and I moved through the crowded visiting room toward the area sectioned off for visitors. De was already there waiting. When he saw us he lit up like a thousand-watt bulb. He talked with Alma first, but kept looking up at me and smiling, his whole face beaming. Knowing that each visit is limited to twenty minutes, Alma spoke quickly and handed me the telephone.
“Hey, you, what’s up, De?”
“You,” he replied, and then added, “I’m glad you came, Sanyika.”
“Yeah, well, you know, I didn’t want to have to see you like this.”
“I know, but you know what, this may be the only way you will ever see me again. Sanyika, I’m stuck. They caught us dead-bang with a kidnapped hostage. That alone carries a life sentence. On top of that I got two murders. They gonna gas me, homie.”
He was staring hard into my face, waiting for a response, a sign that would signal that I could actually feel the weight of what he was expressing. Sitting there with his mother, I didn’t know how to respond. What, I wondered, could I say to make him see and feel that I knew what he was going through? And did I really know?
“Damn, De, how you get stuck like that, man? I mean, what…” But I couldn’t even talk, I was so choked up.
“Dope,” he said simply. “One word. You hear me, Sanyika? I’ve fucked my life up for a kilo of cocaine. Don’t get involved in that shit, homie, I’m telling you.”
“Naw, naw, I’m not. But, De, I want you to know, man, that I’m here for you. I love you.”
“Check this out. You have chosen another path now, some other way to make your mark. And although I’m not what you are and haven’t been through some of the things which contributed to your decision to be a revolutionary, I respect what you’re doing, and no love is lost from me to you. But you gotta understand that I’m still in this to the fullest. This is all I know. It’s Gangsta for life, homie.” And then, to get his point fully across he said solemnly, “Gangsterism continues.”
This was not a challenge or a smite, just the facts as they were at that moment. De felt perfectly comfortable inside of the chaotic confines of the set and the larger subculture of banging.
To break with the set, I’d had to draw on my well of strength and sum up the courage to step out of myself, my set, my learned ways and take an objective look at what was going on in the world around me. This had been neither easy nor comfortable. The process was slow, often obscured, and always painful. I’d had to look back beyond the good times and happy days to the tears and grief-stricken faces of mothers who had lost their children. I’ve found that unless you have children you’ll never know what it’s like to lose a child. I’d had to open my eyes and ears to hear the sounds of clips being pushed in and weapons being cocked, screeching car tires, running feet, the hunted and the hunters, the sudden blasts of gunfire; to see the twisted, lifeless bodies, the wounded still trying to run or crawl, the yellow homicide tape being strung, the tears over a family’s lack of funds for a proper burial, the drugs, the alcohol, the angry faces—this process, the way of life for so many, repeated itself over and over. Two sides, each violently throwing itself against the other. These are the scenes that contributed to my awareness: a firsthand knowledge of life and death on the front lines of all-out war.
