“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 need no daddy. For what?”

“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 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, yearly, cuz can’t tell me shit!”

“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, you trippin’! I ain’t ashamed of being black, I know I come from Afrika. I am a soldier for my people, all citizens of the C-Nation.”

“Yeah, all right, Monster. We gonna see how long you think like that,” Li’l Spike said, looking over the top of his Locs at the others.

“Yeah,” I said, standing to walk away. “You’ll see.”

My commanding officer was Kidogo—Whiskey from Santana Block—who I had known from the county jail back in the early eighties. But the line was being run by Drack from Six-Deuce East Coast. He had been there two or three years. There were thirteen of us—C.C.O.—in Soledad. I was in charge of C-wing. It was my duty to make sure that no Crips came out on the tiers with shower thongs on, because this was a security risk. One couldn’t very well defend himself in shower shoes. I had to make sure that there were at least two knives out on the tier and available whenever we were out in the wing or the dayroom. I designated two people to carry the weapons. Any time one of us took a shower, the area was cordoned off and secured. A quiet period was designated from eleven P.M. till seven A.M. Every Saturday was mass exercise day. All two hundred and twelve Crips would form three huge circles on the yard and go through the routine.

Kidogo was dissatisfied with Drack and petitioned the Central Committee to remove him. He had to go to Folsom for court in a stabbing incident and said he’d handle it down there. I was left second in command. When Kidogo returned, Drack was removed for ineptitude and poor leadership. Kidogo and I forged ties with the other new Afrikan groups there—U.B.N., Vanguards, B.G.F.s and 415s. We networked with communication, military intelligence, and in some cases, weaponry. We got our hacksaw blades from the 415s who worked as plumbers. I had Crips in C-wing cutting steel off of everything to make weapons. There was never a shortage of knives or people to make them.

One afternoon I came into the wing from the yard and found Red from Shotgun showering with no cover. I went in the dayroom, and there was Shark from Harlem watching soap operas! I asked him who had security and he said he did. I told him to go and cover Red in the shower. But Doc from West Covina, who was on the disciplinary crew—those who were used to stab and beat law breakers—said he’d supply cover for Red. Well, that wasn’t his job. So I again told Shark to go handle it. When he left I called over Zacc from Hoover and began discussing the lax atmosphere. Unexpectedly, Shark came stomping back into the dayroom saying how tired he was of being a security guard and how he wanted some action. I asked him where Red was. He said he had left him in the shower.

I exploded and slapped him hard across the face. He responded by reaching for his waistband, where he kept the knife. But before he could draw it, Doc stepped up and put his knife to Shark’s throat. I disarmed Shark and slapped him again.

“If you would have pulled the kisu out I would have killed you! Now get yo’ sorry ass outta my face!”

He staggered out of the dayroom, holding his face.

I gave the kisu to Zacc and he took up the slack at the shower. Doc stayed by me.

That evening I held a meeting in the back of the unit to explain the importance of security.

“Today we had a problem with our security,” I began, looking disgustedly at Shark, “that we shouldn’t have had. Don’t y’all know what’s going on in Folsom and San Quentin? War, that’s what. And it’s just a matter of time before the Surrats try to strike at us here. We gotta be ready! They ain’t gonna walk up to our face and stab us. They gonna bring they sneaky asses up from behind and stab us in the back! So we have to watch out for each another. Secure one another, dig? And another thing, I want to apologize to the community for disciplining Shark in public when I should have taken it to a discreet area. It won’t happen again.”

A few others spoke and the meeting was adjourned.

The next day I was given orders by Kidogo to plant one in a renegade from Folsom. The following week G-wing erupted in an all-out knife fight. The Southern Mexicans attacked the Northern Mexicans and the pigs started blasting away. The Americans were herded into the dayroom. Since the Southern Mexicans and the Americans were allies and the New Afrikans and Northerners were allies, the New Afrikans attacked the Americans, stabbing seven of them. One prisoner was shot and killed.

It was during this time that the New Afrikan community at Soledad began to get flack from one particular pig. That one particularly racist guard was attacked. I was implicated in the accident and three days later, Buck, Zaire, and I were locked in solitary confinement for the incident and given forty-eight months in Security Housing Unit (S.H.U.). Buck and I were sent to San Quentin and Zaire was sent to Folsom. We appealed the decision to put us in the Hole based on confidential information, but the appeal was denied. They did, however, reduce our sentence to twenty-eight months.