“Right, yeah. Me and E got somethin’ for you, Monsta.”

“Red, I changed my name. It’s Sanyika now.”

“Right,” said Red like he hadn’t even heard my corrections. “Here you go, homie. If you need anything else let us know. We gone.”

He handed me a bunch of bills folded neatly. I didn’t count them, just put them in my pocket and walked Red and Eric to the door.

“Thanks, homie.”

“Righteous. But if you need somethin’ else just page me.”

“All right, brotha.”

When I finally did count the money, I found it was a thousand bucks.

Next came J-Dog, the financier of the ’hood and a stompdown loyalist, though not much of a talker. He called the house from his Blazer out on the street.

“Yo, cuz, I heard you was out. Is it cool if I come on in?”

“Yeah, Dog, come on in.”

Dog was the only New Afrikan I knew with a press and curl. I admired him, though, because he never put nuclear waste in his hair. Dog was cool. Shit, he still wore pork-chop sideburns! He has never denied anyone anything. Like “The Rebirth of Slick” by the comrades from Digable Planets, he was “cool like dat.”

“Eh, yo, what up, Monster?” Dog said in his smooth, cool style. As usual, he had blue rollers in his hair and a sweatsuit on.

“Ain’t nothin’, just coolin’ wit’ my fam ’bam, kickin’ blackness. Oh, and you know I changed my name while I was a prisoner.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, my name is Sanyika now.”

“What is that, Muslim?” asked Dog, genuinely curious.

“No, there is no ‘Muslim’ language. But there is Arabic, that Muslims speak. But my name is Kiswahili.”

“Where is Kiswahili? In Afrika, I know.”

“There is no place called Kiswahili. Kiswahili is a language spoken in East Afrika.”

“That’s deep. And how you say it again?”

“San-yi-ka,” I said slowly, sounding out the syllables.

“What does that mean? I heard all Afrikan names have meanings, you know, say somethin’ ’bout people.”

“Pretty much, which shows the depth of our culture. Sanyika means ’unifier, gatherer of his people.’ “

“Cool. How you say Dog?”

“Mbwa.”

“Naw, that’s too hard. People might not never call me,” he said and grinned bashfully. “Hey, homie, here you go. And if you need somethin’ else, get at me.”

“Oh, wait, wait. Yo, what is this, crack?”

“Yeah, it’s two zones there for you.”

“Dog, I ain’t no drug dealer no mo’, man. I can’t feed my family wit’ this. They can’t wear this or live in this. How much these zones go for now?”

“Oh,” said Dog, looking rather disappointed, “they go fo’ five hundred apiece, but I be givin’ them to the homies for three hundred.”

“Well here,” I said, giving Dog back the two ounces, “let me have six hundred bucks then, ’cause I can’t deal no dope. That’s treason.”

“It’s what?”

“Long story, homie.” I was getting bored and stir-crazy in the house.

“All right, homie, you drive a hard bargain, but I hear what you sayin’. I can respect that. Here you go.” He handed me six hundred dollars.

“Righteous, Dog.”

“Only fo’ you though, cuz. Oh, and Li’l Monster, too. Cuz’ name still Li’l Monster, ain’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said, getting up to show Dog out, “for right now it is.”

When I went back into the living room, Whiteboy Eric was there.

“Get yo’ coat on,” said Whiteboy.

“Fo’ what?”

“So I can take you shoppin’ fo’ some new clothes and shit. Come on.”

“He ain’t goin’ nowhere, he just got here,” complained Tamu.

“Yeah, bro, she’s right,” I said, happy that Tamu had saved me.

“Well,” said Whiteboy, digging into his pocket, “here, then. But I’ll be back tomorrow to get you, nigg—”

“Don’t call me that,” I said with my head down, eyes closed, and hands raised.

“What, nigga?”

“Yeah, that’s disrespectin’ me, brotha.”

“Oh, well excuse me,” Whiteboy said with a feigned look of dismay.

“It’s all right this time.”

Everyone looked at one another. They knew that although I had changed my name and reconnected to reality, the ‘Monster’ still lay dormant.

“Here you go, homes.” He handed me the crumpled bills.

“Thank you, E, and I’ll be here tomorrow when you swing by, huh?”

“All right then. Watch yourself, too.”

“I will.”

I closed the door and leaned on it in an exaggeration of exhaustion and told Tamu I’d be ready to go in a minute. I now had $2,100. I gave Shaun $900 of that as he tried to explain what was happening in the ’hood. We had gotten off to ourselves in the back room.

“It’s the dope, man, it has tore the ’hood up. Check this out, there are some homies who got a grip from slangin’, but they don’t come around ’cause they think the homies who ain’t got nothin’ gonna jack ’em. And the homies who ain’t got nothin’ feel like those who do got a grip have left them behind. So there is a lot of backbiting, snitchin’, and animosity around here now.”

“What happened with Crazy De?”

“Poor De, you know he was having big money, right?”

“Yeah, I heard that.”

“He tried to wait for you, bro. Said he was gonna make it right for you when you came home. Had a car and everything for you. But De wasn’t like the others. He cared about the homies and put a lot of the li’l homies down with crack and straps. He got caught up in some bullshit and was gaffled for two hot ones. I miss cuz, too.”

“Yeah, I heard about the murders. Two girls, wasn’t it?”

“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?”

I didn’t answer.

“Here you go, Kody Scott.” And he threw my I.D. in my lap and slapped the roof of the old car. I was furious.

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.