Panther Baby (7 page)

7

Walk Slow and Drink Plenty of Cold Water

I
walked down the “flats” (the ground floor) and up the stairs to my assigned cell on the third tier. The cell block was huge. Four tiers with two inmates per cell. Four hundred adolescents with hormones raging and anger and frustration pulsing through their veins. The charges ranged from burglary and drug possession to armed robbery and murder. All of the teenagers in this section of Rikers were trial prisoners. They either could not afford bail or had been remanded without bail. It was sad to see young men locked up for relatively minor offenses because their family couldn’t afford a few hundred dollars to get them out, but that was the case for a lot of the young inmates at Rikers.

Th
ere was a hierarchy of respect related to what you were charged with. Murder and armed robbery were on the high end. Burglary and grand larceny auto were on the low end and considered to be “meatball” cases. Because I was facing so much time (three-hundred-plus years), and because my indictment listed charges that included attempted murder of police officers and arson, I was considered among the heavies. But as Merciful put it, I “looked soft,” skinny and light-complexioned with a curly Afro. When I walked down the flats, the other inmates would stare at me and whisper. Many of them were wondering how a choirboy-looking dude like me could be hooked up with the Black Panthers.

My cell partner was a nineteen-year-old Puerto Rican guy named Manny, who looked more like a marine recruit than an inmate. Compact physique, buzz-cut hair, and sporting a heart shaped tattoo that said
MARIA
. He had done two and a half years in Elmira Reformatory and was really angry at himself for catching a new three-year sentence for armed robbery. Manny never talked about the details of his case. He said the cell block was full of snitches who would give up their own mother in a second to get out of jail. Manny was “jail wise,” meaning he knew all the ins and outs of doing time. At first he had very little to say to me except “take the top bunk and don’t touch my shit,” but eventually he loosened up.

Th
e guards would make mail deliveries by placing letters on the bars after evening lockup.
Th
e envelopes would already be open, having been read and inspected for contraband. Manny asked me to read him a letter from his girlfriend, Maria. He seemed agitated and embarrassed about asking, saying that Maria liked to use “all these big fucking words.” I read him the letter, then helped him write a response, much like in the play I had read about Cyrano de Bergerac. In payment, Manny handed me two packs of cigarettes and asked me to give him my word that this “letter shit” would stay between us. I told him he had my word but turned down the cigarettes.

“Knowledge is power, brother,” I said as I handed his cigarettes back. “And the power should be shared by all the people.”

“You a strange dude,” Manny decided as he looked me up and down, “but you all right. I’m gonna teach you how to jail.

“Walk slow and drink plenty of cold water,” Manny advised. “
Th
at’s what an old black dude taught me when I first got upstate.
Th
at means think two or three times before you make any moves, and drink lots of water to keep your kidneys clean.
Th
ere’s all kinds of hepatitis and other bullshit going around in the joint.”

Manny taught me that the cell desk could be used as a stove to make quick dishes like grilled cheese, fried salami, eggs, and even French toast.
Th
e secret to not getting caught by the guards was to grill quickly and to do it after they had made a big count or a shakedown in the hopes that they were just too tired to climb stairs and search the cell block for an errant griller.

Th
e cell toilet could be used as a refrigerator.
Th
e inmates would soap it up, scrub it clean, flush it a few times to get the water ice cold, and drop in tiny sealed cartons of milk or plastic sealed packets of salami and other meat to keep it cold. If you had to go to the bathroom, you took the items out, did your business, scrubbed the toilet, and turned it back into a refrigerator. Clothes could get a hot-water wash by taking them with you to the showers; pressing was accomplished by laying them out under your mattress before turning in for the night.

At night, after lock-in, inmates would throw empty cookie boxes attached to thin ropes made from braided sheets out of their cells, running them either down the tier or over the railing.
Th
is technique was called running a line.
Th
e intent was to get your cookie box to your homeboy in another part of the cell block so that you could pass or receive some snacks, a few cigarettes, a “kite” (a letter), or drugs. Many fights and stabbings happened because someone intercepted a line and stole the goods or because an inmate refused to get out of bed or off the toilet to pass a line that landed in front of his cell.

Torn strips of prison sheets could also be braided into thick rope.
Th
is “Rikers rope” was used in escapes and suicides: Witness one kid, a seventeen-year-old black inmate named Teddy, who wandered around the cell block looking like a homeless guy. It was clear that Teddy needed some counseling and medical attention, so I went to the guards and they told me that it was really none of my business, but he was on the list for a transfer to Bellevue.
Th
at night Teddy used Rikers rope to hang himself from the light box in his cell.

We saw Teddy’s hanging body as we marched down the tier for breakfast. Neck swollen, eyes bulging, saliva drooling from enlarged purple lips. “Yo guards, a hangup on
Th
ree Tier. Hangup!” Manny yelled. “Hangup” was slang for a hanging, and the guards came running. Manny and I grabbed Teddy’s legs and lifted his body while a guard cut the rope. We laid him on the floor. Other guards arrived and yanked us out of the way even though we were trying to help. “Shit. He’s dead,” one of the guards shouted as he checked Teddy’s pulse. A siren buzzed and lock-down orders came through the loudspeaker.
Th
e doors of our cells rolled shut as the guards carried Teddy’s body out on a stretcher.

Inmates called out to each other from their cells saying that Teddy hung himself because he had gotten two years for grand larceny auto and was scared to go upstate to do his bid. Others said he was tired of being pressed by the booty bandits. I had seen Teddy go into the shower room with some of the guys from the house gang; now I realized they were taking him there to have sex.

An hour after they had discovered Teddy’s suicide, the goon squad came to shake down the cell block.
Th
ere was a symphony of running water as inmates flushed their lines, Rikers rope, and other contraband before the goon squad could get to their cells.

Th
ere were numerous places around the cell to stash contraband items, including street money, drugs, and weapons. Air vents, lighting fixtures, and bunk-bed legs could all hold items that had been epoxyed with toothpaste and camouflaged with paint made from tooth powder and cigarette ashes.

Manny showed me his weapons stash, which consisted of two homemade knives called shanks, figas, or figs. A figa was a piece of a jailhouse mattress spring that had been straightened, filed into an ice-pick tip, and crowned with a handle made from a sheet or a blanket. It was a wicked-looking weapon that could easily puncture the body and inflict major damage. Manny also knew how to fashion bedsprings into brass knuckles. Rikers was known as a gladiator school, and it appeared I was celling with a master blacksmith.

Manny had very little to say to me outside the cell. He was a loner who didn’t hang out with anybody. “I just want to do my bid and get the fuck out of here and back to my girl and my baby daughter.” Most other inmates would hang out in different groups on the flats—the
Th
ugs; the Five Percenters; the Latin Brothers; and the Workout Kids, who did a thousand sit-ups and push-ups a day.

Th
ree times a day a guard’s voice would blare through the loudspeaker system ordering us to line up for chow. We would march in two lines down the corridor to the mess hall where inmates could briefly mingle with their homeboys and codefendants in the other cell blocks. Our only utensil was a spoon, which worked fine for the watery oatmeal but was challenging on the rubbery meats and half-cooked potatoes. On the way out of the mess hall each inmate had to place his tray on the stack and his used spoon in a bucket, all overseen by several guards.

One night I came back from the mess hall to find a box of cookies and a couple of packs of cigarettes on my bunk. I thought they were intended for Manny, left on my bunk by mistake. He occasionally made figas or knuckles for one of his Latino homeboys and got paid with commissary. “Yo, Manny, I think somebody left these for you,” I said, pointing to the commissary.

“
Th
at’s for you,” he nodded. “
Th
at dude, Lefty, from the house gang, left that shit.”

Lefty was a muscle-bound, cross-eyed black inmate who was captain of the house gang. He was a bully with a devastating left hook that he used to knock out inmates he had a beef with. Lefty and Merciful and a few other inmates would sometimes come around to talk to me about the Panthers. I even started a small PE class where I would explain the Ten-Point Program and other aspects of Panther ideology. Lefty would listen, watch me intently, and walk away. I knew Lefty was a big-time juggler and thought he was offering me some commissary credit. Manny straightened me out, explaining that Lefty was a notorious booty bandit who was trying to gift me before he set me up to take my “manhood” (the Rikers term for being seduced or raped).

A wave of shock, anger, and fear rolled through me as I jumped to my feet. “Take my manhood,” I said. “I don’t hang out with that dude.” I had been taking Manny’s advice and keeping to myself, mostly doing calisthenics and reading, except when guys came up to me to talk about the Panthers.

“
Th
at don’t matter to a snake like Lefty,” Manny replied. “In fact, half those dudes that are coming up to talk to you are plottin’ on ways to get you alone so they can jump you. And your boy Merciful is down with them.”

Manny could see that I was reeling, trying to figure it all out. “
Th
is shit ain’t really none of my business,” he said quietly, “but the only way to back a dude like Lefty off of you is to sneak up on him with a mop ringer or a figa and fuck him up real good in front of everybody. And while he’s on the ground bleedin’ you yell at that motherfucker so that everybody can hear you, ‘I’m a man, motherfucker. I ain’t nobody’s bitch, motherfucker. Anybody try to take my manhood is getting wasted.’
Th
e guards are gonna fuck you up and put you in the bing for a couple of months, but when you come out the dudes is gonna know that you ain’t to be fucked with.”

Th
e guards turned the cell lights out and Manny hopped into his bunk. “You can use one of the figas if you want to—just let me know so I can get rid of the rest of my shit when they lock you up and come to shake the cell down.” With that he rolled over and fell asleep. I stood staring into the cell block night. For the first time since I was arrested I realized that I was alone. My fellow adolescent Panther Katara was in another unit. And my other Panther comrades were in different jails. Whatever reputation the Black Panther Party had as an organization wasn’t going to protect me from the young gladiators in the Riker coliseum.

I tried to picture myself splitting Lefty’s head open with a mop ring, or jabbing him in the lower back with a figa. I saw a fig do a lot of damage when two Latino jugglers jumped on a white boy who failed to pay his cigarette debt.
Th
ey stabbed him eight times in the blink of an eye.
Th
e white inmate ran to the front of the cell block and collapsed.
Th
e guards hit the alarm and ordered an emergency lockdown. An army of goon-squad guards shook all the cells down and the Latino jugglers were taken away in handcuffs. We heard through the grapevine that the white inmate died the next day.

I couldn’t make it work in my head. I couldn’t see myself attacking another prisoner, no matter who it was.
Th
at was what our captors wanted. As long as they kept us divided and fighting, we were easy to control. I joined the Panthers to fight the enemy, to battle the pigs, not to go to war with others who were oppressed just like me.

Th
e next day I went to Lefty’s cell and handed him the cookies and cigarettes he left on my bunk. “Look, brother, I think you got the wrong idea,” I said, trying to portray as much strength as I could. “I want to be cool with you, but I don’t go that way.”

Lefty cracked a sly smile. “I got plenty of girls on the outside. Just like you do.
Th
is is just something to do to get through this bit. Ain’t nobody got to know nothin’.” He stroked my cheek.

I knocked his hand away. “I’m telling you I don’t play that,” I barked, half settling into a fighting stance.

His face went grim. “You can’t beat me, nigga. I’ll take that booty if I want. It’ll be shit on my dick or blood on my knife in this motherfucker.”

I balled my fist ready to do my best against Lefty. I was slightly taller, but Lefty had three tough street years and twenty-five pounds of muscle on me. He stared me down for a tiny eternity and then laughed. “I’m just bullshittin’. I ain’t gonna do nothin’ to you. But a bunch of these other foul niggas is about to take you off. You better let me look out for you.”

“Naw, that’s all right,” I said.

I stepped out of Lefty’s cell and saw some of the dudes from the house gang hanging around. I could tell from the look in their eyes that they were checking to see if anything had gone down between Lefty and me, be it sex or violence. I walked to the back of the cell block and started doing calisthenics. A little while later, Merciful walked up and asked if I was all right. I told him I was cool and kept doing sit-ups. Merciful could tell I was angry and explained that while he wasn’t part of Lefty’s crew, he couldn’t really get involved if Lefty was trying to press me. “I know,” I replied. “I gotta handle it myself. Jailhouse law.” Merciful just nodded and walked away.