“Calvin, a lot of couples break up and leave a trail of bitter feelings,” John Carroll said. “Why don’t you just go over and talk to Leon? I’m sure you can settle it without getting into violence.”
“No, man, it ain’t like that,” Calvin said. “He knows I’m going out with Mavis so if he’s talking trash it means he’s trying to punk me out. He thinks I’m like I used to be—you know, all talk and no action. I’m eighteen now and I got to let the real me out.”
“And who’s the real you?” John Carroll asked.
“I’m hard, man,” Calvin said. “People look at me and think I’m soft because I let things slide. But as far as I’m concerned the slide part is done and the new ride has begun.”
“And he wants to clear up all his loose ends so he can concentrate on his new rap album,” Mavis added.
“Oh, I got you.” John Carroll sat down at the counter. “You going to be a rapper and you getting hard now.”
“I’ve always been hard,” Calvin said.
“Well, why don’t you come around about twelve this afternoon?” John Carroll said. “I need to make a little trip upstate and I could use somebody to keep me company. You come on with me and I’ll give you some money toward your gun and introduce you to somebody who can tell you where to get it.”
“John Carroll!” Sister Tubbs tightened her mouth up so she looked like a frog with a toothache.
“Inez, you are sixty-five years old,” John Carroll said. “Isn’t that kind of late in life to be growing another nose? I know you can’t have but one nose the way you keep nosing into my business.”
“You’re supposed to be a leader on this block and you helping this boy get a gun!” Sister Tubbs stood up, gave John Carroll a dirty look, and stormed out of the roti shop.
“Be here at twelve-thirty, Calvin,” John Carroll said. “I’m afraid you can’t come, Mavis.”
“It’s man business, baby,” Calvin said.
John Carroll watched as Calvin and Mavis left, then got his son, Billy, on the phone and asked him to come look after the shop.
“I got to go see some old friends upstate,” John said. “You’re not busy, are you?”
Billy said he would come, although John knew he didn’t want to work in the hot store on a summer afternoon.
Calvin came back on time and showed John Carroll the twenty-eight dollars he had to buy the gun.
“How much you think I need to buy a nine?” he asked as they settled into John Carroll’s Escalade.
“A decent nine-millimeter should cost about one-eighty,” John Carroll said. “But you can probably pick up something on the street for seventy or eighty used.”
“Well, I got to do what I got to do,” Calvin said.
The drive from Harlem to Stormville, New York, took two hours and ten minutes with a short stop for gas on the way. John Carroll asked Calvin about his new rap album as the station attendant wiped his windshield.
“What I want to do is to bring truth to the people,” Calvin said. “A lot of guys out here rapping and it’s all about bling-bling and it don’t really mean a thing because everybody can’t be into that bling-bling thing. You know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do,” John Carroll said. “That’s what I was telling my friend when I called after you left this morning. I could tell you weren’t into anything fake or halfway. You wanted the real deal.”
“Yeah, people got to know where you coming from so they can know if you just blowing air or you on the square,” Calvin said. “This guy we meeting, he’s a down dude?”
“Yeah!” John Carroll glanced over at Calvin. “You know I’m for real, don’t you?”
“Yeah, man, you’re people.”
“And you know I didn’t always run no roti shop?”
“I didn’t know that,” Calvin said. “What did you do before that?”
“Prison, brother.”
“You were in prison?”
“Assistant warden,” John Carroll said. “Retired ten years ago and opened the shop. I know all the big-time gangsters, guys who really keep it real. That’s why I set up a meeting between you and Bubba Jones.”
“He’s an assistant warden, too?”
“No, man.” John Carroll stopped at the perimeter gate and shook hands with the guard who came over. The square-shouldered man directed him toward one of the parking lots and John moved the car smoothly past the small building and the rotating cameras. “Bubba is a prisoner and the hardest man you ever want to meet. He knows everything that happens on the street. He used to live right down from the armory. You know where they closed that repair shop and rehabbed that building? Put them green awnings out?”
“Yeah.” Calvin nodded.
The waiting room of Greenhaven Correctional Facility was filled with visitors, many of them young women with small children. Most of them black or Spanish.
“You don’t have any guns or knives on you now, do you?” John Carroll whispered.
Calvin shook his head. “Man, this is tough,” he said. “I could rap about this big-time. You know, rhyme about doing time. You know, if you going to wear the poet crown you can slow it down if you got the time to serve even if you didn’t deserve the rap. Yo, Mr. John Carroll, I’m feeling it, man. No lie.”
“I thought you might,” John Carroll said.
John Carroll went through the security search first, taking off his shoes so the guards could put them through the X-ray machine, then going through the metal detector. Calvin followed and John Carroll watched as the guards searched him and then stamped his hand with the indelible ink.
“Why they do that?” Calvin asked as they went into the elevator.
“So they can check you when you leave,” John Carroll said. “You don’t have that ink mark, you’re not leaving.”
The Section 3 Visitors Room had a large eight-sided table and John Carroll and Calvin found seats and talked while they waited for the inmates to be let in. John Carroll asked Calvin if he really loved Mavis.
“I don’t know if I love her,” Calvin said. “But I go for her. You know, she’s got it going on, but she was going with that other dude for so long I think she still might have some feeling for him. I got to check that out before I get too far into her.”
“Yeah, women are funny that way,” John Carroll said. “Hey, here comes Bubba now.”
Bubba Jones was six foot five inches tall. Big, bald-headed, and black. He grinned when he saw John Carroll and came over.
“Hey, Captain,” he said. He reached across the table and shook John Carroll’s hand.
“How you doing, Bubba?”
“I’m good, man,” Bubba said. “You know I don’t have no visitors since my aunt died, but I’m getting by. How you doing? You looking good.”
“Feeling good, too,” John Carroll said. “Got a little arthritis here and there, but it ain’t no big thing. Did they tell you I was going to tighten up your commissary thing?”
“Yeah, and you know I appreciate it,” Bubba said. “Only thing that makes the day go by in here is buying a few things once in a while. Hey, did you know that Wright got out? Guy that robbed the bank down on Forty-second Street?”
“They paroled him?” John Carroll asked.
“They paroled him just before Christmas and that fool was back here two weeks after New Year’s,” Bubba said.
The room had filled with other inmates and was getting a little noisy. John Carroll told Calvin, “Move a little closer. You don’t want to be shouting your business out in here. Bubba, this is Calvin, the young man I called you about.”
Bubba reached across the table and wrapped his huge hand around Calvin’s.
“How do you do?”
“I’m doing okay,” Bubba said. “You a youngblood, right?”
“No, I’m eighteen,” Calvin said.
“Bubba, Calvin’s got the same problem you had,” John Carroll said. “People dissing him.”
“That’s what happened to you?” Calvin asked.
br /> “Yeah, man. Sucker dissed me right there on Malcolm X Boulevard between a Hundred and Forty-fifth and a Hundred and Forty-sixth Street. Called me a low-lifed, stink breath moron and then had the nerve to pull a gun on me!”
“Then what happened?”
“I stabbed him in the eye with the ice pick I was carrying,” Bubba said. “When I done that he kind of doubled over and his right leg started twitching and jumping and he was moaning and turning in a circle. Man, it was a funny thing to see. I snatched the gun out his hand and stabbed him again, and he was kind of staggering up and down the street, and the way he was jerking around was really something to see. I ain’t never seen anything like that but once since then. That was when they killed that boy here in the shower.”
“They killed somebody here in the prison?”
“Somebody’s always being killed or cut up in here,” John Carroll said.
“It ain’t no big thing,” Bubba said. “You get used to it. It’s like when winter comes—you wear a big coat. When summer comes, you take it off. In here, you watch your back. That’s the way it goes. But you don’t see no cutting or stabbing during the checker tournaments. People got their minds on the tournament and that keeps things cool.”
“Didn’t this guy play in the tournaments?” John Carroll nodded toward a tall pale-looking man.
Bubba turned, saw the man, and sucked his teeth.
“Chiba? That fool can’t play no checkers,” he said. “You know he went and filed a complaint about his sentence because he’s not eligible for parole. His family paid for the appeal, too.”
“Everybody wants to get out, Bubba,” John Carroll said.
“How he going to get out when he done killed a whole family and their dog?” Bubba asked. “And I owe him two packs of cigarettes. I bet the Knicks was going to make the playoffs.”
“You can pay him with the money I left for you in the commissary,” John Carroll said.
“Yeah, well …” Bubba hesitated. “Look, Captain, you mind if I do a little business right quick?”
“No, go on,” John Carroll said.
“Yo, Chiba!” Bubba called, and waved the other man over.
The man looked at John Carroll, recognized him, and then looked at Calvin.
“Yo, Chiba!” Bubba called to him again. “Come here, man.”
Chiba Banks was just under six feet tall, with brown skin, cold gray eyes, and lips that twisted in a frozen sneer. He came over and sat on the inmates’ side of the table, his eyes fixed on John Carroll.
“I thought you was dead,” he rasped.
“I’m still here,” John Carroll said.
“Hey, what’s your name again?” Bubba leaned forward excitedly as he spoke to Calvin.
“Calvin Williams.”
“Calvin, my man, just stand up once and turn around,” Bubba said. “All the way around.”
“Why?” Calvin asked.
“A favor for me,” Bubba said. “No big thing. You can do a favor for a brother in the slam, right? We all in the struggle together and everything. You know what I mean?”
Calvin looked at John Carroll, then stood and turned around and sat back down.
“Look, Chiba, I’ll trade you Malvin or Calvin here for them two packs of cigarettes I owe you,” Bubba said. “He’s only eighteen, man.”
“What I look like to you, something stupid?” Chiba’s voice sounded like sandpaper on glass. “He ain’t in here, he’s still in the world.”
“Yo, but he’s getting a gun—Captain told me.” Bubba lowered his voice. “They catch him with a nine he got five years. And he live on a Hundred and Forty-fifth Street in Harlem, so this would be where they send him.”
“Not if he just rob somebody,” Chiba said, covering his mouth with his hand. “You got to kill somebody to get up here or use the gun during a felony.”
“You can just shoot a sucker and get to Greenhaven! He don’t have to die,” Bubba said. “Ain’t that right, Captain?”
“It depends on what space they got and if the judge thinks you’re violent or not,” John Carroll said.
“He’s eighteen and he wants a gun, you know he’s violent!” Bubba said. “And he’s pretty. You seen him turn around.”
“Hey, I don’t go with no men,” Calvin said. “I’m too hard for that crap.”
“Ain’t that how you like them, Chiba?” Bubba put his hand on Chiba’s arm and Chiba snatched it away. “You like them when they got some fight in them!”
“Hey, I ain’t even about no prison!” Calvin said.
“Shut up and sit down, pussy!” Chiba said.
Calvin looked at John Carroll and John Carroll looked the other way, toward the dirty, barred windows.
“Okay, I’ll let you slide on the cigarettes for a year.” Chiba’s mouth barely moved as he talked to Bubba. “But if he ain’t in the system within a year you still owe me one pack. Deal or no deal?”
“Deal!” Bubba answered.
Chiba looked around the room. “You can slide with both packs if he gives me a kiss right now.”
“And so when you asked him about the gun what did he say?” Abeni asked Mavis as she trimmed the hair from her neck into a neat V.
“He had the nerve to tell me to shut up and get out his face,” Mavis said.
“Girl, you got to stop wiggling your neck if you want me to cut it straight!”
“Here he was loving me at noon and then at five-fifteen he was looking at me like I had bad breath or something, and talking about how he had a true reflection to go in a new direction,” Mavis said. “What I think is either John Carroll told that boy some lies about me or the heat is getting to his dumb butt.”
“Mavis, when I was thirteen my father told me something.” Abeni put down the clippers. “He said never to worry about getting a boyfriend. He said there are as many of them as there are leaves on a tree. When the time comes they’re coming down to see you. And if you don’t see what you want there’s going to be a whole new crop the next year.”
“I know that, Abeni,” Mavis said. “But when Leon put me down one week and then Calvin shows up lame the next, I’m beginning to think something’s wrong with me.”
“Mavis, look at yourself in the mirror, girl.” Abeni turned the chair so Mavis could see herself full-face. “Are you fine or what?”
Mavis looked at herself in the mirror, then turned her head slightly to one side, and had to smile.
“Yes, I am fine.”
“I told you,” Abeni said. “Sometimes the brothers just can’t deal.”
marisol
and
skeeter
I’m not the kind of girl who goes around getting into other people’s business and I definitely don’t want you in mine. Also, don’t be jumping up in my face because I don’t like that, either. So when this snap-happy chick at the pool hall starts running her mouth about the way I dress and had the nerve, when I had politely asked her to shut her stupid mouth, to step in front of me and shake her fake fingernails in my face—well, I naturally went upside her head. Several times. With a pool cue. That is how I ended up watching television at Sunrise House on Christmas Eve. I had done twenty days of a sixty-day deck and I had eight more to serve at Sunrise, which is a residency joint for girls on their way out of the joint. It was Christmas Eve and the word came down that anybody who had a place to go to could split. The thing was that my mother went to the Dominican Republic the week before and I had left my keys with her, so I didn’t have anyplace to go. I was seventeen and knew my way around, but I still didn’t have anywhere to crash, so there I was holding down the place by myself. Only other people there was an old security dude and this Jewish lady, Mrs. Goldklank, who works at the place. She sent out for some sandwiches and we ate them and watched television most of the day. It was wack, but I felt so down I didn’t even have the energy to get up off the couch.
The city had hired a band for entertainment and Mrs. Goldklank thought they had canceled it when everybody
else went home. But around nine o’clock a little band showed up. They called themselves the All Star Stom-pers. They had already been paid for the job and when they found out everybody was gone they didn’t know what to do. Mrs. Goldklank said they might as well leave.
“How come you here?” the leader of the band asked. He was about my age, eighteen, brown-skinned, nothing special except he had nice eyes.
“I’m just here,” I said. “No big thing.”
“Well, I guess I’ll play for you.”
The other players, three black dudes and a white chick, gave him a look.
“Hey, y’all can go,” he said. “Merry Christmas!”
Then he took out his saxophone and started playing Christmas carols.
I wasn’t in the mood for no Christmas carols so I just sat on a chair and watched television. He kept on playing.
“What you playing for?” I asked him.
“Because it’s Christmas Eve and I’m Skeeter Bramwell and I want you to be happy on Christmas Eve,” he said. “So I’m going to keep on playing until you give me a genuine smile. Then I can pack up and go home.”
He smiled and I kind of smiled back at him and he kept playing. He was good, and it was funny having a guy sit real close to you and play just for you. I finally broke down and gave him a smile.
“Thank you for playing for me.”
“How long you got to stay in here?”
“I could go now if I had a place of my own.”
He gave me a long look, then pulled out his business card and twenty dollars and handed them to me.
“I don’t want your money!” I said, handing back the money and the card.
He looked hurt, he really did. I realized he didn’t mean anything bad, so I took the card back. Not the money, though.
“I don’t know what your name is,” he said, “but I hope you’re going to be okay. And if you ever get around my way, and you see me on the street, give me another one of those nice smiles of yours.”
“My name is Marisol,” I said. “Marisol Vegas. And I’ll save a special smile for you.”
Then he left and for some reason I was liking him. Maybe it was his eyes, or the way he played for me. I don’t know, but he seemed okay.