“This guy is incapable of functioning in a team. He’s incredibly confident but not histrionic. He’s introspective and resolute in his ideas and inextricable from his beliefs. He has this compelling beauty and implacable charm that triples his influence and capability, yet he doesn’t exploit it. The most dangerous element here is that he reviles authority, abhors instructions, advice, or orders. He disregards conventional thought and actions and has zero group identity. His mind manufactures alternative routes to every desirable destination. He will never yield to a chain of command or relent before the hierarchy. And dear brother, your sweet daughter is absolutely in the palms of his hands.”
Then I knew. She was speaking to the General, Chiasa’s father, my father-in-law. The two of them together, I thought, formed a treacherous mountain for me to climb.
“Aunt Tasha, please allow me to speak to Daddy?” Chiasa requested. “It’s so unfair for you to analyze my husband as though he’s your patient.”
I turned and left, back down the path I used to get there in the first place.
* * *
All cleaned up, I had used an upstairs bathroom comfortably since I knew they were engrossed in the basement. I had also collected my wife’s panties, skirt, and blouse on my route back to her bedroom. Feeling better, I walked down the proper house staircase and into their family library. My wife still had not come up the stairs from her aunt’s office, where both of our pairs of shoes were located and the shopping bag of gifts, I remembered.
In their family library, I was searching for a dictionary. I found one, a medical dictionary. I laid it on a long, wide table. There was a bin filled with scrap paper and a cup of blue Bic pens, and another cup filled with number two pencils. I imagined all of her sons seated in here studying for their exams under the pressure of matching the degrees their parents had already earned. I had seen Clementine Xavier Moody’s degrees mounted in his private office. He’d completed the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business undergraduate and master’s degrees. He earned a PhD in business at Harvard. I thought of my father. He is also a man of degrees, who graduated from the University of Khartoum in Sudan, from the Sorbonne University in Paris, France, and earned his PhD here in Harlem at Columbia University. I then thought of myself. Earning money setting businesses into motion would be my primary skill, focus, and accomplishment. Study would be my hobby, instead of the other way around.
Flipping pages, I looked up the definition of forensics. It said, “The art of argumentation.” I paused and smiled. It sounded about right, fit Aunt Tasha perfectly. She has a degree in arguing and she would try to keep convincing my wife of her views no matter what because she was certified in arguments. I looked up the word psychiatry. It said “the practice of diagnosing mental disorders.” Maybe she specialized in arguing with crazy people. I laughed. But when I looked up the two words together, forensic psychiatry, the profession became even more clear to me: It said “the intersection of law, the courts, and mental illness.” Unlike the regular Webster’s dictionary that I regularly used, the medical dictionary went into long descriptions and several paragraphs. I got drawn into reading about all the professional angles that a forensic psychiatrist could pursue. The most amazing one was that a forensic psychiatrist could be hired to reconstruct the mindset of someone who was already dead. I stopped there. I leaned back. My mind was questioning my soul about whether that was even possible. Could one human being, just because he or she was a psychiatrist, even construct the mindset of a living person? Wouldn’t that involve the ability to read minds? Isn’t that a space reserved only to Allah? Were educated humans just so arrogant that they felt they could confidently enter that space and accurately figure out the workings of another person’s brain? And what about reconstructing the mind of someone whose soul had already returned to Allah? How smart would someone have to consider themself to be, to even agree to get paid to do that? I sat quietly.
Some minutes later I decided that it was not possible. It was guesswork being done by some people who studied so long and so much that no one could argue well enough with them to convince them that they were not capable of being right and exact or precise about these kinds of things. And if anyone tried to argue with them, they would have to have the same degrees to even be considered part of their discussion. And if they had earned the same degrees, they would just be another person agreeing with what the small group of “mind scientists” had already decided.
Aunt Tasha was a foxy owl for sure. But I think her belief that she could read people would end up as her weakness. That bedroom she set up for Chiasa in her home was a good example of a misunderstanding. The darkened pink room was filled with furry stuffed animals and dolls. There was a dollhouse with furniture, and the bed had a box spring below the mattress and sat up high in the wooden frame. It was covered with pink sheets and a white-laced quilt. Nothing I saw in there was a match for Chiasa, who sleeps on the floor on purpose and would have model airplanes and plastic soldiers and a spinning globe and a wall of knives before ever considering a stuffed animal. Chiasa, definitely not a girl who played with dolls, had been given a room that must have fit Aunt Tasha’s designs and hopes and style and misinterpretations of the daughter she never had.
And I saw that she thought and felt she knew things about me that clearly she did not. I thought it was bold of her to think she could read me in less than four hours, as though she could summarize my life, thoughts, feelings, and even intentions, la kadar Allah. She had referred to me as ominous. I looked it up in their standard dictionary. It said, “Fateful. Either a good or evil omen.” Quickly, I looked up prodigious, another word she had used on me. It said, “Having an extraordinary force.” The third word that rolled off her tongue smoothly was pulchritudinous. I fumbled with the spelling for a few seconds. Then I located it. It said, “Physically beautiful.”
So, she believed that I am a physically beautiful, extraordinary force for either good or evil. More importantly, that I am “fateful.” I liked only that part. She needed to know that whatever the case, I am a part of her niece’s fate.
I found the copy of Catcher in the Rye in their library. I just flipped through it, deciding I would buy my own and read it, since every American high school student should do the same, according to her.
* * *
“Let’s walk to the train station,” my second wife requested that night. “I’d like to show you some things in Harlem.”
“You are going to show me around Harlem?” I smiled. I of course had been all through Harlem over my young years in this country.
“Sure.” I agreed to let her guide me around because I wanted to be sure that she wasn’t sad on the inside after her long talk with her aunt. I thought even though she has that beautiful smile, maybe she was covering up another feeling.
She chose to walk east, even though I knew we could catch the train on the west side where we had started out.
“I wanted to show you these two places,” she said, pointing. “There is the Schomburg Library. Have you been there?” she asked.
“Never,” I admitted.
“It’s the library that has all of the books and films and research materials about the African and African-American experience in the world, and specifically America. I only know about this place because Aunt Tasha took me here when I was ten. It’s not my favorite library, though. The best one is the main New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan, so awesome. The feng shui is so much better.”
“The feng shui?” I repeated.
“The feeling, the atmosphere,” she said. “In Chinese, feng means ‘wind.’ Shui means ‘water.’ And most Asians believe that the way a place is arranged adds to either a good healthy feeling or, if it is arranged poorly or is a cluttered place, causes a bad feeling,” she explained.
“I see,” was all I said, remembering that my African wife is half Asian. Her father and his sister, Aunt Tasha, and Uncle Clementine and their family are not half Asian, I reminded
myself.
“And across the street is Harlem Hospital. Uncle Clem used to work there as an administrator, really high up,” she said.
“And what happened?” I asked.
“Well, I was young when he left there, but I guess he wanted to do something where he owned his own business and would be in complete control of his capabilities. Uncle Clem is secretive. Aunt Tasha says that he’s a genius and that even NASA recruited him as a consultant on a top secret project. When he completed it, NASA named it after him.”
“NASA?” I repeated.
“The National Aeronautics and Space Administration,” she explained. “It’s the government.”
“We can take this subway right here,” I told her. It was right in front of the Schomburg.
“Can we walk over some more blocks?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. We began walking down from 135th Street and Seventh Avenue towards 125th Street. She stopped in front of another book place on 130th.
“This is Liberation Books,” she announced. “There is a really nice lady who owns this bookstore. Her name is Una Mulzac. She’s friends with Aunt Tasha. Aunt brought me here once. And this lady Una, her name sounds like Umma, right?” She paused and laughed. “Well anyway, this lady, when I met her for the first time, just kept talking about Africa and all of the problems in each of the countries. That’s when I first had my idea that I would fight against the bad guys. I decided to become a mercenary and go fighting good causes everywhere in the world, solving problems wherever good people needed help.”
“Now your family is disappointed because I married you, and that will no longer happen?” I asked, but didn’t really need an answer. She stopped, turned, and looked at me.
“I saw you,” she said.
“You saw me?” I asked.
“Through the vent. You know I have really good vision,” she said casually, not like she was complimenting herself, but simply stating the truth. “And I hope that you know it does not matter what anyone says when it comes to you and me, and our faith and our marriage. Aunt Tasha thought I was debating with her and fighting to keep you. But the truth is, I was reasoning with her and fighting to keep her. Staying with you is permanent, and no human can alter that.”
16. RIKERS ISLAND, THE KIDS’ COMPLEX
A stampede, then bodies on top of bodies, fists flinging without precision. Feet kicking. Poles cracking heads open. Shank knives piercing flesh, randomly.
The rest of us still standing are moving around the perimeter of the pile-up; there is nowhere else to go. We are all locked in, and we were leery of standing still. So, we pace. Screaming from the top tiers, the cheering noise and commands being called out, turned this into an echo chamber. Down below where I am, there are grunts and cries:
“Get the fuck off of me.”
“Move!”
“I can’t breathe!”
“I’mma fuck you up.”
I’m trying to figure out the formula. I just got here. We’re all in our arrested street clothes. Couldn’t tell who was down with who. A grown-up kid dragged a chair behind him, lifted it up, and prepared to swing it down on the pile-up. I snatched it from him midair and tossed it across the floor where no one was standing. It hit the wall and turned over. Now the kid was shouting out, “Hook!” Some of them boys buried in the pile-up tried to lift themselves up from the pile. Another man shouted, “Da Bridge!” A quarter of the bodies raised up, still fighting and fists still flinging in faces, and the pile shifted. But then they dived back onto the floor, scuffling for a shank that was just lying there in the open. One kid finally got ahold of it, but then his man pulled it away from him, slicing open both of his palms, the blood spilling everywhere. The chest of the kid left holding the shank was heaving. He pumped himself up and made a dash towards another kid who he caught sight of and pushed the shank through him. It wasn’t enough. He pulled it, twisting it back and forth as he yanked it out from the kid’s torso. The guy’s body writhing and he was screaming at the top of his lungs. His boys came to help him too late. One took off his T-shirt and attempted to wrap it around the stabbed guy’s stomach. The white tee was soaked red and the cut kid fell on the pile. Someone beneath him pushed him hard and he rolled off to the side and lay there looking lifeless.
But the one holding the shank on ready was still on the move. He was the one to watch. So I watched him. His arm raised in the air, he was setting up to slash down, and the bodies below his shank flipped and scrambled to get out the way of the blade. He was searching out his target.
“The Ville!” one of the kids that was on the bottom of the pile shouted as he leapfrogged up to his feet with a pair of Air Force 1’s in his hands even though he had Jordans on his feet. “I got it.” He yelled victory but didn’t see the knife heading for his back. I did. I kicked the kid coming for him with full force. He flew over the pile before landing on the floor and dropped the shank. Another kid spit a razor at me. I leaned to the side and it lodged in some next man’s neck. I snatched the kid from the Ville whose face I recognized, and two more from the heap. “Good-looking,” one of them said, and his eyes checked me like he was taking a snapshot.
“Rasta Up!” one Jamaican kid shouted, and the Rastas rushed the pile-up and started kicking and smashing the others with their feet like they were smashing grapes or killing roaches or kicking soccer balls. The dropped shank hadn’t surfaced yet, but the pile kept moving and shifting like footballers trying to pile up on a loose ball.
I was studying faces, weighing loyalties and allegiances, watching fingers, razored-up tongues, and facial gestures, even the ones from the Ville. I was checking who was left wearing shoes, who was without shoes, and what kind of kicks those wearing kicks were wearing. I just needed to distinguish the lions from the tigers, the wolves from the hyenas, the hippos from the elephants, and the rats from the snakes. And I needed to do it quick. It wasn’t easy during a stampede or a riot, or where the fighting was random and ten or more guys who weren’t ganged or boroughed up were just stray junkyard dogs in the mix.
I saw the shank, put my foot on it, and kicked it toward the wall with the pile pushing toward me. I was tackled and fought back, but got buried beneath the weight of bodies. Weight shift; someone must’ve got hold of the shank, and now he’s the target. I was pulling up from the bottom.
Riot geared up and eighteen minutes too late, the special corrections officer squad opened the gate and came rushing in, while the two COs who had locked themselves in the booth and had been watching from the first fist flung laughed. Even though the riot-geared-up gorillas were charging, the threats were still being called out between the men fighting.
“Payback is a bitch!”
“There’s nowhere to hide!”
“Muerte a las mariconcitas!”
“We run this motherfucker!”
One by one the riot squad took down all who didn’t voluntarily lay down. Some got cracked with shields, hemmed in with knees buried in their chest and pinning them down. Some CO gorillas ganged up and threw their weight against a prisoner who they went at with a vengeance like there had been bad blood between them. I got the baton driven into my back and was pinned to the wall. Then I was cuffed, dragged down, and got a floor view of all of us who had been subdued. Along with the others who were still standing, we on the floor all began coughing and gagging. Someone had released a chemical in a room that had no open windows and no one had the energy, the clear vision, or the breath to fight or resist any further. Good, I thought to myself.
* * *
“Welcome to hell!” someone shouted through the slot on a closed and locked cell door. The CO unlocked the cell where we stood. He unchained and uncuffed my feet and pushed me inside, slamming the cell door shut and locking it.
“Hands!” he yelled through the slot. I pushed my hands through. He uncuffed me after he was sure he was safe on the other side of the locked cell door. I pulled my hands back, massaged each wrist, and exhaled. I was in the box, the
bing, segregation, isolation, twenty-three-hour daily lockdown, doing ninety days. It was the most dreaded, most dangerous place for the most dreaded and dangerous inmates; only lawyer visits, no one else, no phone calls, no cell mate, no day room, no yard. Three minutes for supervised shower, fifty-seven minutes to go to the law library or move around in a fake tiny indoor yard, alone. Everyone on the Island called it hell or the black hole. It was exactly where I wanted to be.
“Welcome to hell.” I heard it twice more. I just heard it shouted out again. Business must be good, I thought to myself. They’re bringing in another prisoner and pushing him into another box.
I also heard it before I got up here, on the bus ride from the Tombs to Rikers Island. It was a packed bus, standing room only—only thing no one was allowed to stand. We were all seated, cuffed and chained. We started out in silence as the bus pulled into the busy New York streets. Most were looking around at each other, trying to get a read or a feel about who was the weakest, who was the strongest, who should be used, who should be joined, who should be avoided, and who should be feared. Me, I was playing the window seat, looking out and forbidding any eye contact. Strange, I’m sure ninety-nine percent of us speak English, but it was the same as though we each spoke a different language. No one wanted to break the ice that was frozen solid, dividing and freezing each of us into a separate cube, even though we were traveling in the heat of summer and even though we were all going to the same destination.
Seven minutes in, one dude started rhyming. It was hip-hop, but it was the blues. All about how hard life was for him. The one seated next to him started to click his cuffs together to the beat. Then one behind him began beat-boxing. Not everyone shared the same skill, but we were all black and young and we could each catch the beat with our hands, cuffs, chains, feet, or mouths. It was the only time I saw more than two or three young black males do anything together besides ball—football, baseball, basketball, or soccer. The hardest of the hard tried to ignore the pull of the a capella music. But even those few were either toe tapping or banging or stomping out to the beat. Dude in the middle made up a melody and started singing his own hook to our impromptu song. Somehow his deep voice was soothing, the way it laid back and laced the rhythm of the rhyme. When it was done, it was done. It was back to being frozen and hard-hearted and deaf and disconnected. The dude in front of me and the guy seated next to him were different, though. They broke the ice between them as we neared the Island. A few seconds of overhearing them and I knew that they already knew one another, which was why they were no longer frozen like the rest. One was older than the other, schooling him on the Island in a low tone. But there is no privacy in this circumstance, so I had to listen even if I didn’t want to hear.