Life After Death

by Sister Souljah

  I rushed towards Santiaga. His facial expression showed me what I had already figured out the second I arrived in his cell. Poppa cannot see me. Long ago there was a smile that would come to his face and even to his eyes naturally whenever he saw me after not having seen me for a few days or hours even. Here I am standing right in front of him and that smile is not there.

  “Poppa,” I spoke, but even I could not hear my own spoken words even though I was speaking them. “Poppa, I…” I moved in close to him and ran my fingers through his hair. My fingertips traced his iconic face. My palms rested on his strong shoulders. Then I touched his fingers and then held his hands. He walked away from me. I followed him and saw that he had a short stack of magazines with a tall stack of letters on top. I dashed to the letters and went to pick one up or push the whole pile over even, in order to grab my father’s attention. I wanted to give him a hint that I am here. But my fingers weren’t working properly. I couldn’t lift the letters up, even though I could see clearly that the letter on top was one of the many letters that I had written to him. My father, Santiaga, and I had remained close even while both being separately incarcerated. I tried to knock everything over but couldn’t.

  Now Santiaga was leaning against the cell door looking out the narrow slot. I’m familiar with that stance. How many days had I stood still staring through the cage bars, and then later through the metal door slot. Sometimes staring at the floor because at that moment in lockdown, there was nothing else to do. So I eased towards him. As soon as I did he turned his head. His eyes on the lookout but he didn’t move. I could tell by his gaze he felt something. Like a man who had looked over his shoulder as hustlers gotta do all da time. Then he spun a one-eighty. His feet on pivot. His eyes on search. I ran into his arms, wrapped my arms around his neck, then closed in and hugged him extra tightly. I moved my lips to his ears and said, “Goodbye, Poppa. In all of the whole wide world, you were my favorite person, my best friend, my realest teacher, my deepest love.” I pressed a closed-lip kiss on his lips.

  “Santiaga, hands,” the familiar authoritative voice of a corrections officer called through the slot.

  “Don’t interrupt!” I screamed. Santiaga walked back to the cell door he had been staring out of a minute ago and put his hands through the slot. C.O. cuffed him.

  “Why are you cuffing my father? He’s already locked in!” I yelled. Santiaga drew back his now-cuffed hands.

  “This is just a precaution,” the C.O. said, downshifting his tone like he should have in the first place. The heavy cell door slid open.

  “Wait, don’t come in here,” I said forcefully. “I need a little more time with my father!” Then I stepped between them and turned to face Santiaga.

  “Poppa,” I called out. “Somebody got me! But don’t you worry about who did it. Stay still for me. Don’t kill whoever did it. I’m gonna get you the fuck out of here. I’m gonna put you back where you belong. Trust me, your Baby Girl. Poppa, you did everything in life for me. Now I’m gonna be the one to king you!”

  “Bad news…” the C.O. said as though I was not even standing there blocking him from speaking directly to my father. So I started screaming to dead the sound of C.O.’s voice. It must have worked because just as the words “Your daughter…” came out of C.O.’s filthy mouth, I dissolved.

  3.

  Heat, I was nothing but heat now. Like heat coming through the radiator or incinerator or any hot place. Who killed me? That’s all I wanted to know. Revenge, that’s all I wanted to get. Yeah I was mad about losing out on the moneybag that I was about to earn, but I was more furious that I would not be there to see Santiaga get out and come home. Now I want to put down whoever shot me, before Poppa got home and gave the order to eliminate that person and whoever was on that person’s team. No, erase that. Poppa would pull that trigger himself. That’s the kind of man he is.

  Of course I love, admire, and respect that deadly element of my father. However, it was hard and costly work to get to the point where he would possibly be released. I didn’t want him finally freed only to return to the box for avenging my murder. So my mission is to murder first. They couldn’t charge me with murder in the first, ’cause I’m already dead in the first place. I started laughing. Like real shoulder-shaking laughter that makes the whole body shake. Somehow the volume of my own laughter was increasing like someone slipped a mic on me or was in the DJ booth fucking with the fader, controlling the sound. Soon the volume doubled. So, I stopped laughing, but the laughter didn’t stop. It tripled. It was the first time I ever got pissed and aggravated at the sound of my own voice. The more vexed I got, the more the laughter increased. It grew so loud it mutated and started sounding like some old guy laughing.

  “Shut the fuck up!” I screamed. When I couldn’t out-scream the laughter I stopped caring. I’m good at that ’cause I didn’t care in the first place. Once I thoroughly ignored the laughter, it thoroughly disappeared. I can’t say how long it took to stop because I was realizing that I could no longer count time. That may sound like no big deal but to a locked-up bitch time is everything and the countdown from capture to release is as important and necessary as a pulse or a heartbeat. Without being able to count down time… well now that I think about it, that’s like death. For example, is today the same day as the day I got shot dead? When I saw Santiaga, even though he didn’t see me, was I seeing him right after I’d been murdered? Or was it days after or weeks after or months after?

  Eventually my temperature decreased. Once it did I was more than just a glob of heat. I could feel my limbs again. It was like I got my body back and now the heat was just moving in my chest like my titties were on fire. After calming myself, I accomplished turning myself back to cold, my natural state. That’s when I promised myself, I’m moving whoever murdered me to the top of my “payback’s a bitch” list. It had taken me fifteen minutes after my arrest to put together my payback list. But it took me fifteen years to put together each scheme on exactly how I was gonna do it. Smarter, I knew I had to take revenge without getting found out. If I made one mistake I could end up back in prison and that wasn’t even remotely a possibility no matter what I had to do to prevent it.

  In my payback plot there was no murder. I’m not a murderer, I’m innocent. I served fifteen years for nothing. True, I wanted to hustle and blow up big in the streets. But who the fuck gets arrested for their thoughts? I never actually sold one rock, powder, or pill. But now that someone crossed the line and deaded me, I would turn into what I never was before. Even if that means monster. Who did it? I didn’t even have no murder-type beef like that with anyone anymore. Who did it? Who did it and why? Think, think, think, I told myself. Then it felt like something shot through my chest and grabbed me. I was on the move again after being stuck for who knows how long.

  When the whirling feeling stopped, a sort of free high that I was starting to appreciate, my hearing came back, but not my vision. Ah shit! I could hear Biggie on the track “Who Shot Ya?” I was like, Yeah is that supposed to be funny? But I was excited to hear music, loud, clear, and crisp like it was coming through some even better than Bose, McIntosh super expensive speakers, not some bullshit Department of Corrections radio. I was even more excited to hear the livest music of the ’90s, when I was a teenager at the absolute tip-top of my royalty. After I was locked down and the ’90s slowly disappeared, and when we had the DOC radio turned up, I couldn’t feel nothing from the music. It wasn’t just because the radio was cheap. The new artists just didn’t have “that thing.” They were not the type of hip-hop heads or singers that got me rah-rah excited, hot, and kept me listening and loyal. The ’90s had powerhouse artists who spit that rhyme and sang the songs that snatched a bitch’s heart out her chest, made her go temporarily insane or caused her legs to open voluntarily. Nineties rappers and hip-hop music ruled the airwaves, reflected our culture, and moved our streets. It was dominant, not only in Brooklyn, but in all hoods in America and around the world. All my peeps k
new that even without ever traveling far from the block. Nineties hip-hop shook the planet. And, in the real lives of real niggas, what was said, rhymed, or sung on a hip-hop track even dictated which niggas lived and which niggas died. Word.

  * * *

  Ever seen a dead bitch dance? Me neither, but I was doing it. Ol’ Dirty Bastard was killing the track of his hit titled “Brooklyn Zoo.” I stayed grooving all alone until I realized that I could hear muffled, murmuring voices. It sounded like a group of people talking, but the music prevented anyone from hearing what they were saying exactly. I stopped dancing and waited for the track to end, but Ol’ Dirty merged into Jay-Z’s “Jigga What, Jigga Who” and I was like, Oh hell yeah. It’s a party! Then I got pumped and was like, “It’s my party!” My private after-party, after coming home from da joint. It was scheduled to start at 11 p.m. after all the reality-TV shit and promotions was finished for the day. It was exclusive for only my girls who been through the same shit as me, did time with me too and of course they was each allowed to bring their nigga. Wait! That after-party was supposed to take place the same night of the day I got released. Then I got tight. Is this the same day I got murdered? Felt like forever. And, are they having my after-party on the same night even though I got killed?

  The music flowed on for a long time. I could only tell ’cause I was counting the tracks that the DJ spun. Eighteen cuts, sixty-six minutes later, a non-nineties joint came on. That nigga Young Jeezy a’ight. But to me it signaled that my throwback after-party was about to end. Then the music lowered and a girl’s voice shouted, “Y’all ain’t gotta go home but y’all gotta get the fuck outta my crib! I got two kids and they won’t keep their asses in the bed till y’all leave.” It was the voice of my girl Asia, which confirmed yes, this is my after-the-reality-show-party after-party. The crowd laughed and I could hear the door opening and closing and people’s Timbs, heels, kicks, and flats walking out.

  “Nigga gimme back my Bacardi before I embarrass your ass!” Asia shouted. Obviously one nigga tried to steal a bottle. Asia caught him.

  “Come on girl, you got mad shit in here. Can’t a nice nigga get more nice without you getting mad?” I heard a tussle. Then the door slammed. I’m thinking how it wasn’t really Asia’s Bacardi. I put up the paper to fix up her place and buy her a sound system, a new couch, and for her to get weed free-flowing and the bar fully stocked. I had a budget and could arrange for shit like that. I could’ve only had the one party at the club celebrating my debut on the first day of filming the reality show. Elisha covered costs for that. But that was like for the film crew and other professionals connected with the show. That’s why I needed the after-the-after-party party. Ain’t nothing like a house party, at least in my memory. I wanted to capture that and just chill with my girls and their niggas, all men and women who been high and low and locked, but because of my show, was ’bout to be high again. A house party, where we could and would do whatever off camera.

  “Fuck that bitch, she thought I forgot,” I suddenly heard Simone’s voice, an angry whisper. A little light started bleeding through the darkness that had just surrounded me. My vision now was dim, like there was a vision-control button. The type of buttons we had in our Long Island mansion after Santiaga had suddenly moved us out of Brooklyn right after my sixteenth birthday. In every room we were able to adjust the intensity of the lights. But here, where I was standing in Asia’s apartment, I was stuck on very dim vision, but it was better than the blackout I had just had.

  “I never forgot. Winter like to play dumb. So I went along with it and played dumb too. Fuck, we was locked up in the same joint. I had to look at her regardless. So I used her.” Simone was close up in Natalie’s face. Natalie is short, so Simone was looking down on her, like dominant.

  “Yeah, well, if you gonna use a bitch, use her all the way! Winter got us the TV show! She put us on! You kilt her. Now all of us lost a bag,” Natalie said.

  Simone shot me! Simone shot me! Simone shot me! was running through my head.

  “Word, we should beat your ass for fucking up everybody’s paper,” my girl Reese said, cutting her eyes while unbuttoning her coat that she had just been buttoning.

  “Reese, if any of y’all could of beat my ass you would have tried it already. But y’all know what time it is,” Simone threatened. Reese lunged forward fast and punched Simone in the face. Simone bitch-slapped Reese in return, which sparked Toshi to jump wild, and all three of them started thumping.

  “Don’t fuck up my house,” Asia screamed. Then my girl Zakia started flicking the light switch on and off, off and on, as though that could influence or stop the fight. She was messing up my already-dim view. But I did see Natalie creeping up on Simone. She tried to crack Simone over the head with a bottle of Cîroc. Simone leaned, dodging the direct blow, and the bottle impacted on her shoulder but didn’t break. Simone snatched it from Natalie’s grip. Zakia stopped flicking the lights.

  “Y’all some stupid bitches,” Asia screamed.

  “Why?” Simone asked, laughing in a greasy way. “ ’Cause Winter bought you a couch and fixed up this little dump?” Simone said as she put herself back together from the brawl and was dusting off her shoulders as though to say and show them that she wasn’t even hurt, fazed, or impacted from their little rumble. She then opened up the Cîroc and started gulping it, a fourth of it spilling out on her face and her trying to catch it and lick it up with her tongue.

  “Winter bought the couch and the bottle you drinking from and your ass is drunk! I fixed up the rest of my house myself with my paper,” Asia said, but she was lying. She don’t have no real paper yet. She was just about to come up when I got released and would put her on.

  “Y’all was so busy kissing Winter’s ass,” Simone spit. “Y’all was so happy she put y’all on and was about to get you paid a little paper…” Simone burped then farted.

  “So was you!” Natalie said.

  “Y’all was so stupid y’all forgot to ask how much was Winter getting for the show?” Simone grimaced.

  “I asked her,” Natalie said swiftly.

  “And?” Simone quick replied. As I looked around the room, I could see that Simone’s question caught Reese and Toshi’s attention and changed the expressions on their faces from fury to suspicion.

  “Winter said she couldn’t discuss how much she was getting because she had to sign a confidentiality agreement with the television production company and had to promise not to discuss the deal details,” Natalie answered like a street lawyer.

  “Slick bitch,” Simone said.

  “True dat is kind’ve slick,” my girl Zakia said. She had been standing quietly in the same corner where the light switch was located, watching everything going down, smoking a blunt. Zakia was like that from being locked up with the rest of us. Hers was the shortest bid but her nerves got wrecked from just putting in a little time and a little work on the inside. She used to stand around silent same like she was now, when she was locked. She’d pay anybody selling, any amount, for even a fifth of a cigarette, smoked all of the time and said next to nothing. But we held her down anyway ’cause she was our home girl.

  “It’s Winter’s sister’s husband who got Winter the deal in the first place. So why she had to sign a no-talk agreement with her own brother-in-law?” Reese stated.

  “Because that’s how Winter gets down,” Simone rushed and answered, cutting Natalie off. “She does the least and gets the most. Y’all gotta remember! Winter got me arrested the first time for stealing a dress she wanted. A dress she planned to put on her back and pretend that she paid full price for it herself. Then I got arrested for slicing her face. More than y’all, I did real time. She deserved to get cut but I should’ve really murdered her in the street, right then and there. She killed my daughter!”

  “She did not!” Natalie scolded. “Your big pregnant ass chased Winter and fell down the steps and lost the baby. Back then I told you to stay home and let us handle Winter. You should�
�ve listened.”

  “That’s what happened. I was there,” Reese confirmed.

  “That…” Asia screamed, “was fifteen! Years! Ago!” She said each word with space in between and mad emphasis. “Y’all old bitches better upgrade and update! What we gon’ do now?”

  “You the same age as us,” Zakia’s nervous one-liner bombed Asia. Then she just stared off, not even looking at the rest of the girls in the room.

  “Y’all better wise up. Winter be lying all da time. ’Member how she used to gas us on lock-up about how that nigga Midnight was gonna pick her up on her release date pushing a half-million-dollar whip?” Simone said. My girls all started laughing. Somehow what Simone had mentioned wiped out the tension between them. But I was slowly heating, headed towards furious. I hate when anybody talks shit about something they don’t really know and had no way of finding out what really happened in certain situations. I hate the way people talk shit either after somebody got locked up and ain’t around to say it how it really was. I hate how people would go hard against someone who if they was standing right their in the face, they wouldn’t dare to even look at too long or ever say shit to. Same way I hate how people talk shit about anybody after they was dead and gone and can’t clap back. All that is sucker moves. Only suckers move and do that way.