Assata: An Autobiography

by Assata Shakur

  "Where are we? Where is this place?"

  "You are now on Rikers Island. This will be your new home for a while," the marshal told me.

  "It'll never be my home."

  I looked around while they waited for clearance to pass through the gate. There were huge, ugly buildings in front of us, not old or dilapidated as i had imagined when i pictured Rikers Island, but institutional-looking nevertheless.

  "Are all these buildings jails?" i asked.

  "Yep," said the marshal. "They're all jails. There are a lot of criminals in the world."

  "Everybody in jail isn't a criminal," i told him. "And they've got a lot of criminals locking people up. They've got a gang of criminals in the White House."

  The marshal just grunted. The car turned into a modern brick building. There were no old-fashioned bars, just jalousied window bar combinations. I was brought into a large receiving room and locked into one of the small rooms that lined the sides, empty except for some benches and a dirty bathroom. After a long wait, i was taken out to be printed and photographed. I was returned to the room, then called out again to fill out forms. I immediately got into a hassle about the forms: i had left the line for "address" blank.

  "Where do you live?"

  "I don't live anywhere. I'm in jail. And i've been in jail for six months."

  "Well, where did you live before that?"

  "I don't remember." And it wasn't a lie. I remembered the place, but i couldn't even begin to tell anyone the address. While i was underground i made it a habit never to remember addresses. I used landmarks to remember a place, and i never had trouble locating any place i had been to once, but even if i visited it a hundred times, i never looked at the address.

  "Well, where does your mother live?"

  "Why?"

  "We need an address.”

  "I haven't lived with my mother in years."

  "Well, give me the address anyway."

  "I don't know if my mother would want you to have her address. I'll have to ask her."

  The guard insisted, but that line was left blank. The guard was a Black woman with an Afro. And there was another one, next to her, with a lopsided wig on. She was Black, too. In fact, most of the guards i had seen so far were Black. I was quickly to find out that the overwhelming majority of guards in the female jail at Rikers are Black. But when they opened their mouths and expressed their opinions, you wondered. But that's another story.

  After i had been waiting for what seemed like hours, they brought in a whole bunch of women. It was wonderful. They were real, live people, talking and laughing. It had been so long since i had even heard a conversation. I just sat there staring at them. I know i must have looked like i was crazy, staring like i was, but i just couldn't help it. I was overwhelmed. I could barely talk, though. When someone asked my name i stammered and stuttered. My voice was so low everyone constantly asked me to repeat myself. That was one of the things that always happened to me after long periods of solitary confinement: i would forget how to talk.

  The next phase was the strip and search. There were two groups of women: those who were returning from kourt and those who, like me, were new admissions. We were directed to stand in little booths and take off all our clothes. Then we were told to turn around, squat, run our fingers through our hair, lift up our feet and open our mouths. This was for everybody. The next step was only for the new admissions. They put us in shower stalls without curtains, we were told to take a shower, and then were given this stuff which they told us to put it in our hair and on our pubic hairs and wash with it.

  "What is this for?" i asked.

  "It's for lice and crabs," the guard said. It was humiliating. The last stage was the "search." Every woman who came into the building had to go through this process, even if she had been nowhere but to kourt. Joan Bird and Afeni Shakur had told me about it after they had been bailed out in the Panther 21 trial. When they had told me, i was horrified.

  "You mean they really put their hands inside you, to search you?" i had asked.

  "Uh-huh," they had answered. Every woman who has ever been on the rock, or in the old house of detention, can tell you about it. The women call it "getting the finger" or, more vulgarly, "getting finger-fucked."

  "What happens if you refuse?" i had asked Afeni.

  "They lock you in the hole and they don't let you out until you consent to be searched internally."

  I thought about refusing, but i sure as hell didn't want to be in the hole. I had had enough of solitary. The "internal search" was as humiliating and disgusting as it sounded. You sit on the edge of this table and the nurse holds your legs open and sticks a finger in your vagina and moves it around. She has a plastic glove on. Some of them try to put one finger in your vagina and another one up your rectum at the same time. Anyway, i had an instant, mile-long attitude. I wanted to punch that nurse clear to oblivion. Afterward, the guards had the nerve to tell me that a mistake had been made and a doctor would have to make a complete examination. I was just too disgusted. He was a filthy-looking man who looked more like a Bowery bum than a doctor. He coughed all over me without even covering his mouth, and his fingernails looked like he had spent the last five years in a coal mine. The only good thing about him was that he was quick. He rattled diseases off like he was an auctioneer and asked me if i had had them. Then he gave me a one minute examination, took my blood, and that was it.

  I was kept in the receiving room until long after everyone had left. Then a pleasant enough guard, with a scar on her nose and mouth, took me to my cell. We went down a corridor that seemed to be a mile long to a hallway where a guard sat inside a glass cage. Buttons and knobs and lights decorated the cage. It looked like the inside of some kind of spaceship.

  "Open up five," the guard who had brought me said.

  There was a thumping sound and then a humming sound and then nothing.

  "You can go to your room now.”

  "Go where?" i asked.

  "Just walk down the hall and the door will be open. You'll see it. “

  The hallway was long. When i got to the cell, the light came on. When i went in, the door slid shut behind me. It was something out of a science-fiction movie. The long halls, the sliding door, the control panel. "Space jail," i said to myself. Inside, there was a cot, a dirty sink, a seatless toilet, and a roll of toilet paper. I was tired and wanted to go to sleep.

  "I'm turning the light out now," a voice said over the micro- phone.

  The light went out, but a yellow light stayed on.

  "Turn the little light off please," i called to the guard.

  Again, a voice came on over a microphone. "The light must stay on. It is there for your own protection.”

  The light stayed on and i went to sleep.

  Morning! The doors slid open.

  "Breakfast, ladies!" came over the microphone. It was early, but i was anxious to get dressed and look around. The first thing that hit me was the smell. I don't care what jail i've been in, they all stink. They have a smell unlike any smell on earth. Like blood and sweat and feet and open sores and, if misery has a smell, like misery. The walls of the cell were covered with obscenities and love declarations. "Apache loves Carmen;" "Linda and Lil bit;" "India and Rosa-true love, always." From the window i could see a small paved yard with grass growing between the cracks in the pavement and then another long building.

  A few women were in the dayroom, but most stayed in their cells, which were barren except for the toothpaste writing that covered the walls. In prison, toothpaste serves many functions, one of which is glue to hang up pictures. A few of the cells were "fixed up" with pictures from magazines hung on the walls and a knitted or crocheted afghan on the bed. Clothes, in cardboard boxes, were on the floor. The women looked evil and ashen. They glanced at me with only vague interest and went about their business. They were all Black or Hispanic.

  I took a shower and spent the rest of the morning walking back and forth. Some of the women were bloat
ed, with swollen hands and feet. A few had a real strange look about them. One sat in a chair, her eyes crusted with sleep, giggling quietly to herself. A group of women sat at a table playing spades. They asked me if i wanted to play, and since i had never heard of the game, volunteered to teach me. It turned out to be like whist, only spades are always trumps. Then it was lock-in time again, the second one for the day. The first had come after breakfast.

  There were two women on either side of me who had been locked in their cells all day. "Don't you want to come out?" i asked, stupidly. They broke up laughing.

  "No," one said, "I like it here." When she stopped laughing, she told me she was "locked." That meant she was locked into her cell until she was seen by the Board.

  "What's the Board?" i asked.

  "It's the Disciplinary Board. When you get an infraction, they lock you up until you see the Board."

  "Then they let you out?”

  "Sometimes, but we're going to PSA.”

  "What's that?”

  "It's the hole, the bing. This is 2 Main, where you go before they take you to the Board; then, after that, if they think you haven't done enough time down here, they send you to PSA." (PSA stands for punitive segregation area: solitary.)

  "You mean you don't stay in this part all the time?”

  "No. We're on the sentence side. We only had to come here because we stole the medication. We stole almost everything on the medication truck and drank it. Coke almost OD'd. That's why we're down here. This part is for people who have infractions or for crazy people."

  "Crazy people?"

  "Yeah!" the one named Coke answered. "They've got some real bugs down here. How come you here?"

  "I don't know. I got here yesterday and this is where they put me."

  "You got a homicide?”

  "A homicide?”

  "Yeah, a homicide. You here for murder?”

  "I have a homicide case in new jersey, but i'm here for a bank robbery trial.”

  "That's probably why they got you down here," they speculated. "They probably gonna move you soon." They asked a million questions.

  "Who did you kill?”

  "I didn't kill anybody.”

  "Well, who did they say you killed?”

  "A cop, a new jersey state trooper.”

  "Oh, shit. You gon have a hard way to go. You didn't really do it?”

  "No."

  "You got a bank robbery, too. Did you rob the bank? How much money did you get?"

  "I didn't get any money because i didn't rob the bank."

  "Yeah? Then your boyfriend did it and put the blame on you?"

  "No, i don't have a boyfriend.”

  "Oh, so you like girls funny?" They laughed. "You're kinda cute. Ya wanna go with me?" one of them joked. "You ever do time before?"

  "No, never.”

  "You got any other cases?”

  "Yeah, i have another bank robbery.”

  "Did you do that one?”

  “No!"

  "Well, damn, they got you all hooked up!" the one called Delores said. "How come they tryin' to frame you up like that?"

  "Because i'm a revolutionary. They say that i'm in the Black Liberation Army.”

  "Oh, oh, I know you. You that girl I read about in the papers. Yeah, what's your name?"

  "Assata, Assata Shakur, but my slave name is JoAnne Chesimard."

  "Yeah, you the one. I never thought I'd meet you. How you doin'?"

  "Yeah," Coke said, "I saw your picture on TV, but you look different now."

  "How?" i asked.

  "When I saw your picture I thought you was much bigger. And much blacker, too."

  "Really?" I laughed. It was a statement i heard over and over. Everybody told me they thought i was bigger, blacker, and uglier. When i asked people what they thought i looked like, they would describe someone about six feet tall, two hundred pounds, and very dark and wild-looking.

  "Bad as them papers said you was, I just knew you had to look bad. And here you are, just a little ole thing."

  I asked them what they were in prison for. In the course of those next few days i was to learn a whole new vocabulary. Jostling was pickpocketing; boosting was shoplifting; juggling paper was writing bad checks and dragging or playing drag was conning.

  Later that evening a woman who had just come from kourt told me that Phyllis wanted me to come to the gym at 8:30. I was overjoyed. I had heard that Simba was on the rock, but i thought they might move her to make sure we had no chance to be together. The gym was large. Women were playing handball and basketball, dancing, sitting on the bleachers, and talking. Finally, behind a clump of women, i saw Simba. We embraced and both just sat there, trying to get out all the words that were in our hearts. So much had happened since we had seen each other. We had been close when we were both members of the Black Panther Party. For a while we had lived together. She was always a real earthy sister with a heart of gold. She told me about her case, about the other comrades she was in touch with, and, then, that she was pregnant. Homey was her nickname for her lover, the baby's father, Kakuyan Olugbala. He was a beautiful revolutionary brother, and he was murdered by the New York police. Kakuyan and i had gotten to know each other pretty well while we were both at the Harlem branch of the Black Panther Party. He was one of the brothers who, in the days of the Panther Party's lumpen ideology, would be called lumpen. He was raised in Harlem around 116th Street and 8th Avenue, a relaxed, easy kind of person, but a fighter to the heart. He loved weapons and was a genius with them.

  I was glad about her pregnancy and sad at the same time: she was facing twenty-five years. Although i tried to be cheerful, i guess she could see the concerned expression on my face.

  "Don't worry," she told me. "These people can lock us up, but they can't stop life, just like they can't stop freedom. This baby was meant to be born, to carry on. They murdered Homey, and so this baby, like all our children, is going to be our hope for the future." I would think about her words many times later.

  It's early in the morning. It feels like a quarter to zero and i want to sleep. I hear my name vaguely over the microphone. Something about kourt. They are calling me for kourt. Hurriedly i roll out of bed, shower, dress, comb my hair, and i'm ready to go. They bring breakfast on the food truck. I can't even stand the look of food, much less eat anything.

  "All right, court ladies, time to go to the receiving room," the microphone wails. It's too early in the morning for that thing. I want to tear it out of the ceiling. I stumble down to the receiving room, still not fully awake. It's 7:20 A.M. I sit in the receiving room for three hours. Finally, the marshals come. Now they want me to hurry. One of them chains me up. First he shackles my feet; then he puts a chain around my waist, fastens the handcuffs to the chain, and handcuffs on my hands. I can barely walk. Or shuffle.

  Kourt, dull, gray, dull green. They are putting me into the bull pen. I don't know why they call it a bull pen, though i have often speculated.

  "Attorney visit," one of the marshals calls as he opens the bars to let me out.

  We go to the end of the hall. Evelyn is puffing and huffing. She always puffs and huffs when she's angry. In a few minutes, i know that she will begin pacing and tapping her feet.

  "They're trying to force us to go to trial right away," she tells me. "You know I've been busy, drawing up motions for federal court."

  "What do you mean, federal kourt? Aren't we in federal kourt?"

  "Yes, but if the judge denies our motion for postponement, I want to be ready to go straight into the circuit court."

  "What's the circuit kourt?" It was all Greek to me.

  "That's where we appeal if the judge issues an unfavorable opinion."

  We go on talking. Evelyn is trying to explain to me and i am trying to explain to her that we can't possibly go to trial. "There's no way in the world you can be ready to go to trial right now." I am ranting.

  "I know, I know," Evelyn replies.

  I rant and rave indignantly
while Evelyn tries to explain the law to me. They call us to court. The judge is gagliardi. He looks just like what he is: a racist dog craka. Kamau comes into the courtroom. I am delighted to see him. He has aged. He's grinning, but under the grin his face is hungry. I wonder what he's thinking. Bob Bloom, Kamau's lawyer, is up on his feet talking. He is asking for a postponement. Everything he says is logical and makes sense. Evelyn gets up and starts to rap. She is talking pure unmitigated truth and logic. The judge looks at the ceiling. I predict the out- come of the hearing and keep turning around to look at the audience. Friendly, familiar faces smiling at me. I don't want them to ever stop. The judge denies our motion for a postponement. The judge denies all our motions. I want to scream, "Dirty dog, slimy pig, you're not a judge. You're just another prosecutor."

  I look at the prosecutor. He's smug. His face is unreal-like a poster. He looks like a 1940 war poster. John Q. Public. I keep staring at him. Nobody could look that corny. He's like a ghost from the past. I'm convinced he doesn't know it's 1973. The lawyers ask for a joint meeting and the judge says yes, but make it short. The lawyers outline the strategy of the appeals.

  "What are our chances on this appeal?" i ask.

  "There's a chance," Evelyn says. "Slim, maybe, but a chance. If the courts are interested in justice, well, of course, they'll support our position." We all know how big an "if" it is.

  The next time we went to kourt five days later it had snowed. The trees were bare and covered with ice and, though i don't like winter, it was a beautiful sight. As soon as i arrived in the kourthouse, Evelyn was there to tell me that the circuit court had denied all of our appeals, and gagliardi was talking about going to trial that day.

  "I just want you to understand that there is no way that I can adequately defend you on this short notice. I haven't had time to prepare pretrial motions, I have received no discovery material, and I haven't even had time to think about an appropriate defense because I haven't been able to find out the basic facts of the case. I just want you to know that."