Writing My Wrongs

by Shaka Senghor

  After a few days in the Graves, I learned how to sleep through the mornings and afternoons. Meanwhile, the prison authorities were trying to determine how to punish me for my assault on the officer back at Carson City. In the midst of it all, I was transferred back to the county jail for an appeal hearing on my initial charges. Eventually, they sent me to the Maximum Security Facility at Standish, where a new level of hell awaited.

  13

  Detroit, Michigan

  1990

  “I don’t care what anyone calls you,” my father said as we drove away from the Greyhound bus station. “There is never an excuse to allow someone’s words to stand in the way of your success.” I had known he would be disappointed to learn that I had been kicked out of Job Corps, but I felt hurt by his words. I wanted him to understand why I had lashed out. I wanted him to understand how I felt being demeaned and treated inferior because of the color of my skin. I wanted him to know that I had a responsibility to myself, and those who came after me, to do something about the way we were treated in Kentucky.

  What I hadn’t accounted for was the fact that my father had grown up during the turbulent sixties and seventies, and had joined the military at age seventeen. He had lived through things far worse than I had, but at that point in my life, I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t react in anger to the racism I had experienced.

  When we got home, I basked in the familiarity of my surroundings, and within a week or so, I was back down in Brightmoor, hanging out at Tamica’s house. The fellas were happy to see me, and I was happy to be back. I had missed hanging out, fighting dogs, hustling, and chasing girls with my homies. It was refreshing to be standing out on the corner again with the crew.

  Things were slow for the first few weeks, but soon enough, I was able to get ahold of half an ounce of cocaine, which I cooked and cut up to sell. My boys Mack and Coop had built up a clientele on the block, but neither had a problem with me making a few dollars on the side. The reality was, no one wanted to roll all day, so we shared the business to keep the clientele from going anywhere else.

  Then, one fateful night, I was lying on the couch at Tamica’s when Coop tapped on the window. It was about two o’clock in the morning.

  I got up and went outside to see what was up. Coop had a customer but was out of supply, so he asked if I could spare a few rocks. I went back inside the house to get my sack, which I had stashed in the freezer to ensure my nephews didn’t get to it. When I came back out, I gave a bag to Coop and told him to come back and tap on the window when he had made the transaction.

  Five minutes later, I was on the couch, drifting back to sleep, when I heard the faint sound of someone screaming my name. For a minute, I thought I was dreaming, but then the sound grew louder. I jumped up from the couch and swung open the front door to see what was going on. When I looked outside, I didn’t see anyone in front of the house—but just as I was about to turn and go back in, I heard Coop’s baby’s mother calling my name out of a window across the street. The first thing that crossed my mind was that Coop was about to beat her up (even though I had never seen him abuse her). But before I could make sense of what was going on, Coop burst through his mother’s front door holding a .357 Magnum in his hand.

  “This bitch tried to rob me! This bitch tried to rob me!” he shouted as I walked over to the house. My initial thought was that a woman, possibly his baby’s mother, had tried to hold him up. This wasn’t uncommon in our line of work. The streets were cutthroat, and anyone involved in the lifestyle was capable of any level of disloyalty, betrayal, and treachery.

  Coop went back inside his mother’s house, and I climbed the porch steps of the house slowly, trying to process what was going on. Was Coop trying to pull off a cover-up to justify not having my money? I didn’t know what to think as I entered the house, but when I stepped over the threshold, there was a man lying on the living room floor. He was dressed in dark pants and a dark sweater that was saturated with blood.

  “Please, I’m dying,” he said. His breaths were labored, and the sound of gurgling blood was coming from his chest.

  “I’m about to shoot this bitch in the head!” Coop screamed, standing over the dying man. “He was going to kill my whole family. My mama, my sisters, and my baby is in here.”

  It took me a few minutes to calm Coop down to the point where he could explain what had happened. Earlier that day, the man had come by to buy some rocks, and he returned later with the .357 and a pocket full of ammo. Coop let him in and came to get the rocks he had borrowed from me, but on his return, the man pulled the gun on him and told him to get on his knees. He removed a bullet from his pocket and told Coop to bite it, to prove that it was real. He told Coop that he wasn’t playing, that he would kill everyone in the house unless Coop showed him where the rest of the dope was. As Coop sat on his knees staring down the barrel of the .357, all he could think about was his daughter, mother, sister, and daughter’s mother. It was these thoughts that gave him the courage to fight back.

  In a burst of adrenaline, Coop rushed the man, lifted him up, and slammed him onto the kitchen floor. The force of the blow dislodged the gun from the man’s hand, and in one motion, Coop scrambled, picked up the gun, and fired it into the man’s chest.

  I told Coop to have his mother call the police and report the robbery attempt—that it would keep him from being charged with anything. But Coop’s judgment had been clouded. He said that he wanted to take the body across the street and dump it in the backyard of the vacant house next to Tamica’s. I tried to talk him out of it, but he was determined to get the body out of his mother’s house. At the time, I didn’t have the courage to stand up and make him do the right thing—all I could do was be a friend in the only way I knew how.

  As we stood in the vacant yard across the street, staring down at the man, I don’t remember feeling anything. I didn’t care that the man was lying dead. I rationalized my way out of it by saying that it could have easily been Coop and his family. Looking back, it sickens me to think that at such a young and fragile age, I had already developed a callousness that would prevent me from having compassion and empathy for someone who had been killed.

  I was lost in thought when, out of nowhere, Coop fired several more shots into the man’s body. To this day, I think those shots were a cover for what Coop really wanted to do, which was cry. His family had been threatened, and he had been made to bite the bullet that was meant to kill him. No man wants to live knowing his actions could’ve brought devastation on his family.

  Coop told me to have Tamica call the police in the morning and tell them the dog had found a body in the backyard next door. The next morning, when the police arrived to investigate, Coop came and joined us in the backyard. The detectives had only been investigating the scene for a few minutes when they found a trail of blood that led back to Coop’s mother’s house. They questioned Ms. Cooper and arrested Mack, thinking he was Coop. The detectives said no charges would have been filed had the body not been removed from the house.

  Coop eventually turned himself in and was sentenced to five years in prison. Before he left, Coop vouched for me with his brother Boe, who was running a drug operation of his own. Coop told Boe that if he could trust anyone to do good work for him, it was me.

  Boe brought me on board on an exclusive basis, and we quickly bonded. By that spring, the warm weather was bringing more and more people out onto the street, and our clientele was growing by the day. We would stay on the porch from sunup to sundown, selling drugs and drinking. Even though we were bringing illegal activity to the street, most of our neighbors loved us, especially the girls, and it felt like our block was becoming the heart of the neighborhood. Everyone wanted to be down with the guys from Blackstone.

  But on March 8, 1990, the good times—and the last remnants of my childhood—were shattered by a burst of gunfire.

  —

  TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, I can still remember where I was standing when the gunman drove
by. I remember what I was wearing, whom I was with, and where we were headed. More than anything, I remember the intense heat that raged through my body when the first bullet met its mark.

  It all started with an argument over a girl. The previous summer, before I caught the case that sent me to Job Corps, I had been dating an older woman named Angie. Angie had promised to come and spend time with me once I got home, but when that day finally came, she stood me up. I felt betrayed, so when I ran into her the next day at the store, I told her how I felt. She apologized, but then told me the reason she hadn’t come to see me: She had started seeing someone while I was away. I couldn’t believe it, and I lashed out.

  “Why the fuck you couldn’t just be real about it?” I vented. “You lied to me over and over again through letters, and now you telling me this bullshit. Fuck you, you stupid-ass lying bitch.”

  Little did I know how much those words would cost me.

  Two days later, a car pulled up to the corner where I was standing talking to Boe. When I looked up and saw Angie’s new boyfriend in the driver’s seat, I knew it was going to be trouble.

  “What the fuck you say to my woman the other day at the store?” he said forcefully.

  “Fuck that bitch and fuck you!” I said, not willing to be intimidated.

  These were fighting words. In an environment where the line between disrespect and danger is razor-thin, calling a man’s woman a bitch gives him no choice but to defend her honor and his reputation.

  “What up, get your punk ass out of the car!” I shouted, inviting the fight that I already knew was coming. But I had no clue what he would choose to fight with.

  A smirk crossed his face as he reached down and pulled out a pistol.

  I was unarmed, and before I could turn and run for shelter, he squeezed off several shots, hitting me twice in the leg and once in the foot.

  When the first of the three bullets tore into my flesh, I felt my shinbone crack. Immediately, my shoe filled with blood, sloshing around as I fled the scene, trying to escape my assailant. I zigzagged back and forth, dodging the fusillade of bullets and praying that none of them would hit me in my spine—or worse, the back of my head. (One bullet remains lodged in my foot to this day, a reminder of how fragile life can be in the ’hood.)

  I ran around the corner and into the house of a young lady named Lisa, who had witnessed the whole incident. As I approached her, she begged me not to come in, but I ran right past her and through her front door. I sat there trying to gather myself, my emotions boiling and raging like a violent storm at sea. My initial fear was replaced by a deep feeling of loneliness, and then anger. I couldn’t comprehend why someone would attempt to kill me over a meaningless argument.

  When I came back out, Tamica sprinted down the block and embraced me. She hadn’t known if I was still alive. We walked back to her house, where I took off my jacket and shirt to check for bullet wounds. I was sweating profusely, and my mouth was so dry it felt as though someone had stuffed a handful of sand in it. I pulled out a pack of Newports, but before I could light one up, I jumped up to go inside and get a gun. I wanted to shoot someone so bad, it was killing me. I hated being a victim, and the only thing that would restore balance was getting revenge.

  Tamica and Ms. Cooper did their part to calm me down. I lit up a crumpled Newport and sat on the porch, sulking as I waited for an ambulance that never showed up. This wasn’t a surprise; we were used to calling 911 and never having anyone come to our rescue. After waiting close to half an hour, Boe drove me to Mount Carmel Hospital. On the way, he reassured me that everything would be all right.

  When we arrived at the hospital, I felt like I was being moved through an assembly line manned by robots. The staff didn’t show me any extra compassion—in Detroit, it was business as usual to see a child who had been shot. Their mouths were as taut as a tightrope as they glanced at me stoically. Before rushing me off to the X-ray room, they gave me a shot of Demerol, which knocked me out for the next couple of hours.

  When I awoke, the room was full of police officers. Their demeanor was callous and confrontational as they asked me a barrage of questions about the shooter. I told them that I didn’t know who shot me. (Even in my sorry state, there was a code that said you don’t snitch to the police no matter what. I had never violated it before, and there was no way I was going to violate it now.)

  The officers could tell I was lying, and it angered one of them to the point where he said, “That’s why your li’l Black ass is lying in the bed suffering from a gunshot wound.” He hurled a few more invectives at me before exiting the room. “Y’all li’l dumb-ass niggas think y’all tough until you find your stupid asses in the hospital.” I felt victimized all over again, this time by an officer who didn’t seem to give a damn about my misfortune.

  When the doctor arrived, I felt a sense of relief, thinking that with him I could let down my guard and express my fears like the child that I was. But I was quickly reminded that we live in a cold and indifferent world. The doctor looked at my chart and left without saying much to me, returning moments later with a pair of needle-nose pliers. He dug the pliers into my flesh and wrenched the bullet from my leg, pulling bits of meat and bone with it. He irrigated it, then left to write a prescription for some antibiotics. I dozed back off under the influence of more painkillers and was awakened later by my father, stepmother, and mother.

  My father’s eyes were full of hopelessness, and I could see that my mother was paralyzed by fear. They were clearly at a loss for words. After all, what could they have said to me? There aren’t any parenting manuals that explain how to handle your child getting shot in the streets like a rabid dog. So we talked briefly about me coming home and leaving the street life alone—a plan that we all knew wouldn’t happen—then they all left.

  Throughout the whole ordeal, no one hugged me. No one had counseled me or told me that everything would be okay. No one came to talk to me and explain all of the emotions I was feeling. No one told me that if I didn’t find a way to deal with the fear I felt, I would become paranoid; would reach a point where I would rather victimize someone else than become a victim. No one explained to me that cars weren’t galloping chariots of death, driven by the grim reaper himself.

  So I coped in the only way I knew how. I became angry, and for the first time in my life, I began carrying a gun with me everywhere I went. Fourteen months later, I would be the one pulling the trigger.

  14

  STANDISH MAXIMUM CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

  Standish, Michigan

  1992

  It was a sunny, warm fall day when I arrived at the Standish Maximum Security Facility. I was a year into my prison sentence and a few months past my twentieth birthday.

  Despite the nice weather on my day of arrival, I soon learned that there was nothing warm or pleasant about maximum security. Our movement was heavily restricted, and we were basically locked down all day, even in general population. The officers had complete control, and they did everything they could to strip us of the few privileges we had. They enforced the rules to the letter, and any infraction was met with harsh punishment.

  In the intake room, I maintained a stoic expression as the officers talked their tough correctional officer talk.

  “Inmate 219184, welcome to Standish Max,” a burly officer said. “You are now in the major leagues, so think twice before you try any of the cute shit you pulled at Carson City. We don’t play that shit here, you understand?” By now, I was more than used to the psychological warfare that the officers waged against the inmates, so I ignored him and focused my thoughts on how I was going to get out of solitary.

  As I glanced around the room, an officer began removing the black box that had been wrapped around my handcuffs to prevent an escape. Once the box had been removed, a different officer approached with a pair of handcuffs that were attached to what looked like a dog leash. This was the first time I had seen anything like it, and my immediate thought was that this had
to be a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But I guess in the prisoncrat’s mind, being leashed like a dog didn’t violate Article 5 of the Declaration, which states that no one shall be subjected to “degrading treatment or punishment.”

  An officer placed the new handcuffs on me as one of his colleagues removed the first pair, working in tandem to minimize the time in which either of my hands was free. After removing one pair of shackles and replacing them with another, the officers chatted with each other until it was time for the transfer officers to leave. They then took me to the hole in Cellblock 1, holding tightly to my leash as I shuffled down the hall.

  The layout of this prison was completely different from the Reformatory. Inside the unit were four wings—two upper and two lower. I was taken to the lower wing. The first thing I noticed was that the hallways were free of debris, and instead of cell bars, there were large steel doors with window covers on them. We reached the cell that would be mine, and the door slid open. When I stepped inside on the officers’ orders, the door slid shut behind me. An officer removed my handcuffs and shackles through the food slot, and as he was preparing to leave, I asked him if my window shutter could remain open. He said no, then banged it shut.

  For the first time in my short incarceration, I felt truly alone. It was a spartan cell. A flat green mattress lay folded on top of a thick slab of concrete that protruded from the side wall. On the back wall, there was a shorter slab of protruding concrete, which I soon discovered was the writing surface (or television stand, for those who had a TV). A steel toilet-sink combination sat in the corner by the door, and a large metal locker was bolted to the floor next to the concrete bed.

  I sat back on my bed, and a few minutes later, a piece of thick paper came sliding beneath my door, attached to a string. I didn’t know what it was, so I just sat on my bunk staring down at it until someone called out my cell number and told me to pull on the line. I had no idea what was happening, so I came to the door and asked who it was. Turns out, it was my neighbor across the hall.