Lucky
By
Glenn (#253421)
All I can remember is hearing an explosion that sounded like a bomb going off in my bedroom. Before I knew it, I was ripped out of my bed and thrown to the floor, flipped over on my back, and handcuffed. It all happened so fast. There was so much smoke in the house that I could not see what was happening, and I was coughing from the foul smell of sulphur. I first thought it may have been the Bloods coming back for revenge, but when I heard the yelling, I knew it wasn’t the Bloods. It could have only been the police; they are the only ones around here who yell when they storm into your house. Had it been a rival gang member, I would have heard nothing. My heart felt as though it was expounding from my chest like an alien being that lived inside of me. I was the first one led out of the house by two LAPD SWAT team members. One of them said to me, “You’re fucked, Chino!” Chino was my street name. I could not see the SWAT officer’s face, as he wore a mask to conceal his identity, but I recognized that far too familiar voice. It was Narcotics Sergeant Rivetti. Once outside, the embarrassment set in. My mother and grandmother were taken out of our home in handcuffs and sat against the curb in front of our home at 167 22nd street in South Central Los Angeles. I could hear my mother crying “No!” My grandmother was sobbing and screaming at me in Spanish, “usted es no bueno hombre.” In Spanish that means I am a no-good grandson.
The police were searching my home. I knew the drill, and all the neighbors had come out of their homes in their pajamas to see what was going on. As I looked around I saw Miss Johnson, a church lady whom we played childhood pranks on for years. She looked at me and shook her fist and said to the police, “It’s about time you caught that little dealer.” I watched as the officers had found my stash of Rock. When I say “rock,” I mean crack cocaine. This is what I sold to my “patients” when they came to my window in the middle of the night for a fix. I called them my patients because I was like their twisted under-aged doctor providing them temporary relief from their sorry lives. It was how I earned my living; it was the only way to make a living in my family. I don’t mean my household family; I mean my street family, the Crips, or as the Bloods called us “The Crabs.”
I am a member of one of the most notorious street gangs in South Central Los Angeles, The Rolling 20’s. We held the blocks from 20th street to 29th street all the way to Central Avenue. It was our turf, we protected it, sometimes with our lives.
It all started when I was 14 years old. I had seen this big fat guy driving a Lexus in my neighborhood. He always had a wad of cash in his pocket and wore expensive clothes, but he always had on a blue hat or Jersey to signify his colors. Looking up to his prestige, I wondered who he was and how he got to be so rich. One day while standing in front of my house, he said to me, “Hey, lil’ man. You wanna earn?” “Earn what?” I replied. He smiled really wide, pulled out a handful of cash, and said, “Bling.” His name was J-Rock, or at least that was how I had known him. His headstone now reads “Michael Simmons.” J-Rock took me in to do a simple errand of delivering a package to a five-story housing block up on 23rd street. The way he grabbed me by the neck, I didn’t think I was allowed to say no. I didn’t really know what to do, so I did what he said. I had carried the backpack with the unknown contents to the block and waited for the apartment door on the second floor to open. I dropped the backpack and ran, not even seeing a face in the apartment. When I made it back to J-Rock, he was smoking a blunt. He started referring to me as “Chino,” for some unknown reason.
“Chino, come here and get some.” I walked over to J-Rock, and he threw me five twenty dollar bills. He was leaning against a five story brick building that was a housing project for poor people on welfare. There were empty plastic bags and needles scattered on the ground and the area smelled like rotten meat, like dead things. Looking around at the windows with all the bars on them, I realized this had been my first real drug deal. J-Rock had me join his “family” on my 15th birthday. I was immediately “jumped in.” That meant that 5 other gang members would give me love, basically beat me down to show me their love and acceptance into the family. With a few earned broken bones and bruises, I became one of them. It was the first time anybody told me I belonged. Out here, it’s every man for himself, whether you’re five or fifty. J-Rock stood in back blowing smoke rings through his mouth while they beat me. After I had picked myself up off the ground J-Rock tossed me a beaded necklace that was yellow and blue, our colors.
“Chino, you kiss those beads every night and wear them proud, your one of us now”
I hugged J-Rock and the rest of my new family and shared a 40 ounce of beer with them and a blunt. I didn’t even know at the time that I needed to go to the doctor. I didn’t get a cast on my arm until three dyas later. J-Rock shared with me the secrets of our family and told me never to repeat them to anyone. They entailed the inner works of our drug ring as well as our hit squad. We were organized like the mob, or so we thought. Over the next few years we engaged in countless deals and made some big scores and had some big losses. We lost some of our family due to gunfire or drive by shootings over bad deals or turf wars, but we always retaliated and took some of the Bloods out ourselves. We were tough, we had pride, and no one was going to fuck with our block.
I had been arrested at least a dozen times. The most important thing in my neighborhood was honor to your family. Never rat on a fellow gang member and don’t say anything to the cops. Silence was our way to never divulge our actions or the inner working of our organization. It was the glue that held our family together. Actually, it was the glue that held my real family together also. My brother had gone to college, to Cal State, and he had slipped by all the gang activity. I was the disappointment. No words were exchanged. My mother silently gave me meals and stared at me with eyes swollen from years of worry and pain. She would jump every time a car pulled up. But she never spoke about it, not even in Spanish. I was like a stranger in the house I grew up in, and every day, they recognized me a little less. We didn’t speak the same language anymore.
Sitting on the ground handcuffed, I could only imagine what was going to happen to me. My life was flashing before me so fast but also in slow motion. My first bicycle, my father singing to me before he was gunned down in accidental gang fire, and my mother’s tamales on Christmas Day. How she used to beg me to eat so I’d get strong. Growing up was rare around here. Sergeant Rivetti frisked me and pushed me into the back of his police car. I hit my head on the door frame as he exclaimed, “Get in, you little maggot.” The whole ride to the police station, Rivetti was taunting me. “You’re going away, Chino, and this time for 20 years.”
All I could do was yell. “Fuck you, pig. You ain’t got nothing on me. I’m gonna sue your white ass.” Stuck to the backseat handcuffed and seat belted, I was already an animal.
“Guess what, Chino? I get paid to put scumbags like you in jail. When I’m on vacation with my family next year I will be thinking of you getting fucked up the ass by some big black inmate.” Rivetti pulled into police headquarters to drop me off for processing. I just spat at the window divider between us. I didn’t know what I felt. Maybe it was anger at him, or the cops in general, or myself, or some fatal combination. I was led inside by a booking officer and that was the last I saw of Sergeant Rivetti, until court.
The news cameras were waiting for me at court. This was not my first arrest, so I just looked to the reporters and smirked. Once in the courtroom, I was wearing a County Jail Orange jumpsuit and handcuffed, and my feet shackled together. The courtroom was stained and smelled of mold from the dirty carpets from all the people the judge had seen before me. I sat down with my unprepared free court appointed public defender. I stayed hard and true to my street family, not telling anyone anything. It was my right, as the police had told me, to be silent. I refused to testify or make any comment regarding my case. The prosecutor presented his case and made me look like the most notorious gangster since Al Capone. The judge decided my case within 30 minutes and handed me down a 10-year sentence without the eligibility for parole. The public defender said, he would appeal my case and that I would get a stay of execution to be out of jail on bail, but he never helped me. They wanted to make an example out of me for teens.
I now wear the number #253421, my inmate number at Orange County prison. I was led out of the transportation wagon and brought into a cell where I was told to strip down naked and was inspected by a male guard to see if I was carrying anything illegal. I was handed a yellow bar of soap and instructed to clean myself while he watched. It was embarrassing, and the soap smelled like dead rotten fish mixed with the strong smell of a skunk. Later I was told the soap was for delousing, had I had lice?
I was then given a white towel that smelled heavily of bleach. Another prison guard handed me two pairs of khaki scrub type pants, two khaki shirts, 1 bar of ivory soap, an old looking torn towel, a top and bottom white sheet, and one wool blanket that was as thin as a piece of paper. I was led down a corridor hearing whistling yelling and chanting as I entered the cell block. The voices were so loud that it felt as though they were surrounding me. I could only see their faces through a bean hole window in their cells. I kept looking down at my issued belongings and kept walking with the two male guards who were making jokes at me. “Hey little papi, the boys are gonna like you here,” the taller guard with the mustache said.
“Yeah, he will be the bean in the rice and beans” the shorter guard with the round belly exclaimed while he laughed.
I could hear voices around me yelling: “new meat”, “isn’t he a cute one”, cat call whistles, and anti-Hispanic slang words.
I was put into a single inmate cell that was about 8 foot by 8 foot in size and told to turn away from the door and place my hands on the wall. I closed my eyes and heard a loud crash. I knew what the sound was; it was the cell door slamming shut. The door closed and it hit me, I was in prison. Not only was I a prisoner in this prison but I was a prisoner in my own mind. I did not have the protection from my street family here, or any support from my real family, and any encounters with other inmates could be dangerous. I knew there was a price on my head. I can see J-Rock in my mind telling me before he was shot and killed in front of the 7-11 on Webster Avenue, that I was worth more dead than alive because I had shot Little C, two years earlier. I turned and looked at the room that I would live in for the next seven years, the next 2555 days, the next 61,320 hours, the next 3,679,200 minutes, before my first parole meeting, and I began to cry. I cried because I partly because I was scared, partly because I was alone, and partly because I didn’t know what else to do. I remembered my mother pointing to a gang member down the street when I was twelve. “See him? Before he turns 21, he’ll be either dead or in prison, and once you’re in there, you won’t ever live a good life.” I had just turned 19.
Standing in my cinder block cage I felt the room, cold not only in temperature but also in appearance. There was only a combination stainless steel toilet and sink, an old steel bunk with the flat hard mattress, the window with a view of some razor wire, and a rooftop compressor. A part of whom I had been, of who I could have become had died. The room was damp, although for some reason I was sweating.
The clothes they issued me were size extra large; I am 5 foot 9 inches 145lbs, too thin for the clothes. I looked like a circus clown wearing a tent. I made my bed and climbed into it. My stomach was rumbling, partly from nerves but mostly because I hadn’t eaten in two days. I could hear sounds of yelling from other inmates from cell to cell and heard tapping on the walls.
I heard a loud click and all the lights went out in our rooms. There was a dim light coming from the 1 foot by 1 foot window in my cell and every so often I would hear a tap on the door and look up to see the guard doing his head count. I couldn’t see their faces, I could only hear their footsteps and see the beam of light from their flashlight enter my room like the sun was rising. I couldn’t sleep and was awakened by the sound of my cell door opening. I heard someone yell “roll call!” I was not sure what this meant, so I peaked out my cell and there were about 50 inmates lining up outside their doors waiting in line. I decided to join them, although not looking at any of them in fearing they would smell my vulnerability. I heard a voice call out “Chino.” I turned around and to my surprise it was Victor Carnacio, a Blood and a rival gang member. Victor was from the Central City Bloods and had been convicted last year for throwing an elderly woman down a staircase at a housing project, killing her. Victor was a feared man on the streets. He was only 20 years old but had developed a bad *** reputation. Looking back at Victor, I had to act tough, so I looked at him hard.
“Yeah,” I replied.
Victor grabbed his balls “Your gonna be my bitch, Chino”
I turned around and clenched my fist, then gave him the finger.
A Prison guard yelled and ordered me to face forward, as I turned I heard Victor whisper, “Usted es muerte, ” which means “you’re a dead man” in Spanish.
I kept walking with the group as we were led to the mess hall. I stayed in line and took what portions they gave me of whatever there was. My mind was numb. I was hungry, but I didn’t even know what was on my plate. The food smelled rotten and all I could hear was people arguing around me and the clanging of metal trays against the cold steel tables. I couldn’t let anyone see my fear, or I would be dead for sure. I sat down by myself and two white males with shaved heads and swastika tattoos sat down next to me. One of the males who was about 6 foot two and 225 lbs with a goat-tee and a build like Arnold Schwarzenegger looked over at me.
“Drag your ass out, spic. This is our table.” I stood up, didn’t say a word and walked down the mess hall to where I saw a table in the back that was empty. If that happened on the street, things would have been handled differently. In here I had no other choice but to run away. I sat down and tried to eat, although everything tasted so bland. I didn’t look up at anyone although I could hear people talking about me and felt their eyes staring at me.
As a group we were all ordered to the showers and I had grabbed my ripped bleached towel and my Ivory soap and walked into the shower. There was a guard at the door surrounding 15 shower heads in a concrete room. I waited in line until it was my turn to go in. I was ordered into the shower as another prisoner exited. The water was so cold, and the soap was burning my eyes. The next thing I remember was hearing Victor’s raspy voice say “muerte.” I thought I was dreaming. I felt a sudden burning sensation in my back and a warm liquid dripping from my side. Everything looked blurry. As I looked to the ground all I could see was the red shower water. I began to realize that I had been stabbed. I felt my body begin to fall to the floor, and my face smashed against the shower valve, busting out some of my teeth. I layed on the ground and looked up to see Victor smiling and holding a home made knife made out of a plastic comb. Victor pointed the comb at me and mouthed, “That’s for little-C.” I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even catch my breath. I felt dizzy. I saw my 1st grade class, then my first girlfriend, and then my grandmother, all flashes in slow motion before my eyes. Images of growing up. I felt myself blacking out and reaching for my grandmother. When I woke, I was now in an empty room looking down at a coffin. I could see the body inside the coffin but the face was blurry, was I dead?
I looked again at the coffin and could not believe my eyes. The face inside started to clear as though the smoke cloud surrounding the blur was dissipating. It was me. I was looking up. My grandmother was weeping and holding the sides of the casket although I couldn’t hear her. My mother placed a rose along side of my body. Suddenly I began to feel weightlessness almost like an astronaut would fee in space. I felt myself floating. I was My mind was telling me to hold on, but I couldn’t. My sight began to darken as my soul faded away towards what was above. Nothing but bright lights that hurt my eyes.
“Where am I?” My eyes opened, and I was realized that I was restrained in a hospital bed.
“He’s awake. Page the doctor stat,” a nurse exclaimed.
“Where am I? Let me go!” My hands and legs had shackles on them. I felt a pain in my back and side that ached.
“I am your nurse. Linda.” I looked up to see a white female nurse wearing a surgery gown. “You’re going to be alright, but you have to relax”.
“What happened? Where am I? Am I dead?” I could see bright lights and there was a sour smell in the air like vomit.
“You were stabbed while in prison and rushed here to North Memorial Hospital for immediate surgery.” Linda wiped my head with a cool washcloth.
“I’m confused. My back hurts.” I saw a large lamp, a bedside table with many surgical instruments on it, and a large curtain around me.
“You will be alright now. Just relax. We operated on your wound to stabilize you. When you came to us you had lost 45 percent of your blood. You are a lucky guy.”
My eyes began to clear even more, and I saw a prison guard standing behind the curtain as the doctor entered. “Lucky” is not a word I would use to describe it.
“I’m Doctor Rothstein, and I will be taking care of you.”
“Where do I go when I am better?” I asked, forgetting my future.
“Back to prison,” the guard popped his head in and said. “We have to keep you around to finish off the rest of that ten year sentence. Don’t worry, though. You’ll be in solitary, for your own protection.”
Everything was starting to rush through my mind all at once. Was I better off dead,? Would I be able to walk? Would I need more surgery? How would I survive the next ten years. I was cold, and alone, and I had no one to blame but myself. Dr. Rothstein gave me a shot of pain medication. “This will help you calm down,” he said.
I looked over and saw my mother slowly walking toward me. She smiled through tears and touched my face. It was like that time I fell and cut my knee in the second grade, and she took two buses to pick me up from school. It was like seeing God, and him staring back at you, reminding you of something. I thought of that word again. Lucky. Maybe I was lucky. I don’t know. As I drifted off to sleep, I felt like a king.
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