“Florissant.” Meaning St. Louis. Meaning the South. The way he says it, he knows I’m supposed to give him respect now. It ain’t enough to be an old head anymore or to have the tattooed proof that you were out once, banging, or that you were doing any number of other foolish things. Bringing the Fury or the Force or whatever it’s called where you come from down on your head out of your own stupidity. But some places, you got to deal with the worst of white folk, the terrorists. The places that made money off you by charging you for tickets and scheduling court dates when they knew you couldn’t make it, then fining you for those missed dates if they don’t jail you first, then they say they’ll graciously set you up with a payment plan, then you get a day or two late one month and they put out a warrant, then when they do get you in jail, you gotta post $2,000 bond or some shit like that that they know you can’t pay, and that’s how it starts. While in jail, you miss your job interview, and when you finally get your day in court, they say you gotta change out of your jumpsuit, but you gotta put on the same funky clothes you spent however long getting arrested in and you gotta stand in that courtroom smelling like rotten poom-poom, handcuffed, and you gotta do all you can to even feel like a person still. If you got family, maybe your mama can borrow against her life insurance policy to post your bond.
I know better than to ask him about kids.
He’s at my side now, and out of his back pocket, he pulls a thin white card. Whatever writing used to be imprinted on it is pretty faded. Looks like Braille more than anything else, but it’s got the three-bar logo on it.
“Each house here got one of those touchpads. Put this to it, and you’re golden.”
I pat my pockets. I don’t remember getting anything that looked like that, not at Rikers and not here, and now I’m back to getting ready to cuss out the System that can’t even get rid of me properly. “I ain’t get that,” I tell him. Then I remember something. “They put a chip in my thumb, though.”
The dude’s eyebrows rise in slight surprise. “Ain’t that some shit.” After a beat, “Well, go on. Try it!”
I put my thumb to the touchpad, and the screen door slowly opens toward us. Then the main door slides into the wall, revealing a room dressed in darkness. But already, I can make out a couch, a dining room table with chairs around it, and a hallway, which must probably lead to a bedroom and a bathroom. It’s strange to think of those two things as being separate. Feels, more than any of this other stuff, like the greatest luxury in the world. I ain’t gotta shit where I sleep.
“Who’s paying for this?” I ask, without turning back to face him.
“You are, Youngblood,” the dude says, laughing outright. “Nigga, who you think?”
“How, though?”
“Same way everybody else does. They take it out your paycheck.” He’s shaking his head at me while I take the whole thing in. It hadn’t really hit me till then. Barely do I get to process my freedom before I already got another set of obligations sitting on my shoulders. But this is good. In prison, in jail, routine was good. Had three square meals a day, though most days you couldn’t call ’em that. Had work. Also had to remember that you never knew when or where the harm would come from.
But I look around, and I only see the two of us on this street. And it doesn’t sound like anybody’s waiting for me in there.
“It’s all right,” he tells me. “You ain’t incarcerated no more.”
I wanna tell him I know, but it’d be a lie.
He starts to walk away. “Next time you in trouble, need some help, call on Calvin.”
There’s more room in the shop than I think Miguel needs. It’s supposed to be a barbershop-type setup, but we’re in an open hangar, a bunch of us with varying degrees of time on the outside. Royce came up in Detroit and was in Dearborn for a while before getting transferred here. Romero was the Dominican from the Bronx, Marlon the Jamaican from the same neighborhood. They hadn’t known each other growing up, had gone to the same high school and mixed it up with the same gangs but never really banged with each other until after they got out and had that whole “Hey, ain’t you the cat from—” exchange.
There’s metal all around us. It’s gotten hot enough outside that you can’t let your skin touch the hoods of the rusted-out car-husks scattered out around the hangar. A couple other parolees lie on them anyway, knees up, newspapers covering their faces as they try to sleep. We’re supposed to be working, but a bunch of us don’t have our mechanic’s license yet, so we have to apprentice. And Miguel’s only got one customer right now.
A light-skinned man sits quietly in his chair, chest up against a cushion, his stub of a right arm out on another cushion in front of him. Miguel has his tools on a piece of metal at the man’s arm, and sparks spray in arcs that sizzle when they hit the floor. Miguel used to be a barber and a tattooist, and now he does this.
“There’s no union or anything like that yet,” the light-skinned dude in the chair is saying, “but a bunch of us at the factory are trying to get something together.”
“You think they’ll allow it?” asks Miguel almost absentmindedly in that way barbers have of maintaining conversation while engaging in the geometric precision required for a fly high-top fade.
Marlon leans forward on his milk crate. “You just can’t call it a union in English. You gotta say it in Spanish. Or patois. Had a PO one time who thought bumbaclots were an after-school snack for the kids. Like fuckin’ Tostinos pizza rolls or some shit.”
Mero lets out his belly laugh and nearly falls off his own crate. “Make their software in their fuckin’ algorithm auto-translate from Spanish to English and the shit still doesn’t make sense.”
“Right! Dominican Spanish ain’t Spanish, my nigga. It’s Dominican-ese. It’s like in the Pen when you gotta speak that code while your shorty visiting.”
Mero pointed his O’Douls at Marlon. “But she gotta sag her pants when she first come in because the CO’s like ‘No, ma, you can’t come in here, you look too sexy right now’ or she gets turned away ’cause she got the underwire in her bra.”
Marlon chuckles. “Right before she pulls the heroin out her poom-poom.”
Even that gets me laughing.
Mero lets out a sigh and says, “Shoutout to jail.”
“No!” Marlon shouts back. “Shoutout to getting out!”
Royce, on the car hood, removes the paper from his face, then slides so his legs dangle over the side. He doesn’t even flinch when the hot, rotted metal touches his skin, makes me think he’s got augments, or prosthetics at least. “Niggas really think when you get out, you just gonna start over. Niggas never stopped. You ever play Monopoly, my nigga? You know how you go to jail, then you just wait two turns or whatever? Wait till I get out, I’ma buy Baltic Ave., nigga. Niggas couldn’t walk down Boardwalk without paying respect.”
He says it all straight-faced, but we know he’s clowning.
“Everything green was me, nigga.”
Mero says, “You know all the avenues in Monopoly are mad fucked up in real life. You know that, right?”
Marlon: “You can actually buy those avenues with Monopoly money.” Through his laughter, “Bronx Monopoly.”
Meanwhile, I’m staring at the guy in the chair. He’s chuckling while Miguel’s saying something to him, but I can’t hear any of it. “Ayo!” I call out. “What’s that factory job like? Is it government?”
Marlon giggles. “You see how he asked that question? Like it was pino or something. Oooh, look at that nigga workin’ weekends getting that double-overtime. Weekend rates, hunh, my dick is hard, yo.”
Mero: “Damn, you know how much vacation time that nigga probably accruing?”