you. I just couldn’t stop. I knew there was a chance I would get killed but I didn’t care. I didn’t think I would live to see sixteen anyway so why not go hard? My brother Rodney told someone recently that he thought I was the most courageous guy he knew. But I didn’t consider myself courageous. I had brave friends, friends who would get shot over their jewelry or watches or motorcycles. They weren’t giving it up when people robbed them. Those guys had the most respect in the neighborhood. I don’t know if I had courage, but I witnessed courage. I always thought that I was much more crazy than courageous. I was shooting at people out in the open while my mother looked out the window. I was brainless. Rodney was thinking it was courage but it was a lack of brainpower. I was an extremist.
Everyone I knew was in the life. Even the guys who had jobs were hustling on the side. They sold dope or were robbing. It was like a cyborg world where the cops were the bad guys and the robbers and the hustlers were the good guys. If you didn’t hurt nobody, nobody would have talked to you. You would be labeled as square. If you did bad, you were all right. Somebody bothered you, they’d come fight for you. They’d know you were one of the guys. I was so awesome, all these sleazy, smiley scumbags knew my name.
Then things started to escalate. I began to come into intimate contact with the police. Getting shot at in Brownsville was no big deal. You’d be in the alley gambling, and some guys would come running in shooting at the other guys. You never knew when the shit was going to go down. Other gangs would drive through on their motorcycles and, boom, boom, they’d take a shot at you. We knew where each crew would hang out, so we knew not to go certain places.
But it’s something else when the cops start shooting at you. One day a few of us were walking past the jewelry store on Amboy Street and we saw the jeweler carrying a box. I snatched the box and we started running. We got close to our block and we heard car tires screech, and some undercover cops ran out of the car and, boom, boom, they started shooting at us. I ran into an abandoned building that we hung out in and I knew I was free. I knew that building like the back of my hand. I knew how to go into the walls or go to the roof and go through a hole and be in the rafters above the ceiling. So I did that. I got on top of the ceiling and looked through the hole and I could see anyone walking on the floor below.
I saw the cops enter the building. They started walking across the floor, guns drawn, and one of them went right through a hole in the floor.
“Holy shit, these fucking kids are busting my balls bringing me into this building,” he said. “I’m going to kill these fucking bastards.”
I’d be listening to these white cops talking and laughing to myself. The building was too fucked up for the cops to go up to another floor because the steps were falling apart. But there was a chance that they might look up and see me hiding in the rafters and shoot my ass. I thought about jumping to the next roof because that was my building, but it was a ten-foot jump.
So I made my way to the roof and my friend who lived in my building was on his roof. I was on my knees because I didn’t want to stand up and let the cops outside see me, but my friend was giving me the blow-by-blow.
“Just chill out, Mike. They came out of the building. But they’re still looking for you. There’s a bunch of cop cars down there,” he reported.
I was waiting up on that roof for what seemed like an eternity.
“They’re down, Mike. They’re down,” my friend finally said.
So I went down but waited inside a little longer. My friends were looking around the block, making sure the cops weren’t hiding there.
“Just wait some more, Mike,” my friend said. Finally he told me I could go out. I was blessed to make it out of that situation. The jewelry box we stole had all these expensive watches, medallions, bracelets, diamonds, rubies. It took us two weeks to get rid of all that shit. We had to go sell some there, then go to a different part of town to sell some other pieces.
With all the jostling I did, it’s somewhat ironic that my first arrest was over a stolen credit card. I was ten years old. I obviously was too young-looking to have a card, so I’d get some older guy to go into the store and I’d tell him to buy this and this and that and buy something for himself. Then we’d sell the card to another older guy.
But one time we were in a store on Belmont Avenue, a local store, and we tried to use the card. We were dressed clean but we just didn’t look old enough to have a credit card. We picked out all these clothes and sneakers and brought them to the counter and gave the cashier the card. She excused herself for a second and made a call. Next thing we knew, she had cut the card in half and in seconds the cops came in and arrested us.
They took me to the local precinct. My mother didn’t have a phone, so they picked her up and brought her to the station. She came in yelling at me and proceeded to beat the shit out of me right there. By the time I was twelve, this started to be a common occurrence. I’d have to go to court for these arrests, but I wasn’t going to jail because I was a minor.
I used to hate when my mother would get to the precinct and beat my ass. Afterwards, her and her friends would get drunk and she’d talk about how she beat the shit out of me. I’d be curled up in the corner trying to shield myself, and she’d attack me. That was some traumatizing shit. To this day I glance at the corners of any room I’m in and I have to look away because it reminds me of all the beatings my mother gave me. I’d be curled up in the corner, trying to shield myself, and she’d attack me. She didn’t think nothing of beating me in a grocery store, in the street, in front of my schoolmates, or in the courtroom. The police certainly didn’t care. One time they were supposed to write up a report on me and my mother stormed in and beat my ass so bad they didn’t even write me up.
She even beat me up when I was in the right sometimes. Once, when I was eleven, I was shooting dice on the corner. I was up against a guy who was about eighteen. I had a hot hand that day and my friends were betting on the side that I’d hit my numbers. I got down $200, but I hit my number six straight times. I had won $600 of his money.
“Shoot one more time. Shoot for my watch,” he said.
Boom, I hit my 4-5-6.
“That’s the name of the game,” I said. “Gimme the watch.”
“As a matter of fact, I ain’t giving you nothing,” he said and he tried to snatch the money I won from him. I started biting him. I hit him with a rock and we started brawling. Some of my mother’s friends saw the commotion and ran to our apartment.
“Your son is fighting with a grown man,” one of them said.
My mother came storming over. All the other grown men there were letting us fight because they wanted their money. If this guy didn’t pay, nobody else was going to. So I was in the middle of fighting this guy when my mother jumped on me, grabbed my hands, smacked me, and threw me down.
“What are you fighting this man for?” she yelled. “What did you do to this man? I’m sorry, sir,” she said to him.
“He tried to take back his money,” I protested.
My mother took my money and gave it to the man and smacked my face.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said.
“I’m going to kill you, motherfucker,” I yelled as she pulled me away.
I deserved every beating I got. I just wanted to be one of the cool kids, the kid in the street who had jewelry on and
