Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro (55 page)

 . . . You told me once there’s no one going to love a girl with four kids. Well I’m proud to say you was wrong. My man loves me and my girls. He’s the only one I been with and fucked for two years. I’m not a ho. I changed a lot. I’m not proud of the shit I done, but I learned from my mistakes and I don’t regret my four girls. Probably I did have them for all the wrong reasons, but hey, I’m doing all that I can for them. . . . I’m not a ho no matter what anyone says. I take care of what’s mine. I’ve been, and I fucked one guy in two years.

Probably if you was out here long enough I wouldn’t have cheated
on you. You wanted me to suffer for mistakes you made, the times you got locked up. When you were out here I did you right, even when we wasn’t together. Also knowing that you out fucking bitches without a condom. Yes I know that’s my fault. I loved you that much that I took so much shit from you. You told me one time if I fucked someone that you don’t want to have anything to do with me anymore. That’s when you were out here. That’s why I didn’t cheat, because I didn’t want to lose you completely. Anyway. The reason for saying what I just said is cuz I don’t want you to hate me cuz I got shit off my chest. And cuz of all the stuff I learned from you I learned how to be a bitch from you, I learned how to fuck good and also cheat the way you did. I learned from the teacher. . . .

As for his daughters, Coco wrote:

I will bring them when I can. It’s hard. There’s no babysitting. I don’t leave them just with anybody. . . . You act like shit you tell me don’t hurt me. But it does. I wasn’t a great girlfriend, but I feel that I was there for you. . . . Anyway take care. Your girls love you. Write to them
soon
.

Coco kept her appointment at Planned Parenthood and decided on the Depo-Provera shot, but she didn’t react well to it. She bled heavily for a solid week; when she reported to Planned Parenthood again, she was instructed to continue taking Motrin. Coco asked if she could get her tubes tied and was told she had to make several appointments, including one for an hour of counseling. Between her chronic problems with Frankie and with Pearl, she never made it back.

T
hings were far worse for Cesar than he’d admitted to Coco. From the box, he wrote Jessica that he no longer valued his own life. He feared that his hate and anger ruled him. In the same way that Serena had been Jessica’s inspiration to get out of prison, Mercedes became Cesar’s lifeline to survive:

Jessica, the only time I feel at ease is when I’m with Mercy. Naughty and Justine are lost to me. They don’t treat me like their father. . . . Mercy is all I have left. And she’s slowly slipping away. . . . Once she’s gone I’m going to lose it. I can’t lose her Jessica because then I will lose myself. She’s everything to me.

Cesar had been extorting people to finance his increasing drug use. “There’s a lotta people in here you can talk into anything,” he said. “You can extort them and they don’t even know you’ve extorted them.” But threats always created other threats. Unlike Tito, who’d joined up with the Latin Kings gang for protection, Cesar took care of business on his own. “If I want to rob somebody, I gotta ask?” he said. “I can’t see asking no man about what I can do.” But in order to operate without backup, he had to prove that he was capable of doing anything. When five inmates jumped him, Cesar fought back. Afterward, they all got searched, and Cesar was found carrying a shank—a homemade weapon—and he was thrown in the hole. Then he dug his trouble deeper: outside the hearing room, he attacked one of the five guys, who he believed was about to snitch.

The authorities put Cesar in the box. He faced nine months for the internal weapons violation, for which the state was considering pursuing an additional criminal charge. If he was convicted of possessing contraband in prison, years could be added on to the nine to eighteen Cesar already had to serve. Serving time for killing his best friend was justice, but serving time for needing money for drugs he’d sworn he’d never use filled Cesar with self-loathing. Even though he shared his unhappiness with Jessica, he kept his drug use secret.

Dear Sis,

 . . . As for why I had the knife. Jessica, nobody in N.Y. sends me money. The family done forgot about a nigga, my wife hasn’t been on her job for a while now, so I’ve got to live off the land or starve. Now when I chose to live off of the land I made a lot of enemies in the four years I’ve been down. So I don’t have to explain the rest. If you’re not ready or I’m not ready, I could end up with a cold piece of steel in my chest. I’ve lived the life of a warrior in here & to change will mean signing my death certificate. What keeps my enemies at a distance is my rep. . . . If I change now, I’ll starve & they will hit me up in a matter of days. I have enemies throughout the state and I’m always getting transferred from jail to jail so I can’t change. It’s not a matter of pride it’s a matter of surviving. Plus Jessica I got a solid chain link, $300.00 nugget wedding band & $125.00 Guess watch. I will get robbed day one if I ain’t ready. Jessica this isn’t the feds. This is the jungle. This is where all of the murderers, rapists, stick-up kids & societies worst are all put under one roof. If you walk away from a confrontation you’ll get treated like a bitch & the next thing you know somebody’s going to be trying to make you
their
bitch I ain’t with that. I’m going to live the thug life until the day I’m released!

Plus Jessica nobody sends me no money at all from N.Y. Elaine brought me $30.00 in like June of 1996. Mom sent me $25.00 last month. That was my income from NY in the past 8 months. So you know I have to do my thing. If Mom & Elaine sent me at least $40.00 a month I could chill out. But I ain’t going to starve.

 . . . I don’t need a psychiatrist. I saw one of those for almost two years when I did my last bid. All he kept saying was that “I was too young to be full of so much anger & rage.” But he never helped me. They get paid to listen, they don’t want to. I’m okay without one. You’ll be my psychiatrist. You love me & care & that’s what I need. But Jessica it’s going to take forever to finally get everything out.

You see Jessica, while I was growing up I put up a shield. I couldn’t let the neglection get to me so I closed up. But that was how it affected me. It caused me to become frustrated. That’s why when I was a bit older I took to the streets. I was acknowledged out there. I was taken in and they showed me love (or so I thought). But now I realize that all they loved was that hatred inside of me. They fed it. And I kept that shield up for all that was good & vibed off of the evil.

Jessica, I went & took my problems out on innocent people. Because my family was bad I made other people suffer. But never to ladies, old
people, or kids. . . . I regret what I’ve done because it wasn’t fair. I hate what I’ve become Jessica. . . . I’m so fucked up inside. But I’m going to straighten it out. My kids need me! . . . Yo, about me, & Mom talking & letting out our secrets. She’s too old & sick for that Jessica. I don’t want to cause her anymore pain. . . . I don’t want to speed her death up. I want her to live in peace. What I got inside will hurt her too much because she’ll know it’s true. Mom knows how her & the family neglected me. But I forgive Mom, she’s been through so much as it is. I get angry at her a lot but she’s still Mom. . . . Boy do we come from a dis-functional family! Smile! I guess some people go through hell to end up in heaven. Only God knows why we go through the things that we do. But I do hope for better days.

Jessica, “God willing,” when I make it out of here I never want to return. I never want to see a jail cell again. I’m tired of this bullshit. . . . Yo! Jessica please tell your lawyer to call the DAs office up here & speak to the DA assigned to my case. Tell him to make some noise & say all the fancy stuff about the law & talk that Private lawyer stuff & they might not pursue the case. Please Jessica it’s important. . . .

Love always,

Cesar

Pretty Lone Cesar

Thug Life: Survival of the fittest

The Law of the Land

Jessica understood that relationships were tools of survival. She immediately hooked up Cesar with Lovely, one of her better-off prison friends. In the meantime, to hold him over, Jessica mailed Cesar $20 from her commissary. (After Lovely and Cesar started corresponding, Lovely’s mother made occasional contributions to Cesar’s account.)

Next, she scanned her phone book and attempted to tackle Cesar’s legal mess. Over the years, Jessica had maintained her many outside contacts, even those that were fleeting. (Once she’d called a guy she’d met on Fordham Road. He didn’t remember her name, but she refreshed his memory by describing how she’d been dressed.) She called Boy George’s attorney, who placed a call on Cesar’s behalf. She tried the activist lawyer who ran the prison clinic at Yale. The lawyer, also the mother of twins, held a special place in her heart for Jessica. Yale couldn’t help Cesar—they didn’t take New York State criminal cases—but, as it turned out, they could help Jessica.

Following the twin boys’ birth, Jessica’s health had continued to deteriorate. She suffered from migraines and abdominal cramps, and she believed the prison medical staff didn’t take her ailments seriously. If Jessica joined the long line for sick call, some staff members mocked her: “What’s wrong, Martinez, pregnant again?” The harassment upset Jessica. During her phone calls with the Yale lawyer, she mentioned her frustrations. She also referred several other inmates to Yale who believed they were being mistreated by the medical authorities at Danbury.

While Jessica worked the phone, Cesar wrote voraciously; he mailed letter after letter to Mercedes, who was balking every morning when Coco woke her, physically exhausted from staying up late. Coco, however, mistakenly attributed Mercedes’s reluctance to attitude. Cesar tried to make a connection: “Daddy used to hate school, too. . . . The better you do the quicker it will be over. You don’t want to be ignorant and on welfare when you get older. Stop giving Mom problems in the morning and get your lazy butt up and go to school alright!” He responded to the photographs of her: “All of your little girl teeth are falling off and your big girl teeth are coming in.” He also advised her about Frankie: “Don’t ever disrespect Mom’s boyfriend, but don’t never let him take my place okay.”

Cesar was also counseling Jessica. Sometimes they exchanged two or three letters in a single week. Jessica worried about her brother’s reaction to her lesbian relationships: “Who am I to say you’re wrong because you enjoy women?” he wrote. “Shit! I Love women so much I understand.” He offered her his expertise: “So you say she’s a player right. . . . So if you stay with her you’re going to suffer for the whole time you’re with her. . . . And just because she said ‘I Love You’ doesn’t mean it’s true.” Jessica told him that she’d reconnected with George. “Anyway, tell B.G. I said What’s up. Why do you still keep in touch with him if you said he caused and causes you so much heartache? You are very confused.” He encouraged Jessica to write to Giselle—“Coco, Roxanne, Lizette & all those other bitches I’ve had combined couldn’t stand in her shoes”—and Jessica did.

Although Cesar marveled at the advantages of federal time—“You’se get to throw birthday parties and all that shit over there. Boy that’s proper. We can’t throw shit”—he worried about Jessica taking prescription pills. “Listen up Booga,” he wrote Jessica, “& listen good—DO NOT GET ON ANY MEDICATION/I know you may feel you need it but you don’t. . . . Medication is nothing but temporary relief.”

The prison authorities might have been begrudging about providing
inmates with certain types of medical treatment, but prescription medications were provided liberally. This discrepancy concerned the law students at Yale, who were—in part, through their conversations with Jessica—educating themselves about the female prison experience.

That spring, Jessica attempted to get a time cut for what she’d been through with Torres, but her request was dismissed. That summer, Cesar pled guilty to possessing the shank and received an additional one to three years. By fall 1997, Jessica and a team of Yale law students decided to file suit.