Authors: Kalisha Buckhanon
Upstate (8 page)
I might as well tell you now cause I was gonna surprise you, but you need to know right now. I got into that special program that Madame Girard had me apply to. It's called a French immersion program and I got in because of my recommendations and my essay and my B average. This summer, I'm going to go to Paris. Me. Natasha Riley. I'm going to France, a whole other country in the universe, far away from Harlem and New York City and New York State and America period. On Saturday I went to the special orientation for the program. I used my discount from Macy's to buy myself a nice little red sweater and some black dress pants and some shiny black shoes with a little heel so I could look nice and like I was serious, not there to play games. It was at Hunter College and I was
the only person there from my school. It was mostly black and Spanish kids, but there was some Chinese and Indian people. They had sandwiches and chips and soda and everything for us. I met two girls that I think I'm gonna be tight with, this thick girl from Brooklyn named Tamika James and this real tall Dominican chick named Valencia Vasquez who live uptown too. Valencia dressed from head to toe like she about to ball, and Tamika told her, “Mami, you gotta put on something way better than that if you spect them to take you serious.” And Valencia was like, “I dress like this so people can take me serious. I gets mad respect this way, I get disrespected when I look like a girl. This is me and whoever don't like it fuck em.” It look like Tamika was bout to say something smart and I kind of jumped in to clarify what Tamika had said. I don't think she was making fun of Valencia or anything. I think she was just trying to tell her what people like Mr. Cook always told us: “You gotta dress for success.” So I just said, “Well, it don't look like it's too many of us here and trying to go somewhere in life so we gotta dress proper so we can represent.” Valencia just nodded her head and played with this cross around her neck and chewed on one of her long braids like, “Yeah, I guess you right. I guess you got a point. But I still ain't wearing no dress though.” From that point on, it was all love. I think we gonna be good friends. This black man started out talking to us in French, and he told us we had to just figure out what he was saying before we could eat. Then he started laughing and told us he was joking and started talking about the program in
English to us. It was some other white people with him and they all started the program together. He told us that we would get help with our French and extra tutoring in other subjects in school. Then, in our senior year they help us apply to college and give us special classes for the college entrance exams we have to take. I showed my mother all the stuff we was gonna do and she told me how proud she was of me, and how since I was doing that she was gonna get off her butt and apply for that house. So see, Antonio, I'm going places with my life and I love you and want to be with you, but you gotta keep it together. Like everybody told me after my daddy died and I started acting up, this ain't the time to be feeling sorry for yourself. And really it's not. Now the first thing you need to do is apologize to Ms. Harris. You need to write her a letter and see if you can come back. You need that GED Antonio, and anything else they gonna give you so when you get out we can both have our shit together. Don't write me or call me until you write that letter to Ms. Harris. I mean it Antonio.
the only person there from my school. It was mostly black and Spanish kids, but there was some Chinese and Indian people. They had sandwiches and chips and soda and everything for us. I met two girls that I think I'm gonna be tight with, this thick girl from Brooklyn named Tamika James and this real tall Dominican chick named Valencia Vasquez who live uptown too. Valencia dressed from head to toe like she about to ball, and Tamika told her, “Mami, you gotta put on something way better than that if you spect them to take you serious.” And Valencia was like, “I dress like this so people can take me serious. I gets mad respect this way, I get disrespected when I look like a girl. This is me and whoever don't like it fuck em.” It look like Tamika was bout to say something smart and I kind of jumped in to clarify what Tamika had said. I don't think she was making fun of Valencia or anything. I think she was just trying to tell her what people like Mr. Cook always told us: “You gotta dress for success.” So I just said, “Well, it don't look like it's too many of us here and trying to go somewhere in life so we gotta dress proper so we can represent.” Valencia just nodded her head and played with this cross around her neck and chewed on one of her long braids like, “Yeah, I guess you right. I guess you got a point. But I still ain't wearing no dress though.” From that point on, it was all love. I think we gonna be good friends. This black man started out talking to us in French, and he told us we had to just figure out what he was saying before we could eat. Then he started laughing and told us he was joking and started talking about the program in
English to us. It was some other white people with him and they all started the program together. He told us that we would get help with our French and extra tutoring in other subjects in school. Then, in our senior year they help us apply to college and give us special classes for the college entrance exams we have to take. I showed my mother all the stuff we was gonna do and she told me how proud she was of me, and how since I was doing that she was gonna get off her butt and apply for that house. So see, Antonio, I'm going places with my life and I love you and want to be with you, but you gotta keep it together. Like everybody told me after my daddy died and I started acting up, this ain't the time to be feeling sorry for yourself. And really it's not. Now the first thing you need to do is apologize to Ms. Harris. You need to write her a letter and see if you can come back. You need that GED Antonio, and anything else they gonna give you so when you get out we can both have our shit together. Don't write me or call me until you write that letter to Ms. Harris. I mean it Antonio.
Natasha
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June 17, 1990
Dear Ms. Harris:
Dear Ms. Harris:
Â
First of all, I want to start out by apologizing for what I did in your office. I'm real sorry about that and it won't happen
again if you decide to see me again. I know you just trying to help us and I really appreciate you trying to help us. I'm sure you could be anywhere in the world you want to be because you seem like a nice person with a lot of education. So the fact that you come here and see us is a good thing and we should appreciate it and not waste your time like you said. But my girl kinda helped me realize why I did what I did and some of the stuff that I'm feeling. I think I was kind of feeling sorry for myself about being in here and what's happened to me. I think I was mad because it happened and I wanted somebody else to take the rap. The truth is, and I wish I would've said this when I had the chance and when it mattered. But the truth is, I am really sorry for what I did and I wish I would not have been so mad and not thinking straight that day. The other truth, Dream, I mean Ms. Harris, is that I really miss my daddy. You know what I did because I know you have my file because I snatched it out of your hands. But I miss my father and I am so so so so sorry for what happened. He did things that were really bad to me and my brothers and my mother, but he really wasn't that bad to get what he got, or what I gave him because now I'm accepting the blame. But what I wish I would have done was just leave the house and take my family with me and leave my father alive so he could grow up and change. Then in the future we all could have came together and had our differences settled because we would be grown and he wouldn't have that same power over us that he had before. That's what I wish. But we did some things together like he taught me how to ride a bike and we used to stay up late at night and watch
TV sometimes and he would cook stuff like steak and eggs or popcorn in the skillet and we would watch stuff like
Columbo
and
Kojak
real late and he would ask me sometimes about school or about the honey who he was seeing come around the house. That's the daddy I try to remember and that I cry about when I know nobody is listening or watching. So that's where I'm coming from. I think you're right and my girl right. I do need my GED and I want to meet with you to talk about how we can do that. I'm gonna give this note to somebody to give to you because I don't trust the guards to do shit for me. I hope you get it and put my name on the list for an appointment with you. Once again, I'm sorry. Please accept my apology.
again if you decide to see me again. I know you just trying to help us and I really appreciate you trying to help us. I'm sure you could be anywhere in the world you want to be because you seem like a nice person with a lot of education. So the fact that you come here and see us is a good thing and we should appreciate it and not waste your time like you said. But my girl kinda helped me realize why I did what I did and some of the stuff that I'm feeling. I think I was kind of feeling sorry for myself about being in here and what's happened to me. I think I was mad because it happened and I wanted somebody else to take the rap. The truth is, and I wish I would've said this when I had the chance and when it mattered. But the truth is, I am really sorry for what I did and I wish I would not have been so mad and not thinking straight that day. The other truth, Dream, I mean Ms. Harris, is that I really miss my daddy. You know what I did because I know you have my file because I snatched it out of your hands. But I miss my father and I am so so so so sorry for what happened. He did things that were really bad to me and my brothers and my mother, but he really wasn't that bad to get what he got, or what I gave him because now I'm accepting the blame. But what I wish I would have done was just leave the house and take my family with me and leave my father alive so he could grow up and change. Then in the future we all could have came together and had our differences settled because we would be grown and he wouldn't have that same power over us that he had before. That's what I wish. But we did some things together like he taught me how to ride a bike and we used to stay up late at night and watch
TV sometimes and he would cook stuff like steak and eggs or popcorn in the skillet and we would watch stuff like
Columbo
and
Kojak
real late and he would ask me sometimes about school or about the honey who he was seeing come around the house. That's the daddy I try to remember and that I cry about when I know nobody is listening or watching. So that's where I'm coming from. I think you're right and my girl right. I do need my GED and I want to meet with you to talk about how we can do that. I'm gonna give this note to somebody to give to you because I don't trust the guards to do shit for me. I hope you get it and put my name on the list for an appointment with you. Once again, I'm sorry. Please accept my apology.
Sincerely,
Michael Antonio Lawrence II
PS. My number is 007624 in case you forgot Natasha, now you happy? Write back.
PSS. Happy birthday. The last thing I want to be is locked up in here on your birthday. I dreamed I bought you something nice, a diamond tennis bracelet or something. Then we went on a cruise somewhere nice and laid up on the beach all day. That's what you deserve for your birthday. That's what I wish I could have gave you.
Â
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June 21, 1990
Antonio,
Antonio,
Â
Thank you for the birthday wish. Me and Mommy and Laneice and Drew and Grandma went to Red Lobster in the Bronx. I love Red Lobster. They got the best biscuits. Mommy had told me I could pick a lobster which was crazy cause she ain't never said that cause lobster is mad expensive. But she was like, “Go ahead, it's your birthday.” So I was gonna go ahead and do it, but when I saw them climbing all around on top of each other, smashed together in that tiny tank, those rubber bands on their hands like handcuffs, for some reason I don't know why I just thought about you and I couldn't pick one. I had fried jumbo shrimp instead. Laneice got me this real nice stationery set and some perfume, and Mommy and Grandma got me a gold locket with my daddy picture inside. I swear I'm gonna wear it all the time and never take it off.
Okay, you right, that's a really good letter and I hope she put your name on the list for that appointment. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. I think she will. One thing about us black women is we forgive our men too much for the shit you do. Least that's what my mother say all the time. So you miss your daddy, baby? How come you never told me that? So see now, that's another sign we was meant to be together cause it means we have something in common. We both miss our daddies. It's
kind of really sad if you think about it, that our kids won't have no real grandfathers, only grandmothers. That make me think about this article I read in
Essence
and I tried to translate into French for that program I'm in. Basically, the article talked about how it was a black male crisis in our community because of prisons and early average death age for black men and stuff. They was talking about how black men are going to prison more than college. This woman named Angela Davis who used to be a Black Panther was interviewed for the article. Remember I told you about her and how my mother said the popo's had busted into her apartment when she was little because her big sister Ruth was tall and skinny and lightskinned with a big Afro? Well, the FBI was looking for this woman Angela Davis and somebody had gave an anonymous tip that Angela Davis was living in that apartment. Well, looking at this picture this woman don't look nothing like Aunt Ruth but guess from a distance she could.
kind of really sad if you think about it, that our kids won't have no real grandfathers, only grandmothers. That make me think about this article I read in
Essence
and I tried to translate into French for that program I'm in. Basically, the article talked about how it was a black male crisis in our community because of prisons and early average death age for black men and stuff. They was talking about how black men are going to prison more than college. This woman named Angela Davis who used to be a Black Panther was interviewed for the article. Remember I told you about her and how my mother said the popo's had busted into her apartment when she was little because her big sister Ruth was tall and skinny and lightskinned with a big Afro? Well, the FBI was looking for this woman Angela Davis and somebody had gave an anonymous tip that Angela Davis was living in that apartment. Well, looking at this picture this woman don't look nothing like Aunt Ruth but guess from a distance she could.
Hey, Laneice and Black been kickin it real tight lately. They be together all the time and all she talk about is Black Black Black Black. I'm so sick and tired of hearing about Black I don't know what to do. “Black bought me some sneaks, Black took me to KFC, Black took me to the new scary movie, Black Black Black Black.” She think he love her, but it seem to me that all he want to use her for is sex. Every time I look up they bumpin and grindin or getting ready toâin the movie theater, in the stairway at school. I mean, she was giving him head in
the middle of that new Jason movie at the 14th Street theater. And this chick with a big old Afro and these thick glasses had went and told the usher and we got kicked out. It was just the matinee so it was only five dollars, but still. I told my grandmother about it cause I went up to her place when we got out cause I DID NOT feel like hanging with them no more. My grandmother said, “That's nasty and disgusting and I hope you're not out there behaving like a heathen.” I told her, “No, Nana, I'm not.” She still think I'm a virgin. I feel like one now that you ain't around. That's why I don't want to hear Laneice personal bizness all the time. I don't even want to go nowhere with her no more cause we somehow always end up at Black spot or with Black. And the other night she musta lied to her mother and said she was spending the night at my house and didn't tell me nothing, cause Mr. Clark called over here for her. That bitch is lucky I answered the phone and was able to lie and tell him that she was in the shower. Then the first place I called was Black house cause I knew that's probably where she was, and sure enough that's where she was cause his mother had went down to Virginia to see her sister. I told her, “Bitch don't be using me for no cover and then not telling me.” That's a lotta nerve. She told me she was sorry and I guess she called her father or whatever. But anyway I told her she better be careful if she don't want to get pregnant. She had basically let it slip that sometimes they don't even be using nothing and he just pull it out. I told her she was stupid. Now me
and you ain't never did that. We was always safe and I told her that she had to be if she wanted to go to college and be somebody.
the middle of that new Jason movie at the 14th Street theater. And this chick with a big old Afro and these thick glasses had went and told the usher and we got kicked out. It was just the matinee so it was only five dollars, but still. I told my grandmother about it cause I went up to her place when we got out cause I DID NOT feel like hanging with them no more. My grandmother said, “That's nasty and disgusting and I hope you're not out there behaving like a heathen.” I told her, “No, Nana, I'm not.” She still think I'm a virgin. I feel like one now that you ain't around. That's why I don't want to hear Laneice personal bizness all the time. I don't even want to go nowhere with her no more cause we somehow always end up at Black spot or with Black. And the other night she musta lied to her mother and said she was spending the night at my house and didn't tell me nothing, cause Mr. Clark called over here for her. That bitch is lucky I answered the phone and was able to lie and tell him that she was in the shower. Then the first place I called was Black house cause I knew that's probably where she was, and sure enough that's where she was cause his mother had went down to Virginia to see her sister. I told her, “Bitch don't be using me for no cover and then not telling me.” That's a lotta nerve. She told me she was sorry and I guess she called her father or whatever. But anyway I told her she better be careful if she don't want to get pregnant. She had basically let it slip that sometimes they don't even be using nothing and he just pull it out. I told her she was stupid. Now me
and you ain't never did that. We was always safe and I told her that she had to be if she wanted to go to college and be somebody.
But honestly Antonio, when she be talking about her and Black being together, and one time when I was at her house and her parents wasn't there and he came over and they did it and I heard them doing it, I thought about us and I just had to play with myself down there. I know it's wrong and it's not like the real thing, but I just had to cause I thought I was gonna bust into a thousand little pieces if I didn't. Antonio, I wish it was some way I could see you. I miss you baby. Do you miss me? Don't you think about me and being with me? It's been now about six months since we did something, remember we did it at your house that one night when we came back from the movies and your mother was sleep in her room and your father was out and we did it on the couch real slow and quiet for a long time so the couch wouldn't squeak? You was real good that night. I had got in trouble for coming home late, but I didn't care cause you made me feel so good. Well, I need you to make me feel good again, but the only problem is I'm here and you there and we can't be together until you get parole so I'm gonna have to just wait and be a virgin all over again.
Laneice said that if you and me both kind of think about each other at the same time, like say around midnight or whatever, and if we both touch ourselves in that way we both like at the same time, then that's just the same as doing it. So, why don't we do that on Thursday?
We'll do that together and it'll be just like we making love.
We'll do that together and it'll be just like we making love.
Love always, your one and only,
Natasha
Â
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June 24, 1990
Natasha,
Natasha,
Â
Yeah baby girl I thought about you real hard last night. I thought about your pretty caramel skin and them nice juicy lips always taste so sweet and that big phat ass you got and your little titties that so nice and tight and I thought about you not just at midnight like you said but all night. I especially thought about them times when we was alone like at my uncle house when he had went to Mexico with his girlfriend and he left me the keys cause he said he know sometimes a man wanna be alone with his woman. I thought about how we got to take off all our clothes those times and how we was able to make as much noise as we wanted and how I was able to do it to you over and over again real hard and make you scream my name real loud til you couldn't scream no more and you just started whispering it cause we was so sweaty and tired. That was the best time we did it and I thought about it all night. I came like twice thinking about you. Did you come thinking about me? I hope you did over and over again until you wanted to scream my name but you just had to whisper it cause people
was in the house. You know, Benito and Mohammed came back. First they was on different blocks cause of the fight and everything, but then they couldn't get along with the new mates so they just shook hands and came right back to where they were. But I wish I woulda had the whole place to myself cause I didn't like jacking off like Benito, but I had to do what I had to do for real. I was telling Mohammed about you and he said that we could get married if we wanted to. Then, maybe next year or whatever depending on my behavior, you could come visit me for like two days or whatever and we could be alone. They give you a trailer and all you gotta do is come out and show your face every two hours. I think there's a camera or something to make sure we ain't doing nothing illegal but baby don't worry I can make you forget all about a camera. Try to come this weekend with my mother. Try to come up here so I can see you. I need to see you so bad. I miss you baby.
was in the house. You know, Benito and Mohammed came back. First they was on different blocks cause of the fight and everything, but then they couldn't get along with the new mates so they just shook hands and came right back to where they were. But I wish I woulda had the whole place to myself cause I didn't like jacking off like Benito, but I had to do what I had to do for real. I was telling Mohammed about you and he said that we could get married if we wanted to. Then, maybe next year or whatever depending on my behavior, you could come visit me for like two days or whatever and we could be alone. They give you a trailer and all you gotta do is come out and show your face every two hours. I think there's a camera or something to make sure we ain't doing nothing illegal but baby don't worry I can make you forget all about a camera. Try to come this weekend with my mother. Try to come up here so I can see you. I need to see you so bad. I miss you baby.
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