The Rat That Got Away: A Bronx Memoir

21. Free at Last! Free at Last . . .

21 Free at Last! Free at Last . . . The ride home from Rikers Island in my father’s car was a blur. I was sucking in everything around me, just like someone needing air. All five of my senses had been starved during my months in jail, and the smells, sights, and sounds of the outside world were more intense than I had remembered. On top of all that, the feeling of just having experienced a miracle had my head spinning. After the judge announced my reprieve in the courtroom, my mother was overcome by tears of joy. She couldn’t stop hugging me, and we both cried and thanked the Lord for saving my young life. My girlfriend, Pam, also cried tears of relief. She had stood by me through thick and thin. We were so happy to be reunited, we even talked about marriage. Leaving that courtroom and driving away from The Rock, I felt as if the life that had been taken away from me had been returned and that anything was possible. However, reality has a way of bringing you down to earth. When we all arrived at our apartment, my father called me into his bedroom and told me to shut the door. He then proceeded to tell me how he had lost faith in me and did not trust me as far as he could throw me. I had hurt a lot of people, and as a result he had no confidence in me at all. To win back his respect, I would have to clean up my act and prove that I could be a decent, trustworthy human being. I listened and felt hurt and sorry, but I also felt ready to do what was expected of me. My first night at home was a dream. My mother fixed a feast of collard greens, fried chicken, a baked ham with pineapple, macaroni and cheese, corn bread, and, for dessert, sweet potato pie. I ‘‘chomped myself,’’ as 114 Free at Last! Free at Last . . . 115 they say in the joint, eating everything they put in front of me and washing it all down with Kool-Aid with lemon and crushed ice. In addition to feeling full and satisfied, I felt safe for the first time in a long while. I was at peace with my God and felt clean, as though I’d been washed off on the inside. But I also was wary. For that evening, at least, I didn’t want to leave the apartment for fear I would wake up the street side of my personality. I knew, as did everybody else, including my father, that I would have to go back to the street soon, if only to resume my basketball career, but I wasn’t in any hurry. The next day, I decided to test the waters. I walked outside and was heading down 3rd Avenue from 143rd Street, just cruising from one end of the Patterson Projects to the other to see who was out, when I saw a brother I knew walking on the other side of the street and coming the opposite way. He called out to me, and I answered back, ‘‘Yo, my nigger, what’s up?’’ Just then, I felt something cold in my side. A white man wearing a long jacket grabbed me, flashed his badge, and motioned to me to follow him into one of the Project buildings. He guided me to the back entrance and made me take everything out of my pockets, all the while keeping his gun trained on me. When he saw that I was clean and that I had nothing on me, he asked, ‘‘Where do you know that guy from, and what are you doing around this neighborhood?’’ I said, in my own defense, ‘‘I live here. I just got out of jail, and I’m on probation.’’ He said, ‘‘Do you know what that guy does?’’ I replied truthfully, ‘‘I have no idea.’’ He said, ‘‘We have been watching him for a while, and if I see you talking to him again, I am going to send you back to jail.’’ When he let me go, I was shaken. There was even more tension in the neighborhood than when I left it. The streets were crawling with police, put there because respectable citizens were fed up with being robbed, and there was no way I could hang around people I knew without being arrested...