Riding his bike home in the pleasant night air, Ishmael Phillips didn’t know this was the last moment of peace his life would ever know. He was feeling a natural high in the warm evening. Having just come home from playing video games for the weekend with his old foster brother Ricky. The streets were empty except for cars way off turning at the inner section. He knows home is always chaotic, violent. His mother had such a monstrous hostility. She always was either sullen and crying, off somewhere else chasing some sleazy boyfriend or at home making his life a living hell. She would find plates in the sink and decide not to make food all week, or step on a lego and sell all his hand me down early marvel comics to the pawn shop.
Today was a nightmare his young mind had no way of grasping. Laying his bike down on the grass and coming in the front door he was surprised to see peace for once. So many times he came home to punches, kicked in tv tube, bullet holes in the door or even a fire on the back porch because she was mad about a puppy they had for about a week that disappeared in one of her conniption fits. A lot of turmoil and grief circulates above her schitzophrenia... drug ridden brain. Any moment of joy can be snatched away in an instant because she is in a rage about some invented transgression. Sometimes its funny to see your mother stomp around snarling like a toddler having a tantrum, but mostly its like having a festering wound on your soul.
Inside the living room the tv was static. The VCR and rabbit ears were knocked off the top knocking on the tv in the breeze from the broken side window. Feeling some instinctive pause. He feels like running back the way he came and pleading his way into his aunties house, or the gang hideout on the corner, or to sleep on the roof of the school as he had done so many times he has a blanket and pillow stashed in an air duct. Deeper in the house he hears some strange gasping and meat packing sounds. He couldn’t tell if this was sexual, which his mother had no shame about having rough sex with the doors and windows wide open. But none of the smells and subtle hints of lovemaking were here. He imagined what if his mother was in trouble and he could save her and be the hero. Looking in the bathroom there was a knife in the sink, washed sloppily, leaving a ring of coagulated blood around the drain.
His bedroom looked ransacked. This was no new thing. His mother and her cast of revolving lovers often came in his room searching for valuables to trade for a night of drinking or white stuff to snort during weekends of screaming and domestic violence. His bed was upside down, thrown diagonally into the closet where the door was smashed and his younger brother Israel’s blank eyes stared from within. He wanted to ask what was going on, but the big tear filled eyes just stared off like a Vietnam vets thousand yard stare, retreating into the closet and closing the door. Just then he hears his mother talking somewhere else in the house. Looking into his mothers bedroom, he sees a body.
A mixed man with a professional type haircut you see on only cops and marine recruiters lays halfway off the bed. He sees a neatly folded sheriffs uniform on top of the television. The man had dozens of stab wounds piercing his white tank top, a puffy brown stain in the back of his white boxer shorts. Beside the body is a briefcase full of polaroid pictures, syringes and black film containers full of what he knows to be drugs. A slamming cabinet startles him. He feels small and tries to call out with a little voice that catches in his throat. This family is like a emotional marathon. He never gets a full nights sleep from screams of rage or booming music from all night doper parties. Seeing an angry silhouette pass from the kitchen. He crouches and walks back into his room to pack up clothes for him and his brother to wait out the violence somewhere else.
Hearing a sound from behind that makes his skin crawl. His mother was glaring in the window from the back porch. Her eyes are bloodshot and hateful. She smokes a cigarette and doesn’t say a word. Her hands are shaking and her expensive pressed on nails are chipped and bloody. He feels a little relieved knowing it was her in the house and not some unknown attacker going room to room to shoot them in the back of the head over some drug debt. As he urinates, in emotional shock he rocks back and forth. He doesn’t know why but streams of tears come from his eyes. His throat has a lump and his heart feels cold, like a giant weight is pressing down on him and stifling his breathing. He is in his own little world and is slapped back to reality when his mothers gnarled hand seizes the bathroom curtain and says “yes he is here… what is he wearing? …let me check.” Her face appears in the crack in the screen window, she doesn’t make eye contact and looks down at his outfit.
“He has a pale blue Thundarr the Barbarian T-shirt, burgundy corduroy shorts and yellow leather pumas.” She sounds like she is on the phone with 911. In the rare fake surgery tone his mother only talks with police, school administrators and social workers. He hears her setting him up, “yes he is still here, I don’t see the knife. He must have hid it…” He doesn’t know the profound tragedy of these words. He had walked into an ambush. His mother had just altered their lives forever. Hearing several cars pull up with no sirens. Squaks of radios and hurried boots filing in the front door. His mother steps forward with the avocado colored rotary phone pressed against her chest. She mouths, “Im sorry…” Just as towering white men from the police gang unit, pummel him into unconsciousness with a harsh tackle and flashlight cracking the back of his skull.
When he awakens it is in a brightly lit white room with only a table and some dark yellow fiberglass chairs with metal legs. He stands up and looks in the large mirror thats on one wall, and on the other side a sees an office room with one black officer with heavy black circles around his eyes that looks like a hulking corpse. Seeing him, he tries to smile but the man has a cold glare then slaps the one way glass with a heavy hand. Rising the black officer walks out of the room and soon 2 detectives come in one with a hawkish that IRS type smile. The other with a menacing vibe, pushing him against the wall so hard he almost loses consciousness. Smelling onions and tunafish in this big “Tom Bunyon” motherfuckers village people cop mustache. The detective turns his hat around backwards and sits in the chair the wrong way like an actor from an anti drug commercial.
“Why did you do it?” Ishmael feels a knot in his throat and doesn’t answer. Again another heavy slap on the table. He feels a cold flash in his stomach like being on a roller coaster for the first time. “I am officer Telez, narcotics. This is Bartlebee from Juvenile Homicide Investigations. The Sheriffs Deputy you killed is Hotchkiss from South West Division. You are lucky this isn’t their jurisdiction. They are itching to get their hands on you. There are 6 car loads of them in the lobby yelling for your blood. If you don’t help us out I will let them interrogate you. Why did you do it?” Ishmael feels like he forgot how to speak English. His head is spinning and everything feels overwhelming. He can’t even hear the cops. They sound like they are talking in underground tunnel. He tries to think of who can save him.
He doesn’t have any one. He has some teachers who like him but not their telephone numbers. His father has been on deathrow since he was in first grade. He hears the cops say “like father like son.” His dad was involved in a take over robbery at a asian grocery where his uncle Elmer the Vietnam vet worked. He has a grandma back in Mississippi who was on her deathbed from emphazima and lung cancer. There is some family of his Dad’s side they don’t talk to that lives here in LA but he has only heard rumors about some old neighborhood feud that divided the family. He wonders what could have been if his Dad didn’t fuck up all their lives with a well publicized murder all over the news. Being involved in gangs and marrying the worst, most toxic woman he could find. His mother Jinx. Maybe he could have grown up in suburbia, had a bike ramp or studied to become an Astronaut or a famous Comics artist. Down where art class was a spray can in the creek, music class was a boom box on the roof of the defunded public arts school that sits burned down and boarded up.
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This isn’t the first time he has been here. He stole a bike in elementary and nothing happened besides a meeting with a social worker. He got busted again for breaking into a pool and getting cut up on barbed wire. While he was swimming another kid took a hammer and broke all the drinking fountains, windows and when caught threw him under the bus for everything. This is when his mom decided to give him up to the court, mostly because she wanted to rent his room out to her drug dealer. After a year and a half in group homes and camp. He was allowed back home. 7 months back at home was liberating in the sense he didn’t have old white ladies taking away his comic book art or skateboard, making him do chores and accusing the only black kid for every thing missing. But his moms form of parenting was negligent. She let the kids police them selves, if they didn’t do their homework she didn’t care.
His mind circling on what he should say. The cops are all done, they have been filling out paperwork and passes him a pen to sign the confession they just fabricated. He doesn’t have the presence of mind to refuse. Signing his future away, he is given a sandwich and papercup of juice before being driven to Juvenile Hall where by 3am he is making a bed for the first time in years and forgetting how the sheets fit. He wakes up to bucket of black water being thrown on his face by the trustee from a dirty mop bucket. Laughter from all the bunks around him in the now stark daylight of the juvenile dorm. He sees mean smiles full of challenge, shouts of disrespect and people planning who will test his manhood first in the endless neighborhood disputes of Juvenile Hall.
This place is called Los Padrinos, a facility for minors to wait in while being ferried back and forth to court while their case his resolved. He gets a note from his uncle Elmer that his mother isn’t allowed to visit because she is a witness for the prosecution and that the rest of the family is too busy to come either but when things cool down he will send some food and magazines. He never hears from Elmer again which isn’t unusual. Elmer is kind of allergic to family or any thing else besides watching westerns and drinking him self to sleep in a chair on his porch. A week later he gets pulled out from his unit for an interview with the public defender. She is a mousy latino lady who looks nervous and bites her nails. She is pretty but rarely makes eye contact and when he asks about his case she says “maybe you shouldn’t have killed a cop, i don’t think i can help you other than saying you are too young for the death penalty and they can’t give you life but you should get comfortable because at minimum you are going to be here until you are 23.”
He tries to protest but she shushes him to read some mandatory legal jargon, says she will know more at court and leaves. At court she isn’t there and a harsh man from juvenile probation says “You are lucky i don’t break every bone in your body… Give me a reason to beat you to death! Cop killer!” All the staff here have reputations for enjoying twisting arms behind your back until they dislocated, breaking jaws and knocking out teeth. His third day in he saw a kid who didn’t speak english get his face slammed against a wall until he went into convulsions. Ishmael is kind of in auto pilot. Even when hearing important bits of info his brain is kind of blank. He doesn’t know what to make of all this. He just wants to be left alone and die in some dark corner. His upbringing left him in a familiar emotional dark place from rejection, abuse and trauma. Several times walking down stairs his feet were kicked out from under him by the staff, who thought this was funny. He also smelled feces and tobacco chew spit in his food tray more than once so he only drinks the unopened milk carton and eats the apples and orange if he can wash them off in the bathroom.
His mind spirals between two polarities of frustration in blinding rage when alone in “the quiet room” where they put you when upset. Every time he gets escorted to a unit, the staff open the door by slamming his head into it. He doesn’t fight back which makes them more mad so they start screaming like he tried to run to justify the assault. Twisting his arm until it breaks and throwing him into “the quiet room.” A blank space to chip your teeth on bullet proof glass windows with wire mesh, solid walls where bored and mean spirited guards encourage you to break your own fists on metal doors. His other more profound emotion is loss. As if a black and blue blanket of absence of all love and light needed by a human being is swept into the black sky in the lonely hours of the night. Feeling truly alone and with out hope he leans into the respect he gets for fighting other juvenile delinquents. He isn’t from a gang, but his dad was and where you live is enough to make enemies in here. They do let you have tapes, but the Walkmans get broken down into tattoo guns in short order.
His dad started the “Ghost Town Crips,” which are enemies with the “Sepulveda Santa Muerte,” Mexican gang and the “Graveyard Gangster Bloods” was the other black gang in their unincorporated western fringe of Los Angeles. “The Ghetto by the Sea.” In here its all enemies, nobody he went to school with is in here. Its a mix of the worst of the worst and because he is in for murder he is housed with all killers who are full grown. Ishmael isn’t even in High School yet so he is the punching bag. He picks up boxing from a cell mate he has who has a little training. Before the end of the year he has a growth spurt and goes from under 5 to 6.2 by the next Christmas. There is always a new challenger. He gets the nickname “Mail Man.” It was Nov 1982 the night his mother framed him, by June 84 he was in the Youth Authority, on a chilly morning in February 1993 he is released not from good behavior but because they can’t keep him past 24.
He was getting released from Preston. That was the San Quentin of juvenile facilities. It was situated in a marshy little farm town south of Sacramento. He was far from home and he didn’t even have a quarter to make a call. He sees all the other wards getting kisses and hugs from family and amorous girlfriends. The cars roll out and he starts to walk in the direction the cars had left in. This little town called “ione with an i” was pretty. A lot of old trees and falling town houses that reminded him of the south or the movie swamp thing. Just as he starts walking into the blazing westerly sun he hears someone calling his name. He looks back towards the castle on the hill. Preston castle was supposedly haunted and looking back on it when you get released is a jinx to make you get violated early on parole. He doesn’t believe in that, besides he had maxed out. Taking a lone and mournful look at that old stone edifice on the hill, over looking dorms named after alpine counties and species of trees.
He hears it again, somebody calling to him. He searches the fence for one of his road dogs and doesn’t see any one paying attention to him. Just wards walking to and from buildings, hands behind their back or lugging yard work tools. He turns back to the empty street and is shoved by a little bald asian with dark skin and eye buster gang tattoos. He puts his weight on his back foot and pulls back his curled fist to smash this fool. He doesn’t get fully loaded into the punch before the angry face breaks into laughter and he feels a glint of recognition. “You don’t recognize me? For real fool?”
It dawns on him this is his adopted brother. A mixed Cambodian and black kid who got sent back from the group home for lighting the curtains on fire and tagging up the house. The eyes were the same but this little asian kid he remembers wearing “super powers” cartoon hat and trading action figures was now full grown and kind of mean looking. He had a bunch of bad tattoos under his eyes that say “Homicide” and “Sepulveda Killa” in angular gang writing. Ishmael says, “They call me Mail Man.” He thought this was Israel for a second but if he stayed with Mom it was likely he was strung out or in custody too. She had a way of psychologically ruining people. Love is a poison pill when your care giver is a sophisticated manipulator with narcissistic tendencies and a god complex.
He smiles and it feels like cracking ice. He hasn’t had many occasions to smile and it feels good. “How did you find me Ricky?” Ishmael asks. This kid he remembered from 1981 gives a glint of hostility and says. “Don’t call me that, they call me Homicide now!” pushing his hand out in a formal reintroduction. Shaking his hand he feels a little of that charged CYA gang world protocol he has been living for the past decade. “Who did you smoke fool?” Homicide ignores him and gestures towards the ’66 Chevelle full of alluring girls and a curious driver.
Driving back he has two different girls shoving their hands down his fly, jacking his dick and riding him while the dudes in the front ignore them while loud music blares. The entire way back to South Central he wears out these chicks. One girl is Asian, the other Mexican and they are rabid nymphos but he still wears them out. They stop somewhere between Fresno and Bakersfield to use the bathroom and get the driver to buy him a bag full of 40’s. He chugs two and before he knows is falls out drunk leaning against the window with cold drool dripping down the window. The girls are offended and in his dreams can hear them bitching.