Lockdown Read Online Free PDF Page A

fight all you want,” Mr. Wilson said.
    He looked at me like I was nothing, and that was the way I felt. But when he left, I thought about what he had said. Maybe he went home and dealt with his family and his friends like he wanted, but I had to deal with what I found at Progress.
    I wanted to pray, but I don’t like doing that kind of stuff. I mean, to me, praying sounds lame. You’ve messed up and then you go asking God to let you cop a plea. One time I heard Mama praying. She was in her bedroom and I thought she was praying to get off that stuff she was using, and I leaned against the door to hear her. But she was praying for ten dollars so she could buy some food. I knew what she would be buying with the ten dollars if she got it.
    Mom was a trip and a half. She was small. I was as big as she was when I was nine. She was pretty when she fixed herself up. And she spoke well. LikeIcy. Icy probably talked like Mom, really, but when Mom spoke, you could hear every syllable. Unless she was high. And as much as I loved Mom when she was straight, that’s how much I hated her when she was high. And she always tried to pretend she wasn’t using when I knew she was.
    But the main thing was that I knew how some of the chicks around the way copped their money to get high. You can finesse people in stores or you can finesse people in the post office, but you can’t finesse no dealer. He knows what you need and what you’ll do to get it.
    Sometimes I dreamed about Mom and me and Willis and Icy living somewhere together, maybe in Queens, next to the park. It was a good dream when it started, but it never ended up good. Never.
    The whole joint was quiet and I figured the staff had everybody on lockdown. Sometimes, especially if there was a fight or something, there would be a silent lockdown. You couldn’t have a radio on or a television and you couldn’t talk. That didn’t bother me but it bothered some guys big-time. They had to have some noise going on all the time. I think maybe they were hearing stuff in their heads andwanted to shut it out. Those were usually the guys on the meds line in the morning.
    When dinner came, I was glad to march with everybody to the mess hall. Dinner was the same as lunch, a hamburger patty, a slice of bread, some creamed corn, potatoes, string beans, and rice pudding. It didn’t have any taste, or maybe I was just not up to tasting it, I don’t know.
    My light went out at eight thirty. I’m a level one and it wasn’t supposed to go out until nine thirty. I wondered if Mr. Cintron had dropped me to level three, or even four. If I was on level four, I didn’t get to go to school or have rec time. I wouldn’t be going to Evergreen anymore, either.
    Being at Progress, hearing the bars slam or standing in the halls waiting for somebody to unlock one of the steel doors, made me feel like maybe I was an animal or something. Going to Evergreen and seeing people walking around and smiling made me feel good even if they weren’t smiling at me. They were feeling good about themselves, and that’s what I needed.
    The thing was that whatever happened to me, there was always something worse than there wasbefore. The first time I was arrested, when they sent me up to Bridges on Spofford Avenue for two weeks, it was bad, but the worst thing that could have happened then was that I got a record. That was like a weight around my neck that was going to drag me down even further the next time I got into trouble. Then the last time I got arrested, I came here to Progress, which is a lot worse than Bridges. When Wilson said they could send me upstate with Cobo, I knew that would be even worse. If Cobo did have a gang up there, they would just probably kill me like they were thinking about killing Toon.
    I guess dying is the worst shit you can get into.
    Morning came and I got roused up with everybody else. We lined up and I didn’t see Cobo. I was looking for him because he might be trying to sneak up on