Unruly Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the day, it all boils down to the decisions you make. I’ve made some bad choices in my life, some that could have landed me in here for life. God looks out for children and fools. Lord knows I’m not a child anymore and I promise this will be the last time I play the fool. I started work today, they got me doing lawns and grounds in the morn, then Porter work in the afternoons. It gets me out this fuckin cell. At least it’s not hard work and it gets me outside during the day before rec. time. I haven’t started school yet, but everyone says that shit is a joke and that the teacher never comes. Shit, Steve been here 4 years and still hasn’t got his GED. He gets out in 2 days and now they are telling him he has to get it on the outside. But we can lift weights all day—that’s right niggas use your brawn and not your brain. LOL. God forbid we educate you to break the cycle. Education is a good thing. I like to read and write. I don’t need that good enough diploma. I was smart enough to make millions of dollars, but it would be nice to have a diploma so when I’m preaching education to my kids they can’t say, “Well, you don’t have a diploma and made out just fine.” We all know having talent and actually making good use of it is the luck of the draw no matter how hard you work. You know how many talented motherfuckers are working at Walmart. LOL. It’s not what you know it’s who you know. I started reading this book by Sista Souljah called Midnight and the Meaning of Love . It’s a good book that got a lot of jewels in it. I’m glad to see that she didn’t let the politricks of this bullshit industry discourage her. She’s using her pen in a mightier way than she ever could by rapping. Not to say she wasn’t a good rapper but kids don’t wanna hear that conscious shit in music, they wanna be entertained. I’ve also been hittin the weights pretty hard. I’m about 165 right now. I plan on leaving this bitch at about 190. They gonna think I was in here lifting Toyotas. LOL. All in all, jail is a place you never wanna be, but it’s also a place that is unique. I never would’ve become one wit myself on the streets because there are too many temptations and distractions. It’s sad but some of the greatest thoughts were sparked right here in prison.
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THREE
    Hard Breathing
    I WAS STANDING AT THE FRONT DOOR OF MY CRIB AND THERE it was—an eviction notice. We’ve moved six times in two years. There was nothing I could do except take it off the door and give it to Moms. She was inside getting ready for work. I slowly handed the notice to her and she looked at it with tears welling in her eyes. She sat down at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. The sight of Moms’ hands shielding her shame tore me up. I hadn’t seen her cry like that since my father was in the house.
    All I could whisper to her was, “It’s going to be okay, Moms. It’s going to be okay.” It was up to me to make sure that it was. I’d always been a fighter, even though I was one of the smaller dudes on the block. Moms once told me when I was in second grade, “Jeff, you have to fight to survive. They should never let your size fool them. If someone hits you, you better hit them back.”
    And that’s what I was going to do.
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    MOMS AND ME were the Black Sheep of the family, for real, so we couldn’t turn to family. Luckily, my Moms had good friends. We went to stay with one of her male friends who lived in Rochdale Village. Rochdale was one of those high-rise co-ops that tower over Queens, looking a lot like the projects but it wasn’t considered one. Rochdale Village has twenty different buildings in five groups. Each building has three sections, A, B or C, and each floor has about fifteen apartments. Even though RV wasn’t the projects, it was notorious for its drug activity. I