Sister Souljah - Life After Death

“I didn’t ask Chaplain all dat,” Veronica said, suddenly sounding aggravated.

“Now you won’t have to. There’s nobody to pray to. Nobody is listening. Don’t you think Chap been praying asking dead Jesus for a better job than this fucked up place? Even if somebody was listening, mandatory means exactly what it means. Besides, Chaplain is right in here with us, New York State prison. She ain’t no different ’cept she got a fucking jar of caramels and stolen steaks and we got commissary and gotta pay for what we want. We work in here. She works in here. ’Cept, she gets a little iddy-biddy paycheck. So the difference between her and us is about three hundred dollars a week. You gon’ bow down to a bitch who every other word out of her mouth is a fraud game, who in one week only brings home three hundred dollars? Veronica, you locked up for hustling, making three hundred dollars every three fucking seconds!” Case closed. I won her over. I could feel it.

Veronica never answered me that night. I know she wasn’t sleeping. The next day when we had fifteen minutes to shoot the shit, our girl crew was talking. Simone had told everybody about Veronica’s trip to the chaplain. Asia said to all of us, “If Veronica wants to start going to church and chilling with the chaplain leave her ass alone. It ain’t got nothing to do with us. Most of the hustlers and even the rappers who we know and love be rocking a Jesus piece. It don’t mean nothing. It don’t stop shit from happening. When I was on my knees sucking Rojo’s dick, that diamond-flooded crucifix was swinging side to side right above my head. He wasn’t thinking about Jesus, his wife, or his kids! That nigga was just moaning like a bitch!” We all started cracking up, even Veronica. Next day she was back to confidently doing what we do, with us.

My casket plus my memory of my girls caused me to miss lockup, which I never ever thought was possible to miss. Back in Brooklyn I was used to living with my Santiaga family and running with my hood girlfriends. When Santiaga moved us to our Long Island mansion, I spent all my time trying to get back to my Brooklyn hood, my bitches and my niggas. On lockup I got ganged up eventually and was used to rolling in a crew of my girls. Even when planning my release after fifteen years I had thought to live in the same house with my crew. That’s why this casket shit is bullshit to me. Why am I alone? If hell really existed, which I never really thought about unless some sucker from the group home or the prison bought it up, same as I don’t believe in the boogeyman, or ghosts, or anything like that. Same as I love the haunted house and horror flicks ’cause that shit is all just entertaining bullshit to me that could be enjoyed and laughed at after having a few blunts and beers. And if this is Hell that I’m in right now, why ain’t the place packed? Where is everybody else? I’m game for hell long as I’m not the only one in it. If this is hell bring all of the other motherfucking dead sinners so we can have a party. I can only exist where the action is at.

6.

It can’t be only me here, I thought. But it was. It could have been six seconds, or six minutes, or six hours, or six days, or six weeks, or six months, or six years after my death. I could not tell how much time had passed. All I know is what’s happening to me at the moment. I’m no longer laying flat in my casket. I’m sitting, same as I would be sitting back on my Brooklyn block on a bench or stoop. Really though it feels like I’m sitting on a curb close to the open sewer. The stench is like a beating, a continuous foul smell that only changes from stinky to the stinkiest. The odor is so foul that even after I suspected that the smell might be coming from my unwashed rotting body, I could not confirm it. Must be the stench is traveling in waves of steam coming up from the sewer. I want to get up and walk away from the smell like any sensible bitch would, but my legs cannot move. It’s dark, completely black. There has been no sunshine here or even one speck of light. Not even artificial light, like from a light bulb. That meant there are no days and no seasons. There is no sunrise, and no sunset. I could say it’s like nighttime all of the time where I am now. Even that would be a lie, though. Down here there is no moon and no moonshine and not one single star. So it is unlike nighttime because there is no night shine. Instead of the rotating earth, and the alternation of days and nights, instead of a moving sky or clouds or even rain, snow, or hail, thunder or lightning, there is none of that, just deep blackness. There is only the threat of the unexpected. The stench is the only permanent thing. Could be six months’ worth of odor from my period blood, my poop, my urine, and my sweat combined. Even the thought of that stinks. The odor randomly intensifies ranging from high to higher to the highest foulness, as though it is being controlled like how the knob on the stovetop can lessen or increase the degree of a flame. There is no flame to be seen, though, because that would be a form of light and would upset the theme here. But at certain intervals a heat rushes beneath me that causes me to want to leap up. Yet, I cannot. It’s like here where I am, it will be cold as a freezer, then suddenly it would feel like someone was frying my ass as it sat on the curb, and the soles of my feet as they rested on the street. I’d rather whoever runs this place to decide on one temperature and stick to it.

There is no music here. I ain’t heard a jam or joint in I don’t know how long. But, there are plenty of strange sounds at varying volumes, some soft, like the hissing that comes and stays for what seems like a long while. It is a hissing that makes my skin crawl. Then suddenly it disappears only to be replaced by the sound of cracking, like ninety-nine niggers cracking their knuckles at the same time. If that ain’t enough, next it’s the high-volume sound of bones breaking and the screaming that follows the breaking. Sounds like a whole city of screamers, as though all of the boroughs of New York including Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island, more than eight million people, are screaming at one time. The screaming sound is the weirdest to me because I am the only one here. When it comes around I try to ignore it even though it is too loud and impossible to ignore. I just use my determination, go inside of my own thoughts and think about some other shit that I prefer. Once the screams cease, I’ll hear something like grinding. It is kind of like the sound of that annoying drill that the dentist uses. It’s like a million people getting dental work done at the same time. That shit is annoying and even harder to ignore.

Someone was trying to break me, I know. But Winter Santiaga is not easily broken. Number one, I’m not afraid of the dark. Number two, I don’t like the noise but I’ve heard the sound of a hundred bitches banging on their cell doors at the same time. Number three, I’ve heard screaming when the task force forces their way down the tiers and into each prison cell and starts attacking chicks for some trumped-up bullshit reason. Number four, I remember when the prison toilet system failed and instead of all of our shit getting flushed down, it squirted up and into our faces, then flooded our cells. So I’m well familiar with overwhelming stench. Number five, I’ve heard Simone sharpening chicken bones by dragging each bone back and forth on the cement wall till they were each good enough to stab or puncture somebody who wouldn’t bow down to our crew. When it wasn’t bones she was sharpening, it would be anything that could be continuously scraped and grinded until it was razor sharp so that she could sell it to some other bitch who wasn’t one of our enemies, wasn’t one of our crew either but was simply a customer who needed to defend herself, which was an everyday thing. As for number six, the hissing, I’m not accustomed to the hissing. If I could choose to dead one sound, that would be it. Sounded like six hundred jealous bitches whispering at the same time about someone whose look or style they simply couldn’t match or touch or tolerate. Come to think of it, I have heard that envy-inspired, whispering-hissing sound before plenty of times.