The Mars Room(41)

We dealt mostly from Rodney’s apartment. We handled the sales ourselves. We never had kids on the street corner doing it, like how it goes now. The way they exploit these children. You find a kid with a clean record to sell for you. When he gets busted, he won’t go to jail, since it’s his first violation, but he’s not useful anymore so you get a new kid. Go from kid to kid and they all get records. We dealt only in fives and tens, because the twenties were the bills that narcotics officers marked. I remember a girl came to the gate with ones and Rodney shoved her into the street and said never to try to buy from him again with her loose change.

Rodney and I had two Cadillacs. One was root beer brown and it had an airbrushed painting of me on the trunk hood, like I was the virgin of Guadalupe, and underneath it was written, “Let me tell you about the blues.” I was often the only Latina in the room. I got to know a lot of black women. But I’ve always mixed well with all kinds of people; I’m not into hanging with one race. I can talk to anyone. Rodney would take me to the players clubs. The girls there are something to look at. They get their hair and nails done every day. If they wait a day on the hair, they sleep with their hands propped under their cheek, so their hair won’t rub the pillow. You go to the club and everyone is buying bottles of Hennessy. They have strippers on the bar.

We liked to travel. We went to Vegas. San Francisco. We always dealt on our trips, and we carried weapons. We would go up to Sierra Madre, where there was an illegal shooting range, to practice. It’s past the big rock up there. You have to go with the dudes who run it, on a dirt road, in their huge four-by-four. I remember it had a skull for a shifter knob. These crazy white people. They sell hot, clean guns up there. We bought SKSs from them, which came straight from Iran. The kick on those was amazing. I was a better shot than Rodney.

Sometimes we did not agree about how to do business. One morning there was a guy painting a building on the corner near our apartment. He was doing exterior work and started talking to Rodney and they exchanged information. Later the guy—a white dude—calls and says he wants to buy a large amount of cocaine but that he’s stuck in Laguna Niguel and wants us to come down there. It was pretty clear to me that if he was all the way in Laguna Niguel and a serious buyer, he would have a connection there. Why did he need us? I thought it was an unnecessary risk to go there, but Rodney was stubborn about it because he felt this deal could expand his business. We went. It was a fancy area, just as Rodney had suspected. The houses had long driveways with a call box at the bottom. We get to the box and say who we are and this huge gate opens by itself, presto. We motor up to a house with a circular driveway, and the guy comes outside. He hands Rodney the money and Rodney gives him the dope. Next thing I know, these people came out of the trees. Twenty or thirty of them, all in black, with face masks. There was a gun to the side of my head. I had an unlit Camel cigarette in my mouth. It was trembling up and down; the cigarette was bobbling like crazy. I was not scared to be arrested. Fuck no. I’d been to prison twelve times already and considered it part of life. I thought this guy was about to shoot me in the head; that’s why I was scared. They pulled Rodney out of the car and pepper-sprayed him. We each got eight years flat. The dude from Laguna Niguel was a rollover. He had set us up, in order to clear his own case. Showed up in court, pointing us both out for the prosecution. No shame.

Rodney never pursued vengeance on that, but he could have. What you do is hire a private investigator to find the rat. The PIs get a lot of their clients that way in Los Angeles. People think what they do is all about cheating spouses. No. Most of their business is from dealers and bangers who need to hunt someone down. Sometimes it’s to transact a hit. The PIs, they know not to ask questions. They find the person and that’s it, they step back because their job is done. Of course they are aware of what comes next. If it’s not a straight hit, the rat gets picked up and taken to a torture garage to learn a lesson. The garages are in secret locations all over South LA. I’ve been to two. They hang you from the ceiling. That’s not a place where you want to end up.

Rodney didn’t need a torture garage to punish and control me. Now it seems like he’s old and I’m old and we don’t bother with each other anymore.

After I ran away from Keath, I knew I’d get picked up. I didn’t care. It’s hard to live on the streets. In prison, you can be someone. Life has order if you know how to do time, and I know. I’m an expert. Living in a tent is a temporary thing. You do it until you go back to prison. That’s just how it works.

What happened to me is I got tired. Being an addict is a constant hustle; it takes so much energy. When I was in county after they picked me up, I had to kick because I had no access. After I kicked, I just knew, like a light got turned on. I was going to stay clean. Life was going to be different this time around.





14


“Miss Hall, can you stop crying, Miss Hall?” If an inmate can’t stop crying, they check a box on the suicide risk form. They weren’t hoping to spare a life. They were trying to avoid paperwork and internal investigations.

They had taken me to a different part of the prison, the nursing facility, where no one could hear me scream, no one but the cop on duty. They were following protocols on a behavior sheet. I was alone in a strip cell, no clothes, and no sheets on the bed, on a ward where they put mental cases.

My mother had sat in the courtroom, unable to save me, but in a sense, she had saved me, by existing. Now there was no one for me, and no one for Jackson.