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I needed all the help I could get. Some of that help came from another piece of good news. This one was a surprise. I learned that my godmother, Denise Robbins, another big supporter of mine, had trained to be a correctional officer and was coming to work at the Cut. Denise was family and having family inside Grandma’s House couldn’t help but keep my spirits high.

She couldn’t do me any special favors, but just seeing her from time to time did me a world of good.

Denise was another reason I started to turn the corner from negative to positive.

Around this time, a negative came up.

Word came down that the mother of the girl who had gone after me with a bat—the girl I killed—was being sent down to the Cut. Word came down that the woman would be looking for me.

I wasn’t worried. I knew at Grandma’s House they put people like that in protective custody—and that’s just what they did with her. The woman had a lot of emotional problems. From time to time, I’d see her pass by, but she was always with an officer. She never said shit to me, and I never said shit to her.

Did I feel bad about what I’d done to her daughter?

Of course I did. I felt horrible about it. I felt deeply remorseful. If there had been some way to undo it, I would have. But in my heart I knew that what I’d done was done out of self-preservation. It was kill or be killed. There was only way to save myself—and that’s what I did.

The women in the Cut knew what was happening. They kept the girl’s mother away from me and, for the most part, out of my sight.

So I went my way without fear.

I kept my head up, my eyes open.

I went back into the classroom, where the teacher no longer bothered me. She tried her best—she was still a bitch—but, after Uncle’s visit, I was a different person. I wasn’t taking none of the bitch’s attitude personally. She could dog me all she wanted. I didn’t care. I was reading deep into the books. I was learning my lessons. I had the answers before anyone else. History class. English class. Math. You name it. Snoop was on the case.

When I met CO in a secret alleyway where no one could find us, when I held her in my arms and gave her a kiss, when she told me that she loved me and was proud of the progress I was making, I said, “Baby, everything’s changing now. Everything’s changing for the better. This here is the best day of my life.”

THE WORST DAY

OF MY LIFE

When my dreams start getting crazy, I start to worry.

I’m not saying I can see the future. I can’t. But I pick up vibes and those vibes creep into my sleep.

For weeks my sleep was disturbed. I was dreaming of bad shit. Can’t remember it all, but it had something to do with knifings and shootings. Crews were being ambushed and sprayed. Then there were storms, hurricanes, tidal waves, and tornadoes blowing through the neighborhood and wiping out everything in their path.

I’d wake up sweating. Wake up wondering. Wake up with this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Oh, well. There was work to do. I was on the cleanup patrol in the yard. I had my books to read and my lessons to learn. I had to keep my nose clean and stay outta trouble. I couldn’t think of the other twenty or twenty-four months I had to go, just sitting in Grandma’s House. I had to get up and do things to make the time pass. I had to live the life of the Cut.

And I did.

I’d see bitches about to get in a fight, and I’d avoid them.

Bitches might threaten me. I’d ignore them too. I couldn’t be provoked into a fight. Had no reason to fight. Had every reason to keep moving up.

So where were these dreams coming from?

In one, I’m walking through an open field and bombs are dropping on my head.

In another, a pack of wolves are chasing me down.

I’m drowning in the ocean and I’m being pushed out of a skyscraper.

I wake up with a headache, every single day.

The headaches get worse. Aspirin don’t help. Advil don’t help. The Cut has a pretty good doctor, but she says there ain’t nothing wrong with me. She says everyone in jail gets headaches.

Then one day I’m looking out that little window