I sat in my bedroom thinking of my brother Terrence with a cloud of guilt and helplessness surrounding me. Honestly even though I was the reason my brother was locked up, it rarely ran across my mind. But when it did? The guilt hit me like a ton of bricks. The person closest to me in the world sounded like he was about to go insane. My big brother. Thinking back to our conversation two nights ago had me on edge. Terrence kept saying he didn't have anyone to really talk to. No one that really cared about him and what he was going through. Where the hell did he get that shit from? Ain't I damn near always home to take his calls? In all this time I only let the money on his books slip three times. Then the nigga had nerve enough to take me off one of his accounts and had his lawyer start handling it. Terrence act like those Ramen noodles and honey-buns were going somewhere! Hell I forgot, I have a life too shit, I couldn't help but feel immediately guilty about my thoughts. After all, I was the reason he was locked up anyways. Terrence never tried to make me feel guilty. At least not intentionally. Terrence had always taken responsibility for landing himself in Sampson State. It was just hard to think about him being depressed and unhappy. Terrence had always been the rock in our family, even when he was doing wrong, he did it for the right reasons. To take care of his family.
Even though he'd been locked up for over a year with months to go, he was still providing for my mother and I behind prison walls. Terrence was the only son of our parents, Angela and Terrence Hill. We'd been an average working class African-American family. That is until our father was killed leaving Terrence as the man of the family. He was only 15 at the time. My brother found out fast he'd have to step into our fathers shoes if our family was going to survive. Terrence loved our mother more than anything, they'd always been close. So it wasn't hard for us to see even as children, her downward spiral after our father was killed in the car accident. In a word; our mom was weak. Without her husband it was as if she couldn't function. Loving Terrence Sr. and being a housewife and mother to his kids had been her only aspiration. When my dad had been killed it was hard for my mom to transition and realize she would now have to be the bread-winner if our family was going to be taken care of. Mom didn’t digest the new reality that our families survival was now dependent solely on her. She just didn't fuckin' get it.
There had been no huge payout from the insurance company. In fact even though we had insurance and our father was found to not be at fault, the insurance company paid out very little and our mother was too distraught to fight a case we could have won. We relied on the help of the few family members that were in the city with us. But when they were struggling as well, how much help could they actually be? It was tough asking for a handout from people that were barely eating themselves.
Growing up in Brooklyn exposed my brother Terrence to many things. Both good and bad so when faced with the possibility of our family starving and being homeless, Terrence didn't feel he had any choice. Terrence was only sixteen at the time and we'd spent the last year struggling. I was twelve and our family was in desperate need of the money. Terrence knew he could easily make what we needed to survive. Especially when he could see guys he knew from the block flaunting easy money. Money they spent on the latest jeans, sneakers and eating out.
We needed it to survive. To pay the rent our mother wasn't paying. To put clothes on our backs and keep our bellies full. Terrence was sixteen years old when he started and what I know scared him the most is how easy it all came to him. So easy that by the time my brother was nineteen, he was one of the top soldiers in the Jamel's crew. The Jamel Owens crew was a crime organization that ran deep through Brooklyn and other boroughs of New York. Each area they had a hold on had it's own specialty. Terrence's area of expertise was soon cultivated in the drug game.
In all the time Terrence worked with the Jamel's crew he'd avoided any run-ins with the law with the exception of the one incident that found him in his current situation. Terrence had been given two years in Samson State Penitentiary after he'd been convicted of aggravated assault against some muthafucka who'd been harassing me at the time.
I'd actually been so mad at Cordell that I'd ran my ass straight to Terrence complaining about Cordell harassing me. If only I'd just listened to him and stayed away from Cordell, things may not have gotten so bad. They say a hard head makes a soft ass but I guess it was a lesson I was still learning because even though my brother was doing time behind my bullshit with Cordell, I was still fuckin' with the nigga. I was addicted to him. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't leave his ass alone. So for the last year I'd been seeing Cordell behind closed doors.
Terrence and I had discussed the situation many times in the past,he said he couldn't honestly say he regretted it. He didn't. Though he hadn't intended for the police to roll up on him in the midst of beating the shit out of that “pussy ass nigga”. His words to describe Cordell. Terrence had great lawyers so he was lucky to get the relatively short sentence he did get. He was already on probation when it happened due to a previous altercation with this same nigga Cordell which was why he got the two years.
Regardless of the fact of how it all went down, I still felt awful. It was all my fault my brother was locked up. Terrence told me constantly not to worry about it and that he'd do it all over again to protect me but I could hear something in his voice every time we spoke.
Something was changing with him.
Terrence's voice sounded heavy, he wasn't talking as much and the cheerful demeanor he'd managed to maintain over the last year was slowly but surely disappearing. Was he getting depressed? His time was almost up. Terrence had come too far to give up. All he needed to do was hold on a few more months.
We...or rather me,since our mama wasn't really about shit, all did the best they could to make his time in Sampson State go as easy as possible. At twenty-two, I was over one of his accounts. Terrence saved every dime he made. Making a point not to splurge on overly extravagant items that would call attention to himself or our family. He provided my mother and I with everything we needed and most of what we wanted but always in moderation. Not that our mother would have ever noticed since she was oblivious to anything beyond a drink in her hand.
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