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Wallace A. Brown


Chapter Seven

During my brief political stint I had taken the Postal Exam, I also started to dabble with heroin again, the whole period of hanging with Pete I only sniffed dope, and then just a few times.

My political education was good for me in that it put me around people with a more positive outlook on what life should be about.

I started attending a poverty program that taught inner city kids trades, I chose cooking thinking it would be an easy way to make a living.

I went to T.R.Y. (Training Resources for Youth). While there I befriended a Five-Percenter named C-Wisdom, he became a very good friend to me.

Shortly after we started hanging out someone attacked Cee. After finding that someone dissed my new friend I returned with a sawed off shotgun to help him look for the perpetrators.

That gesture sealed our friendship. Cee and his brother Aaron introduced me to acid. Although I use to trip sometimes, heroin would remain my drug of choice.

I began to go through a rough period when Ronnie became pregnant. I was arrested for sticking up Waldbaums. I justified this move because they had not supported our free breakfast program.

I was sent to Rikers Island, as soon as I got there I started seeing people from the neighborhood and guys that I had known at Hampton.

I was placed in a cell at the end of the tier where someone tried to commit suicide earlier, there was still a puddle of blood on the floor, blood was smeared on the walls.

There was no attempt to clean the cell before they brought me in there; the stench was horrible, nasty. My grandma bonded me out the next day.

I lay down on the top bunk to contemplate my situation. In the morning a guy I knew from Hampton named Mercardo was a Trustee and gave me some smokes. Soon I was on the ferry leaving the Island, bonded out, accompanied by my Grandpa and Marion, who had come to pick me up.

I completed the program at T.R.Y., I was accepted at the Institute of Dietetics in N.Y., although I was doing well there I would still go out sometimes and rob people the night before I had to go to school.

I was using drugs more heavily, strictly shooting now, plus I had found a new love, speed balling, a mixture of heroin and cocaine.

Chapters can be written on the people that I robbed alone. While I sank deeper the depravation that I experienced has only been rivaled by later periods of my drug abuse.

Ronnie was getting further along in her pregnancy while I ran amok, she was headed in a direction of responsibility and I was headed the other way.

Her brother Doc joined The Nation of Islam; he introduced Ronnie to it. I think she was always very spiritual, both her family and mine were pretty religious. She had found her new love, Islam.

Ronnie began writing letters to the Honorable Elijah Muham-mad asking to be accepted into The Nation of Islam.

She hid the letters from me. Since she spent most nights with me, I began to find letters everywhere. Under mattresses, in coat pockets and just about everywhere else she thought that I wouldn't find them.

She knew that I was against her joining The Nation, I knew that I would lose her completely if she joined.

I still tried to hold on to what little I had, knowing that I was losing my grip, hell, I had lost my grip on myself.

She eventually went to a home for unwed mothers in Harlem and had our son. She named him Ameeq, which means to be intelligent.

That's certainly the opposite of what I might have been called, I was Amok, because that's where I was running.

Robbing people was a thing that I did on a regular basis now. I began to come out mostly at night, like the vampire I was sucking the blood out of anyone who had money.

I was living at Cees' house that he shared with his brothers Hershey and Aaron, and his family.

Cees' parents moved the rest of the family to Coney Island. The building now belonged to us, the landlord refused to come and collect the rent.

Like so many other buildings in Brooklyn, landlords were being robbed with increasing frequency, so a lot of buildings were left unattended and unoccupied.

This gave me a place to hole up and rest when I wasn't out doing my thing.

The net was closing in and I could feel it. I had taken from so many people it started feeling like the correct thing to do.

I had groups of people, Posses looking for me. I stuck up dope dealers who had hopes of finding me; the stores that I robbed were countless. I even robbed a couple of people who thought they were okay with me.

I heard of an amnesty for people with drug habits and court cases pending that were thrown out upon completion of the program.

I admitted myself to the Phoenix House Rehabilitation Center, only to leave two weeks later for a welfare check that I had coming.

I was in desperate need of escape, so I called my mother who had recently moved upstate N.Y. with Melvin and his family after his job at J.J. Newberry transferred there.

When I told her I was coming, She replied " For what? so you can rob everybody?" She knew about the day that I went to the Atlantic Towers with another guy and robbed three of her friends, tied them up and even threatened to cut their pet monkeys' throat if they hesitated about giving up their cash.

Cee welcomed me at his place of rest; I stayed there until check day. I went to the Unemployment Office to pick up my welfare check, got high and got on the bus to Schenectady, N.Y.

I arrived around three in the morning and started hunting for a job the next day. I found a job