White Lines (15 page)

When he first started coming around, Jamari was a sheep among wolves. He dressed like a cornball, and Marquis had to show him how to rock his jeans, how to wear his hat and lace his sneakers. Jamari soaked it all up, and was an eager student. He admired Marquis, and wanted to be more like him—more accepted by both the girls in the hood and the nig-gas on the block.

Up until the age of fourteen, all the boys had been known by their given names. There was Marquis Graham, and then there was Jamari, Martin, his brother Sammy, and Chauncey. Upon entering high school, the boys abandoned their bikes and occasional football games, and began to come up in the game among the local hustlers. They adopted names comparable to those of their older counterparts. They were searching for themselves, and searching for new identities, trying to carve a niche in the broken society in which they dwelled. Sammy was now known as Smitty; Chauncey shed his given name for Chance. Only Martin and
Marquis had opted not to alter their personas at first. But in all the boys, a transition was underway that would mold them from this point forward.

Marquis didn’t make the decision to change his name spontaneously. Instead, shedding his given name was a metaphorical peeling off of old layers, of old scars. He had a special love for his mother, this woman who somehow managed to hold it all together despite the anarchy around her. Marquis had seen his mother weather countless storms, had witnessed her strength and her grace firsthand. He was proud that she was his mother, and he wanted to pay homage to all the love and guidance she’d given him over the years. So he started calling himself by his mother’s maiden name—Bourne—only he altered the spelling for good measure. He no longer wanted to think of himself as his father’s son, his father’s heir apparent. It was his mother who had shown him how to fix a flat on his bicycle. It was his mother who listened when he told her about the fights he had gotten into with other boys around the way. His mother had been the one who held him down, had his back, and was there for him. There had been too many nights—too many days—when all he had was his mother. And all she had was her son.

Born had begun to change in his father’s absence. He was longing for the relationship between a father and a son that is so vital in every young man’s life. His father had ignited a fire in him that he’d then allowed to be extinguished. A hunger dwelled within Born for the power and honor he’d witnessed his father having before the crack had come into play. He was hungry for money and respect. And now that his dad was around less and less, it became obvious that the streets would be the place he’d turn to to fill the void left by his father.

Marquis was different now, but his mother flat-out refused to call him Born. Ingrid thought it was stupid to walk around calling yourself something other than your legal name, regardless of his reasons for doing so. She was the only one who continued to call him Marquis, and he didn’t protest. It would have been pointless to argue with her about it. But she recognized that the transition from impressionable youngster to ruthless hustler was under way in her son.

Ingrid Graham was Born’s favorite girl in the world, and all of her friends thought it was precious that her son loved her as unabashedly as he did. In his eyes, his mother was smarter and more perceptive than the average woman. So it should never have surprised him when his mother uncovered what he thought was a well-kept secret. His father was smoking now more than ever. Leo was home whenever he was broke, and out getting high whenever he got money. Ingrid still hadn’t tried to talk to her son about what was happening in their family, because she didn’t even know where to begin. Born spent less time at home and more time on the grind.

He and his boys had a tight crew going, and eventually they got their hands on some guns. Trouble was, they were all about sixteen or seventeen, and everybody was still living at home with their moms. Born was the only one whose mother didn’t snoop around his room. Ingrid was never that type. She left his shit alone as long as he left her shit alone. So it was agreed that Born would hold everybody’s guns at his house, and each day everyone would come to him and pick up their piece.

This setup worked for a while. Every day the crew would come to the crib and get their artillery, and then they would hit the block and get money. By now their crew was notorious. It was common knowledge that the 55 Holland boys would rob, steal, shoot… whatever! It was all about money to them. They had a legacy already. Known for resorting to collecting hood ransoms from rival crews (they would kidnap a rival hustler who had a little paper and hold him till they got five or six grand for his safe return), it became clear that they were not above
any
means of getting money.

Then Martin began to play the role of a stick-up kid. He was successful most often, because when a victim took one look in his evil eyes, no one dared to challenge him. They simply handed over their valuables and prayed that he let them leave with their lives. He robbed old ladies, young girls, hustlers from other neighborhoods—anybody who had what he wanted. Soon the rest of the crew had caught on, and together they pulled off robbery after robbery. But, this successful track record came to a halt when Martin and the rest of the crew tried to rob two younger hustlers from the Harbor projects named Junior and DonDon.

Martin, Born, Smitty, and Chance were all in on this robbery. Junior and DonDon talked a lot of shit and did a lot of bragging about what they had, and about the money they made. There had been bad blood between Born’s crew and Junior and DonDon for a long time. Their crews often sold to the same customers, and stepped on each other’s toes, on each other’s turf. This was one crime that was more personal than anything else. So the four of them cornered Junior and DonDon in the lobby of a building in the Harbor projects, and demanded it all—their jewelry, money, sneakers, and all that.

“Gimme all yo shit, nigga. Punk ass! Go ‘head and give me a reason to shoot you!” Martin barked.

Born, Smitty, and Chance all had their guns pointed at both Junior and DonDon. Junior stared at Martin over the barrel of his .45. “Fuck you,” Junior said, disrespecting the robbery. He didn’t think the cowards had the heart to shoot them. “Y’all ain’t ready to use them guns. Stop playing.”

Martin shook his head. “You sure about that?” he asked.

Junior looked as if he might change his mind. But Martin decided it was too late for that. He fired, hitting Junior dead in the head. Then he turned his gun on DonDon.

“Oh, shit!” DonDon reached for his own gun, figuring he might as well go out shooting. He was considerably outnumbered, but he shot it out anyway. Born opened four holes in him before DonDon could fire twice. The 55 Holland niggas walked away with every item of value that Junior and DonDon had put their lives on the line for. When all was said and done, DonDon was in a wheelchair and Junior was dead.

Word on the street spread that the 55 Holland niggas were behind the robbery of Junior and DonDon. The hood was all abuzz with speculation, and still, Born underestimated his moms, and thought she was clueless about what he was doing.

Then one morning, Born was asleep in his room. Leo wasn’t there that day, and it was just Born and his mother at home. It was early—about eight o’clock in the morning. Ingrid came in and frantically woke her son up. She shook Born awake, and said, “Marquis, get up! The cops
are outside in front of the building, and they’re coming upstairs. You need to get them guns up out of here!”

“What?” Born was shocked, because he had no idea that she knew about those guns. He didn’t have time to question it, though. He jumped out of bed and took the bag from underneath his bed. “How you know they’re coming up here? They could be going to somebody else’s apartment.”

Ingrid grabbed the bag and frowned at her son. “Boy, you know damn well your ass is hot right now,” she said. She ran to her next-door neighbor’s apartment, and tapped eagerly on the door. The woman let Ingrid in, and after a brief explanation she hid the bag way in the back of her closet. Ingrid knew that the cops had her son and his crew on their radar.

Born had thought his mother was too lame to notice, but he had underestimated how well his father had taught his wife to pay attention. She had known all along what Born was up to. She had heard what the streets were saying about him, and she had long ago noticed that her son was deep in the game. Ingrid had been expecting the cops to come looking for him sooner or later. She would address it in her own way, but the issue at hand was more pressing than all that. She had to save him from going to jail.

Once back inside their apartment, Ingrid and Marquis nervously awaited the inevitable. They didn’t need to wait too long. The cops came banging at their door no more than five minutes later. They came in, eight of them in full riot gear. “Get on the floor and place your hands behind your head!” they barked at Born. Ingrid was also subjected to scrutiny, as the cops made her stand with her hands behind her head. They ransacked the apartment, searching every room and looking in every crevice. But thanks to his mother, when they searched Born’s room they didn’t find those guns.

But they did find some of Junior’s jewelry, and a few bags of weed. “Looks like we got you,” one of the cops sneered at him. Born didn’t panic. They brought him in for questioning, along with Smitty, Martin, and Chance. But none of them talked, and the cops had no way of proving
that the rope chain and pinkie ring had belonged to Junior. Nothing was found that could connect the 55 crew to the crime committed.

Still, Born was shocked. His mother had never been the type to snoop. Or so he thought. But she had known what he’d been doing all along. After that, Born started wondering how much else she knew. And he stopped underestimating Ingrid Graham. But he kept getting in trouble. He and his crew were brought in for questioning in connection with attempted murders, assaults, home invasions, and drug dealing. It got to the point that whenever someone got shot or assaulted, the police questioned one or all of the 55 Holland niggas. Born was constantly in trouble. It wasn’t long before the state got involved, and they put him in a group home all the way out in Queens.

He was in the group home for a year or so before he got kicked out for fighting. Fighting was part of survival of the fittest in a group home environment. The fight hadn’t even been Born’s fault, but they sent him to juvenile detention. He was always in some kind of group home or detention center in his early teens, and his mother always held him down. She made sure he had sheets, towels, clothes, tapes, whatever. Ingrid was sick without her son at home, and she knew that part of his “I don’t give a fuck” attitude stemmed from the pain he was feeling over the departure of his father.

Being away from home was not the deterrent that the state of New York hoped it would be. In fact, in a lot of ways it prepared Born for jail. It was while he spent time at a juvenile detention center in the Bronx that Born witnessed the crack epidemic in a way that he never had before. Fiends lined up by the dozens to buy crack from one man. Born had never witnessed such extreme poverty and addiction until then. But it also showed him the potential for profit the drug game held. He watched bum-ass niggas make miraculous come-ups just by serving the fiends, who would give
anything
to get high. By the time he returned home after his stint in the group home, it was no secret to Ingrid that the respectable young man she knew as Marquis was also a ruthless thug known in the streets as Born. He was a fearless young man with nothing to lose and
the world to gain. Born had arrogance that people either hated or loved, and he didn’t care about anything. Born was a wild one, and the streets grew to revere him.

While doing his stint in the Bronx group home, he was allowed to come back to home to Staten Island from time to time. He would put in work on the block every time he was home. A counselor at that group home named Shakim noticed that whenever Born went home for a while, he would come back with all kinds of clothes, sneakers, coats, all kinds of shit. Born had a six-hundred-dollar blue Polo sweater that everyone knew was pricey. He was always styling, and everyone took notice. Shakim had read up Born’s rap sheet, and he knew his whole story. So he would look at all the pricey new clothes and expensive jewelry that Born had each time he came back, and he’d shake his head.

“Damn! You out there slingin’ them golden grams, huh?” Shakim asked Born. “It ain’t hard to tell what you’re out there doing.” He knew what Born was doing. Shakim noticed that Born’s eyes were always bloodshot and lazy. He knew that Born was smoking weed and that he was hustling. He decided to try to get through to the boy’s mother as a last-ditch effort to save the young man.

Shakim had a conversation with Ingrid that didn’t go as well as he had planned. “Your son has too many expensive things. I know that you send him some of it. But he gets plenty on his own. He’s drawing attention to himself. And he’s sending the wrong message to the other group home residents. These kids are supposed to be turning their lives around. But your son is making it look so much more enticing on the other side of life.”

“Uh-huh,” Ingrid said. She acted like she had no idea what Born was up to. “Everything that Marquis has, I’ve given to him. I’m his only source of income.” But she wasn’t. Born was doing it all by himself. She told Shakim, “I
work.
I can buy things for my son if I want, can’t I?”

But Shakim knew the deal. After his conversation with Ingrid, Shakim told Born that he still had a lot to learn as a “hustler.” “What you’re doing is so obvious,” he said. “Because for the past six weeks you haven’t even been going to pick up the allowance the group home gives you. You don’t need that money, so you keep forgetting to go get it.”

Born stood there feeling like a fool for being so obvious. Shakim was right about all of his suspicions. It was no real secret what Born was doing out there. The system did nothing to deter him.

His father was fucked-up by that time. Leo was a full-blown crack addict, and to add to the problem, his health was deteriorating. His heart was failing; he was in a wheelchair. He was messed up. During one of Born’s visits home, Leo had a talk with his son.