Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph

cell for a shower. Two more meals were brought to me: a bologna sandwich with tea, and a rubbery greenish piece of meat that was supposed to be liver. I ate what I could and did push-ups to keep my strength up. Every time the guard opened my cell to leave a food tray, I jumped to my feet expecting to hear him say, “You’ve been released.” But each time an inmate would just pass me a food tray and the door would shut.
    A black prisoner named Merciful Allah passed by my cell using a heavy industrial mop to clean the floor. He was part of the “house gang,” a small group of inmates selected by the guards to do custodial and light maintenance work in the cell block. Merciful lived in Th ree Block but was escorted over to the “seg” unit twice a day to do chores. Merciful would finish cleaning the corridor and then stop by my cell to talk for a few minutes until the guard chased him away.
    He told me my arrest was all over the news. Merciful slipped me a newspaper that had pictures of everyone who had been arrested and indicted. Th e police were reportedly saying that twenty-one Black Panthers were set to go to war with the government. District Attorney Frank Hogan said that we were arrested days, perhaps hours, before we were going to plant bombs in major department stores at the height of the Easter shopping season. We were also accused of planning to bomb the Bronx Botanical Gardens as well as police stations, where we would be shooting cops as they fled the explosion. I stared at my mug shot in the paper, trying to process the allegations and comprehend my surroundings.
    Merciful’s real name was Tony Mason. He had a scar on his right cheek, running from his ear to his mouth, and an Islamic star and crescent tattoo on his arm. He took the name Merciful after joining a group known as the Five Percenters, which believed that the black man was God, and all of the members took the last name Allah.
    Merciful was twenty years old and was about to “go upstate” to a maximum-security prison to serve five years for sticking up a liquor store. Th is was Merciful’s third bid. He had done two years in a youth house and three years in Elmira Reformatory for burglary and robbery. Damn, I thought, twenty years old and he’s already spent a quarter of his life in prison.
    I would talk to Merciful about prison being a concentration camp that was part of a military-industrial complex designed to exploit and enslave black men for the purpose of profit. Merciful would talk about the black man being God and white man being the devil.
    He would hand me a cigarette and ask a bunch of questions about the Panthers. Real cigarettes were like gold in prison. In fact, cigarettes were used as currency and also for gambling. Prisoners would shoot dice, play cards, and bet on basketball games and boxing matches with cigarettes. “Juggling” was a big loan-shark business in jail. “Jugglers” would walk through the cell block calling out “Two for one” or “ Th ree for one.” Th is meant that you could get a pack of cigarettes (or cookies, deodorant, or toothpaste) today with the understanding that you would pay back two or three packs on commissary day.
    Many of the jugglers were also part of the house gang. Th e house gang got to stay out when the rest of the inmates were locked in their cells for the afternoon count and evening lockup. Th is meant they could pursue their juggling enterprise as they moved around the tiers, waxing, mopping, handing out clean sheets, and bringing food trays to inmates who were locked down in segregation for security or medical reasons.
    Merciful was part of the house gang and a juggler, but he never asked for anything back when he gave me a few cigarettes, real toothpaste (not the tin of tooth powder inmates were usually given), or a sandwich. He was just fascinated to meet a “real Black Panther” and was amazed that I appeared to be “so soft” compared with the “hard niggers” he imagined