Unruly: The Highs and Lows of Becoming a Man

124 Pages·2014·0.9 MB·English

by  Ja Rule

DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my foundation—my family, who is responsible for my growth: my
grandparents Edward Cherry and Mary Cherry; my parents, William Jeffrey Atkins (rest in peace)
and Debra Atkins; my wife, Aisha; and my children, Brittney, Jordan and Jeff Jr.
CONTENTS
Dedication
Author’s Note
PART I: VENNI VETTI VECCI
Prologue
One - Silence
Two - Moaning
Three - Hard Breathing
Four - Soulmates
Five - Hollering
Six - Screaming
PART II: THE LAST TEMPTATION
Seven - Must be the Music
Eight - 160 Varick
Nine - What’s Beef?
Ten - A Rock Star
PART III: PAIN IS LOVE
Eleven - My Father
Twelve - My Wife
Thirteen - The Mirror
Fourteen - Sober
Fifteen - Changing

Acknowledgments

About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I do not speak about my exploits with pride. I’m not trying to glorify or glamorize what it took to get
me to this point. My only hope is that these memories of my life may save you some pain. Give love.
PART ONE
Venni Vetti Vecci
PROLOGUE
JULY 2012
ONEIDA CORRECTIONAL FACILITY
THE CORRECTIONS OFFICERS WERE ALL BITCHES. THEY SPOKE to us like the animals
that they had made us. There was no respect for any of us, not even me, who had sold 30 million
records, traveled the world, won countless awards and flown to meetings on private jets. Who would
think a bitch-ass corrections officer would be the one to show me something that I should have
already known?
Oneida Correctional Facility in Rome, New York, had a reputation among inmates for being a
prison with racist COs and rampant misconduct among its officers. The officers would patrol the
yard, always listening for some bit of conversation to get a sense of what the inmates were thinking.
It was another uneventful day in the prison yard as the sun shone on the rusty chain link fences
highlighting the age and neglect of the facility. The yard always held a crisp feeling of weighty
expectancy, always waiting anxiously for something to jump off. In some corners of the yard, there
were the bulky inmates lifting weights, while others concentrated on their chess games. Others just
stared into space, dreaming of the day when their prison nightmare would end.
Officer Smith, one of the more difficult officers, was nicknamed “the Klansman.” The Klansman
may have been my age or a little younger. He had evil dark blue eyes and slicked-back hair, which
revealed his large forehead. His beer belly was bursting through his tight uniform shirt.
“You know, Atkins, your kids are job security for my kids,” Officer Smith said. He just looked at
me as if he had said something innocent but what he was really saying was that the cycle never gets
broken for Black people.
I could feel my rage bubbling up in my stomach. The urge to choke the shit out of him was
overwhelming. The only reason I didn’t was because I knew that fights in the yard only caused sirens
to flash, twenty-four-hour lockdowns and a lot of unnecessary paperwork.
The only thing I could safely say in response was, “Not my kids.”
Smith didn’t know what to say to that. He had assumed a whole lot about me based on the color of
my skin. He wasn’t expecting me to say shit back at all. That muthafucka didn’t even know me, my
family or what we’ve been through. I may have been in prison, but it was partly because muthafuckas
with an agenda put me there and partly because of my own doing.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” I whispered under my breath.
Officer Smith was already gone. He walked away not knowing the weight of his words. My head
was heavy trying to hold them.
I wasn’t supposed to be here, in prison, but I was. I knew then that it was my fault and my fault
only. There were no more excuses. This was just one of those fucked-up Black-people moments,
where we learn truths about ourselves through our oppressor’s eyes. It was enlightening to understand
how white people see us, as fucking job security. In his mind, Officer Smith, his sons and his
grandsons will further their family’s mission of holding Black men down in prison. They will be the
keepers of “our place.” It’s scary to admit, but in some ways, it’s kinda true.
We don’t have to be someone’s fucking legacy, keeping them employed by our irresponsibility and
disrespect for our communities and ourselves. Our lives mean so much more than that. Our ancestors
went through too much for us to be free for me and other Black people to be doing stupid shit that gets
us locked up.
After the conversation with CO Smith, I told my homies what that bitch CO had said to me. “See,
he didn’t say it to y’all, he said it to me, the most successful muthafucka in here. He was trying to
break our spirits, man. He must not have understood that we are descendants of a strong race of
people. We come from the Black Panthers, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks. How
dare that muthafucka belittle me? We can’t let them break us. We can’t.”
Eyes widened. Everyone was blindsided by the deep blow that had just been thrown. Several of
them put their heads down, ashamed to even look at each other.
That’s just what they expect from us. What they don’t expect is for us to get the fuck outta here . . .
ONE
Silence
I WAS ONLY FOUR YEARS OLD WHEN MY FATHER CAME IN THE house yelling about
some dumb shit. “You should be learning, boy! Not playing with all those toys.”
My Moms could smell my father’s anger mounting again. She could sniff out that rancid scent that
she had become too familiar with. The stench of his anger seeped from his every pore. This was an
aroma that made her fear for my life and her own.
My father’s tone was particularly harsh that day, and as he railed at me for holding a toy, my
Moms recognized that glassy look in his eyes. She could tell that her husband had been somewhere
that he didn’t belong. Moms never wanted me to be on the receiving side of my father’s blows. She
had taken enough of them herself. There had been too many silent nights of her nursing her wounds
with drugstore ice packs and old towels.
That night was not unlike all the rest. He was always yelling about something. My Moms came
over to me, scooped me up off the wood floor and placed me in my room. She was proud that we had
two bedrooms. The second bedroom would come in handy the night she would change our lives
forever.
She trembled as she thought, “At least, I have Jeffrey. He’s worth everything I’m about to do.”
In my room, behind a closed door, I played with the toy that she’d given me. While I lost myself in it,
I was losing my Dad, at the same time.

MOMS WALKED BACK into the living room and said to her husband, “Nigga, this is the night you
gon’ die. I’ve been stupid enough to take these beatings, but if you’re going to abuse my son, like
you’ve been abusing me, that’s not going down.”
My father never said a word to her. He didn’t argue. He didn’t say, “I’ll change,” or “You know I
would never hurt Little Jeff.” Or even, “I love you.”
“I understand,” is all he said. And then there was silence.
Moms called my grandmother and said calmly into the phone, “I’m leaving Jeff today. I can’t take
it anymore.”
My grandmother put her second husband on the phone. Grandpa Cherry okayed the arrangement.
He said, “Yes, I’ll come get you and Little Jeff.”
And that was that. There was to be no more yelling and cursing. There was to be no more hitting.
And there was to be no more puffy eyes and salty tear stains for Moms to try to hide. There was just
to be no more daddy.
That is how he left us. With silence.

MY MOTHER MET MY FATHER at a party in 1974. As soon as William Jeffrey Atkins walked in
the door with his half-cut T-shirt and muscular body, she immediately noticed him. She says that he
was “quite interesting.” Moms admired his burgundy polyester bell-bottoms and how they hugged his
slim frame. She watched her husband-to-be float into the room without a word. It wasn’t until the end
of the evening that he finally approached her.
“Didn’t you notice me looking at you? I think I’ve met you before,” he said.
They danced briefly to James Brown’s “The Payback,” which was the anthem of the streets at the
time. The song exalted Black folks’ new sense of freedom while acknowledging our collective rage.
After they danced, he said, “I’m leaving now, but I’d like to call you. I’ll get a pen and paper. I’ll be
back.”
My mother worried that the handsome stranger would float into the crowd, never to return. When
he did, my mother went to a nearby table so she could write. The syrupy sound of Tavares’ “She’s
Gone” warmed the room. Couples danced and kissed under the colorful lights and the sparkles of the
disco ball. It put her into a romantic mood. On the scrap of paper, she neatly wrote “Debra Ann
Moorehand, 208 100th Avenue; Hollis, Queens, 11423,” and “718-656-3234.”
William said, smiling, “I didn’t plan on writing you, I was just going to call you.”
Her eagerness slightly embarrassed her. She whispered, “Just in case you wanted to write or come
by . . . someday.”
As they said their goodbyes, William Jeffrey Atkins promised to call.
He didn’t call for days.
When he finally did, Debra suggested that William pick her up from school. William didn’t realize
that Debra Moorehand was still in high school. He was a few months younger than her. He had
graduated from Food and Maritime Trade School and was an aspiring baker. He agreed to pick her up
after school, but with a warning: “I’ll have a tie on. I’m job hunting.”
Shit went quick between them two. They dated heavily and fell in love, all within a year. Before
Moms knew it, William Jeffrey Atkins was asking her to be his wife. When Moms graduated from
Central Commercial High School at seventeen, she walked down the aisle not only with a boyfriend
but also with a tiny diamond engagement ring on her finger. They married on September 14, 1974,
when she was eighteen.
“I always felt safe with your father. No one was going to bother me with him around,” Moms later
told me. Although my mother was comfortable that my Dad was making $500 a week, once he started
working, she didn’t realize that he was also picking up a bunch of new friends with some very bad
habits.

TWO YEARS LATER, a leap year, I was born on the rare twenty-ninth day of the shortest month of
the year. That would be my first and last birthday celebration. We were Jehovah’s Witnesses, so
birthdays were not celebrated. The only thing my family ever did was cook a special birthday dinner
after the fact. No one even said “happy birthday” to me. They didn’t believe in it.
Moms worked as a secretary at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center right up until the week I was born.
Every morning she would take me to my grandmother’s house, work at Creedmoor from eight to four,
pick me up at four thirty, take me home, make dinner and clean the house while my father was hanging
out in the Village with his new friends and their bad habits.
Soon, Moms and me started to linger at my grandmother’s house every evening, allowing Moms a
little time to catch up with my grandmother and hear about the things that I had done to make her laugh
that day. I was a well-behaved child and my father’s sisters used to argue with each other over who