Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur Page A

the street. Walk down the wrong street, in the wrong neighborhood at night, and you know what happens.
    Eva and i got on famously. A lot of times i didn't understand what in the world she was talking about. But at times she made so much sense i wondered if it was really the world that was crazy. She taught me a lot about prison, and she was forever telling some funny story about her life.
    Eva was a huge sister; she weighed about 300 pounds. She had very dark skin and her hair was cut short next to her scalp. People who have accepted white, European standards of beauty would find her unattractive. But to me there was something beautiful about her and i loved to look at her. She is one of the few people that i have met in life who have the courage to be almost totally honest.
    Altogether, Eva had spent about ten years in the clinton correctional facility for women in new jersey. She had been there in the old days when the women worked out on the farm. She told me how the women were treated, that state troopers would be called in for the slightest disturbance. She was there during a riot at clinton and had seen state troopers beat the women mercilessly; once they had beaten a pregnant woman so badly she lost her baby.
    Around this time i started taking my little walks. Staying cooped up in that cage all day was driving me up the wall. So when the guards brought my food, i would walk past them into what was called the day room, where the women ate and watched TV. I would walk first to one dorm, then to the other, and then return to my cell. There was no place i could run to since there were two or three locked doors between me and the outside. Most of the guards would nag me to come back into my cell and, after a short time, i would. But none of them got too crazy about it until one day a guard yelled at me, "Get back here! Did you hear me? Get back here!"
    If there's one thing i can't stand it's being ordered around, and if there's another thing that makes me go wild it's for a white person to talk to me in that tone of voice. "You make me come here," i told her. "You so big and bad, i want to see you make me come back in there." She made a move like she was going to grab me. "You put your hands on me and it's gonna be you and me. You lay a hand on me and i'm gonna splatter your brains all over these walls." It's a good thing she didn't try me, though, because she outweighed me by at least fifty pounds and i was still pretty much the one-armed bandit. But i would have given her a hell of a fight. I was mad and frustrated and i had already stored up about two or three months of anger. Anyway, i finally went back into the cell, when i was ready. But her attitude made me defiant. Whenever she opened my cell for anything, i would push past her and walk around for a minute. She would stand in the doorway like she was a door or something and i would rear back and butt her out of the way. She was as big as a house, but she didn't have one bit of strength. Finally, she called the male guards. I was in one of the dorms talking to the women, wondering why she wasn't bothering me, when about ten male guards came into the room.
    "Who is JoAnne Chesimard?" the head guard asked. Nobody said anything. "Which one of you is JoAnne Chesimard?" They looked like they were ready to leap on somebody. Again no one responded. "All right, I'm gonna ask you again, which one of you is JoAnne Chesimard?"
    "I'm JoAnne Chesimard," Eva said. Well, when the guards took one look at Eva and saw how big she was, their tone changed immediately.
    "Miss Chesimard, would you please return to your cell?"
    One of the guards came from the back and tapped the sergeant on the shoulder.
    "I know her," he said. "She's not Chesimard."
    "I am who you are looking for, " i said. I didn't want Eva to get too involved in my madness. "I'll see you sisters later. I've had enough excitement for the moment." I walked past them and went to my cell and opened a book.
    The next day this