After Tupac and D Foster: After Tupac and D Foster

In jail, Pac started getting clear about thug life, saying it wasn’t the right thing.

He got all righteous about it and whatnot, and with all the rappers shooting on each other and stuff, it wasn’t hard to agree with him.

Not because she’d done something real wrong or anything—just because she was in this militant group, the Black Panthers.

“The way I figure it,” D said, “we all just out in the world trying to figure out our Big Purpose.”
“Oh, now you gonna go get all relevant,” Neeka said.

“Well, what made you take the bus from your house over there in some vague place you don’t seem to want to reveal to us,” Neeka said, speaking slowly—like English wasn’t D’s first language or something.

And a few days later, when D showed up, she was wearing new sneakers and carrying the rope in her knapsack. As we stood there, unraveling it, talking about who’d be first and what rhymes we knew, D got real quiet.

“Albert E wasn’t smart,” I said. “I read somewhere that he had some kind of brain disorder. Made him say all these crazy things that made sense to people a whole lot of years later. He had a psychosis.”

I read all those books and watched those educational shows and peeped the newspapers and people’s biographies and autobiographies because I was trying to see some tiny bit of myself up in those books.

Sitting at the kitchen table with Mama, that cold gray winter-light coming in from outside making everything, even the toaster, look like it was on the verge of tears, it was hard to even believe there was a time when I got so happy and silly over something like snow.

“He ain’t a thug,” I said. “That’s just his...his persona. The way he acts so people think he’s a true gangsta.”

“First Amendment says people got a right to freedom of expression without government interfering—everybody knows that. Judge doesn’t like the way he looks, didn’t like the way he is in the world, what he talks about, what’s on his stomach...that’s the crime here.”

“It was like he’d taken the crap I’d been going through,” Jayjones said, “and spun it into this...these lyrics that just broke it all down. You know, he…” Jayjones looked at me.
“Clarified it,” I said.

“You my girls,” D said back, her voice all choked up and hoarse.

“It ain’t his time. I don’t feel it.”
“So you all psychic now.”

We walked down a whole lot of stairs and across a field. Then we came to a big stage.
“It’s called an amphitheater,” D said.

I watched them trying not to look at our loud, raggedy bunch, but they couldn’t seem to help themselves.

“I’m for real, Mama. You know how many more rich Negroes there’d be if we wasn’t all the time trying to pay off some lawyer or bailing a brother out. That’s one thing I’m truly guilty of—giving hard-earned money to the man. One person mess up, legal system got the whole family on lockdown.”

She had two gold bangles on one wrist and a watch on the other.

“I’m saying this to you,” Miss Irene said, “because I don’t want any pictures commemorating your time here..."

“Cool to finally meet you both,” D’s mama said. “Lordy, have I heard some earfuls about you.”

I’d asked the question a lot over the years and each time we had the same old tired dialogue.

Mr. Randall’s the reason I got my appeal finally.

“My moms says people die to make room for other people. She’s all up into crystals and afterlife and meditating....”

Seems D was right—you listen to Tupac’s songs and you know he’s singing about people like D, about all the kids whose mamas went away, about all the injustice.

It’s hard not to get to hoping that maybe they’re together...finally...somewhere. Finally meeting each other. Across the miles. Across the years. All the drama and chaos of their lives dropping away.