Afeni taps my thigh. "Yes," she says excitedly. "Priority. And I'm glad your people taught you that. You knew early. It's taken me so many years to find my priority in life, only to come right back here where I began. Now, I know what I'm working for and striving for. The real estate man who showed me this place was happy to sell it to me, you know, until he found out who my son was. Then he wanted me to go and get a big ole fancy house."

"Yes, 'cause your son's a superstar! You need some marble and a fountain, some gates and some statues, a swimming pool!" I laugh because such showy opulence would be untrue to Afeni's real self.

"And I wanted the land, not the house. The land, to live on and to cultivate and pass on to my family."

Afeni inhales her Newport and surveys the deep forest green of her backyard. I notice new saplings planted on the edge of her small pine forest.

"Those new trees are what the babies planted," Afeni says proudly.

Afeni's "babies" are the Shakur family's next generation. The two sisters, Glo and Afeni, are at the helm -- they are the keepers of the brood. Sekyiwa, Afeni's daughter, and Tupac's sister, has two children -- Nzingha and Malik. Jamala, Glo's daughter, has one daughter -- Imani. Katari, Glo's son, has a daughter as well, Kyira, the same name as my daughter. And on any given day, these cousins roam Afeni's yard, raid her refrigerator, and laugh up the rooms of her Stone Mountain refuge.

"Nzingha wanted a pine tree. So, that's her tree right there. That one is Imani's. And Leeki [Malik], he wanted a fruit-bearing tree. This one's his and look...there's some fruit! We plant a tree for Tupac on his birthday every year. Either here or on the farm."

Afeni also owns a 56-acre farm in Lumberton, North Carolina. She invites me to go there often, but I'm reluctant to travel too far from my double-tall, two-sugar-in-the-raw nonfat lattes.

"You got to come, Jasmine," Afeni insists. "Bring the children. Children love it. I got cows and pigs. We grow our own vegetables -- organic vegetables, without those chemicals and hormones that are killing our kids. We give away these clean vegetables to the people of Robeson County. They work the land, and they sell the produce. It's for them and by them." Afeni gets excited. "You see, Lumberton is the poorest county in North Carolina. Robeson County -- the poorest. And what this means is..."

Afeni looks nothing like she did when I first met her in the halls of the courthouse doting over her bandaged son. Then, she was reticent, kind of caved in. She looked sad and tired, worried and scared. She was skinny then, too, maybe one hundred pounds and some change. Now, when I look at her beaming over her newly planted trees, her skin has some red in it, and her head is full of new thick hair -- short and healthy without the patches of distress that once wore through.

"I've got some Lumbees helping me with my land," Afeni continues. "They come every day and work the land."

"What's a Lumbi?" I picture little gnomelike creatures with green skin and snakelike tails that only till the land at night.

"Lumbee's are Indians indigenous to that part of North Carolina."

"Lumbee. Never heard of them. But isn't that Cherokee country?"

"No, the Lumbee Indian came from the Sioux and Cheraw. They mixed with some Spanish explorers early on. Then, you know, the English and Scottish came and they mixed with them, too. By that time, they started to lose their language and their customs and nobody knew what to call them. They were all mixed up."

"They spoke English?"

"Yes," Afeni is emphatic. "I'm telling you, they lost their culture and their language but they stayed separate. They knew they were Indians. They just needed a name. First they were Croatan Indians. Then they were Robeson County Indians. Then, the Cherokee of Robeson County. They've been called a lot of names. Lumbee came after a long fight to be recognized by the North Carolina legislature as a tribe. They named themselves after the Lumbee River."

Afeni takes a long drink of water, grabs her pack of Newports and continues. "I thought my great-grandmother married a Lumbee. Well, at least part Lumbee, part white dude, but he was just a white dude, really poor white trash."

"Was this your great-grandmother's second marriage?"

"No. This was her first."

"Then, this is your great-grandfather you're talking about. So, he's your grandmother's father," I reveal. "You act like he's no kin to you."

"Well," Afeni chuckles. "It's taken me a long time to deal with the fact that my great-grandmother married a white man. It will take a few more years to say he's my great-grandfather!"

"Damn, Afeni," I say. "You can't change the facts." But we are both laughing.

"But this is what I'm saying; I need to see things for what they are -- always. And that's what I taught my kids to do." Afeni takes a breath. "And these were not nice white people this man came from. These were po' white trash people, like I said, and they disowned him for marrying my great-grandmother....Tied him to a wagon and dragged him all the way through town."

"Some Jasper, Texas shit," I say, making reference to the recent torture killing of James Byrd.

"Not really, not like that, he wasn't killed. Because back then, kids played with wagons, draggin' each other around. So, it didn't kill you always, like what happened to James Byrd hooked up to that truck. This was more about humiliation, and him marrying my great-grandmother was humiliating to that white family. Even though they were po' white trash."

"Damn," I say, "Your great-grandmother married a white man in the twenties!"

"Earlier than that," Afeni responds. "My grandmother was born in 1899. So, her mama had to have gotten married before or around then."

"Deep." I'm surprised this couple made it through their marriage alive.

Afeni continues. "As a child, I'd tell people he was half Indian, 'cause my great-granddaddy being all white was too much for me to bear. I remember my great-grandmother. I have a picture of her in my house. Her and all her children. Half and half...like you." She nods at me. "But I said they were half Indian, at least till recently."

"What kind of Indian did you think they were?"

"Lumbee, probably..." Afeni says. "And that was cool with me because the Lumbee didn't take no shit from white folks. And sometimes Black folk would benefit from that. You know, them being in the middle was like a buffer. They did things we couldn't do as a group. They were unified and together. In fact, they ran the Klan out of Robeson County."

"Really?" I love to hear a good Klan-getting-their-ass-kicked story.

"Klan came in and tried to impose a ten o'clock curfew on the Indian and Black community. Posted notices up about race mixing and basically wanted to control the Lumbees and treat them like niggers. So, the Klan had a rally posted -- the time and place and everything."

"Publicity."

"Wasn't no secret, and for weeks, we saw it coming."

"How old were you?" I ask.

"'Bout ten, I think. It was around my birthday, and the Klan had this rally near Maxton in some open field. Up until the day of that rally the Klan had been burning crosses and terrorizing folk in St. Paul's and were getting closer to Lumberton and Pembroke. They said they wanted to set the Indians straight, show 'em who's boss. Well, the Lumbees got guns and rifles and ambushed the Klan at their own rally. Folks say it was a mob scene. Shooting everywhere in the complete darkness of night. Black folk wanted to fight with them, but the Lumbees said they had it under control. They felt specifically challenged by the Klan, you know. They were like 'this is our battle.' So we all just waited to hear what went down in Maxton and rejoiced with the news that they ran the Klan out. Those white-hooded crackers ran into the woods like the little wing wangs they were." Afeni takes a drag and remembers. "That was a good day that mornin'. Miracle was nobody got killed."

"Was that your first smell of revolution?" I ask.

"That was my first taste of resistance. Resistance is what I felt. Resist. A sense of don't let that happen to you." Afeni looks at me to make sure I hear the difference. The difference between revolt and resist. "When Emmet Till was beaten and drowned the message was don't let that happen to you. Little girls raped in the cotton fields...Don't let that happen to you. White boy spit in my uncle's face...Don't let that happen to you. Woman's lip swollen, puffy and scarred...Don't let that happen to you. Resist. Not revolution. I didn't know shit about changing the world. I just knew there were some foul, hateful people in it that torture us for no reason, and I needed to resist that. Shit, that's all I knew. Because I was a little girl -- six or seven years old -- walking to school with my sister and a car full of grown-ass men would drive by, slow up and call us niggers and monkeys, and all I knew was I had to protect myself and resist."

"You learned quick. You learned early."

"Wasn't nothin' to learn. That's the way it was. That's what I saw."

"You learned white people could hate you so deeply they could kill. You learned what it was to be poor. Hated and poor."

"Let me say this..." Afeni sits up straight. "Everybody was poor. Nobody had shit. So, you don't feel poor when everybody's poor. You know, you aren't sticking out. That's not what they called me growing up -- 'po' this or 'po' that. It was more 'Nigger' this, 'Baldheaded' that, 'Skinny' this, and 'Tar baby' that. That's the kind of shit I got. But poor? We were all poor. In fact, that is what held us together as a community. Like our neighbor, Miss Hattie. This lady liked my mama, and she knew our situation. You didn't have to tell her anything or ask her anything, but this is how cool she was. She would wait for my daddy to leave because coming over there while he was home would have caused even more turmoil." Afeni looks ahead as if she can see Miss Hattie looking out her window. "And then she would just come over and take my mama grocery shopping. She'd take her to get groceries because she knew my dad didn't give her nothing for food. She would ask no questions, just take my mama shopping." Afeni seems amazed at the kindness of strangers. In spite of all the pain around her, life has sparkles of humanity. "My mother kept a calendar, and every Friday when my father got paid she would write down how much he gave her. So, she would know how much she had to work with for the week."

"Was it a set amount every week, like an allowance?"

"No, it fluctuated. One Friday, it was two dollars. Another Friday, it was six dollars. Another Friday, it was three -- that's what he gave her."

"According to how much he made?"

"Shit, according to how much he spent." Afeni does a harrumph or a snort. The noise is hard to describe, but what it says is 'Baby, let me tell you.' "My daddy was a street nigga, and he was loved by the people in the streets. He understood the rules of the street, and when I say street, I'm talking Norfolk, Virginia, not New York streets. So when I say street, it's not the same street you know today. Here, you're basically talking about the difference between the people who were saved and sanctified and who went to church, versus the people who drank and didn't go to church. So, amongst those people -- "