Whispering, I said, “Whatever, dude. She look like if you lay down with her, you going to rise up with something a dawg don’t want.”
When Jackie came over to me she said, “Is something wrong?”
I said, “Is that your girlfriend?”
“No, she’s my cousin, and preacher boy is intrigued. Why you judging her though? I see your nose up in the air, like she’s not your speed. You think you too good for folks?”
I actually had to ponder that question. My dad called it the eyeball test. People see you and immediately put you into some type of category. If you don’t want negative thoughts, then make yourself look presentable. When I looked at this KaydaKay girl, she screamed nothing but ghetto fab. If this was Jackie’s cousin, what kind of family did Jackie come from? As a dude trying to get with her, I might think it’s enticing for Jackie to wear low-cut stuff, but if she was my girl, the dress standards would have to change. Jackie seemed too strong-willed to change. Therefore, the possibility that we could have something was dissipating.
“You think you’re better than me,” she said, as she saw I was unimpressed with her cousin and her tone.
I like that she said what was on her mind. I merely had a problem that she was naïve with the way the world viewed people. If you want to be taken seriously, dress the part.
Explaining, I said, “I just don’t understand why you got to flaunt everything you got all the time. It makes me think—”
“What? That I’m fast,” she said, cutting me off.
“That you’re not slow, and honestly, I don’t know if I want to get involved with someone that’s out there.”
“Well, I am who I am, and my body is mine. If I want to show it off, that’s what I’m going to do. My crew told me you were too stuck up. Guess I should have listened. Come on, cuz,” she said to KaydaKay. “I don’t want to play.”
They got in her cousin’s hooptie, pumped the music up too loud, and were out. Landon looked at me with a Why you mess me up? expression. I told him to get in the car, and we drove off. Was I being too judgmental? Or were the standards that I wanted in a lady right on? It should not matter to me anyway. I was already involved, and I wasn’t going to change that for just anything.
Sometimes I felt like a kid. I had knots in my stomach when I pulled up to my house, because it was after my ten o’clock weeknight curfew. It was just five minutes past ten, but with the high-maintenance, maniac, narcissistic father that I had, being late wasn’t what you wanted to do. All the lights in the family room were on, so I knew I might as well buck up and get ready to deal with his mouth.
Like a clock that chimes right on schedule every hour, that’s how much I knew my dad. And as soon as I walked in the door, he rushed over to my face, grabbed my collar, and shouted, “Why you coming up in my house late, boy? Give you a little bit of leeway and you can’t show me that you’re responsible. I am so sick and tired of you doing what you want to do, thinking you’re grown in this house … gimme them keys!”
Of course, I was not doing what I wanted to do. If left up to me, I’d be out with the boys. Leo surely did not have to be home at ten. I resented my dad because I was not really that late. I appreciated that he was my father, and that he was the higher authority in my life. But he was not a zookeeper, and I was not an ape. There could have been an accident that held me up. My girlfriend might not have been able to get into her house. Anything could have been a reasonable excuse for my delay. He could have asked me or given me grace.
However, he was not backing down and neither was I. My dad and I were looking eye to eye. We were standing toe to toe. At that point we were standing man to man, because I was not going to have him sock me, hit me, or push me around.
“What you going to do, Blake? You think you can take me? Got a couple little muscles on you, so are you going to come up in my face, thinking you can take me? Boy, you don’t pay no bills in this house, and when I tell you to be home at a certain time, use your cell and call me if there is an issue,” he said, as my irritation became slightly verbal. “What … you gonna groan, grunt, make some mumbling sound? Boy, I’ll—”
My mom just screamed out, “Stop, Brad!”
She came and stood between the two of us. She was not anywhere close to either of our sizes. She stood firm, wanting us to back away from each other.
“Brad, you know I can’t take this right now. Please!”
My dad yelled, “No, I’ma show this boy he ain’t grown.”
“Just stop,” she squealed.
My mom was crying. As her emotions started to become more intense, I realized that she was extremely upset and not just because of the brewing altercation before her. She went over, sat on the couch, and started rocking back and forth.
Knowing my mom as I did, I knew there was more to her sad demeanor. Then when my dad rushed over to her, put his arms around her, and completely settled down from tripping, I knew something was terribly wrong.
My dad held her and said, “I’m sorry, baby. I know there’s a lot going on. I’m sorry. I’m just not handling all this the right way.”
“You can’t put more on me right now, Brad,” she cried.
I did not know what they were talking about. My parents had a pretty good relationship. My dad had always been there. I never knew us to be struggling financially. We were not rich, but all of my needs were met, unlike a lot of boys I’d come to know over the years who had absentee fathers or no father at all. They were scrambling, hoping, and praying that they would eat. As much as my dad irked me, he was a faithful husband. I guess that’s why I didn’t want to just get with a girl. He was an excellent role model when it came to being the head of the home, and whatever had my parents so upset was starting to creep me out.
“What’s wrong? What’s going on? Talk to me, you guys,” I said in a panic.
I did not want my dad to get upset again and say, “It’s none of your business,” or “It is none of your concern,” because seeing my mom in tears was for sure my concern. Though my dad could be a big jerk, I knew he had not done anything stupid like cheat, misuse all the money, or start drinking. So what had her so shaken? Had she lost her job?
She was a branch manager for a bank. We moved to Georgia because she got a promotion. Maybe they had downsized and she was let go. Even if that was the case, we should be fine. My parents had always talked to me about how to be smart with money and that I could always get everything I needed because they had put some away for a rainy day. They did not believe in getting credit cards to blow up and max out. They had a couple of cards for emergencies only. It could not be a job loss freaking my mom out. If she did lose her job, certainly she was qualified enough to get another one. And even if we had to go a bit without her salary, from everything they told me, we were covered.
When my mom kept crying, I went over to the other side of her. My dad looked away and when he looked back at me, tears were in his eyes too. I was shaking with worry.
I was not an only child. I had a younger sister, Lola, who was headed to the seventh grade. She was going to be a week late starting school because she was in a summer ballet program in New York.
“Oh my gosh! Is it Lola Ivy?” I asked, calling my sister by her whole name, which we did only when we were serious. “Is everything okay with her in New York? She’s not hurt or anything is she?”
“No, no, son,” my mom mustered up the courage to say. “I’m so sorry to break down in front of you like this. I told your dad I wouldn’t do it, and we don’t know everything going on with me, so why stress? However, I haven’t been feeling too well. Also, I found a lump in my breast.”
I heard exactly what she said, and at that moment, it felt like I had been shot. My whole body became numb, and it felt like my heart had been shattered into a billion pieces. I had to be in a nightmare because there was no way in the world something physically could be wrong with my mom. She was a rock, always going one hundred miles per hour. I knew nothing of how PMS got wome
n down because I never knew one moment when my mom was on or off of her cycle. She never had mood swings. She was sassy, fierce, confident, and strong. A lump. Cancer. It just could not be.
“No, no,” I kept repeating. “No, no.”
I stood up and backed away from my parents. My dad came over and held me tight. He and I both broke down. Then I pushed him away because I refused to believe something was wrong with my mom. She had to be okay. Things had to be right. There could be nothing wrong with her. I would not accept anything less.
My mom got up, wiped her face, stood beside me, and placed her arms on both of mine.
“It’s going to be okay, honey. Whatever the doctor is going to tell us, it’s going to be okay.”
But how could it be okay if she was ill. My heart got hard. All of this was not fair.
My parents consoled each other. I grabbed my keys and got out of there. I didn’t care about the consequences. It didn’t matter that I knew I was supposed to be getting ready for school. I didn’t care if I didn’t sleep at all because I had just been hit with the worst news imaginable. My mother might have cancer, and as big, fast, and strong as I was, there was nothing I could do about her facing sickness.
As I drove like a maniac, exceeding the speed limit, driving in the median, and going around slow cars, subconsciously it didn’t matter if I crashed because the thought of living this life without my mom was unbearable. If I wasn’t here, that problem was solved. I guess there was something else working inside of me that calmed me down because the next thing I knew, I was in my cousin’s neighborhood.
It didn’t look as upscale as the one I lived in. It was late at night, and the place was jumping. The place where I lived was like a closed mall. Brenton’s area had six and seven cars in certain driveways. Some were broken down and on bricks. Even though it was night, you could see the place wasn’t well kept, and maybe that’s why I didn’t feel sorry for people.
Though I was just a young black man, there was so much about my race I didn’t understand. Yeah, my parents provided a lot for me, but I worked hard on my own. When you see people not taking care of property, being all loud and rude in the middle of the street, not moving when they see a car coming, and with no common courtesy for their fellow man, I understood why some people don’t want to be around Negroes.
As I honked the horn for the brothers to get out the way, finally realizing they were so high they probably didn’t understand I was trying to get around them, I felt we had to do better. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. He risked his life and didn’t even get to see his own children grow up so that we could be about something, and I knew in the pit of my gut that he wouldn’t be proud of the majority of black men: in jail, on drugs, not taking care of their families, and gone too soon.
That’s when I realized I was no better. I had to figure out a way to handle my problems. Black men probably turned to booze sometimes, not only because it was cheap to get alcohol, but also because it was easy to turn up the bottle and wash away their problems when jobs were hard to find and owning much of anything was out of reach. I could only imagine how a man must feel when he couldn’t take care of his family. Girls just throwing themselves at you trying to get pregnant so they can latch on to any dollar somebody worked hard to earn. I wasn’t just trying to blame females. It took two to tango, and if you decided it was cool to lie down with the sista, then whatever the consequences might be, you got to take care of it. It was easy for me to understand the plight of the black man, and that let me know I should not be so judgmental.
When I pulled up to Brenton’s yard, there was a whole bunch of yelling going on, and the front door was open. I quickly jumped out of my car and ran inside. My aunt’s place was being ransacked. A man I had never seen before was tripping before my very eyes.
“Grab his arm, Blake!” Brenton yelled out.
Brenton held the man by one hand, and before he could chuck my aunt’s lamp across the room, I grabbed his arm, and the lamp fell to the couch. The man started tugging, wiggling, and going ballistic.
“What’s wrong, Aunt Val?” I called out.
My aunt was just standing there, shaking.
Brenton yelled, “I told you, Mom, don’t trust him. I told you not to let him back in this house. I told you I saw him the other day around the corner, stoned.”
“He needed something to eat, Brenton. I was just helping my friend. I mean, we been dating … I didn’t know, but he came in here all drunk and high, Blake,” my aunt started saying to me. “I was so glad Brenton came home because he was hit …”
“What? What? You better tell these boys to leave me alone. I’m gonna call the cops on your tail. That’s what I’m gonna do. They gonna lock you up. Then what?”
“Joe, just get out of here!”
It was hard to get the man to cooperate, but Brenton and I handled it. Though he was kicking and screaming, we got him up out of my aunt’s place. My cousin wasn’t the starting linebacker for a 5A program for nothing. He grabbed that man by the collar like he was the dumbbell in practice and pushed him back so far he ended up falling on the concrete.
“I’m giving you this pass just once, but if I ever see you five feet in front of my house again … I’ll …”
I grabbed my cousin and pulled him away from the man. When I looked back, the dude had run away. I hadn’t seen my cousin upset like that ever. It was just a mess.
Brenton was breaking down in my arms so much that I could not even tell him my mom might have cancer. I had to put my hurt and pain aside and be there for not just my cousin, not just my boy, but for my brother.
“It’s going to be all right, man,” I said.
“He put his hands on my mom, Blake. I just don’t understand why she trying to get with any old joker, man. For a hug and a kiss, for a couple dollars … Dang, man, I got to quit the football team. I got to get another job. I got to take care of my mom so she don’t need nobody else to take care of her! I just got her, Blake. I just got her!”
I looked up at the perfect night sky and knew that I could not break even though I felt like I was in my own pit of doom. For my cousin’s sanity … For him to know we can get through this … For him to know he wasn’t alone … For him to know whatever he had to do, he wasn’t quitting the football team. We needed him. I had to be strong. He had to be strong. We had to keep our guard up.
CHAPTER 3
Excellence
Showing
I felt like I had to be excellent, performing at my maximum best, ready to dominate, and the best QB ever seen, because I was getting ready to head to the National Underclassmen Combine—an elite football camp—in Birmingham, Alabama. My parents were going to be taking me, Brenton, and Landon. We were invited to this camp after being selected as one of the top fifty players in each position in the South. Landon was one of the top receivers. Brenton was one of the top linebackers. And I was doing my thing as one of the top quarterbacks across the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia.
Of the other top forty-nine players in our position who got invited, we did not know exactly how many would show up. However, we knew the ones who came were going to have their game faces on. I was determined to show them what I was made of.
We were leaving so early in the morning that Landon and Brenton stayed over. They were piled up on the floor in my room on two different air mattresses. I was lying restlessly on my bed.
Landon must have looked over at me wrestling and said, “Blake, man, you ain’t sleep?”
“Yeah, I’m sleep,” I said, hoping he would get the message that I did not want to talk.
I had a lot on my mind. Neither of them cats knew what was going on with my mom. Also, my father was still tripping. Though every part of my game was sharper in practice, I knew my dad was still not satisfied with my forty speed. Although a quarterback does not have to have super speed, I wanted to be dominant in all areas. I did not like that Brenton could bench press more than
me. Yes, he was a linebacker and was supposed to be stronger; however, I still did not like it because I wanted to be superior in every skill. Landon was like lightning, and I wished I had his flash. I really wanted to get the two of them up so they could help me in my weak areas, but it was too late in terms of morning hours and too late because we were competing the next day. Where I was as a player was pretty much where I was going to stay. I’m not a whiner, but I thought it was easier to just say, “Yeah, I’m sleep,” hoping that Landon would be like, “All right, man,” and leave me alone.
“What about you, Brenton?” Landon asked, obviously wanting to talk.
“Tryna dose off,” Brenton said, truly sounding tired.
“Y’all can’t sleep like me,” Landon said nervously. “I’m jittery, and I feel like my heart is gonna fall out of my chest. I don’t know if I can go through with this tomorrow.”
“Landon, come on, partna,” Brenton said to him. “You straight, man.”
“You’re not the only one nervous,” I finally admitted.
“Cuz, don’t you trip. You are the baddest quarterback around,” Brenton said, surprising me that he was that confident in my skills.
Thinking about all that was on me, I became emotional. The light from the moon shone into my bedroom. I did not even realize that they could see me wiping me eyes.
“Blake,” Landon sat up and said in a caring voice. “Brenton’s right. You know you gonna show out tomorrow. Dude, I don’t ever think I’ve seen you cry. What’s wrong?”
Being vulnerable, I said, “It’s my mom, man.”
“What’s going on with Auntie?” Brenton asked, as he sat up too.
“I don’t even wanna talk about it. You guys need to concentrate, and I don’t want to add none of my stress to y’all.”
“Fo’ real, Blake, don’t front,” Brenton said. “You was there for me. Don’t hold out. If you going through, I’m going through. What’s going on with Auntie? I’ma be worried crazy if you don’t tell me now. You gotta spill it. What’s going on?”
Always Upbeat / All That Page 12