Quamara looked at the ice cream and slowly, dutifully, handed it to me.
“That’s right,” Sharon told her. “That’s what I want you to do every time you’re over here and you have something and he has nothing. That’s your brother. You always have to share with him.”
My father’s sister, Lora, who was friends with my mom, says she also protested that it wasn’t right that my grandmother seemed to have lingering questions of whether I truly belonged in the family.
Later, as the years rolled on and I became an adult, my father’s mother and I became much closer. As I came to know her better, I respected how much she had sacrificed to provide education and advantages for her children. I recognize now that she must have had high hopes for Dad’s future, and it had to have been a crushing disappointment when he fell so short of his goal. It wasn’t in her plan to see her smart, talented son go to prison when he should have been in college. And she certainly hadn’t envisioned him fathering two babies at the same time.
When Dad wasn’t in prison, I usually visited him at his mother’s house. This happened maybe a couple times a year, from the time I was a baby until I was a preteen.
My memories of this early period are fuzzy, probably because I saw so little of him. But I remember that I thought my father was the nicest man in the world. To me, he was a loving, mild-mannered man who was good-looking and muscular.
Every time I saw him, my heart would leap. Happily for me, my dad seemed as excited to see me as I was to see him.
I remember my father always being the life of the party. He acted like one of the kids and would play with us when the other adults were in another room, doing their own thing. The younger set loved playing music, and we could always talk my father into getting up and trying the latest dance moves. We’d howl with laughter as he tried to dance like us. He didn’t care. He was just having fun and he enjoyed entertaining us.
I don’t remember ever being the center of his attention. Anything we did, it was with a group. Still, I always felt happy and supremely satisfied just being around him. If Dad was in the house, I felt welcomed and warm.
My dad often surprised the kids in the house with gifts. I always appreciated anything he gave me, even if it was small. The present I remember best was a bright red electric keyboard that he gave me for Christmas when I was around age eight. It came with a strap so I could wear it like a guitar and really get down like Prince or some other superstar.
As a kid, I was always entertaining, and now I could strut around in front of my audience and perform a real concert with live music. It had a ready-made bass line, so all I had to do was add some key strokes to make a song that sounded halfway decent.
I practiced on my keyboard for hours, trying to get my act right. Such a wonderful musical instrument had to be really expensive, I remember thinking, which made me love my dad even more. I thought it was one of the best gifts I had ever received.
I never blamed Dad for not being a regular presence in my life. I figured if he couldn’t visit, there was a good reason. I didn’t spend any time wishing he could be with me. Back then, I was just a happy little kid who was delighted to bask in my dad’s attention. The funny thing was, in another compartment of my life that I kept completely separate, I already was engaged in an active quest to teach myself to become a man.
In my single-mom-headed household, I could already tell there were things I needed to learn for myself. I knew boys behaved a certain way, with a certain roughness. I was always on the lookout, searching for clues about how to act. But I didn’t connect the dots, back then, during the fleeting time I spent with my father. Maybe because I couldn’t get any time alone with him, maybe because he wasn’t around too much, I didn’t rely on Dad to decipher the mysteries of becoming a man. Nor did he take those opportunities to offer his son any tips on becoming one.
Instead, as a boy, I tried to keep my antennae up at all times, to pick up on anything that might be appropriately manly. “Hey, that must be something we’re supposed to do,” I’d say to myself whenever something that seemed loaded with testosterone popped up on my radar screen. And that’s what drew me, when I was about eight years old, to sign up for the Pop Warner youth football program in my Plainfield neighborhood.
I was no fan of football. I had tossed a ball around casually with my friends, and my mother adored the Dallas Cowboys, so I knew how to drop some names of football stars, but I didn’t know any more than that. I didn’t know the intricacies of the game, I couldn’t tell a defensive end from a running back. But playing Pop Warner definitely seemed like the thing to do. In my neighborhood, all my friends couldn’t wait for the season to start.
Inside my head, a loud debate was roaring.
It was one of many times that I acted in the role of my own father, since I didn’t have one in the flesh to train me and cheer me on.
“Boy, you better go up there and sign up for Pop Warner,” I told myself sternly and silently.
“I’m scared, I don’t know how to play,” my heart answered.
“Be a man, you’ve got to give it a shot,” I told myself. “Now march your butt up there and sign up.”
Answering dutifully to the fatherly voice I’d manufactured, I prepared to report to Cedarbrook Park that summer for the first football practice.
First I told Mom that I needed some equipment. She took me to the sporting goods store to pick it out. I didn’t even know what I needed, so the clerk helped me select everything. I felt really excited when I walked out of the store with a bag full of shoulder pads, knee pads, cleats, helmet, and a uniform. It felt great, like a new adventure in my life.
I hurried home to try everything on. I was feeling like a real man then. I tried the pants first, fitting the knee pads into the sleeves in the pants. Then I put on the shirt and helmet. I snapped the chin strap and looked at myself in the mirror. Boy, I was ready to go. I was more enthusiastic to play than I ever thought I would be.
I took another look in the mirror and realized something looked funny. I had forgotten to put on the shoulder pads. Grabbing them, I was tempted to just hang them over my shoulder, but I hadn’t ever seen anyone wearing them outside their uniform before. So I took off my jersey and put the shoulder pads over my head. I tightly tied the laces across my chest and adjusted the pads evenly. Then I tried to put the jersey on over the pads but it wouldn’t fit. I couldn’t ease it over the shoulder pads.
I tried again and again, but I just couldn’t get it. I didn’t know what to do. I got so frustrated that I took the jersey off and threw it in the corner. If there ever was a time I wished I had a dad or brother around, it was then. What was I going to do? The first practice was the next day, and I didn’t even know how to suit up right.
The next day, I dreaded waking up. I was ready to quit before I even started. But my mother would have killed me if I didn’t go to that first practice after she spent all that money on the uniform.
When I got to Cedarbrook Park, I saw a bunch of kids with their parents or older brothers standing around to cheer them on. I was there alone.
The coach came over to me, asked what my name was, and checked his list. He asked what position I wanted to play and I couldn’t come up with an answer. After he realized I had no clue, he put “linebacker” next to my name.
That made me more uncomfortable because now I was about to start playing a position that I didn’t even understand. Why couldn’t he have put me down as a running back or quarterback? I knew what those guys did. I was upset at myself for not saying one of those two positions, but the truth was, I wasn’t sure if I’d have been good at either one, and that’s why I didn’t say anything.
Then the moment of truth came. The coach yelled out, “Suit up!” While all the other kids got excited by what the coach said, and their parents and brothers smiled from the sidelines, my knees buckled. I had no idea what to do. I didn’t know how to put my jersey on over my shoulder pads.
What to do? I was frantic. I
feared that if I asked anyone for help, I’d be the laughingstock of Pop Warner football. Pulling the coach aside wasn’t an option, I thought, because he’d realize in an instant that I didn’t know jack about the game. Finally the scared little boy inside me won out. I gave up, gathered up my stuff, and turned around. Hoping nobody saw me leave, I headed home. I felt dejected.
I blamed myself.
I thought it was my fault that I couldn’t put on the football pads. It didn’t occur to me that I didn’t have anybody in my life to teach me to do it.
It was my fault. I had to be inadequate.
I fell into a habit of thinking it was my own fault whenever I couldn’t master something.
That’s because I’ve always been pretty independent. My family still laughs at the memory of how I nonchalantly boarded a public bus as a five-year-old and rode to downtown Plainfield alone. When I finished checking out the sights, I found the right bus to take me home and climbed on board. I arrived home at Ma’s safely, to the surprise of my panicked family.
As I got older, Mom and I moved around a lot, bouncing between Ma’s house and various apartments that weren’t in the best of neighborhoods. I was always walking into a new social setting, every year or so. One thing I learned quickly growing up in the ’ hood is that you had to be tough.
Being a good student, I knew that I had a nerdy side. The older I got, the harder I worked to conceal it, in order to be perceived as tough. This became a tall order once I reached fifth grade and was selected for my school’s Gifted & Talented program. Now I couldn’t hide my good grades any longer. With the other gifted students, I had to publicly rise and leave at the end of third period to go to special classes. This made it all the more important for me to work hard at being considered cool.
Since turning to Dad for advice wasn’t possible, I did what lots of my peers did. I turned to the streets. In my search to construct a manly personality for myself, the streets became my best classroom. I started imitating whoever it was in my neighborhood that seemed the biggest and baddest at the time.
First I settled on a guy I admired named Buddy, who was the best gymnast I’d ever seen. Of course, I’m talking about gymnastics ghetto-style, where you find some dirty old mattresses and teach yourself to flip on them. Buddy was so good, he could somersault and do back flips on any surface, whether grass or concrete. I thought Buddy was so amazing that he probably could qualify for the Olympics, although this being the ’ hood, there was no way that would happen.
Because of his gymnastic ability and his good looks, Buddy pulled all the girls. But Buddy wasn’t soft. He could fight, so nobody messed with him. So I convinced myself that I should act like Buddy.
But the problem was, I couldn’t flip. I tried and failed miserably. Too embarrassed to ask him how to learn, I decided to switch and imitate his brother, Andre.
’ Dre was a good athlete but the quiet type. He didn’t start any trouble but he knew how to kick butt if somebody messed with him. Ladies liked him, I noticed, because he was mysterious.
So I devoted a few weeks to imitating him until I realized I just couldn’t pull it off. I talked entirely too much to be the strong, silent type.
This went on and on. It was frustrating. I kept trying to find the right role model to copy, but none of them fit.
It certainly helped to have a father or older brothers, I noticed. My friend Sean also was in the Gifted & Talented program, but he was no geek. I considered him the epitome of cool. But then again, he had the benefit of having older brothers who helped him polish his game.
Sean taught me a lot. You could say he was the kind of tutor who believed in “experiential” learning. He knew I hadn’t had much experience with girls, so one day when we were preteens he volunteered to let me watch him in a sexual encounter with his girlfriend. When he invited me on the adventure, he had a “Pay attention, sonny boy” patronizing attitude, but it didn’t matter to me. It sounds kind of weird but little kids are curious and will do almost anything to satisfy their curiosity. So I went with him to his girlfriend’s house at a time when her parents weren’t home. The “lesson” took place in the basement. Sean had a well-thought-out plan: If for some reason her parents came home unexpectedly, he and his girl would stop the “lesson” and act as if we were watching television or playing Ping-Pong.
But we weren’t interrupted. From my front-row seat, I got my first peek at sexuality, a much-publicized and discussed phenomenon among my peers. I’d seen music videos with men and women acting suggestively but I hadn’t ever seen sex in action. Now I had an idea what the fuss was all about.
Sometimes I let friends drag me into crazy and even dangerous things. Once when I was about sixteen, I was hanging with some older guys from Plainfield on the day before Thanksgiving. I wasn’t a heavy drinker, but on this day I went in with them to buy some forty-ounces. Then we headed to our hangout spot, on the steps in back of a nearby school, where we passed the beers around and got a little tipsy.
There were about six of us laughing and talking when a crackhead from the neighborhood wandered up. “Can I cop a rock?” he asked, trying to see if any of us could sell him some crack. One of the guys I didn’t know so well jumped up, ready to make a deal. The two of them walked away, made their transaction, and then the crackhead disappeared.
Minutes later, we looked across the schoolyard and saw flames rising from the man’s crack pipe, which threw the guy who’d sold him the rock into an instant rage. “I told him not to smoke that up here near the school,” he said. “I’m gonna go kick his ass.” The rest of us prepared to rumble, too. I have to admit, our logic was a little hazy: although we thought crack smoking near the school was unacceptable, we didn’t see anything wrong with drinking forty-ounces right next to it ourselves. But we thought we were tough, and we were used to protecting our turf. It was common for us to get in scuffles with rival crews. Beating up this sorry crack addict was going to be easy. So we all ran over to him.
“I’m sorry, I’m about to leave,” he said hurriedly when we confronted him. But hungry for one last hit, he knelt down, flicked his lighter, and lit the crack one more time. For us, that was the last straw.
One of my friends punched him in the head. The pipe flew and broke into pieces, and the crackhead sagged to the ground. “Wow, you dropped him,” we said admiringly.
Next, it seemed that everyone else wanted to get that same thrill of knocking him down like in a boxing match. For at least five minutes, we smacked him around until he fell to the ground, always lifting him up to take another blow. He looked like a human punching bag.
Then I remembered something. In my trench coat pocket was a knife I had just bought at my uncle Rasheed’s shop. In an effort to impress my friends, I pulled it out. “Look what I got,” I told my friends, and flicked the knife so that the switchblade popped out.
Suddenly all eyes were on me. And I found myself in a position I had no desire to be in. My mind raced. “What am I gonna do?” I asked myself. “I don’t want to stab this guy. But if I just close the knife up, they’re gonna call me a punk.”
I figured I had to do something, just to keep my reputation intact. I wanted them to know I was cool and tough. So I stepped forward and poked the crackhead gently in the thigh. It barely broke the skin. As I retracted the blade I became nauseated; I was sickened by what I had just done.
Leaving the guy moaning on the ground, we walked away from the scene. I headed to the store with my friends so they could buy cigarettes. Then I stupidly went back with them to the same old hangout near the school so they could have a smoke. The police walked up to us. “A guy got beat up back here. Do you know who did it?” Although we denied knowing anything, they searched us. And they found the knife in my pocket. My heart sank.
I ended up in jail on a charge of attempted murder because we had beaten him up so badly. Luckily for me, the case was thrown out after the victim failed to show up in court. It was then that I realized that being a tough gu
y wasn’t me. It just didn’t feel right. Finally, I just let it go.
I figured out that I needed to just be me. The problem was, I had been such a shape-shifter in the past that I didn’t know who “me” was.
It wasn’t until I went to high school and hooked up with George and Sam that I found the perfect fit. They were fun-loving and adventurous but they also knew how to knuckle down, study hard, and get good grades. With them, I could strike the right balance. I could be smart and cool at the same time.
But before that, I was always on a search to find the right personality.
I often wondered why many of my friends were better than I was in sports. The answer was obvious: I rarely spent any time practicing, so why would I be good at sports?
Somehow I couldn’t grasp the fact that I needed to practice my jump shot over and over in order to improve my game. I could have really used someone in my life to remind me to go outside and do the shooting and running drills that make people better athletes. My dad could have handled the job easily if he had been around. Dad had been a pretty good athlete when he was young. He played high school basketball, and when he got to Assumption College, he made the varsity team. But it really wasn’t a testament to his skills. Dad shared a room with a black student who was there on a basketball scholarship, and after hanging out with him, Dad decided to try out for the team. He showed up at the tryouts, ready to compete for a slot. But the coach just handed him a jersey and told him to suit up. It was the 1970s and he was black, so naturally it was assumed he had to be good at basketball. He remembers that he had to correct his professors often, letting them know that it was actually an academic scholarship, not a basketball one, that got him there.
By the time I got to high school, I was a pretty good basketball player, but I didn’t stand a chance of catching up to the sports skills of guys my age who’d been practicing and playing competitively for years. So I developed a motto: “I don’t play sports, I play girls.”
The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive and Reconnect With Their Fathers Page 20