There was some false bravado behind that slogan, though, because I really didn’t know how to talk to women. After all, I couldn’t stand next to a guy and take notes when he was getting his mack on. Nobody told me the secrets. It seemed to me, once again, that not having a father in my life had handicapped me. Fathers, I believe, help instill a confidence in you. But I didn’t have that. I worried endlessly about finding the right thing to say. I was afraid of approaching girls because I didn’t know how to break the ice. If I looked at a girl and she didn’t smile, I would think, “She’s not interested,” and I’d back away. I didn’t have anybody to explain the “She’s playing hard to get” ploy to me, and as a result, I gave up too easily.
The only thing that saved me, and helped me carve my playboy image in high school, was that I didn’t have to pursue anybody. Girls openly flirted with me and told me they found me attractive.
The only downside to this was that I rarely got the girls I wanted—instead, I had to take the ones who wanted me. When we were in high school and college, Sam had the confidence I lacked. Sam was never afraid to go up to a girl and he could always think of something to say. He’s always done that, and he usually was pretty successful.
I, on the other hand, seemed to just exude nervousness when I approached a girl. I remember going to a party when I was about fifteen, where I met a girl who was so pretty I would have done absolutely anything for her to be my girlfriend. I guess she could see this in my lovelorn puppy-dog eyes, because she led me to her cousin’s bedroom and we started making out.
We talked on the phone for about a week after that, but then she lost interest. I’m sure she could see how infatuated I was with her, and that she was in control of the relationship. She knew exactly how far she wanted it to go, and she hit the brakes long before I wanted it to end. I thought about her for months afterward. Every time the phone rang, I wished it was her. I ran into her a few years later, and she was dating one of the neighborhood hustlers. I spoke to her, but I don’t think she remembered me. I didn’t even try to refresh her memory or get her number. I didn’t think I had a chance against a guy who had a wad of money in a rubber band.
After a few ego-battering episodes like that, I realized it made more sense to let the girls chase me than to go chasing after them.
The person you grow into, I’ve realized, depends largely on what you’ve been exposed to as a child. One of my cousins, for example, loved going fishing with his father. I, on the other hand, couldn’t see what the big deal was all about. What was so exciting about fishing? You just sit there for hours, with your line in the water, even if nothing happens? I didn’t get it.
But now I think I’d probably enjoy fishing today if my father had taken the time with me that my cousin’s father did. If my father had taken me out on the lake and explained to me, “Son, this is peaceful. I’m going to teach you patience,” maybe I’d be a more patient person today as well as a competent fisherman.
But those kinds of lessons aren’t a priority in the many homes where kids are growing up fatherless. When you learn what the streets have to teach you, it makes for a haphazard lesson plan. It makes me think of the first time I drank beer, when I was sixteen. I thought it tasted awful. But I knew that I was supposed to like it, because all the guys did. Now I’ve grown to like the taste of it. The streets made sure I learned that lesson well.
I WAS DEEP INTO the job of borrowing people’s personalities, busily designing my way to a manly reputation, when my father arrived back on the scene.
I was about twelve when Dad became a more consistent presence in my life. He had just completed a two-year prison sentence and moved in with his girlfriend, a woman named Beverly. Not long after that, they had a child, my half sister Daaimah.
This is where my real memories of my father begin. I could finally start to carve out a real relationship with him.
At first it was hard even mouthing the word “Dad.” I just hadn’t had much occasion to say it during the earlier years of my life. It sounded so unfamiliar. My mouth wasn’t used to saying the word. As I got older and spent more time with him, though, it rolled off my tongue effortlessly.
I know that Dad still struggled against his drug problem for many more years after he was last released from prison. But he also tried valiantly to be more of a father to me. And I appreciated that.
My father and I had a low-key, low-pressure relationship. He never tried to come on strong, like a big-time disciplinarian. I think he realized that it was a little inappropriate to come in and out of my life and then announce, “I’m your father, so do what I say.” And that was fine by me. It would have turned me off for him to be a heavy-handed father.
Instead, he fit more into the mold of a dad who was as much a friend as a father, similar to George’s surrogate father, Shahid. He gave great advice, and that’s exactly what I wanted. I craved learning about him so much that I must have asked a thousand questions an hour.
I wanted Dad to tell me about himself. He was really a stranger and I didn’t know too much about him. I wanted him to reminisce with me, to reveal what his childhood had been like. I wanted him to pass down things to me. I wanted to know the secrets of manhood.
Hungry for that father-to-son wisdom, I would hit my father with questions as soon as I saw him. Dad seemed caught off guard by my constant probing. “Tell me about when you were my age,” I would beg him. “What was it like? What did you wear? What did you do for fun?”
There was so much I needed to know. I felt ignorant. I was getting old enough to realize that my dad didn’t do the things that traditional fathers were supposed to do. He didn’t tuck me in at night, he didn’t help choose my school or check my homework. He didn’t know my friends, he didn’t pay for my school supplies, my food, or my shelter. My upkeep had been almost completely provided by my mom and her family.
I didn’t know what a dad was supposed to supply. But whatever it was, I knew I wasn’t getting it and I wanted it.
Yet I respected my father. Once he came back into my life, he always kept his word. Dad never made promises he couldn’t keep. Mind you, he didn’t make many promises, so he didn’t have as many to keep.
I didn’t ask him for a whole lot. I never asked him to buy me a car because I knew he couldn’t. But the little things, I knew he could manage.
One thing I loved about Dad was his soft-spoken but thought-provoking way of talking.
When Dad found out that I had gotten in trouble for the incident with the crackhead, he had a serious talk with me.
“You didn’t stop to think, did you?” he asked me. “You’ve got to think about the decisions you make. You see the consequences now, don’t you? You could go to jail. You’re doing so well in school, you want to go to college, why destroy it now?”
Dad sounded more like a counselor than an angry father. He helped me see how the split-second decisions I make can be detrimental. He was almost like a psychologist. He didn’t give me the answers. Rather, he wanted me to see the answers for myself.
“I’ve been in these kinds of situations,” he added. “You don’t want to end up like me.”
I really paid attention to what he was saying. I knew it was coming from somebody who knew what life behind bars was like.
Yet our conversations always seemed short-lived. Since he wasn’t a full-time father, he couldn’t be there to advise me through my everyday problems. I had to keep stumbling through on my own.
I came remarkably close to getting a live-in father figure at one point, though. So close, in fact, that I allowed myself to hope things were getting ready to change. Bobby was a boyfriend of Mom’s who stole my heart when I was about ten years old. If I could have had a magic wand that let me make a decision that would affect my mother’s life forever, that would have been the moment I’d have waved it. I’d have made her marry him.
Bobby was a great guy. He worked with Mom at Bell Laboratories. Thin and tall, he was a handsome man who wore an Afro. They started dating when Mom
and I were living in an apartment in suburban Hillside, in a building that resembled Brooklyn’s brownstones. Soon Bobby moved in with us and became like my live-in father, something I’d never had.
When he came home from work, he always said yes when I asked him to play backgammon or video games. I could easily talk him into playing Uno with me or a game of Sorry. We would spend hours engrossed in games in the living room, occasionally jumping up to put one of Bobby’s favorite albums on the stereo. To this day, if I hear “Off the Wall” by Michael Jackson or Donna Summer’s suggestive “Hot Stuff,” I think of those game sessions. If Bobby wasn’t in the mood to play with me, he never showed it. He never skimped on attention, and over time we became a real pair. I could tell the feeling was mutual: I liked playing around with him, and he liked spending time with me. Sometimes it was lonely being an only child, but having Bobby around filled that void and it felt great.
One added benefit was that my no-nonsense Mom seemed to take more of an interest in playtime once Bobby arrived. If she came home and found us playing backgammon, she might take a few minutes and play the winner. Thanks to Bobby’s presence, Mom softened up a little, taking time for more fun and games, I couldn’t help but notice. Soon, the three of us started to spend time doing more of the things that families did together.
Bobby was good to me, and more important, he was good to my mother. By the ripe age of ten, I had realized that Mom’s choices of men didn’t seem to be helping her with the things she was going through. I was in fifth grade, and already I felt like her protector. Bobby wasn’t into drugs, and he seemed to be a healthy influence on Mom.
He wasn’t the type to party hard, and was more of a homebody. In my eyes, he was a regular stand-up guy, even a little corny. Bobby never attempted to discipline me; he left that responsibility to my mom, who was up to the task. And I never turned on him with the “You’re not my daddy” line that a lot of kids aim at their parents’ live-in partners. I appreciated everything he did for us, and I wouldn’t have dreamed of being disrespectful.
I could feel the difference in our lives financially after Bobby began handing his paycheck dutifully over to Mom. We were able to do more and have more. Mom even got to pursue one of her dreams, training for a career working at the airport, while Bobby took care of us. Suddenly I could see the difference that a reliable man makes in a household. I never knew how I wanted and missed and cherished this kind of a connection until Bobby showed up.
Then Mom started dating a new guy while she was still with Bobby. It was someone from her past, a guy she remembered from her years as a teenager hanging out at Twin City Roller Rink in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Back then, my mom had thought he was so cool. He had been one of the smoothest dudes at the rink and was well known throughout his neighborhood. When she bumped into him thirteen years later, he had recently been released from prison. Mom felt flattered to be hotly pursued by a guy she once had a huge crush on. I think he was exhilarating to my mom, a change from the Leave It to Beaver lifestyle she had found with Bobby.
I remember walking up the stairs to my grandmother’s house the day that Mom broke the news to me that she intended to break up with Bobby. “No!” I said, banging my fists into her. “Why are you doing this? You’re making a big mistake.”
Then I tried to talk sense into her. “You can make it work, Mom,” I begged. “You need to get back with him.” But she wouldn’t listen.
Then something happened that I’d never done before. Tears started rolling down my cheeks. I had never cried for any of my mother’s boyfriends until that moment.
I had let myself believe that Mom and Bobby would live happily ever after, but now I had to face the fact that she meant what she was saying. It was over. I was crushed. Part of my reaction was selfish—I really liked those after-school game sessions—but I knew that Bobby provided us with a lifestyle we hadn’t known before. For the first time, we were doing well. Mom wasn’t going out on the town; instead, we were going out for family dinners. Bobby had been the first man Mom ever brought home who I felt was the right guy for her. There was no way she could justify her decision to me. All I knew was that we finally had a happy family and she was messing it up.
But Mom had already made up her mind. Bobby wasn’t the kind of man she wanted. He acted weak, he didn’t know how to take charge, manage money, or make decisions. The only real relationship in the apartment, she said, was between him and me. “It was more of a twosome than a threesome,” is how my Mom describes it.
That day, I felt like I had lost my best friend. It was a pain like I can only imagine a son feels when his parents divorce. I already had missed out on knowing what it was like to live with my father in the same house. Now here she was snatching away the closest thing I had known.
Mine wasn’t the only heart that was breaking. Bobby loved my mom and couldn’t understand why she was acting so distant. But he finally got the message that their relationship wasn’t salvageable after Mom became pregnant with her new boyfriend’s child.
Bobby moved out of the apartment. And I never saw him again.
In what seemed like a flash, I had to adjust from perhaps the most blissfully childlike period I’d ever known to a situation that demanded I become man of the house. I didn’t resent it at first, though. Mom really relied on me once the Bobby era ended, because around the same time the baby was born, the new man in her life was arrested and returned to prison.
My sister Mecca arrived in chilly January, when I was in sixth grade. Mom and I had already given up the Hillside apartment and moved back into the safety net of Ma’s house for a while. My mother landed a steady job at the post office, and as soon as she saved some money, she moved us into an apartment in Plainfield, a few blocks from Ma’s.
Now we had a family of three, and I was given the job of father. I took that responsibility to heart, even though I was only twelve.
In the mornings, I’d give Mecca a bath in the beige baby tub. And then I’d comb her hair. That was the most challenging part. I remember trying to arrange and part her hair, putting it in two or three pigtails, and snapping the ends closed with plastic barrettes. I was proud of myself for doing her hair. The only problem was braids. I could never figure out how to braid, so I settled for twists. After my hair-care sessions, Mecca always looked good when she went off to day care. Then I’d get myself together and head to junior high.
After a while, though, it started getting tough being the patriarch. Mom was working a midnight shift at the post office, so I pretty much served as Mecca’s primary caregiver after school while my mother slept. As a result, I wasn’t able to go out and roughhouse with my friends because I had to babysit. I complained to Mom that it wasn’t fair. “I’m a kid, Mom, I want to do kid things,” I’d protest. “I’m only twelve, I want to go outside and play.”
“Who’s going to watch your sister?” she’d throw back at me.
So I got resourceful. I would just take my baby sister out with me. I found some girls in my apartment complex who would sit on their porch with Mecca and give her a bottle or fix her hair while my friends and I ran back and forth nearby.
But that solution didn’t last long. There was only so much a twelve-year-old could do with a toddler in tow. I was miserable. And to top it off, I also had to watch my grandfather Raymond Hunt. He had been living on the streets when Mom found him at Newark’s Pennsylvania Station and decided to take him in and clean him up. It was a well-intentioned gesture. He was a war veteran and an alcoholic and was suffering from mental illness. But my grandfather didn’t talk to us, he only mumbled to himself, talking to the voices he heard in his head. He needed to be in a mental hospital. Instead he was parked inside my bedroom. I used to be proud to let my friends hang out in my room, which was decked out with Star Wars curtains and cool bunk beds, but now I was ashamed to invite them over. My grandfather often soiled his pants, so my bedroom stank. To make matters worse, Mom asked me to make sure he took baths, which was not the easiest
mission. Sometimes I resented all the responsibility I had to shoulder, and then I instantly struggled with guilt over those feelings.
Finally Mom realized we couldn’t take care of him anymore, and she took him to the veterans’ hospital and dropped him off. The hospital discharged him a few days later, and my family never saw him again.
But I was still in charge of Mecca. My grandmother was helpful, though. Sometimes I could take my sister over to her house and my relatives would watch Mecca so I could have a little time for myself. It was a hard situation for a preteen, but I didn’t feel entitled to complain. What else was I supposed to do? My mother had to work, so she couldn’t be there for my sister. So I just tried to make the most of it.
This topsy-turvy period was the tipping point for my mother, I think. It added more hurdles to her already complicated life. With neither my father nor my sister’s father to support her and her children, our lights started getting cut off periodically and there wasn’t much food in the refrigerator. When I was younger, Mom always kept me looking sharp, with fresh haircuts and new clothes. But now she let me know, at age twelve, that I needed to get a job and buy my own school clothes.
Mom’s behavior was changing. I could hear whispers in my family that my mother was doing some unhealthy things, but Mom always protected me from seeing any evidence of drug addiction. All I knew was that she told me she had to find a way “to numb the pain.”
But despite whatever Mom was doing secretly, she kept a firm grip on her plans for my education. All my life, my mother had made it clear that she had high expectations for me academically. I noticed she was much stricter about good grades than my grandmother was. For Ma, a B or C would have been acceptable, but my mother knew I was capable of much better. It disappointed her when I brought home anything lower than an A. It was my mom who taught me to excel in school, because she didn’t accept anything less. Mom made it so clear that I would be going to college that I grew up thinking I had no other choice. College was just a given. Even though a lot of my Plainfield friends hadn’t given much thought to college, I knew I was different.
The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive and Reconnect With Their Fathers Page 21