“I didn’t think you’d come,” a teacher or administrator will always say when I go to the school. “What a surprise!” Part of that is that they see me in movies and on television. But I’ve also seen them do that to any woman with a job. Some of the other working moms and I formed an alliance at the boys’ last school, but out of all the working moms I was the only stepparent. An understudy unfamiliar with the script, showing up and ad-libbing her ass off.
As a stepmother you have to remember your place. You play your position and stay in your lane. You don’t overstep, and you’re very aware that some people are waiting for that moment when you go too far. In interviews and even here in this book, I consciously refer to “our boys” or “the boys.” You’re not going to catch me saying, “my boys,” and definitely not “my sons.” I know how that would sound.
But any parent—step or otherwise—will go hard in the paint for the kids they love.
I am also very conscious that I am helping to raise young black men in a world where they are often in danger. I have watched them grow, and I have watched the world’s perception of them change as they do. Zaire is now six foot one and Dada is five foot nine. They are not freakishly tall by the standards of their classmates, but after about nine years old, young black boys are suddenly perceived as young black men, and things start to change.
So, for their safety, I have taken to dropping these terrible Black Bombs on the boys. Black Bombs are what I call the inescapable truths of being a black person in this country, the things you do your children a disservice by not telling them about. I feel it is especially important that our boys, privileged black children in predominantly white, privileged neighborhoods, know these truths. Here they are living in luxury—and here I am to say, “Nuh-uh, homeboy. Plymouth Rock landed on you. Things aren’t going to be the same for you.” I tell them this when I see that they have their privilege blinders on.
The first time Zaire and Dada went to a sleepover, they were in sixth grade and we were still living in Miami. I drove them over to their friends’ house, and they were opening the car doors before I even finished parking.
“Hold up!” I said. I turned to face them. They were sitting in the backseat, little duffel bags on their laps. “Do not wander around this house.”
They looked at me dumbly.
“Only hang out where the family is.”
“What?” asked Zaire.
“Because if something turns up missing, guess whose fault it is?”
Their faces were like cartoons—eyes wide, like, “Whaaaat?”
“They think I would steal?” asked Zaire.
“Yes. People think black people steal,” I said. “Only hang out where other people are.” Have fun at the sleepover, kids!
When they got older, I changed my script a bit. “Don’t ever put yourself alone in a room with a white girl,” I told them. “Or, in Miami, a Cuban girl.”
They always gave me the same look: “Oh my God. Please stop talking.”
“Her family is not happy about your little black dick,” I said. “They’re not happy about any of this.” In the same way that we teach children not to run in the street, I need to teach them things to keep themselves alive. I have to tell them, “You talking back to a person of authority is not viewed in the same way as when your little white friend Eddie does it. People look at Eddie and say, ‘Ah, here we have the makings of a leader! A free thinker to buck the system.’
“It doesn’t matter who your parents are,” I say. “You’re going to be looked at as a thug or a problem child. Stand up for yourself? You’re the bully.”
I say to myself: “And the second you’re not identified as Dwyane Wade’s children, you are just young niggers.”
At one of the boys’ old schools, a dean said that Dada was bullying another black child. D was away, so I tagged in for the meeting. We had been through other incidents at this school. A boy playing basketball on the court one morning got frustrated when Zaire beat him. He called Zaire a nigger, and Dada jumped up to have his back. They didn’t hit him, but this was still seen as poor behavior. Kids said “nigger” around the boys constantly, then blamed it on song lyrics. When I was in Pleasanton, the word simply wasn’t as prevalent in music as it is now. There wasn’t that handy excuse of singing it to a beat and saying, “Hey, it’s the song.” With me, it was a word the other kids had clearly heard at home.
“So I’ve taken the liberty of printing out spreadsheets for all of us,” I said at the start of the meeting. “You can easily follow along on the agenda that we’re going to cover today . . .”
This is actually not a joke. When I go to school meetings, I come with my books and articles to support what I’m talking about. Whether it’s a Harvard study on implicit bias in academia or research into African American teenagers underperforming because they go to school with the burden of suspicion, I was ready to call them on their shit. That day I brought a copy of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me. Written as a letter to Coates’s fifteen-year-old son, Samori, the book is a sort of guide to surviving in a black body in America.
“I think you should read it,” I said, leaning forward to slide the book at the dean, “if you’re interested in better reaching the black children whose parents pay tens of thousands of dollars to attend this school.
“So,” I said, “did you label the other kid who started this disagreement a bully, or just our kid?”
“I didn’t say bullying.”
“Well, actually, you did,” I said, passing him another printout. “Here’s an e-mail chain where you used this very word in describing the incident to our nanny. You think our nanny from Wisconsin can’t forward an e-mail?”
I explained the danger authority figures put black kids in when labeling them bullies. And I noted that they felt comfortable using that term because there was near-zero diversity in their faculty.
“What are you saying about black excellence or Latino excellence,” I asked, “when the examples they see here are the crossing guard and the janitors? What message do you think that sends?”
It was just a fact that they disciplined others differently than our black boys. “How many times do our kids need to tell you that their classmates are using the word ‘nigger’?” I asked. I had screen grabs of texts and e-mails where classmates used the word “nigger” and our kids told them to stop. “My kids have told you this,” I said. “And what did you say?”
That had been dismissed as “typical boy behavior.” Zaire was a bully. The administrators told me they hadn’t thought of things that way. Cue the Oprah “aha” moment of nodding. It was revelation time. They didn’t think of things that way because they’d never had to.
Here’s the thing. I had to do all that—armed with spreadsheets and e-mails—to be taken seriously as a stepmother. At the end of the day, I could sign them out to take them to the dentist, but I didn’t have the power to switch schools. That’s D. That’s the work of a real parent.
But guess what? We switched schools. The school officials could see it coming, and I could tell a stepmother’s delivering the death blow made it especially painful.
OUR FRIEND PHIL BOUGHT A HOME IN OUR MIAMI NEIGHBORHOOD AND converted it into a basketball gym. Not just a court—we are talking Olympic-level training facilities. It’s insane. I know this is some rich-people shit. When you see me owning the court on Snapchat? That’s where I am. I should say this, too: Phil Collins bought J. Lo’s house up the road from us. Different Phil. However, if I could get the drum crash from “In the Air Tonight” playing each time I sink a basket? Yes, please.
The gym is about eleven blocks away from our place and our friend Phil gave us a set of keys. “Anytime you want to stop by,” he said, “let yourself in.”
It was a Tuesday night in April when Zaire and Dada asked me if they could walk to the gym. It was 9 P.M. I was reading and didn’t even look up.
“No, it’s dark.”
And that was that.
> Cut to the next night: D was home from the playoffs, in a good mood, and they pulled the old okey-doke, like, “Let’s get this sucker.” I wasn’t in the room.
This time it was 10 P.M., even later than when I said no. The boys were as sweet as could be. “Can we walk to Phil’s gym?”
D said, “Sure. Here are my keys. I’m not sure if they work. I think he changed the locks. But try them.” I now picture D in that moment, talking in a Jimmy Stewart voice: “Golly, guys! Try these keys repeatedly and see what happens!”
Then D casually came outside to join me on the dock. It was a beautiful night, a light wind coming off the water. Honeymoon weather.
“Hey, babe,” I said.
“I told the boys they could go down to Phil’s.”
Record scratch.
“They just asked last night and I told them no. It’s too dark.”
“Well,” he said, “I told them they could.”
“D, it’s too dark. People can’t see them if they walk down North Bay.”
“Babe, we’ve gotta cut the cord sometime.”
I was already up, heart rate flying. North Bay is dark in some stretches, depending on how illuminated neighbors want their houses to be. You can be on a spotlit sidewalk one minute and “lurking” through trees the next.
“They’re old enough,” he said. “Think about what we were doing at their age.” At their age I knew enough about the world to not trust that everything would be okay just because.
“This is an open-carry state, D,” I reminded him, getting agitated. “A stand-your-ground state, and all our neighbors have to do to shoot these children is say they felt threatened. What’s more threatening to our neighbors than two black boys ‘lurking’? Walking down the street in front of their properties? We don’t know half our neighbors. Half of them don’t live here half the time. Do you trust these people to not kill our kids? Do you trust their security to not see our boys as threatening? If someone sees them, and the keys don’t work . . . two black kids, D, two black kids.”
D paused a moment, peering at me, turning the thought over in his head. “Let’s go get ’em,” he said. I had dropped another one of my Black Bombs, this time on him.
We literally hopped in the golf cart like Mission: Impossible, taking off down North Bay, D at the wheel, me dialing them on speaker.
Zaire answered on the third ring.
“Where are you?!”
“Um . . .”
“That’s how I know you’re fooling around,” I yelled, the panic not quite yet unleashed but slowly working its way up my chest. “WHERE ARE YOU? Tell us specifically where you are.”
“I think we’re on Fifty-first Street. We’re walking back. The keys didn’t work.”
I periscoped my head straight toward D, like, “I told you so.”
As we drove our golf cart down the street, a cop car whooshed silently by. The thing about North Bay Road is that it’s the most exclusive street in South Florida. A siren or flash of police lights would denote trouble, and if you’re spending thirty million dollars on a mansion, you don’t want to know there’s trouble. That’s why, in this neighborhood, police officers just roll up on you silently, like ninjas.
Then another one magically appeared. The squad car slowed down as it reached us, and the officer rolled down the window. Instinct kicked in. Dwyane and I froze.
“Oh,” said the cop, genially. “Dwyane Wade.”
“Hi,” said D.
“Have a nice night,” the cop said.
As he drove off, I stared straight ahead and gritted my teeth into a smile. “If you think these cops were not called on our boys, you are fucking delusional,” I said.
These are privileged kids, I thought. Lord knows what they would say when the cops reached them. I would like to think they would be polite, but under duress, who knows. I realized it was completely possible they would say, “I live here, motherfucker.”
Soon we found them on the side of the road, walking toward us. Before we did, I turned to D. His eyes were on the road.
“What did you tell the kids to say when they’re stopped by police?” I asked him.
“Well, I told them what to say in case—”
“WHAT did you tell them?”
“I told them to say their full names and our address.”
“Wrong answer,” I say. “‘I’m Dwyane Wade’s kid.’ That’s what they say.”
AS WE ZOOMED DOWN THE ROAD IN OUR STUPID GOLF CART LOOKING for the kids, my mind flashed back to March the year before. Zaire was in seventh grade and he’d asked if he could take our Dalmatian–pit bull mix, Pink, out for a walk with Dada. It was a negotiation.
“Okay, walk down to the Boshes’,” we said. D’s old Heat teammate Chris Bosh lived eleven doors down the road. I figured they could walk out the door and I would have our security call the Boshes’ security to warn them.
As they bounded out, I stood at the door, ready to drop a Black Bomb. “Wrap the dog leash around your thumb,” I said to them. “That way, your fingers are free to spread.” This was an actual conversation I had. But this is what you did three years after Trayvon Martin and five months after Tamir Rice. I didn’t want the boys to have their hands in their pockets or for them to look as if they were concealing something dangerous.
Zaire started to open his mouth, and I shut him down.
“You’ve gotta walk Pink that way,” I said. “It’s not just the police. It’s the neighborhood security officers, too. Anyone who is armed can harm you.”
Sure enough, the first time they walked Pink, it was a disaster. That was the night someone swatted Lil Wayne’s house over on La Gorce Island, near us. Now, if you are a celebrity, swatting is a nightmare. Someone calls 911 as a prank, announces a hostage situation or shooting at a famous person’s house, and watches the news as a SWAT team storms the mansion. It’s happened to Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Ashton Kutcher—any bored thirteen-year-old can make a call and then watch the show. It’s happened to poor Lil Wayne twice.
So there were two boys walking a huge dog as a dozen police cars flew past them. At our house, our security guards started to go crazy, talking about a shooting. Chris’s security then radioed in, practically yelling, “Abort mission!” about walking a dog. It was like an international incident.
As more and more cop cars raced by the kids, they froze on the side of the road. They assumed the cars were for them. “Oh my God,” I imagined them saying to each other. “This is what she is always talking about!”
The last cop car stopped and rolled down the window, just like they had done with D and me in the golf cart. He was looking at our two black kids. He didn’t say a word—just stared.
And what did Zaire do? That boy dropped the leash and ran. Dada followed. They just took off, with a pit-Dalmatian running after them like Boyz in the Waterfront Community Hood.
I had gone over this and over this with them, but when the shit hit the Shinola, they just didn’t know what to do.
Zaire and Dada told us all the whole story that night in the kitchen. The boys were laughing now, the edges of the experience dulling into an anecdote. I’d poured a glass of Chardonnay to calm myself down. I swirled the wine in my mouth for a second as they talked excitedly, tasting the notes of pear and white chocolate with hints of vanilla. I was drinking wine and listening to what amounted to a boys’ adventure story told in a million-dollar custom-made kitchen. None of it would protect us.
“They could have shot you in the back,” I said.
BACK TO THE GOLF CART, SEARCHING FOR ZAIRE AND DADA, WHO WERE probably fumbling with their keys and looking to everyone else in the world like two black boys staging a break-in.
I felt mad at them, I felt mad at D, and I felt mad at how black boys seem to be in constant danger. (And these are not just black boys. These are big black boys, especially endangered.) How are we supposed to give them all the knowledge, all the power, and all the pride that we can, and then ask them to be subservient
when it comes to dealing with the police? “This is how you have to act in order to come home alive.”
They are the boys I adore. And people don’t value their very breath. It could be extinguished in one second, without thought, leaving a dog to run, dragging its leash the whole way home. A dog, safer from harm than black boy bodies.
seventeen
MITTENS
When Dwyane moved back to Chicago to play for the Bulls, we began renting a Victorian-style house on the Gold Coast. The boy who grew up hearing shootings on the South Side of Chicago now lives in the most expensive neighborhood in the city. The house was built in 1883, and one of the first owners was successful adman Charles Kingsbury Miller, a Son of the American Revolution who proudly traced his lineage to colonial families. For his postretirement second act, he led the charge for legislation to make it illegal to disrespect the American flag. He was especially upset, he said in an 1898 SAR banquet speech, to see the flag “converted into grotesque coats for Negro minstrels.” The home was recently restored to preserve its sense of history, so it is easy to imagine Charles returning to visit and the look on his face when he finds me at the door.
When I am in town, I leave the house every morning to walk to the gym. In the winter it is eight degrees in broad daylight, and everyone and their mother is wearing the uniform of a big black puffy coat with the hood up. You can see two inches of everyone’s face. As I walk, I see my Gold Coast neighbors scan the visible slash of my skin. They’re looking to see if I belong to one of the houses. Am I the cook? The nanny? Whose girl am I?
The sidewalks are narrow here because a lot of our neighbors have literally gated their shrubs. There’s the shrubbery in front of their home, then the sidewalk, and then more fenced-in shrubbery before the street. Why they need to wall off their shrubbery is another topic for conversation, but the result is that if you stop to talk with somebody, you literally block the whole sidewalk.
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