Uncensored

by Zachary R. Wood

  Instead of going every month as I was supposed to, because we didn’t have the money, I went to the orthodontist only maybe two or three times between sixth and eighth grade. And since I had gone so long in between adjustments, several of my front teeth had been pulled too far in one direction. When I got to DC I had to find a new orthodontist, and when he looked at my teeth, he was concerned. “What have you been doing?” he asked me. “These braces can really mess up your teeth if you don’t do this right.” He had to basically start the process over from the beginning and create a new plan to get my teeth back in line, which would take another eighteen months.

  We set up a new payment plan, which of course would accrue plenty of interest, and set up weekly appointments to get everything back on track. I showed up every week and swiped my card, and it was rejected about half the time because there wasn’t enough money. Sometimes the orthodontist took pity on me and saw me anyway, but most of the time he didn’t.

  Pulling my top teeth in one direction and then back in the other left a gap almost the size of two teeth on the right side. Eventually I would need an implant to fill in that empty space. So now, to make more room for the implant, the orthodontist was trying to create an even bigger gap. I was so embarrassed by this. It wasn’t like having a gap in between my two front teeth, which plenty of people have. It was off center and huge—it looked like I was missing a tooth, which essentially I was. People commented on it often, and it was always in the back of my mind. When I was talking to people, I would hold my mouth in a certain way so the gap would be less noticeable.

  This caused me so much anxiety, and the financial aspect was a huge source of stress for my dad. It was a bill we constantly had to pay but could never afford. I just wanted to get the entire process over with, and every time my card got rejected I knew we were driving up the cost and pushing the end date back further and further. To make things even worse, my mom had never paid off the orthodontist in Michigan and had put that bill in my dad’s name. So as we struggled to pay the new doctor, my dad was still trying to find a way to pay the old one.

  Then there were things that ate away at my dad’s income that had nothing to do with socioeconomics—namely, my mom. When they were married, my mom would take my dad’s credit card and go on huge shopping sprees, buying furniture and other things we couldn’t afford. They’d also held a lavish wedding that they’d paid for mostly with credit cards. When I moved to DC, my dad had just finally managed to get out of credit card debt. For more than ten years, he’d also been paying for my child support plus all the extras that my mom demanded, most of which she spent at the casino. Since he’d split up with Brenda, he was also paying child support for Nicole, but because they shared custody, that was in addition to all the expenses he was responsible for during the times when Nicole was with him.

  Despite all these hardships and challenges, my father had always found a way to pay for my private school tuition. After my scholarship, his portion came to about a thousand dollars a month. I was well aware of how many fathers in his position would have just refused to pay that bill. I would have had no choice but to go to public school. But ever since he’d attended Dads’ Day at GPA, my dad believed in the value of that education. He felt that a quality education was the only thing he could give me that would open doors and ensure I got ahead. He didn’t have the connections or money to open those doors, so he was willing to work three jobs, go without a car, and sacrifice many, many small comforts so that he could give that to me.

  He was determined to do the same thing for Nicole. Like me, she stayed in her public school until third grade and then switched to a private school in Virginia. Nicole was very smart, although not as academically ambitious as me, and had always been a sensitive kid. My dad wanted to give her every possible advantage, so he paid for the portion of her tuition that her scholarship didn’t cover as well as the cost of her ballet class and music lessons.

  This is yet another reason that being from a disadvantaged area is so expensive. If I had lived in a neighborhood with better schools—either in DC or back in Michigan—it would have been no problem for me to go to the local school. But because we lived where we did, the choice was either to go to a school with a startling lack of resources or find a way to pay for a better education. This is precisely why private schools that have wealthy donors, influential alumni, and prodigious endowments should offer more generous financial aid. Many private schools care about diversity because it is promotional, makes them look good, and allows them to say that an education at their school will expose students to a variety of perspectives and backgrounds. However, many of these same schools care more about their endowments and reputations than diversity and the hardships faced by disadvantaged minority students who attend their institutions.

  Working to pay for my private school education meant that life outside of school was rough. There were now five people living in that tiny two-bedroom house: Me, my grandma, my dad, my uncle Lee, and, half the time, Nicole. Lee had been living there for years, so the second bedroom was his. Lee was a good uncle, and I enjoyed hanging out with him. He was a faithful Christian who worked as a security guard at his church and at the airport and had an upbeat personality. Lee had never lived on his own and didn’t know how to use certain technology, so when my dad was at work, it fell on me to help him. I was happy to help, but without a computer or other resources at home, it was challenging.

  If I wanted to print something out for Lee or type up an essay for a school application, I had to walk six blocks to the local library, where there were only three computers. Usually there would be a homeless guy at one, a group of kids hanging out by the other, and a student trying to do his or her work at the third. I just had to stand there and wait until one of them got up. This often didn’t happen until the library closed, and then I had to walk home and beg my dad to let me go to work with him in the morning to use his computer.

  With Lee and my grandma in the two bedrooms, my dad slept on the small couch in the living room, and I slept on a cot next to him. My dad is six feet two, and the couch was small—maybe five feet long. I hated seeing my dad scrunched up on that thing after working so hard every day. But I wasn’t much better off on the cot. It had been strong enough for me to sleep on back when I was a kid and visited for a month or so at a time, but it broke under my weight after I’d been living in DC for only a few weeks. From then on, I just slept on the floor. Often, my dad would offer to switch places, but I told him I was fine.

  When Nicole was with us, she slept with my grandma, which she hated. Nicole was getting older and more aware of the differences between life at her mom’s comfortable condo and life at my dad’s house. But she was still too young to understand the reasons behind those differences or how painful it was to our dad when she pointed them out. One day shortly after I moved in, she was upset about something and started complaining.

  “I don’t like sleeping with Grandma,” she told my dad. “There are stains on the sheets and the bathroom is always so dirty. It looks like someone peed and went number two on the carpet.” I looked at my dad as he sat there listening to all this. I knew that Nicole didn’t mean any harm; she was just a kid, and she didn’t realize the impact of her words. But I wished she’d somehow register the pain on my dad’s face and stop talking. He was working so hard and doing everything he could for us, and his facial expression told me exactly what it felt like to hear his daughter tell him that it still wasn’t enough.

  I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand my dad. Because he’s so reserved, the things he’s done for other people have told me far more about the man he is than anything he’s said to me. I may not have been aware of it at the time, but when I got to DC, I needed someone to talk to. After everything I’d just been through—the abuse, the fear, the confessions, and the pain of having to leave home and start over again under very tough circumstances—I had no emotional support, no one to help me proc
ess it and figure out the right way to move on. CPS had completely disappeared after making their recommendation for me to move to DC.

  My dad was the most likely candidate to give me emotional support, but whenever I tried to open up to him, I got one-sentence answers at best. So I quickly stopped trying. It would have been easy for me to assume that my father simply couldn’t relate to anything I’d been through, but the more I’ve learned about his background, the more I’ve realized that the opposite is true.

  I never met my dad’s father, my grandfather, but from the stories I’ve heard from relatives, my impression of him is of a smart guy with great social skills and a remarkable memory. My grandmother always described him to me as a great talker. “He was like you, Zachary,” she told me. “He could talk to anyone about anything.”

  Despite his positive qualities, my grandfather, after a brief stint in the military, became a reckless and violent alcoholic who was in and out of jail the rest of his life. When he was around, which throughout my dad’s childhood was rare, he abused my grandmother and was violent with my dad and his two brothers. According to one story I heard several times, he once threw my uncle down the steps when he was just a toddler sitting in his stroller. Fortunately, my dad caught the stroller before it hit the wall at the bottom. When he was absent from their lives, my grandmother struggled to support her three sons by working as a waitress, so she sent them to live with her parents.

  From then on, my father had no consistent parental presence in his life. He saw his dad only once every few years. His mom visited him more frequently, but there were several times when she said she was coming to see him and then got stuck working or couldn’t afford the trip and failed to show up. When I heard this, I realized it was why, no matter what, my dad always made sure to make the drive to Michigan to see me when he said he would. One time it was snowing so badly that his car got stuck and he couldn’t continue. That’s the only time he didn’t make it, and I knew he’d tried.

  My dad learned early on to lower his expectations for people and swallow his emotions. I’ve never once heard him complain about anything. Not his childhood, not the disadvantages he’s faced, and not how hard he’s had to work for so little.

  For a long time I just assumed that nothing bothered him, but as I’ve struggled to embrace vulnerability in my own life, I’ve begun to wonder how much he’s internalized the hyper-masculine idea of what it means to be a “real nigga.” Our society is one that discourages men from showing too much emotion. For black men, who have been degraded and oppressed, from the time of slavery to Jim Crow–era lynching and today’s police brutality and mass incarceration, any sign of vulnerability or weakness takes on another level of significance, almost like an added layer of resistance. In the black community, men usually don’t go to therapy or talk about how difficult their childhoods were. They man up, act hard, move forward, and do what they have to to survive. And that’s exactly what my dad has done, seemingly without any resentment or hostility toward his father or anyone else who contributed to the difficulties of his childhood.

  When my dad was in his twenties, his father was nearing the end of his life. Despite the fact that his father had never been there for him, until the day he died, my dad visited him every other day to spend time with him, clean his house, and even prepare his food. When my dad’s older brother battled his own addiction and psychological issues, my father sacrificed to pay for him to go to rehab and later to have a place to stay. He has always been there for the people he cares about, and he was there for me, too, though maybe not in the exact way I needed at the time.

  In that house in DC, I was lonely. I didn’t have any friends in my neighborhood, because I wasn’t like most of the boys who hung out on my block. I woke up every day, afraid that my mom would catch me off guard and seek vengeance. I told my dad to be careful when he was out. My mom had made so many violent threats against him over the years, and I wondered if she’d now follow through. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me,” he told me. “My head is always on a swivel.”

  I was almost relieved when he got home safely from work, though it was usually in the early morning. During the day, all I did was read and write in my journal as a way of processing some of my experiences. My happiest moments were when I took a break to play with Nicole.

  That summer, it was sweltering outside, as it was in the house. We had no air-conditioning or way of cooling off, and that stifled energy mirrored the way I felt inside. I was angry and frustrated, often wanting to pop off or punch something. But I was also determined to avoid that trap.

  When I was finally accepted at the Bullis School, a prep school in Potomac, Maryland, I was more determined than ever to turn this fresh start into something positive by making lasting friendships and proving my worth to everyone I encountered there. I knew it would be a challenge. Bullis was an hour’s drive from the house, which meant it would take more than two hours each way using public transportation. And we could afford to buy only two sets of the school uniform, which I would have to wash by hand. We didn’t have a washing machine or a dryer, and the closest laundromat was a long walk or bus ride away.

  But I wasn’t afraid of hard work, lack of sleep, or doing whatever it took to succeed at Bullis. I’d channel all my anger and frustration into doing more and being more than I ever had before. For the first time, I could focus on achieving without the threat of my mom showing up and ruining it for me. I could make friends without her infecting those relationships with her projections and overreactions. I could even be a “normal” teenager and date without it being tainted by my mom’s warped ideas about sex.

  At least, that was my plan. It didn’t end up working out that way at all.

  CHAPTER 5

  Comeback Route

  On my first day at Bullis, I was asleep on the living room floor when my alarm went off at 4:45 a.m. I quickly shut it off, hoping not to wake up my dad, who had gotten home from work just an hour before. I stretched my body out on the ground and forced myself to get up. It was still dark outside, and I had a long day ahead of me.

  When I left the house soon after, the sun was just starting to rise, casting a slight glow on the small, barren lots that filled my neighborhood. As I walked to the bus stop, I heard a dog barking. At first I assumed it was coming from behind one of the chain-link fences that lined the sidewalk. Then, as I crossed the street, a dog came charging down the road toward me. He looked rabid and malnourished. I quickly hopped up on top of a parked car to avoid him and stayed there until he moved on.

  From then on, I made no assumptions. When I heard a dog barking, I quickly scanned the block to see if any loose dogs were out and, if so, what my quickest form of escape would be. I learned to stay circumspect and proceed with caution every time I passed a car, ready to run or react swiftly in case someone or something jumped out at me.

  At the bus stop, I pulled a book out of my backpack and waited. Pretty much the only other people out at that time were homeless. Some of them were sleeping; others mumbled to themselves or to me. I would have stood out no matter what I was wearing, but I was in my prep school uniform—an easy target. I remembered everything I’d learned from Yeti, the guys on the basketball court in my old neighborhood in Detroit, and my earlier walks through the neighborhood. I tried to lean my body a little and tilt my head to evoke a certain masculine strength.

  “You got that tie on, nigga,” one guy mumbled to me, reaching out his hand. “Lemme hold that tie for a minute.” I didn’t reply, hoping he would give up and move on, but instead he got mad. “What the fuck is up with you, nigga?” he asked, stumbling a little as he walked toward me. “You a wannabe-white-ass nigga.”

  I tried to defuse these situations and play it cool, but, depending on whom I was dealing with, that could be difficult. When the bus pulled up a minute later, I was hoping this dude wouldn’t get on behind me. Luckily, he didn’t that time. But the bus was filled with peopl
e facing any number of challenges. There were folks who were loud and obnoxious, irritable and grumpy, depressed and detached from reality, and others who were just pissed, ready to pop off and raise hell over the slightest thing, like my backpack brushing their shoulder as I walked to the back of the bus to sit down.

  I took a seat and continued reading, trying to avoid eye contact with some of the angrier-looking faces that surrounded me. After a few more stops, a guy got on the bus who looked like he could bench-press a small car. He was tall with dreads, with no shirt on and tattoos all over his body. It was clear from the moment he stepped on the bus that he was having a bad day.

  “I’m gonna kill all these niggas, yo, don’t fuck with me!” As he made his way past me to the back of the bus, he kicked the empty seats and punched some of the windows. I quickly put my book away and changed the expression on my face so that I looked a little tougher and slightly angry—but not so much that it would attract his attention. Then, from behind me I heard him say, “Yo, li’l nigga, get up.”

  No matter how many situations like this I’d dealt with, I still wasn’t sure how to respond. If I ignored him, I’d be asking for a confrontation, but if I got up, I’d be admitting weakness. For a moment, I stayed in my seat, and then I saw him coming toward me out of the corners of my eyes, bumping into the seats and pushing people out of his way. “Oh, I’m about to whup your bitch ass,” he threatened. I stood up. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said, taking my seat.

  “Yo, man, I don’t want any trouble,” I said. My goal was to comply calmly without seeming submissive or afraid.

  “I ain’t fuckin’ with these li’l niggas, Moe, I ain’t playin’ with ’em. You feel me?”

  “Aye no disrespect, boss, I hear you,” I said. Fortunately, that was enough to keep him from kicking my ass.