In My Skin

by Brittney Griner

  And then I drove to the Ferrell Center, parked the Magnum, left the keys in it, and sent him one more message, telling him to come get his damn car because I didn’t want it anymore. I couldn’t help thinking about what had happened four years earlier, when I asked my teacher to follow me in his car so I could leave the Magnum at the clubhouse of our subdivision. Except this time I didn’t need anyone to follow me. I just walked away.

  I didn’t deal with my dad for several days after that. I wouldn’t answer his calls, and he knew better than to text me after everything I had said to him. But he texted my good friend Janell, knowing she would relay the messages to me. (Janell and I are tight from high school; I actually call her my sister, because she always has my back.) Dad was mad with how I was acting, and he said I was making a mistake about the car, that I would be stranded without it. He said the same thing to me when we started talking again. I said my friends would take care of me, and he made a dismissive sound, the equivalent of Good luck with that. He thought my expectations were too high, that my friends would end up disappointing me because they wouldn’t be there for me.

  But I had chosen my friends well at Baylor. And they came through for me when I needed them most, giving me rides to class, to practice, to games. I didn’t even have to ask, which was a huge relief, because I don’t like asking for favors. My bros Julio and Nash learned my daily schedule, and they would often be parked outside my last class, waiting to give me a quick lift to the arena for practice. Sometimes I would take my skateboard, but I usually wouldn’t get more than halfway to wherever I was going before one of them would see me, pull a U-turn, and pick me up. All of my friends were amazing. Their response was the exact opposite of what my dad had predicted. Here I had concrete proof that much of what he had said over the years was the product of his own skewed worldview, and not necessarily reality. I wasn’t alone in the world, with only him to protect me, which is how he had often made it seem. I was blown away by the realization that my Baylor friends were part of my family now too.

  Sometimes I feel bad about all those text messages I sent to my dad. Then again, things are now better between us, so maybe it was a necessary, if painful, step. I said things that were mean and hurtful, but that was actually the first time in my life I had really said my piece to him—all of it, not just when I was sticking up for myself during one of his rants. Even in high school, when I moved out of the house for a while, our arguments had centered around my sexuality, and we stuck close to that topic. I defended myself when he said I was being influenced by other people, that I was just a follower. But I didn’t bring up my childhood or tell him how some of his other paranoia made me feel.

  My brother and sisters had their own run-ins with him; it was like a rite of passage. And when I unloaded on him in those texts and told him to take his car back, they weren’t mad at me or disappointed. I think they were relieved in a way, almost as if they were wondering why it had taken me so long to exert my independence. “We were waiting on it, Baby Girl,” DeCarlo told me. “We knew it was bound to happen.”

  WHEN I WOKE UP that morning, I had no idea the day would play out the way it did, that after blowing up at my dad, I would then take a big step forward in my friendship with Cherelle. She was a friend of a friend, and she had started hanging out with my group toward the end of my junior year. By November of senior year, we were all having barbecues a couple of times a week, usually at House 41, and “Relle” (as I often call her) would always be there. She struck me as steady and reliable; she had her head on straight. We would have good talks, and a few times I walked away from those dinners knowing there was something between us.

  The day I got into it with my dad, I texted Cherelle and said, “You still going to dye my hair?” She had offered to color my hair at some point—I was always looking for people to help me out with that—and I felt like I needed to do something simple to calm me down and try to turn my mood around. She texted back and said, “Sure.” But she didn’t know I was heading over to her place right away. So when I showed up at her door a few minutes after getting her text, she started laughing.

  She said, “I didn’t know you meant now!”

  And I said, “I thought that was my invite!”

  As she worked on my hair, I started telling her about the things I had said to my dad. And the more I talked, the more I surprised myself. I don’t often share something so personal like that, and certainly not with someone I don’t know all that well. But midway through the night, I pulled out my phone and handed it to her. “I just sent these texts to my dad,” I said. I also gave her the backstory, so she wouldn’t think I was in the habit of being disrespectful to my parents. If anything, I’ve stretched a lot, and keep stretching, to make things right with my dad. We still bicker, and I’m not sure he has come to fully accept who I am, but we’ve been on pretty good terms since I left Baylor, because I think he has a better understanding of what lines not to cross.

  When I left Cherelle’s place that night, I knew she was somebody I wanted to be with, because I had opened up with her. She had a way about her that brought me out from behind the walls I had built. And the more time we spent together, the more sure I was that she had feelings for me, too. There was just one catch: she had never dated a woman before. At first I told myself we would just be friends. But eventually our mutual friends encouraged me to tell her how I felt, because they could see our connection and I was thinking about her all the time. So that’s what I did. I texted her one day and said, “I really like you. And if you want to keep things the way they are, as friends, that’s cool. I just thought you should know.” She told me she respected my honesty, and that she liked the way things were between us. I knew she was going through a breakup, so I just kept acting the way I’d been acting, and she kept inviting me over to hang out.

  One night, we were joking around after dinner, and Cherelle said, “You wouldn’t put in the time to get me.” She had a big smile on her face because she didn’t think I would take her seriously. She was playing, but I wasn’t.

  “Oh yeah?” I said. “Just watch me.”

  She told me she wasn’t convinced I would put in the effort to make things work, because she knew I had stopped trying with my previous girlfriend. She needed to know I truly cared about her, that I wasn’t just looking for a fling. I had never chased a girl before—I was usually the one being pursued, or things just kind of happened—but I was more than willing to chase Cherelle and prove I was serious. I would meet her on campus after she got out of class, then walk her to the next one. Whenever we made plans, like going to the movies or chilling at her place, I’d show up early. I’d help with dinner, send her cute texts, make myself available as much as possible. Finally, after a couple of false starts (we’d get close, and then she’d pull back for a few days), she let her guard down and realized that being with me was something she wanted. We began dating toward the end of my senior year.

  Getting close to Relle was a new kind of experience for me, my first adult relationship, one that was built on a solid foundation of friendship. Senior year was full of challenges, to say the least, but spending time with her helped me to look at things in a different way—and to express myself on a deeper level.

  DESPITE THE BUMPY WAY our season started, with that loss to Stanford in Hawaii, we eventually cruised through the schedule, rolling up wins the way we had done during our run to the national championship. We were routinely beating teams, even really good teams, by double digits. But there was something different about the way we were winning. We had become a second-half team, occasionally finding ourselves in tight contests before pulling away down the stretch. Everybody was gunning for us because we were the defending champs, and the media loved asking, “Can anybody beat Baylor? Who can stop Brittney Griner?”

  Senior Night at the Ferrell Center was one of the best nights of my life. I almost never get nervous before games. Even before the 2012 NCAA title game, I was really loose on our bus ride to the
arena; I might as well have been on my way to a movie. But I’ve never been more nervous about a basketball game than I was on Senior Night. I couldn’t quite comprehend that it was my last official home game, on the court where I had collected so many great memories. My emotions were all over the place. I was sad, uneasy, but also happy because I knew I had good things ahead of me. As I walked into the arena, I started thinking about all the little things I did before every home game, and then the scene played out just like it always did. I chatted with our support staff, listened to music in the locker room, laughed with my teammates. (Somebody was usually doing a crazy dance or acting silly.) Then I walked onto the court and said hello to our radio crew. I nodded and waved to the alumni who never miss a game. I spotted my bros, all the guys from House 41, screaming and yelling with excitement. Cherelle was there, too. Everything was the same, except now it all felt different, because I was looking at these familiar faces and thinking something I almost never think: I don’t want to mess up! I’m usually pretty good about pushing negative thoughts out of my head when it comes to hoops. But that night, as we went through warm-ups and the clock ticked down to tip-off, I kept picturing myself having a terrible game, followed by this headline: “Brittney Griner doesn’t score, fouls out on Senior Night.” Every time that thought popped into my head, I told myself to go harder than I had ever gone before on the court.

  And that’s exactly what I did once the game started. We were playing Kansas State, a scrappy but undersized team, so I was trying to take advantage of my height in the paint. Once I got into the flow of the game, I just kept scoring and scoring. The more shots I hit, the more I wanted the ball. In the second half, I came out for a breather, and Shanay Washington leaned over to me and said, “You’re over 35. Go get 40.” I knew I had a lot of points, but I was still just focused on going hard, because K-State was knocking down threes and hanging around, keeping the score close. Then, during a break, Shanay said, “You’re over 40. Go for 50.” And that’s when it really hit me, that I had a serious chance to score 50 points on Senior Night. We started to pull away with about nine minutes left in the game, but I was stuck on 46 for a while, because the Kansas State players were digging in, doing whatever they could to stop me. I heard one of them say, “Don’t let her have it!” I scored with about three minutes left, and then thirty seconds later I hit my final bucket, on a fadeaway jumper after curling off two screens—the kind of shot I would almost never take. When it went in, I felt a huge sense of relief. I was running back on defense, and I gave Kim a look: Okay, I’m all set! Get me out now, Coach! She subbed for me, and the fans gave me an awesome standing ovation. As I walked to the sidelines, I saw Kim was crying, so then I started crying. She reached for my neck and pulled me down. (I was always hunched over talking to her, because she’s only five foot four, so even when she’s in four-inch heels, I still tower over her.) She patted me on the back and said, “What a game!” She paused for a second, then told me, “Soak all this in. You did it for your team and for the crowd. I love you.” I nodded at her—that was all I could manage—and walked to the end of the bench.

  A couple of weeks later, we hosted the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament, so we actually played two more games at the Ferrell Center. That was great for us, no doubt, but those games are run by the NCAA and they have a different feel than a regular Baylor home game. Our mind-set had shifted, too. Senior Night was a chance for everyone to show their appreciation—for the fans to thank us, for us to thank the fans—but now it was time for us to lock in and defend our crown. We were the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, and we easily won our first-round game, 82-40. Two nights later, we played Florida State in the second round, and in some ways it felt like we were saying good-bye all over again, because this really was my last college game in Waco. While I was getting my ankles taped before the game, our radio guy, Rick, stopped by the training room and said, “Three dunks! That’s how many you’re going to get tonight. No woman has ever done that in a game before. You’ll get it tonight.”

  I smiled and answered, “Okay, Rick!” Then, after he walked away, I shook my head and laughed, because people always say stuff like that to me. If some fans catch my eye as I’m walking onto the court, they’ll shout, “Throw one down tonight, BG!” So I didn’t think much about what Rick had said until I was jogging to the locker room at half time. We were winning big, 51-20, and I already had one dunk. I also felt like I had so much space in the paint that I’d get more opportunities to dunk in the second half. Florida State was a good team, but they didn’t have a strong, physical inside presence, so I was able to get the ball deep in the paint and snag rebounds close to the rim. As I headed for the locker room, I started replaying what Rick had said: “You’re going to get three dunks tonight!” And all of a sudden, I thought to myself, You know what? He’s right! That’s exactly what I’m going to do! The idea of it made me excited, knowing I could do something no other woman had done. But I let myself get caught up in the moment, and when I walked into the locker room at the break, I took my phone out of my locker and went to my Twitter page. I wanted to get the fans pumped for the second half, so I sent this tweet: “Need two more dunks on home court for the best crowd ever! #BaylorNation.”

  After I put my phone back in my locker, I started thinking maybe that wasn’t the smartest move on my part, tweeting at half time. I had never done anything like that before, but it seemed so harmless, and I didn’t think anyone would actually question my focus. I wanted to give myself a challenge. And later in the second half, I got my chance, dunking twice in the span of about a minute, right before Kim took me out of the game for good because we were already winning by so much. On the third and final dunk, I grabbed a rebound in the lane with three defenders around me and just went up and threw down a one-handed reverse. I think at other times in my career, I wouldn’t have been as forceful in my decision. I might have pump-faked, or turned and tried a little hook shot, because I sometimes worried about looking so powerful—which sounds ridiculous when I hear myself say it out loud. You think guys ever worry about that stuff? I’m afraid to dunk this ball because people might think I’m too strong. I can’t imagine LeBron James ever has those thoughts in his head, but I did on occasion.

  When Kim took me out, the crowd gave me an even bigger ovation than they did on Senior Night, and I gave her a big bear hug. I had chills. It was like another giant going-away party, except now we were heading to the Sweet Sixteen. Of course, once Kim found out I had tweeted at half time—because it was all over the news—she called me into her office the next day for another talk, telling me she would have to make an example out of me. She was clearly annoyed. “Big Girl, you know you’re not supposed to do that,” she said. “Now, when I start taking everyone’s phones for this road trip, your teammates aren’t going to be happy. But you have to take this one on your shoulders. You’re the captain.” Then she brought up something else: she said the media had been complaining about us, saying we disappeared after games when we were supposed to be available for reporters. And it was true. Most of us would hide in the back of the locker room as soon as our sports information director announced the door was opening for media. All of a sudden, everyone had to use the bathroom, or fix their hair, or they weren’t feeling too good. We would drift away, and the reporters would just be standing around, waiting for us. So Kim said that was the real reason she was taking our phones away, because we needed to step up and deal with the media for the rest of the tournament.

  This wasn’t the first time she had tried to regulate our phone usage. Like a lot of coaches, Kim would occasionally collect our phones on road trips, and even sometimes for home games, in an attempt to minimize distractions. When we were on the bus heading to an arena, she’d make us turn our phones in directly to her or an assistant coach. But we weren’t stupid: we gave her old flip phones, or smartphones we had replaced with newer versions. And she wasn’t dumb either: she knew those weren’t our real phones. Al
so, even if I did turn in my real phone, I would still have had my iPad or laptop, so I could still get all my texts and e-mails, my Twitter and Instagram. The crazy part is that nobody said anything about this little phone game we played. Sure, we rolled our eyes because it was still a hassle, an extra step we had to take to get around the so-called ban, but we pretended like we took it seriously, and Kim pretended like we took it seriously. The whole thing was such a silly charade, all for show.

  That didn’t erase my mistake, obviously; I shouldn’t have tweeted during the game. So I told my teammates what was coming, that my punishment would now be theirs, too. Most of them just said, “Really? Whatever.” But a couple of them said, “Ugh, BG, why would you do that?” I reminded everyone that we didn’t point fingers, that we were in it together, because all of us had messed up at some point. (Well, except for Makenzie. There’s not much room for error when you’re the coach’s daughter.) They knew I was right, and there really wasn’t anything else to say about it. When Kim met with us after practice that day, she announced she would be taking our phones again, because I had tweeted at half time.