Concussion
Page 24
Standing around the grave, the family is dressed all in white in traditional cotton robes. A hard rain has fallen and so the air feels sharp and the sun stings. The men with their long straps lower Oba’s casket into the grave and the priest in gold vestments chants his prayers and rattles his sprinkler of holy water over Oba. Then he steps back, folds his red prayer book, and nods to the men with the shovels to stand back to make way for the wife, who will please come forward now and throw the first fistful of dirt.
All eyes go to Iyom. Tiny and round, a white scarf folded with great flourish on her head, she has her body pressed against the compound wall, pushing against that wall.
“She will not throw dirt,” Winny says, standing in front of her mother.
“She must,” the priest says.
“She will not,” Uche says, and moves next to Winny.
“She must!”
Theodore comes forward. “She will not.” He goes full-tuba with the proclamation, shouting it, and that’s when the fighting starts.
She will not! She must! You promised! You signed! This has nothing to do with the Catholic Church! She must! She must! It’s the law! You signed!
“You signed the papers! It’s the law!”
“This is bullshit, Father, this is bullshit bullshit bullshit!”
“He will not go to heaven unless she throws the dirt!”
“Who do you think you are?”
“I will leave! I will not bless Oba. He will not go to heaven!”
“Go ahead, leave, you are not welcome here. You are supposed to be a man of God, you use your power to trick people, you must be stopped, you will be stopped!”
“He will not go to heaven if I leave. I will leave if she does not throw dirt this instant!”
Theodore’s voice is now one hundred tubas, arms flailing, men nose to nose, Chizoba frozen with his mouth dropped in horror, and Bennet shouting his outrage in rapid-fire bursts, and Winny screaming and Mie-Mie screaming and Uche screaming and their mother crouched, pushing against the wall.
It’s an Igbo-style fight, no one backing down, sweat flying, spit spurting, everyone ready for blows, until finally Bennet jumps all at once out of the fray, jumps out of that hot circle of rage, steps to the outskirts, and looks down into the open grave.
He’s holding a rose. He looks down at Oba’s casket. Oba all alone down there. All the fighting up here.
“Bye-bye, Daddy!” Bennet shouts. And throws the rose.
Everyone watches the flower tumble down into the hole, the first thing to land on the casket. Not dirt—a rose. Not the wife—a son. And so what? The rose on the casket officially and without surrender ends the battle, and the shovelers move in quickly with the dirt.
The music starts. The priest storms off. The gates open and the villagers come rushing in. Families with gifts, a goat or a cow, or cases of beer, brandy, yams, bags of semolina. They will be handed a microphone, and they will shout over the drumming, they will shout in praise of Oba, over the drumming and the horn blowing by the village man who won’t stop for days. Theodore will record the gifts and the Igbo elders will stand and wave sacred fans and the brandy and kola nuts won’t stop. Some of the mourners bring teams of dancers, or more drummers, or masquerade shows, and Theodore will throw money at them in thanks while they perform. Ikem and Chizoba will throw money. Winny, Uche, and Mie-Mie will announce the next group at the top of the hill and throw money. It goes on like this for four days, constant parades and dancing and drumming and the horn. Behind the house, under the tents a band plays Afrobeat funk and hip-hop tunes, and down the hill there’s another band, and across the road another, the music and parties in pockets. Buckets of rice and stew and slaw come up constantly from the bottom of the hill where the cooks work nonstop, and the man with the cleaver keeps slaughtering.
Bennet floats in and out of the festival. He’ll have a brandy with his brothers, beer with his sisters, and some kola nuts. He’ll throw money, dance with his sisters. Then he’ll wave, slip away, go to his room, and read.
When he gets home to America, he begins composing his letter to the pope.
Bennet Omalu, age seven, on his way to mass in Enugu, Nigeria.
After a long day of autopsies, Omalu poses in scrubs.
The right side of the brain of a football player diagnosed with CTE by Omalu. As the CTE damage is microscopic, the brain appears normal to the naked eye.
A cut coronal section of the same brain, which shows none of the damage typically associated wth traumatic injury or degenerative brain disease.
Omalu examines a tissue sample on the balcony of the condo he shares with his wife, Prema.
Tissue samples taken from the brains of athletes whose families asked Omalu to check them for CTE.
Omalu, left, and Dr. Julian Bailes examine tissue samples in the West Virginia University lab. © West Virginia University Hospitals
Omalu on vacation in Laguna Beach in 2014 with his daughter, Ashly, his wife, Prema, and his son, Mark.
The beginning of a letter from Mike Webster to his lawyer, Bob Fitzsimmons, in which he praises Fitzsimmons’s “skill, professional excellence, and humanitarian consideration and the cahuna’s [sic] to make a stand when other people abuse their unearned position and privileges of power and wealth.” Courtesy Fitzsimmons Law Firm PLLC, Wheeling, WV, and the Estate of Mike Webster
Excerpt of another letter from Webster, featuring a depiction of how he envisions his mental deterioration. The circle on the left shows Webster’s brain as it used to be—neatly organized—and the circle on the right reflects the breakdown of that structure over time. Courtesy Fitzsimmons Law Firm PLLC, Wheeling, WV, and the Estate of Mike Webster
A billboard commemorating the death of Bennet Omalu’s father, John Donatus Amaechi Omalu, that was hung on the family compound in the village. Bennet’s father was known as Oba, a title of honor.
Omalu and his siblings in prayer during a ceremony in the village that was held before his father’s mass. The family is dressed in white at Oba’s request. He wanted the funeral to be a celebration of life rather than an occasion of mourning.
Omalu’s eldest sister, Winny, with their eighty-two-year-old mother, known by the honorary name Iyom.
Omalu wears custom fabric featuring portraits of Oba and a cap bearing his father’s initials during the funeral week.
The funeral procession to the ancestral home of Omalu’s father in Enugwu-Ukwu village.
For Alex
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Concussion grew out of an article, “Game Brain,” that I wrote for Andy Ward in 2009 when he was an editor at GQ. He asked me to dramatize a subject that had already been expertly covered by journalists who’d done the heavy lifting of investigative reporting before me, and to whom I am indebted. My thanks to Andy for giving me the opportunity to enter the national conversation, and to Bennet Omalu for allowing me the privilege of unearthing his forgotten piece of the story.
Bennet sat with me over the course of many years recounting the events of his life in Nigeria and in America. He wrote long passages of introspection, some of which appear in these pages, set in italics. Based on these interviews, and hundreds of others with key players in the story, I’ve re-created scenes as accurately as an informed imagination will allow. My goal was to tell Bennet’s version of the events leading up to, and the subsequent fallout after, his discovery of CTE. How did this saga play out through his eyes? Bennet gave me permission to document that journey, and we joined forces as honestly as two people could in entering an agreement like that. If there were profits to be made from the product of our work, we would divvy them up, but the main thing was that he would have to give me complete editorial control. He wouldn’t get to edit himself. He wouldn’t get to read the book until after it was published. He would have to trust me. So Bennet handed over the reins of his legacy to me. I don’t know how you thank a person for something that enormous, but I am trying to do that here. Thank you, Bennet, for your fea
rless willingness to bestow trust.
Thank you to the Omalu family—Theodore, Winny, Uche, Ikem, Chizoba, Mie-Mie, Iyom, and Prema—for opening the doors into their homes and touring me through their memories. Thanks to Julian Bailes and Bob Fitzsimmons for their guidance through the maze, and to the many players and their families, notably Fred and Tia McNeill, who provided an intimate glimpse into what it’s like to live with trauma-induced dementia.
I am grateful to Jim Nelson at GQ for his early and continued support for telling Bennet’s story—and for continuing to champion this kind of long-form journalism—and to the editors who shaped related stories, notably Joel Lovell, Raha Naddaf, Mike Benoist, and Geoff Gagnon; and to researchers Elaine Vitone, Christopher Swetala, Rachel Wilkinson, and Riley Blanton, who dug until they found the treasures.
Elyse Cheney, my agent, ignited the idea of expanding Bennet’s story into a book, and she became its ferocious advocate. I am grateful to her for her fearless wisdom and guidance, and to Alex Jacobs and Sam Freilich at the agency.
Here again I come to Andy Ward, now at Random House, for championing the book project along with Susan Kamil, and to Kaela Myers and the others at Random House who made it real, and to Amelia Zalcman for protecting it. I’m thankful to so many of my writer friends who listened and lent courage, namely Wil Hylton, Mike Paterniti, Bill Lychack, Peter Trachtenberg, Rebecca Skloot, BK, Nancy Mosser Bailey, Kit Ayars, Sally Wiggin, Lynn Cullen, and give special thanks to Jeff Oaks, Geeta Kothari, and Nancy Kirkwood for holding up the fort at the Writing Program while I took leave.
Don Bialostosky, chair of the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh, provided much needed support. My thanks to him and to John Cooper, dean of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, for the patronage.
I’m deeply grateful to all the movie people who committed to telling Bennet’s story on-screen: to Giannina Scott for embracing the project with such passion and love, along with Ridley Scott for championing it and the amazing Peter Landesman who pulled off the impossible, to Elizabeth Cantillon, David Crockett, Michael Schaefer, Salvatore Totino, Amal Baggar, Larry Shuman, CAA agent Matthew Snyder, and especially to David Wolthoff for never giving up. My thanks to Will Smith for bringing Bennet to life on-screen with such dignity and grace.
I would like to thank Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru, whose extraordinary book, League of Denial, stands as the most comprehensive, encyclopedic account of the history of the National Football League’s mishandling of the crisis of traumatic brain injury among players.
A final word of thanks to my giant, supportive family that gives me my footing, notably my husband, Alex; my daughters, Anna and Sasha; and my parents, John and Claire Laskas, whose steady prayers from heaven are duly noted.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Bennet Omalu Foundation is a nonprofit organization committed to funding research, finding cures, and providing care for people suffering from traumatic brain injuries and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Visit thebraintrustfoundation.org for information on how to help.
BY JEANNE MARIE LASKAS
Concussion
Hidden America
Growing Girls
The Exact Same Moon
Fifty Acres and a Poodle
We Remember
The Balloon Lady and Other People I Know
About the Author
Jeanne Marie Laskas is the author of six previous nonfiction books, including Hidden America, her latest collection of stories, and she is a correspondent at GQ. Her writing has appeared in publications including Esquire, Smithsonian, The Washington Post Magazine, and Best American Magazine Writing. She is professor and director of the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh and lives in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two children.
jeannemarielaskas.com
Facebook.com/JeanneMarieLaskas
@jmlaskas
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