On the Line

by Serena Williams

  For another, the long layoff allowed me to pursue some other career opportunities. On the professional tour, there’s not a whole lot of downtime, so if I wanted to try on this acting thing I figured I had to grab whatever time came my way—even if it meant I’d have to do it on one good knee. Lyn came up to join me and make an adventure out of it, and we loved hanging out on the set, pretending like we were real movie stars. It was so exciting! We went to bed each night exhausted because we were out and about all day, and on top of whatever they had me doing for the show I was also rehabbing my knee, so sleep was a welcome thing.

  When the phone rang at about four o’clock in the morning, it was like a bad dream. It was my mom, calling from Florida. Her voice was calm but confused. She said, “Have you heard from Tunde? I can’t reach her. I think maybe something’s happened. Maybe she’s been involved in a car accident, or a shooting.”

  The call didn’t make a whole lot of sense. It wasn’t that late out in California. Tunde had a sitter at home for the kids—that I knew. My first thought was that maybe she’d put the kids to bed and gone out to a late dinner or something, or maybe out with some friends. I didn’t get how my mom made the leap from not being able to reach Tunde to thinking she’d been involved in an accident or a shooting, so I shrugged her off. I said, “Mom, I’ve got a shoot tomorrow morning. I’m sure Tunde’s fine. Get some sleep.”

  Of course, I couldn’t fall back asleep after that. It wasn’t that I was too terribly worried, but there was something about my mom’s incongruous thinking that kept me awake. I learned later that someone had called my mom and suggested she check in with Tunde, so that was what had her on edge. I guess that’s how it goes sometimes, when someone close to you (but not quite close enough!) wants to alert you that something terrible has happened but doesn’t want to be the one to actually deliver the news. Of course, I didn’t know this at the time, so I just thought Mom was being a little dramatic.

  Still, I couldn’t help thinking that something was going on. Lyn was asleep in the bed next to mine, but I didn’t want to wake her over this, so I called Tunde’s house. One of my cousins answered the phone. I thought, That’s strange. But at the same time I didn’t really think anything of it, so I just said, “Hey, it’s Serena, is Tunde around?”

  That’s when I heard. That she’d been involved in an accident. That she’d been shot. My cousin wasn’t really making a whole lot of sense, and of course it was late and I was tired and probably half-asleep. Everything just sort of half-registered, but all those halves added up soon enough, and then the whole dark truth took shape in my head. Finally, I heard the words I’d been subconsciously dreading since my mom put out all those negative thoughts: “She’s gone, Serena. I’m so sorry.”

  I thought, Gone? Tunde? It didn’t make sense. I’d just spoken to her earlier in the day. She was so excited about this show I was working on, and the progress I was making on my knee, how well Venus had played that summer, how beautifully her children were growing, and on and on. She’d just opened her own beauty salon and was finally starting to do well with it. She was only thirty-one years old, and I know it’s a cliché but she really did have her whole life ahead of her. Gone? My sister? There was just no way. It was too crazy. Too impossible. Too sad. Her children needed her. Her parents needed her. Her sisters needed her. Her baby baby baby baby sister needed her.

  I pushed the thought right out of my head. I said, “What do you mean, gone? Is she out or something? Did I just miss her?”

  “No, Serena,” my cousin said. “There’s been a terrible accident. Tunde’s been shot. I’m afraid she’s passed.”

  By this point, Lyn was wide awake, after listening to my end of the phone call, and we were screaming and crying and consoling each other. Underneath all that screaming and crying, though, we were also confused. I remember saying to my cousin, “For real?” Over and over. “For real?” Like someone would really joke about something like this.

  “For real? For real?”

  At some point, I just dropped the phone. I couldn’t think what to do with my hands. It was awful, just awful. All that time in Kingdom Hall, all that time praying to Jehovah and trying to live a good, purposeful life, and there are no words of comfort, no pieces of scripture, no amount of faith that can swallow up the hurt of something like this, no comfort to help you absorb the news. You just don’t see it coming, and when it hits you it doesn’t fully register. It’s like a glancing blow. You feel it, and you don’t; you understand it on one level, and on another it’s just impossible to comprehend. For the next day or two, even, a part of me thought there must have been a horrible mistake, that Tunde hadn’t passed, after all. Maybe they’d gotten her mixed up with someone else. Or maybe by some miracle she rallied and was okay. Something. Anything but this awful, lurking, dark truth.

  Lyn was just a wreck. She had been superclose to Tunde. Like me, Lyn had also recently moved back to California, only she didn’t have to do all the traveling I did on the tour, so they were together constantly. Lyn babysat Tunde’s kids all the time, or just came around to hang out. She was shaking when I dropped the phone, and she crawled onto the bed and leaned into me and wanted me to tell her what had happened, but I didn’t know anything. I just said, “Something’s happened to Tunde. It’s bad. I think she’s been shot.”

  What happened was Tunde had been out for a late dinner with friends, just like I thought. But then she drove over to Compton, our old neighborhood, with this guy she’d just started seeing. It was just after midnight, and some kind of argument or confrontation took place. I can’t imagine Tunde arguing with anyone over anything, so I’m guessing the guy she was with was doing the talking. Anyway, somebody pulled out a gun, and shots were fired into the SUV Tunde was riding in. According to the police report, Tunde was hit by the shots that were meant for her boyfriend.

  Just like that, she was gone. Just like that, my great, big sister was taken from us—just when we needed her the most. Her three young children needed her most of all, this was true, but her baby sister needed her, too. And just then, I didn’t see how I could ever step down from that bed in my Toronto hotel room and do whatever needed doing.

  For real.

  Somehow, Lyn and I shifted into emotional autopilot and started making phone calls. I think some of the strength and willpower I needed to push my game to such a high level was also at play here. That strength you develop as a serious athlete isn’t just physical; it’s emotional, and it courses through you like a giant force. Without even thinking about it, I must have put on that superhero cape I’d fashioned for myself on the court, and here it helped me through these next agonizing paces. God knows, I couldn’t have made it through on my own.

  First call I made was to my mom. She picked up the phone and before I could even say anything she said, “My baby’s gone, isn’t she?”

  The calls just got harder after that.

  And the flight back to Los Angeles the next morning? Man, that had to be the worst flight ever—and the longest! We were so upset! The whole way, Lyn and I were in this weird state of denial. They say that’s the first stage of grieving, and here we were, right in the middle of it. When you’re up in the air like that, literally, you allow yourself to think all kinds of illogical thoughts. You think, deep down, maybe you’ll land at the airport and learn this wasn’t what really happened. Maybe the guy who was driving the car was the one who was shot, and Tunde was just grazed in the crossfire. Maybe they did some kind of operation, and because we were on the plane and away from a phone nobody’d been able to contact us to tell us Tunde was going to be okay. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It’s a whole lot of maybes, and you hang your every last hope on each and every one of them and hope something catches.

  But, of course, maybe doesn’t help. You touch down and the truth takes hold and doesn’t let go.

  The next days and weeks were a blur, and I didn’t want to bother my parents or sisters to help jog my memory on this because it was such a pri
vate, painful time. By the grace of our God, Jehovah, we managed to slog through it. We held on to each other for dear life.

  Tennis was about the last thing on my mind, just then. Forget that I wasn’t physically ready to pick up a racquet. It just didn’t seem all that important. A lot of people ask me if maybe tennis would have been a good way to power through all this grieving, but that never occurred to me. When I get angry or hurt or frustrated, I don’t go out and play tennis. I reach for my family, for my friends, for whatever love and support I can find, and here I had all of that going on in a big-time way. That’s what helped me power through. I had my sisters. I had my friends. I even had a long, meaningful visit with So-and-So, who came out to offer whatever comfort he could—so I guess maybe he wasn’t such a terrible guy, after all.

  The most difficult piece was helping Tunde’s kids. My mom took the lead on this one. She moved right in to Tunde’s house and set about raising those kids as her own. Wasn’t any discussion about this, as I recall. Wasn’t ever an issue. It was just what happened next—only here, too, I have no real memory of this new setup taking hold. I looked up one day, and there it was.

  One specific memory comes back to me, though, from those first days and weeks after Tunde’s death. We played a lot of UNO, just like we used to do when we were kids. Me, V, Lyn, and Isha. Jeffrey and Justus, too. It turned out Justus was really good at it. She was smart, like her mom. And fearless. For hours and hours, we’d play UNO. At Tunde’s house. At my apartment, or Lyn’s. Wherever we happened to be—and for the most part, we happened to be together. None of us could sleep, so it was a way to pass the time, a way to keep Tunde close, a way to refocus that picture we all carried of our time together as little girls, sharing that one small bedroom in our house in Compton, talking all night about anything and everything. Here we didn’t talk all that much, but we were together, going through the same motions we did as kids. Late at night, in the middle of the afternoon… whenever. Yeah, there was a piece of us missing, but in some ways we were still whole.

  I look back now and catch the symbolism in the game itself. I mean, UNO is all about being number one, being the first to announce yourself and claim the top spot, and as kids it served to reinforce the competitive streak our parents hoped to instill in us on the tennis court. Here, it seemed to mean something else. Tunde was the oldest, our number one. She was the first to announce herself, and spread her wings, and move on toward a life of her own. No, she wasn’t a gifted athlete, but she was strong, focused, driven. We all cheered her on, same as she cheered us on. And now she was gone, and the four of us would have to take turns in her number one spot, filling the spaces where she had been.

  Your destiny has just begun. Remember your people. Remember your sister. I’m proud of U. Your people are proud of U. Tunde is proud of U. Always, always, always. Keep it up. Play for the moment. Play for yourself. Play for your people. Play for Tunde. U are capable of anything.

  —MATCH BOOK ENTRY

  TEN

  Change It Up

  Like I said, tennis was about the last thing on my mind after Tunde died—although to be honest it wasn’t exactly front and center before she died, either. Keep in mind, I’d hurt my left knee just after that great Grand Slam tournament run that started in 2002. I hurt it in a foolish way, and I’ll offer those details here, to help me make the all-important point that sometimes a rash or stupid act can derail your plans in a big-time way. All that sweat and effort I put in on the court went out the door right after I beat Venus to win the 2003 Wimbledon title. It was the last tournament I played that year, because I was such a dancing fool. That’s what it came down to: a dancing injury. The first major injury of my career, and it happened on the dance floor.

  I was out at a club in Los Angeles, dancing and partying and having a grand old time, but the foolish part was that I was doing it in heels. Everything had been going so well on the court, so there was every reason to celebrate, but then at some point I went into this little spin move out there on the floor and I could feel something go in my knee. I did my move and thought, Oh, no, Serena. This can’t be good.

  It turned out my left quad had partially detached from my knee, and I would need surgery. I hated being sidelined for such a frivolous reason. It was embarrassing—so much so that I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone how it happened. At first I thought I could play through it. I’d been ranked 1st for an incredible stretch, and won all those majors, and I wasn’t ready to step away from all that, I guess. A part of me thought it was expected of me to power through. That’s what champions do, right? They suck it up and press on. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking how it took Zina Garrison five years to get a clothing contract after turning pro, and how my Puma deal was almost up, and I didn’t want any potential new sponsors to have second thoughts about getting into business with me. It was hard enough for an African-American woman to make some noise on the tour in success; I wasn’t about to make it any harder in struggle.

  Also, I knew that my parents and sisters had put all this effort into my career, and that in some ways Venus and I carried the hopes and dreams of our entire family, and I didn’t want to let any of them down, especially after we’d been riding so high. That’s why I didn’t tell anyone what had really happened. I made up some story about how I hurt my knee while I was practicing, so nobody would be disappointed in me. It was silly, I see that now, but at the time it made complete sense. I could put off the surgery, I supposed, but I’d risk further damage. The only thing to do, really, was shut it down.

  Anyway, that’s what led me directly to those long months of rehab and recovery at home in Los Angeles, and the precious gift of all that time with Tunde, but then after Tunde died I was adrift for a while. We all were. I went through the motions of rehabbing and keeping in shape, because that’s just what you do when you’ve spent your entire life around the game, but my heart wasn’t in it and my head wasn’t even close. It’s like I was on autopilot.

  Frankly, I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had that knee surgery to hide behind. It was an easy excuse to stay on the sidelines, because God knows I wasn’t ready to get back out there and play tennis, but at the same time I didn’t think I could go on not playing, if I was physically able. Venus actually went back for the 2004 Australian Open in January, and I remember feeling a little jealous that she could step on the court and maybe forget for a few hours the anguish and agony of losing Tunde, but at the same time I didn’t think I was emotionally strong enough to start playing again even if I had been healthy. And so for me the injury doubled as a silver lining and a black cloud.

  My rehab continued for several months, and yet in all that time I don’t think I fully allowed myself to grieve for Tunde. Oh, I went through the motions of grieving, but I was still too numb and raw to really grieve. I cried, but the tears didn’t really take me anywhere. I prayed—about how we might repair our lives and become whole once again—but in many ways it was a surface kind of prayer. I thought about Tunde and her kids constantly—but here, too, I’m afraid I made room for only surface memories, and surface hopes and dreams, because anything below the surface or too deeply personal was just too painful to consider.

  I didn’t realize it quite this way at the time, but with perspective I see I was keeping myself at arm’s length from what was really going on inside, and here again I think I hid behind my knee. It offered a convenient scapegoat, and a misplaced focus, and in this way I allowed my injury and my recovery to become more important to me than they actually were, which in turn made them less important than they might have been under less trying circumstances. I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s how I’ve come to see it; my knee became my main focus, when really I was too unfocused to have a main focus. And so, just as I was going through the motions of grieving, I was going through the motions of healing as well.

  I was such a mess! Yet everywhere I turned I was encouraged to suck it up and press on, so that’s wh
at I did. I plowed through my grief. I plowed through my physical therapy. I did all my exercises. I worked my butt off and made myself physically whole. And the good news was I put my new knee to work with positive results—at first. My very first tournament back was in Miami in April 2004, and I won it in convincing fashion, with a 6–1, 6–1 victory over Elena Dementieva in the final. After that, I was knocked out early in my next few tournaments, including a quarterfinal loss to Jennifer Capriati at the French Open—a back-to-back disappointment, it turned out, as Jennifer had just chased me from the semifinals in Rome a couple weeks earlier. Next, I somehow got it together to reach the final round at Wimbledon before falling to Maria Sharapova in straight sets (6–1, 6–4).

  It was a progression, to be sure, but I wouldn’t exactly call it progress. If anything, it was a “one step forward, two steps back” kind of progress. Whatever edge I’d given myself following that dispiriting breakup with So-and-So was by now long gone, and for the first time in a long while I dropped out of the Top 10 rankings. This was a disappointment, but not a major disappointment. I mean, it’s unreasonable to expect to play at such a high level indefinitely, wouldn’t you agree? It’d be nice, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t count on it. And with Tunde gone, it wasn’t really important to me just then. Playing was important, because it offered a compelling distraction to what was going on at home, with my family. Working hard was important, because it gave me a place to put my bottled-up energy and frustration. And winning was certainly better than losing, but in the end it was just a game. My drive, my sense of mission and purpose, my desire to be the best in the world… all these things had fallen away without me fully realizing it, and it wasn’t clear if I’d ever get them back.