“Brandon Fleming!” the clerk yelled. I flinched, thinking, Damn, lady, why you gotta call my name so loud? I wanted to crawl under my chair. There were at least a dozen other people in the waiting room and no one was in a good mood. We were all in need but I imagined that we were suspicious of one another’s motives. It seemed that judgmental eyes followed me as I tucked my head and approached the counter.
The embarrassment evaporated when I received the flimsy EBT card that felt like an American Express Centurion. “I got the food stamps!” I announced as soon as I returned home. We all cheered and dapped and beat our chests, yelling, “Let’s goooo!” like I had just hit the Powerball. We stormed the grocery store and stocked up on cereal, Hamburger Helper, Oodles of Noodles, and packages of hot dogs and ground beef. No more plain noodles for us. We graduated to gourmet noodles with wieners to sauté as we sprinkled premade seasoning packets like Salt Bae. For dessert, we threw bread slices in the toaster, slapped butter on both sides, then dashed them with cinnamon and sugar. We were livin’.
But we did not always enjoy Oodles of Noodles, cinnamon toast, or similarly lavish meals. Our hasty splurging depleted my EBT funds. A benefit meant to support my brother and me had quickly turned into a household feeding trough. We often blew the funds in the first half of the month, then survived the last two weeks on grilled cheese, one-dollar McChickens, and five-dollar Hot-N-Ready pizzas.
We could barely make our rent. We could hardly keep the lights on. Interruptions in service made us vulnerable to winter’s bite and summer’s swelter. Cable was a luxury we could not afford. We entertained ourselves with karaoke, rap battles, and wrestling. When any sort of household disagreement arose, we retrieved the boxing gloves from behind the couch and settled the dispute by sparring. The scuffling took a heavy toll on our living room. The walls were lacerated. Broken lampshades tilted and lightbulbs flickered. Nearly every inch of the original white carpet was stained, and the entire apartment was forlorn. Open the front door and the view featured a defective Philips television on the living room floor and an army-green love seat with a sinkhole in the middle. Girlfriends were disturbed when they saw the place. It looked like the den of Tasmanian devils.
Somehow, our conditions did not discourage us. We sat in a pitch-black living room without electricity or water, using our phones as flashlights. Devouring a struggle meal, Walter and I would look at each other with mouthfuls of leftovers and say simultaneously, “We out here livin’!” We’d laugh hysterically, as though our circumstances were ideal. To us, this was the good life. It was far better than where we came from.
My room was a cave of devastation. Stains covered every inch of carpet. I’d scavenged a piece of bed foam, washed it, swaddled a blanket around it, and tucked it in the corner on the floor. I slept scrunched next to my brother, our bodies close and sometimes famished. We didn’t have much, but we had each other. I lay next to him full of regret. His ragged snores and nightmare twitches reminded me that he was just a kid, and that none of his family members had been able to provide him with what he needed.
But in that desolate room, there was one sign of hope. A paradoxical and prophetic talisman hung on the wall above our pallet, a pennant associated with a place that seemed completely beyond my reach. It was crimson and it hovered in the dark above my head each night like a dreamcatcher. The lettering read: HARVARD.
I’d bought it as a sign of hope and aspiration. It made me feel closer to Du Bois and Locke and Woodson, my Harlem Renaissance heroes. And it’s the place where Cornel West both studied and taught. The pennant gave me hope of meeting him someday. But who was I kidding? I was not on a launching pad for such a place. Neither my GPA, my wallet, nor my EBT card would ever get me to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The pennant was ornamental, on some days an inspiration, and on others days an elegy for places that I would never go.
My debut speech at the church, however, was making me reassess my prospects. Maybe I wasn’t a failure after all. Other people with untapped gifts probably felt as flightless as I had. And if I could be grounded by insecurity and fear of incompetence, maybe they could also be freed with help from people like Coach, Professor Nelson, Walter, and Pastor Gilbert. Maybe they, too, could discover their purpose and their passions and soar. I thought about the words that had poured out of me: God doesn’t call those who are qualified, but He qualifies those whom He calls. I realized that the message wasn’t only for the congregation, cheering me on. The message was for me. I examined my new wings and understood why it took so long for me to fly. Success was always the goal. But the true gift that was given to me—and the gift that I was realizing I was destined to give to others—was everything that I had learned during my process of reinvention. Maybe I could help others transform, too. Maybe I could help people experience their own renaissance. Maybe I could be for others what I’d once needed.
I finally knew what I was called to be. I rushed to meet with my academic advisor. I barged into his office and said, “I want to change my major.” It spilled out of me before I could even take a seat.
“Okay,” he said. “What change would you like to make?”
“How do I become a teacher?” I asked. I could hardly contain the excitement and urgency triggered by discovering my purpose. I’d never wanted anything so badly. I wanted this more than I’d wanted to be in the gang. I wanted it more than being the neighborhood drug lord. I wanted it more than being a real nigga. Not even basketball could compare. For the first time, everything made sense.
My advisor made the change: English with a minor in secondary education. I did not care that my course load would instantly double. An additional year of practicums, placements, and licensure testing was piled onto my Degree Completion Plan. But I was relentless. I was so eager to become a teacher that I went nonstop: fall semester, spring semester, summer semester, and intensive courses during what would have otherwise been holiday breaks. I was so determined that I finished more than four years of coursework in less than three years.
By my final year, I had completed most of my English courses and all that remained were a few secondary education requirements. I completed my first teaching practicum at Amherst High School. I completed my second teaching practicum at Liberty Christian Academy. All that stood between me and my own official classroom was a semester of student teaching—a four-week internship where I’d teach a full semester of English at a local high school. I was ready. I was eager to change the world one student at a time. Until, once again, failure swooped in like a wrecking ball to shatter my dreams.
I could not begin student teaching until I passed the Praxis, a subject-specific test required to teach high school English. There were two major problems. My first year and a half of college, the second time around, was spent being drubbed by dead poets. I was sucker-punched by Shakespeare, drop-kicked by Dickinson, and clotheslined by Chaucer. I’d cheated to keep upright until I could stand on my own feet. And by the time I could do that, I cared only about the wonders of the Harlem Renaissance, where I’d remained until I became obsessed with philosophers both ancient and modern. This eccentric course of study left me ill-prepared for an exam that assessed my knowledge of the mainstream world literary canon, which is mostly white, male, and Western.
I failed the test. I found myself in a familiar place, one that I thought I had escaped forever. I offered my wishes to the universe like magic dust held in the palms of my hands. But a hailstorm of disappointment came crashing down. I took the test a second time, and I failed. But I did not give up. I went back and took the test a third time. And I failed.
Three years of college were spent. I was in too deep to go back and change my major. My financial aid was about to expire. I could see only two options: pass the Praxis and complete my degree or become a two-time dropout. The test was expensive, and each attempt sent my bank account closer to the red. And if I kept failing the test, I would run out of financial aid before I could graduate. That would force me to withdraw, and I would n
ot let that happen.
My entire future hinged on passing the Praxis, but I couldn’t afford to register for it again. Pastor Gilbert stepped in and footed the bill for me. He held my hands and prayed with me. Afterward, he said, “You got this.” I was afraid God kept tally on all my false promises. But a calm came over me because I knew God listened to Gilbert. I studied harder than I had ever studied for anything. I was ready to make him proud. I was ready to pass the test, get my degree, and change the world of education like Joe Clark from Lean on Me. I walked into the testing center with my head held high for a fourth and final time. I wore a big, confident grin because Gilbert had asked God to go with me. I took the test. And I failed again.
Options exhausted, I turned to my academic advisor in desperation. “You can walk,” he said, “but your degree won’t be conferred until you pass the Praxis and complete your student teaching.” This was devastating. I would be stuck in purgatory, a graduate who could not enter my profession. I’d have to keep working for minimum wage.
“Or…” he continued, “since you’re almost done with your English credits, you could drop the secondary education minor and graduate with a bachelor of arts in English.” It felt like he’d lodged a javelin in my heart. I had completed all those education courses for nothing. This was the worst good news I had ever received. I could graduate, which was enough to make the angels sing. But I could not become a teacher.
I had no clue what else to do with an English degree. I was devastated. I had found my purpose. I had never been so sure of anything. But now it seemed like the universe had dangled this prize in front of me and just as my fingers were closing around it, the prize was yanked away.
A familiar feeling of dejection tugged at me. I could hear my name being called from the depths of a depressive abyss that I’d once tumbled into. But I would not allow it. Not this time. I heard the mantras that had pulled me out of self-pity and set me on the path toward learning. Coach’s voice rang in my ear: We don’t complain, son. We compensate. And Professor Nelson’s charge: What will you do about your own disadvantages?
If I had learned nothing else on my journey, I had learned how to blaze alternative paths. I had learned that trailblazers don’t wait for opportunities; we create them. So I decided to seize fate’s pen and write my own narrative. No license or piece of paper would determine whom I was called to be. Since the Virginia Department of Education denied me an official classroom, I decided that I would create my own.
Some of the teenagers who attended Gilbert’s church came from broken homes and were dragged there by single mothers struggling to manage rebellious kids while keeping everyone fed and housed. These women hoped church would be a panacea for all their problems. I could relate, not only because these women reminded me of my own mother, but also because I was now Ben’s guardian. Ben had made friends easily, but he and these other kids were always up to some kind of trouble.
One Sunday after church service, the teens gathered to ravage the refreshments in the foyer. Meanwhile, the parents bemoaned the complexities of child-rearing. I leaned in like a complete tenderfoot. As an inexperienced guardian, I needed all the tips I could get. Being a surrogate parent was odd because I felt like a grown-up in one sense, but in another, I was only a twenty-two-year-old college kid with five roommates and hardly enough money to keep a quarter tank of gas in the car, food on the table, and the bathroom stocked with toilet tissue. And it was awkward having parent talk with women who were my mother’s age.
“I don’t know what else to do,” Tasha said. She sighed and looked away. Her daughter Shontae had just been suspended from school. It pained me to see her look so hopeless.
“I hear you, girl,” Monique said. “Same with Cordell.” Cordell had brought home another report card full of Fs. He was on the verge of failing the tenth grade. Ryan, just like Ben, had been held back a grade. He was already eighteen and repeating his senior year. As more parents chimed in, it was clear that these kids were headed toward alternative school or dropping out. My struggles as a single brother were no different, so I fit right in.
I wanted to give them hope. I searched for reassuring words that I could not find. We were all stuck in a dark tunnel, and none of us saw light dancing at the end. We were at an impasse between our desires for the kids and their desires for themselves.
“They’ll come around,” I said. I promised them that the maternal suffering pays off. I assured them that if I could be transformed, as wayward as I was, the same could happen for their kids.
“I hear you,” Tasha said. “But how? And when?”
I had no answer. They were skeptical about a promise so disconnected from their day-to-day reality.
The conversation moved on but I couldn’t. Tasha’s questions pricked me like a thorn. I looked at the mothers chatting like everything was okay, but it wasn’t. I looked at the kids hanging out like they were okay, but they weren’t. None of us were okay. We were all laughing to avoid crying, two more generations of people living in a perpetual present because none of us were taught to plan for the future. Frustrated, I wondered, Why don’t any of us have answers? When I looked at those kids—who were bold and bursting with untapped promise—I saw myself. They were me. That’s when I realized that I could be the answer. My purpose was to be for them what I’d needed when I was their age.
“I tell you what,” I said to the group of mothers. “Let me spend some time with them this weekend.”
I had no plan. But there were no objections, no questions except, “You gon’ pay for food?” Without hesitation, they agreed. “Anything to keep him out these streets,” Andrea said.
I invited Ben’s friends to hang out at our apartment. I was eager to engage them, but my attempts at mentorship immediately fell flat. They shrugged off advice about good grades and college and professional goals, because they could not conceive of life beyond dating and sports and fashion and video games. The times I interrupted their conversations with words of wisdom, their eyes rolled and I could hear Ben murmur under his breath, “Here he go again.”
Redirecting my brother was much, much harder than I had expected. I warned him of dangerous behaviors, only for him to aver, “But you did it.” He was right. I begged him to learn from my terrible mistakes, but I didn’t talk honestly with Ben about our past. It was easier to bury pain than to acknowledge the things he’d watched me do. I had traded in my durag and Timberland boots for Gilbert’s hand-me-down blazers and hard bottoms from Goodwill. Ben did not recognize this renaissance version of me. At first, he didn’t believe that this person was real: this suit-wearing, book-toting brother who willingly attended church on Sundays. I did not blame him. At times, I hardly recognized this person myself.
I was determined to get through to Ben and his friends. I thought carefully about what I’d needed when I was their age, in a similar family situation, alienated from school. It was not a lecture or a wrist slap. I needed someone to meet me where I was. So I changed my approach and stopped lecturing them.
I soon learned that there is a difference between being uninterested and being disengaged. We often accuse young people of being uninterested in matters we consider important, but seldom do adults claim responsibility for our failure to engage them at their level. When I was younger, I struggled to identify with teachers because they expected us to come to them. They rarely came to us. They did not understand culturally responsive education. But my coaches did. Granted, it did not always work. But they tried. Sometimes they offered outdated and outlandish advice on how to get girls; sometimes they uttered hilarious malapropisms when attempting to use our slang or quote our music. What mattered was their understanding that language can be the great divider or the ultimate unifier. Their attempts to speak our language said, I see who you are, I see where you are, and I’m willing to meet you there. They were like travelers who learn some basic phrases before going abroad, instead of expecting everyone in the world to speak English. They didn’t need to master the mus
ic, the slang, or the culture. The coaches just needed to demonstrate their interest in and their appreciation of our culture, even if it was different from their own.
I had what these kids needed. I knew it. I had knowledge that I was certain could transform them into scholars. But as Theodore Roosevelt said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” So when they hung out at my apartment, I stopped lecturing and I started listening. I pressed pause on the advice playlist and focused on learning their language.
I let our interactions be guided by their interests. If they wanted to talk about dating, that’s where we went. If they wanted to play games, that’s what we did. If they wanted to talk silly teen gibberish for hours, that was cool. Because I had to learn how to love them before I could learn how to teach them. I had to prioritize their humanity over my academic agenda. And when they saw that, I earned their trust.
The six of us kept meeting but my apartment was just too cramped. When my roommates were home, there might be ten to twelve of us sprawled across the floor. One Saturday, I suggested that we take our hangouts to the church. Going to the church was not their preference, but I secretly wanted to try something. Their parents were eager to drop them off.
“God bless you,” Tasha said. “One less child for me today!” She had five kids and could use the relief. Andrea thanked me profusely for babysitting her two teens. Monique kicked Cordell out of the car and yelled, “Keep him as long as you want!” as she sped away.
I was left with disgruntled teens who did not share their parents’ enthusiasm. They moped through the door, visibly inconvenienced on a weekend morning. They hated being dragged to church on Sundays. The only thing worse was being dragged to the church on a Saturday, too.
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