Step Out on Nothing

by Byron Pitts

  My first real teachable moment at Curley had nothing to do with the classroom. And the first ass whooping did not come from a teacher. In 1974, America’s racial divide seemed far away from Archbishop Curley. I was never targeted because of my color, though on one occasion it was as good a reason as any for a group of upperclassmen to push me around. The first week of high school I spoke to no one and no one spoke to me. I walked to school alone. It was about a two-mile walk through my racially mixed neighborhood, past a predominantly black housing project, a white blue-collar neighborhood, and finally the homestretch through the school parking lot, which had its own diverse hood: some obnoxious upperclassmen who had cars and angry boys who didn’t have cars. Needless to say, I always viewed the school parking lot and the housing project with equal trepidation.

  I soon discovered that Joseph Stumbroski shared the same anxiety. Joe was about five feet four inches tall, with dirty blond hair, an edgy Baltimore accent, and a sophisticated (for his age) sense of style, which seemed odd for a child of working-class parents (a Polish father and an Italian mother). Every day on our trips to and from school, Joe and I would eyeball each other suspiciously, but we never spoke. Until one day, through fate or friction, we bonded or, more accurately, bled together. That day, heading home, I was almost clear of the school parking lot (in those days I thought it was at least a mile long, but on a recent trip there, I was astonished to realize how small it actually was) when several upperclassmen approached.

  “We hate niggers,” yelled one of them. The others nodded in agreement. Just about then, Joe Stumbroski walked past, and for some reason he stopped. “And we hate nigger lovers almost as much as we hate niggers.”

  Joe looked as stunned as I felt. Didn’t these jerks realize that Joe and I were freshmen and that we weren’t friends? Before the upperclassmen could jump us, Joe and I took off. We ran as hard as we could all the way to the bridge. A small bridge over a narrow creek, it was the border that separated the safety of our neighborhood from the segregated communities surrounding it. Joe and I had no idea we lived just a few blocks from each other. And why should we? He had gone to an all-white Catholic elementary school and I to a predominantly black one. We were so overjoyed to reach the safety of the bridge, we stopped to celebrate.

  “I’m Joe. What’s your name?” Joe extended his hand, accompanied by a toothy grin.

  I returned the gesture. “I’m Byron.” But before we could seal our lifelong bond with a handshake, we were approached by several “project boys.” How could we be so stupid? In our sprint from danger, we drew the attention of several teenagers from the housing project. What an odd sight in East Baltimore in 1974: a black boy and a white boy running together. “What do we have here? A cracker boy and an Oreo.”

  Joe was the cracker, and I was the Oreo (black on the outside, white on the inside). There was no escaping this confrontation. Joe and I fought valiantly. Back to back, we fought like warriors against a barrage of racial slurs and fists. When it was over, Joe and I were tossed in the creek with our books. Bloodied and wet, we looked at each other and started to laugh.

  “You fight pretty good for a white boy,” I said through a bloodied lip.

  Joe returned the compliment. “But why didn’t you float like a butterfly,” he added with a chuckle. From that moment on, we became friends and remain so to this day, and Joe’s parents became like my second parents. I can’t imagine that Mr. or Mrs. Stumbroski had any black friends, but they treated me and fed me like family. When my mother underwent surgery and was hospitalized for more than a week, Mrs. Stumbroski made dinner for my brother and me every day. She made sure we ate before her own family ate. And every morning during high school, the neighbors on my block could hear her blowing the horn of her car. “I have to make sure my boys get to high school on time,” she’d often say. The Stumbroskis always had my back.

  Many of my Curley classmates were like brothers, and the priests were more like older brothers and uncles than teachers. The faculty, staff, and administration took an interest in the whole student. It was always an odd and joyous sight every February at all-black New Shiloh Baptist Church to see a half dozen or more white faces in the audience for our annual young adult choir concert. They came all dressed in black, with trench coats covering their robes, just to see me perform. The first year that a handful of priests from Curley came to my church, it caused a minor crisis. As my choir mates and I were lining up in the back of the church to march in that Sunday evening of the concert, someone yelled “What are the police doing here? Black folk can’t have anything without white people messing it up.”

  Several people in the choir and congregation assumed the white guys in the black trench coats were police officers. It was a great lesson about cultural assumptions on both sides. After a few years, my pastor would even acknowledge the priests in the crowd. It was a great source of pride for my entire family that a group of white priests from Archbishop Curley would drive across Baltimore City to attend my concert. For many of the priests, it also became one of the highlights of their yearly social calendar. Some of my friends would joke: “Those priests aren’t here for the gospel; all they want is the soul food afterward.”

  I was lucky to have them there. At an age when many adolescents were challenging authority, I cherished and needed the uncompromising support of these priests. They weren’t simply friars or fathers, they had replaced my real father, who by this time had all but slipped out of sight. At least one time that I know of, my mother had asked him to help with a tuition payment, and he never returned the call. While my mother attended every single one of my football and wrestling competitions in high school, I never saw my father’s face in the crowd. I always missed his presence and missed the things a father would teach a son. How to tie a tie, polish a pair of shoes, or ask a girl out on a date. I would learn these things from a collection of men.

  John Lattimore taught me that a man could be both rugged and well groomed. Mr. Lattimore was the first man I knew who wore a suit and tie to work. He was my mother’s co-worker and longtime friend, part of her drinking and gossiping crowd. Her friends would often gather at our house after work, or my mother would meet them at their favorite bar. Mr. Lattimore’s brother was a college football coach. He knew how much I adored football, so sports was always an easy topic. He was on the short list of my mother’s colleagues who praised her for sending me to Curley and remaining so demanding. I think she always valued his counsel and support. He was well educated and the only person I knew who had a master’s degree and had traveled overseas. He set an example for me of the value of a good education. He and my mom were never romantically involved, but I’m certain he chipped in a time or two to make my tuition payments. My senior year in high school he volunteered to let me drive his Cadillac to the prom. A two-door, blue 1977 Cadillac with a temperature-controlled air-conditioning system (that was fancy stuff in 1978) and white-wall tires. I washed it twice, used Armor All on the tires and interior. I almost slipped out of the seat as I drove to pick up my girlfriend. His kindness always stuck with me. It was one of the first rewards I had ever received for simply being a good kid. It made an impression on me. Do right and eventually people will notice.

  Coach Cook, Coach Mack, Mr. Lattimore, Joe Stumbroski, Mr. and Mrs. Stumbroski, they all had my back. Despite the economic circumstances and academic deficiencies of my youth, I never felt deprived or shortchanged. God had blessed me with the priceless gift of family and a rainbow of friends. People who in their own ways looked beyond my limitations or the circumstances of the time and gave freely of themselves without any expectation of return on their investment, and they did so time after time. Where would I be without each and every one of them? Some were Baptist, some were Catholic, some professed no religion of any sort, to the best of my knowledge, but there’s no doubt they were sent by God. Who’s got your back? Do they know how much you value them? Don’t wait too long. How I wish I’d shown Coach Mack how much I value him.


  FIVE

  The Hands That Pull You Up

  You can’t climb a mountain without some rough spots to hold on to.

  —Roberta Mae Walden

  ALL THOSE HELPING HANDS could smooth the path, but none could do the work for me. Soon I would discover the difference between those who loved and supported me just the way I was and those who could lead me to who I needed to become. To this point, my coaches and friends and the like had taught me valuable life lessons. They were encouraging and kept my spirits up, never allowing me to dwell in self-pity. But I reached an age when I needed to learn specific skills. In many ways, I was still a very young child trapped in an adolescent’s body. What I needed now was structure and academic discipline, because it was still a struggle for me to keep up in school, especially when it came to reading.

  Think of all the books you had read by the time you were fourteen or fifteen. Perhaps an adventure series like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or a classic like To Kill a Mockingbird or one of Michael Crichton’s great science-fiction thrillers. Poetry by Langston Hughes or the sweeping romance of Zora Neale Hurston. Then imagine if you had never read for enjoyment until you were nearly fourteen or fifteen. It would stunt your reading experience and deny you the rich experiences that all those books would have brought you.

  That was me. Playing catch-up. Not a natural reader, but with the years I had invested in my reading machine, I was now a careful and deliberate but slow reader. I could quote Scripture, but I was unfamiliar with the flow of the written word. Not only did it take me longer to read, but since I hadn’t read as much, I didn’t have the same starting point as my classmates. I read a book for the first time cover to cover, simply for pleasure, when I was about fourteen. It was Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea. Can’t be certain why I chose it. It might simply have been because I liked Hemingway’s beard. Nonetheless, when I told my mother of my plans, she advised me against it.

  “Son, why don’t you read a simpler book first,” she said. Here was the woman who had been my number-one champion showing some doubt.

  “What’s wrong ?” I asked her.

  “I don’t want you to get discouraged if the book gets too hard. Why don’t you read something else and work your way up to Hemingway.”

  More than disappointed, I was startled by her reaction. Fortunately for us both, another one of my core qualities kicked in: stubbornness. “I’ll read this book because I can read anything,” I proclaimed.

  Right away I could relate to the old man’s struggles against the marlin and the predatory sharks, as well as the expectations of others. But I would eventually learn there is a dramatic difference between reading and comprehension. I read Hemingway’s words at fourteen, but it would actually take years for me to grasp his meaning. Santiago’s triumph over adversity, and his struggle with his pride, has certainly resonated with me and my life.

  My struggle, along with the shame and embarrassment, has made me angry most of my life. In fact, seething with anger. Jealous, competitive, and sensitive to the slightest insult, I hated anyone who was smarter than I was, which, by the time I got to Archbishop Curley High School, meant almost everybody. Freshman year at Curley I was ranked 310 out of 330 students. More than making me feel inferior to most of my classmates, it made them the enemy. When I wasn’t working to improve my grades to please my mother, I was working harder to prove something to the kids around me. Besides Joe Stumbroski, I had very few friends for the first couple of years of high school. Perhaps Joe and I were close because we were never in the same classes. He was never an adversary. I chose to dislike most of my classmates. In an odd way, it made it easier to function. If a classmate got an A and I got a C, it meant that he was better than me, smarter than me, probably laughed at me and therefore could not be trusted. I avoided study groups. I never wanted anyone to know how slowly I read and how slow I was to comprehend. The same whispers and looks of pity or disgust that followed me into the basement at St. Katherine’s tagged along in high school. I was in remedial reading. The class for dummies was how it was commonly referred to. Another familiar insult. A class full of adolescent boys, working through their learning disabilities, while, outside, the cool boys preened and teased.

  But I managed to keep all my rage inside (or express it on the football field). The best way for me to cope and live within my mother’s rules was to “kill them with kindness.” It became my motto. A bad student. A good kid. A poor reader. The most polite boy in class. Slow to comprehend. He’s the hardest worker we’ve ever seen. It’s been the same approach most of my professional life. Always the underdog, but unfailingly polite and disciplined. One of the coaches at Curley described our football team this way: agile, mobile, and hostile. That was the attitude I took into class. Every slight was noted. I kept score on everything, ready to settle up in due time. Unlike many of the classmates in remedial reading who displayed their anger by becoming discipline problems or mentally punching out of class, mine forced me to emphasize my strengths as I built on my weaknesses.

  However, hard work did not guarantee success. I got a D in reading first term and was placed on academic probation. My mother’s finesse may have gotten me into Curley, but in order to stay, I’d have to improve my grades. I was ordered to stay after school to work with a reading specialist and meet with my guidance counselor. Once again, disappointment created an opportunity.

  Father Bartholomew was a sturdy-looking man, who wore glasses and had thinning blond hair. Though he rarely smiled, he had a pleasant expression on his face. He was my image of what Christ might look like, not his color but his character and gait. He walked with a purpose. He wasn’t athletic, but he always looked fit. He wore sandals almost year-round. Father Bart was both practical and encouraging.

  He asked a life-changing question: “What’s your plan?”

  “I want to play pro football,” I said with a smile.

  He laughed. “That’s a nice dream, but what is your plan? What about college? How do you plan on getting there? Your current grades won’t get you there. Trade school or community college but not a four-year college.” He could see from my expression that this news was saddening to me, so he added, “That’s not good news or bad news. That’s just where you are.”

  It was a powerful reality check. It’s nice to dream, but you need a way to get there. Father Bart and I first mapped out my four-year plan for high school, and then he said, “Now let’s make the plan within the plan. Planning your education, like planning your life, is like building a house one brick at a time. So let’s talk about what you have to do today to prepare for college.”

  That first forty-five-minute session lasted a few hours. Since Father Bart lived only a hallway away in the rectory and I would walk home to an empty house, neither of us was in a hurry. Like an architect at his drafting table, Father Bart laid out everything I’d need to build a “plan within the plan.” From his shelf, he pulled out a college directory, which detailed all the entrance requirements. He opened it and pointed at random to the first college he came across and said, “These are the requirements to get in.

  “You see,” he said, “based on your current schedule, you can’t get into this school. We could keep going, but we’d find the same thing almost everywhere.” My shoulders rounded with disappointment. “Chin up,” he said with confidence, “we’ve got four years to get you ready.”

  For the remainder of the session, we pored over my current schedule and coordinated it with the classes I’d need to get into college. It’s worth noting he never set boundaries on what kind of college. So at fourteen, still reading below grade level, I was allowed to hold on to the notion of endless possibilities. We went over my syllabus for the remedial reading and math classes, and he described how I would have to progress to get into a so-called good school. Then he went deeper, explaining the kind of time I’d have to put in studying. There were formulas he said for how long good students study.

  “You’ll have to study eve
n longer and harder,” he said. By this point, his tone was more like a football coach. He wasn’t quite yelling with excitement, but he was forceful.

  We made a schedule for every half hour of my day, from the time I woke up in the morning until bedtime. He arranged for a tutor. He also got me a job mopping the halls after school so that I’d have a reason to be on campus, other than the extra academic help I needed. It remained unspoken, but Father Bart was aware how sensitive I was to being seen as different. The job after school gave me great cover when friends asked, “Why are you hanging around?” Added to that was the fact that my family could use the extra money. I wasn’t the only kid whose parent(s) scraped to send their son to Curley. The school had its own work/study program of sorts. After school, boys worked mopping the halls and cleaning classrooms.

  The routine suited my mother just fine. Clarice Pitts made sure I did every extra-credit activity and kept to a strict regimen of school, work, sports practice, homework, and church. My mother didn’t allow friends in the house unless she was home. I wasn’t allowed to go to anyone else’s house other than the Stumbroskis’. House parties were forbidden. I could go to a dance at school or to a church event, but teenage hangouts and the mall were not allowed. I was permitted to go out on Friday nights and was always home by 11:00 P.M. Later in life, my own children and their peers have always found such boundaries barbaric. “Nothing good ever happens after midnight,” Clarice often said when I would plead for an extended curfew. Once I gave a well-thought-out rebuttal, “Is that when you and Daddy got married, after midnight?” I thought it was brilliant. She playfully but with an edge punched me in the shoulder. “Don’t say that again.”

  Despite where I was academically, Father Bart never discouraged me. He taught me to know where you are and where you want to go. I wanted to go to college, and Father Bart assured me he would help me get there. In many ways he helped put my reading deficiencies in perspective. I was in remedial reading, but I didn’t have to stay there. I could go farther with a plan. It also helped that we always started and finished our meetings with prayer. How wonderful it was for me to be in an environment where prayer was not simply encouraged but expected. All the distance I had traveled to this point came on whispered prayers. Now I was in an environment that affirmed that prayer can take you as far in life as you’re willing to plan and work. Who knew Franciscans also believed in the African proverb: When you pray, move your feet.