A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball (12 page)

In the meantime, whenever Tragil visited me, she avoided giving me too many details about how our mother was doing. Rarely would my sister even complain about her own situation, which in many ways was much tougher than mine. So smart and alive with whatever she was studying in school or at church, Tragil would tell me everything, like a teacher, hoping to get me as excited as she was about academics—reinforcing the idea that education was the way out.

Then she’d laugh and apologize for being a nerd. At fourteen and fifteen years old, Tragil was not a nerd in the least. Because we never had any money for nice clothes and shoes, my sister might not have been one of those fast, flashy women that Mom warned me about, but as a teenager her looks made her appear to be the girl next door—wholesome and pretty at the same time that she could be tough and independent. And the guys were starting to notice. One in particular had been showing lots of interest and Tragil confessed that the attention was flattering. Well, at least at first.

Knowing that I would worry, Tragil would only say that Mom was asking about me; she didn’t tell me when our mother first went to the county jail or how that meant my sister had started moving from place to place. Although Grandma and our older sisters had been there to help her out, they all had full households and lives of their own.

At one point, Tragil attempted to come live with us at Sixty-Ninth and Harper. Around that time, Bessie and Dad were in the process of getting married. This coincided with the arrival of their first child together, my baby sister Maryya, as well as my father and stepmother being in the early stages of trying to rein in the four of us rowdy boys. Tragil had a hard enough time adjusting to a new school, where she faced threats because word got around that relatives of hers were in gangs not welcome there. Even tougher was coming home and being expected to look after the baby, just because she was the teenage female in the household. Tragil, raised to be independent, had already been on her own, more or less, and wasn’t accustomed to being bossed around, even if she was fourteen. So there came a point when Tragil was so overwhelmed with the drama at the new school and the new rules at the house that she complained under her breath in a way that upset our stepmom.

Well, that didn’t go over well with Bessie or Dad. When he came home, the Denzel Washington of
Training Day
erupted out of our father. He said that she was flip-mouthed and needed to be more respectful. Dad then proceeded to wash Tragil’s mouth out with soap. And once Grandma heard about that, as well as the gang threats, that was the end of her stay in the household. Dad tried to convince Grandma to let Tragil return but our grandmother was adamant: “She ain’t going back.”

Meanwhile, Dad had stayed in touch with Mom to make sure she understood why the decision had been made for me to come live with him. Dad said to her, “Jolinda, if it gets to be too much without your son, you know he can come back and stay with you when you get settled somewhere.”

Mom later told me and Tragil, “I didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t take care of my boy. Pride had always kept me from saying before that I was in the midst of a struggle, trying to raise kids but feeling failed. When your dad came to me that day, I could have been angry and said ‘bring him back, that’s my only son, my child.’ I could have gone and gotten you back. I could have done that. And I want people to know that because it’s never easy. But I looked around my world and asked myself—what the hell was I going to bring you back to?”

Mom acknowledged that my father’s life at that time was better than hers. “One thing about your dad is you always respected him. He had a place to live, a job, and he had sports that the two of you could share.” She reminded me, “I was on drugs and had a boyfriend beating me day and night and I didn’t want you to learn that this was how it was supposed to be. So that’s why I didn’t go and take you back. I chose what would be best for you and God helped us all out.”

Amen.

ROBBINS, ILLINOIS, IS ABOUT A HALF-HOUR DRIVE—JUST under fifteen miles southwest of Fifty-Ninth and Prairie—from where I spent my life up until the age of ten. But when Dad purchased a three-bedroom house of our own in Robbins from one of our relatives and then moved us all there toward the end of my fourth-grade year, I went through major culture shock.

Robbins was no mere small suburb of Chicago. In fact, Robbins labeled itself a village and embraced a proud history that went back to 1917. Incorporated in that year, the village had become the first all African American–governed town to exist in the United States above the Mason-Dixon Line. Then, in the 1930s, the village leadership built the nation’s first black airport and only flight school at the time where African American pilots could receive training. Many instructors and graduates went on to become heroes of World War II as Tuskegee Airmen.

Wow! To me, Robbins was an amazing wonderland when we arrived there. Talk about movin’ on up. I could almost feel an added strut to my step and lift to my chest. I was like,
Dang, this is the Jeffersons!

Life was normal. Stable. We finally had a place of our own and we were being raised now as a family—the kind of family that my father had worked hard to make. Up until this time, maybe there was a sense that I was more of a guest or an added responsibility. But in Robbins, and probably for the first time since I had been under the watch of the women who had raised me, I was made to feel like a real part of the family, which now included my stepbrothers and our new baby sister.

The first shock came a few nights after we moved into the house. Demetrius and I went out front to see if there were any kids to meet. None in sight.

“Listen,” I said, noticing something bizarre.

“What?”

“Do you hear that?”

“No, unh-unh, what?”

“I know.” That was my point—there was no sound of gunshots. In the past, gunshots were what used to put us to sleep at night, almost like background noise. Out here in Robbins, where the crime rate was lower in those days, there was only a quiet hum of crickets and cars going down the street, the normal nighttime sounds of a poor, working-class, family-oriented community.

Even though the village itself was still almost completely African American, we went to schools with neighboring districts that were much more mixed. That was another big shock when I started school at Springfield Elementary and got to know classmates who were white.

Weird. Really weird. But in a good way. The multicultural atmosphere was unlike any school situation I had ever experienced. The facility was nicer, cleaner, and safer. No more of all that surrounding stress, either.

Even though Robbins was poor, with more than a third of the population living below the poverty line and the rest barely above it, the move for the Wade/McDaniels household was a huge step up. That’s how bad it had been in the city.

There was one other shock that my brothers and I hadn’t really expected. Dad and Bessie had decided in the new house that they were going to implement new rules. And they were going to be absolute sticklers about us complying with them! There were chores and homework hours and bedtimes we’d rarely had before. Gone was that lack of structure and freedom that we once had in the city where we could run the streets at all hours. Now we weren’t allowed to go beyond our own block! Since there weren’t many kids we knew close by, the only way we could go anywhere was by prior arrangement between parents.

We couldn’t believe it. We were tough city boys, not babies.

Dad and Bessie were quick to remind us that part of the reason for moving out here was to be able to have a backyard of our own. Why should we be running off anywhere else to play when a safe, nice yard was right behind the house?

My brothers and I exchanged bewildered looks. How were we supposed to make any new friends when we were stuck at home? But Dad shot us enough of a menacing glance that we knew better than to open our mouths.

Structure sucked. A week later, however, we began to see the light. And what had seemed to be a bad thing became a good thing.

Dad woke up early that Saturday morning and took off, returning an hour later with a few of his basketball buddies. We watched as they walked down the driveway that ran alongside the house and toward the detached garage in the back. Dad pointed up right over the garage door as the others nodded their heads in agreement. The next thing we knew, they had unloaded plywood, power tools, a ladder, and an honest-to-God real basketball hoop.

We now had our own court, complete with a wooden backboard and everything that Dad and his friends had made for us from scratch. At first, it was just me and my brothers out there. But soon enough, all the friends we started to make wanted to come to our house. Our basketball hoop in the backyard became something like magic. We became that house on the block where you wanted to be. Instead of being the outsiders who had to fight our way into games, the deal was—
Hey, if you want to get into basketball y’all gotta come play with us.

The backyard was also a place where I could be alone and put aside all the stories that had preceded our life there, and feel a new kind of release. Playing basketball against myself became an important preparation for the challenges of the game ahead. Then again, everything that had happened so far was preparation for competition at a high level, for developing a mental toughness that life required of me even more than the game did.

Until the age of nine, basketball was something I liked and something that could be a way out. It was a connection to my mom and my dad, something that made me feel good, that made me feel cool, that provided comic relief in a mad, mad world.

What was it exactly? I suppose for a kid who kept so much emotion locked up tight, basketball was my comfort, something that brought a feeling to me that other experiences didn’t: a feeling of confidence, of satisfaction, of completion.

At age nine, because of Michael Jordan and the Bulls, because of the skills I started to develop under the guidance of Dad, my first coach, I dared to let myself go, to fall in love with basketball, and invest a solid belief that these dreams could be real.

At age ten, alone in the backyard of our house in Robbins, playing one on one, me against me, I found my wings. Now the challenge was to grow into them.

INSTEAD OF CALLING ZAIRE OUT AND MAKING HIM COME TO me, I walk over in his direction. He looks up, as sad as can be, and rises to meet me.

Zion and Dada are still locked into their game, oblivious to the two of us.

“Zaire,” I begin, trusting that he’s about to help me help him, “come talk to me.” So we find a shady spot and sit down on a bench together and I start in, saying, “I heard you’re having a bad day—an episode. What’s going on, son?”

Unable to keep from crying, he leans in, buries his head on my chest, and says, “Daddy, I don’t want to go . . . I don’t want to go home yet.”

“Zaire, you don’t have to . . . ,” I say slowly, searching for words. Then they come as I look directly at him and announce, “You are home.”

Still crying, he says, “What . . . what do you mean?”

“Well, I didn’t tell you this, but on Friday the judge made a decision. Remember I told you a while back that soon she was going to decide whose house you and Zion are going to live in?”

He nods, listening closely.

“The judge decided on Friday that you and Zion are going to have to live here in Miami with me.”

Zaire’s eyes blink away the tears in an instant as he starts to smile. But then, his voice anxious, the first question he asks is, “What about Mommy?”

And I say, “Look, this is all new, and your mommy is still gonna be Mommy and you’re still gonna go visit her. But you’ll live here and we’ll work out the details together. I haven’t talked to Mommy, but she knows.” There isn’t much more I can say about my faith that eventually she and I can create an open line of communication to make shared decisions about our boys. Instead, I ask Zaire, “Do you have any problems, or questions about living here now?”

He shakes his head no, adding, “I just hope Mommy’s okay.”

Then, after that, I watch him just perk back up, Zaire animated-style as he jumps to his feet and says, “So, so, wait, wait, I’m living here and I don’t have to go back?” Seeing my nod he asks, “Does everybody know?”

“Yeah, pretty much. I was just waiting to tell you and Zion, but I wanted to tell you first.”

“Can I tell Zion and Dada?”

“Sure.”

With that, he runs over to Dada, singing out, “Zion and me are living here from now on, we’re not going back! You can come visit anytime!” To Zion, he says, “Did you hear that? We get to live with Daddy!”

Zaire is so excited and joyous, his little brother and cousin can’t help but be, too. I go to give them both hugs. Zion does one of his running leaps into my arms.

Dada looks like this was a no-brainer. He can see his cousins more often by visiting us in Miami for vacations. Zion nods. If his big brother is happy and his cousin approves, he isn’t going to miss out on the fun.

Zaire can’t stop smiling and neither can I.