A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball (18 page)

One day she came to see me and wanted to talk about not rushing into anything serious with the opposite sex. I had my first girlfriend at the time and we were nowhere near serious. Tragil started to go into a whole conversation about not doing anything rash and becoming a dad in my teens.

The embarrassed look on my face must have told my sister everything. She then proceeded to try to tell me about the birds and the bees. I stopped her right there. “No, that’s okay. I’m playing ball right now. No serious girlfriends.” As far as becoming a father in my teens, I knew all too well what happens when kids themselves start having babies. Now, as far as being eager to lose my virginity, that was another story. But even after having a first girlfriend, I was still pretty clueless.

The next young lady I dated was someone I’d known since the move to Robbins. Her name? Siohvaughn Funches. We had been friends from the neighborhood and school all this time, never with any hint of romantic interest. Siohvaughn was one grade ahead of me. She was very smart, very cute, outgoing, talkative, a go-getter. Around the time when she was sixteen and I was fifteen and a half, we started spending more time together and soon were more than just friends.

Part of that was built on my needing Siohvaughn; at the very least I had come to depend on the support and affection we shared. Siohvaughn was sensitive to the trials and tribulations of my background. Raised by a single mom, she had recently gone through the loss of a sister in a tragic car accident. Our different struggles became a bond for the two of us.

At Siohvaughn’s house I could do homework or just hang without the arguing and drama of being at the Wade household at the time. Not that I was always over at the Siohvaughns’. But as the weeks and months passed, I’d be staying over one night and then maybe another, until it would be a few days at a time and so on. Eventually the Funches women became almost a second family, giving me a place to stay, a shower after a long practice, and a hot meal. And I liked that a lot. I enjoyed that treatment. Who wouldn’t?

Unfortunately, I now know that being drawn into a relationship so young wasn’t the way to build toward a lifelong commitment like marriage. Neither of us knew who we were and what we ultimately might want from a life partner. Certainly I didn’t. Of course, I wasn’t thinking long term. There was a moment or two when I realized, as a popular athlete in school, that this was the time to enjoy the perks of being the big man on campus. That said, in those days, I was more focused on basketball and seeing where it could take me. In hindsight, I should have definitely played the field more when it came to the opposite sex.

Then again, I thought the concept of being high school sweethearts was cool. Siohvaughn had qualities I’d been raised to value: church-oriented, an excellent student, and not one of those “fast women” my mother always warned me about. As more of an introvert, I was impressed by her ability to express herself forcefully, to get loud and free at times with her sense of humor, too; yet she had insecurities and wasn’t stuck-up. All of that led to a comfort factor. Besides, I felt a commitment to what was the right and honorable thing to do. After all, I was being given the safe haven I needed (and wanted) a lot in those days. And because of the huge sense of responsibility that’s at my core—this belief that if someone does something for me, I want to do something for them
times ten
—I fell easily into the role that was presented to me, of boyfriend. But our relationship was built on that flawed foundation of my needing her, a dynamic that would reverse and come back to haunt us later on.

Darlene Funches was a very caring mother figure. Here, too, a void was being filled. As my future mother-in-law, she would soon take an active role in helping guide some of the decisions that would alter the course of my career. And that brought with it mixed blessings—as only time would tell.

“IS THAT MY GRANDSON?” MY GRANDMOTHER CRIED, CALLING down to me from her spot up on the porch at 5901 Prairie.

Early in the summer of 1998, I managed to take breaks between practices and games in the city to go see how Grandma, at almost eighty years old, was doing. Anything to hear her laugh, to sit up on the stoop next to her outside in the thick Chicago humidity and watch the world around us.

Willie Mae Morris hadn’t aged a minute. She still had her full pretty head of white hair, her tough pride, and constant concern for all of her loved ones. Everything else around, except for her, seemed to have changed. The corners nearby had been mostly shut down, much of the action moved on to other blocks, leaving this stretch of the Southside to look kind of barren. Almost a ghost town.

As a younger kid, I had never understood how communities like mine could be allowed to fall through the cracks, how people in a country as rich and powerful as the great United States of America could be left to scrounge for the most basic of needs. Yes, I had made an early vow to be different and not continue the cycle of poverty and the cycle of fatherless families that lay heavy like a suffocating blanket on my streets. But now at sixteen, I started to do the math—and to grasp the reality that becoming successful enough to make a difference for my family and community was going to take money and influence far beyond the reach of anyone I’d ever met.

How? How to do that? Was I crazy to think that I could have money and influence to do big things for others one day? Probably. I knew the odds. The odds were as close to unheard-of as me growing four and a half inches over one summer. That wasn’t even in my dreams.

A much more realistic dream was fulfilled right there on the porch with my grandma when she finally asked, “You hungry, chile?” She told me to go on up to the kitchen and help myself. And you know I did!

When I returned, my stomach full, I sat back down on the steps, waiting for Grandma to bring up news of Mom. But she said nothing, other than to ask God to continue to watch over me and my cousins and to spare her grown-up kids from too many more troubles.

I could have asked more specifically about Mom but didn’t. This was at that stage where you didn’t ask for fear of hearing worse than you knew before. Grandma and I communicated on that level where you didn’t have to say anything anyway. No news of Mom was bad news.

One of the last times most people knew what had happened with Jolinda Morris Wade was in August 1996 when she appeared in court, as per the terms of her last arrest, and was sentenced to another four years at Dwight Penitentiary, effective immediately. With time served and her prior record of good behavior, the sentence was reduced to eighteen months.

Once again I would have to wait years until my mother could recount the dramatic events that followed. As in the past, after Mom went behind the walls, getting sober was no problem. She’d say with a laugh, “You know, as before, God was in there waiting, telling me, ‘Jolinda, this is the only place I can talk to you!’ ” Four months at the penitentiary and she was doing so well that she became a candidate for work release, a program that helps inmates find jobs in the real world and gives support for eventually transitioning into an independent life. After she put in for the program, Mom recalled, “I got accepted November 1996 and shipped out to the Work Release Center on the Westside of Chicago. While I’m in there, God had me favored. I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke cigarettes.”

Her first job was in telemarketing, and as long as she was given supervision and structure, Mom thrived. She felt like her life could have meaning—that maybe she had finally battled her demons. The big area of discomfort, however, was meeting other people. That was how, in March 1997, when she started attending classes as well as working her telemarketing job, with free time to independently get from the center to work and to school, she had her first slip, walking unsupervised to class with enough money for something to eat in her pocket.

An inner warning told her not to stop off at the liquor store for a sandwich, she admitted. But the nervousness about connecting to others blocked out her better judgment. “I remember going into that store and asking for a pack of Newport,” she would say, explaining her rationalization, reminding me that she never smoked menthol cigarettes. And then she bought something other than her old standby of red wine, telling herself that anything else wouldn’t tip her off. She made it to school without incident and then went back to the Work Release Center, thinking she could camouflage any telltale signs. “When I got in, the lady called me over and asked if I had been drinking, and that’s enough to send me back to the penitentiary. And I said, ‘Yes ma’am.’ ”

The woman thought about it and told Mom, “I know how hard you’ve been working. I don’t want to send you back.” Instead, she recommended that my mom go on to work that afternoon and then come back in to see her afterward and they would discuss getting her into a new program and class.

If there was a lesson there, that one slip didn’t have to ruin all the progress she had made, Mom hadn’t reached that understanding yet. She still hadn’t overcome the
F
of failure she had branded on herself. So what did she do?

“When I left up out of there, I was supposed to take the train going north to work. Instead I took the train south, right back to the old neighborhood. And I had money in my pocket.” As it happened, Mom had run into Dad on her way back to the Work Release Center and he had given her money, hoping she was turning her life around with school and work. But there she was, back on the same block with all the familiar triggers and temptations.

The rest of the day did not go according to plan, as Mom told the tale: “First thing, I ran into a friend of mine and he was sick. Dope sick. And he asked if I had any change, and I gave him ten dollars. I’d decided to ditch work and then get back to the center in time.” That went awry when she stopped over to see her brother, one of my uncles, and sat talking to him and some friends. “Well, by that point, I stayed too late and couldn’t get a ride. Nobody.”

It was never easy for me to listen to how my mother made her decisions at different crossroads when she was in her madness. But that difficulty is nuthin’ compared to her effort to look back and recollect the numerous ways that she fell down without ever fully giving up. So I have tried never to judge her or blame anyone else for where her decisions took her. I admire her even more for being able to tell others the truth of her actions without self-pity or excuse, but by owning her actions.

The thing that I understand better now about Jolinda Wade is that her true nature is all love, all heart, all joy. Obviously, her temptation out on this work furlough program wasn’t the result of wanting to go back to the old life of dope and addiction. The temptation in those moments when nobody could give her a ride back to the Work Release Center, where she was about to be sent back to the penitentiary, was more primal: the desire for freedom.

Mom said it more simply: “That night, I made up my mind. I wasn’t going back in.” Her sentence by now was whittled down to only eight months to go. “Eight months and . . . I left. On my mind was where to go next. I tried the guy who asked for money earlier but he wasn’t answering his door. That was unusual. But I had to go somewhere because I was now an escapee. I wasn’t sure what was about to happen—whether they were gonna send the police after me or how they would track me wherever.”

Months passed before I even heard about my mother’s situation. Eventually I learned that she went to a friend’s place and was able to stay there that first night, not saying that she was on the run. When she left there the next morning she was for all intents and purposes a fugitive, basically moving to different neighborhoods incognito.

“The first thing that happened that next day was that I found out the guy who had asked me for the ten dollars had OD’d that night. He was a dear friend of mine and I couldn’t believe I had given him the money. What if I hadn’t? He could be alive. If, if, if. When I’d gone to his place and he didn’t answer, he was up there OD’d.”

My mom never told me how long she managed to stay off dope in this time. I do know that she blamed herself for the misery and desperation of her existence. I do know that she blamed herself for the misery of others. After a few days of her not having anywhere to go, another friend let Mom stay in an extra room at her house. The downward spiral happened faster than ever. Mom recalled that she was truly scared. “Now I feel like death is following me, that anyone I’m around is gonna die. I felt like God was telling me, ‘You ain’t gonna be able to be out here and take all this stuff I’m giving you and throw it in my face.’ ”

For almost five years that was going to be her life: running from the law, dealing and using, getting beat up. She couldn’t be legal or have an ID on her in case she did get arrested. Of course, she couldn’t work or rent a place to live in. Finding her was tougher than ever.

In the summer between sophomore and junior year, a month or so after I had a good visit with Grandma, Dad heard of the address where Mom was staying and gave me a ride to see her. My father had apparently given her a heads-up, enough for my mother to pull herself together and not look too bad.

Or maybe that was just because I hadn’t seen her in so long. Still, I wasn’t encouraged when I glanced around that room—where the air was thick with smoke and the smell of burnt chemicals and there were ripped sofas, piles of cigarette butts in ashtrays, and people in the shadows either with the glazed-over expression of a dope fiend or the edgy glare of a crackhead. I thought my mother had landed in hell. She would tell me later that after all the years of being abused, she had become abusive, beating up the men around her who were in that same hell.

No matter what, Mom was going to see to it that I didn’t leave without something she could give. So after she asked who was my favorite girl and I told her, like always, “You mom,” my mother turned to the others in the room and said sharply, “Who got money up in here?” She waited a beat and then insisted, “Put it on the table.”

Mom scooped up twenty dollars lying there and said, “This is going into my baby’s pocket,” as I took the money from her.