A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball (5 page)

And that was that.

Of course, I had other memories of this period in time out there on the porch where Grandma usually kept her chair just under the overhang. In warmer weather, we’d stay outside farther down on the stoop, sitting there for hours, late into the night. And Grandma would watch the goings-on in the neighborhood, keeping an eye out not just for her own kids and grandkids but for everyone. Nowhere in the world was safer to me than my spot sitting behind my grandma. No matter how many times she’d say, “Go on in, chile, time you go to sleep,” I’d say, “I don’t wanna go to bed, I’m not tired!” and then proceed to curl up right behind her and fall asleep there.

At sixty-five years old, Willie Mae Morris, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, mother of nine, including my mom, was more to me than a mothering/grandmother figure. She was probably closer to a mentor, teaching me fundamental lessons for life—that later would carry over to basketball. Grandma taught me the importance of family, of loyalty, of looking out for loved ones. She tried to teach me patience and forgiveness, too.

“When somebody do you wrong or do somebody wrong that you love,” Grandma would say, “gettin’ back at them ain’t the way.”

At five years old, I’d heard all that “two wrongs don’t make a right” stuff. But, frankly, I already knew that if you didn’t stand up and answer someone who disrespected you or somebody in your family—that would be seen as weak. You had to fight back.

You can ask Tragil about that. Not long after I started kindergarten, she began telling me about a bully from her school who’d been teasing her, taking her book bag, messing up the stuff inside, and throwing everything on the ground, and scaring her. Finally, when he did it in front of me after she stopped by to walk me home from school one day, I went ballistic and let him have it. Me, a skinny little five-year-old boy, hauls off and punches this sixth-grade badass in the nose?! Naturally, he turned around and punched me twice as hard in my nose, at which point Tragil stopped being afraid of the bully and chased him down the street to get vengeance, but he outran her. The fight would have been broken up by older kids. They may have whispered something later about who some of our family members were. Whatever was said, after that the bully backed down completely.

Grandma’s point was to let it go. “Can’t fight water under the bridge.” She emphasized that forgiveness wasn’t about weakness. “You gotta move on, learn to forgive,” she explained. “But you never forget.” That was my grandmother’s belief and she repeated it: “Forgive but don’t forget.” Then, looking at me straight in my eyes, she asked, “Understand?”

I nodded but it took me years to really understand. Still, in the meantime, she had started to teach me what it meant to be tough in a different way.

Willie Mae Morris was so tough. She could walk down the streets, through the most dangerous parts of the neighborhood, and nobody would mess with her no matter what was going on. There was this aura of pride and dignity that everyone admired, which came along with the fact that she was obviously a godly woman. Grandma commanded a presence and a toughness.

Nothing intimidated Grandma, not even the police. And nothing scared me more than the police. So whenever they came around, I hid right there on the porch behind Grandma and no harm would ever come to me—because I think the police had a respect for Willie Mae Morris, too. She was like the patron saint of the neighborhood and as long as she was sitting there on the stoop or down in the grass in front of the building, they almost never tried to come in on a bust.

Of course, almost is not never. After that first raid, there would be others. I was terrified that the next time they would take Mom away and not let her come home.

The cure for the fear, as far as I could tell from Grandma, was to be on my toes, to use my senses, paying attention to sights, sounds, and smells, learning to read people—anticipating their next moves by little clues. By being watchful, my fear wouldn’t overpower me so much and I could enjoy the entertainment value of all these interesting characters who all passed by 5901 Prairie Avenue.

Grandma loved to have me watch with her, too. And her laugh was contagious and unforgettable. Her laugh would ring in my head forever—the music of someone holding on to joy as hard as she held on to faith.

Whenever something positive happened, Grandma would remind me of it often, teaching me to value happier memories. We talked so much about the day I graduated from kindergarten at the Cockrell Child Parent Center that it stands out as a highlight of childhood. The school was for pre-K and kindergarten, before I’d continue on at Betsy Ross Elementary, which Tragil attended. For the graduation ceremony, I came dressed in my best clothes—a little suit I’d been given by a member of the family—and I wasn’t sure if Mom was going to make it. But lo and behold, when I stood onstage I looked out and spotted her there in the crowd, waving and smiling proudly, pointing me out to the people around her.

Grandma loved any occasion that brought others together. That stoop was like her office—with everybody stopping by for a visit. My sisters and their friends would come by, as would neighbors and aunts and uncles and cousins, sometimes even sitting down on the steps with her before heading off to wherever they had to go. Except for me. I’d hang with Grandma, in the best seat in the house, right behind her, to watch and listen, enjoying the show. As scared as I was of the police, I eventually started to have a running inner monologue—me pretending I was a stand-up comedian or something—about the different officers. Like there was one of them who moved in a robotic motion, his head rotating from side to side, and his eyes always hidden behind his shades. He was the one I nicknamed “Robocop.”

Whenever he headed our way, I’d just think to myself,
Okay now, here comes Robocop,
and chuckle under my breath. Somehow that made him not as mean. I’d share my inside jokes with Tragil and with my only friend of these years, a kid who started as a bag boy carrying drugs when he was all of five.

That was a damn shame. And most people at the time would have agreed. But, again, that was the culture, the way of the world that we lived in: that eventually everyone was going to be connected or related to the gangs in some capacity, part of the industry that was all there was.

No one spoke too much to me of the history of the Chicago gangs. The older folk, however, could remember that they originally formed to be of service to the needs of the community, like a social fraternity for belonging, when your own family couldn’t be there for you or when other institutions let you down. When politicians and even church leaders had no answers for the problems in the community, the gangs stepped in and actually fulfilled important functions. That changed over time. Still, for a struggling, mostly poor, all African American community like ours, where pretty much the only white people we encountered were the police (and they were all white then), gangs like the GDs and the BDs offered protection and options. The drug trade wasn’t just one option; it more or less became the only option, what ruled every aspect of life—
the
answer.

All this reality played itself out over the years as I watched the main players and the supporting cast of characters go about their daily business in plain sight. This wasn’t out of the norm for kids my age, either. But maybe, as a serious spectator, I paid extra attention. I knew who sold what and where. By the time I left, I’d seen over the course of my time every corner, every signal, every handshake for the exchange of money and drugs. Since the police watched, too, the dealers had to keep changing it up, trying different stuff for the handoffs so as not to look shady. There was an art and a science to these moves. The buyer would have the money in a hand and the seller had the drugs in a hand. The two would approach, act cool like they knew each other, do a kind of “what’s up” hesitation, and then in a blink
—slap!
—the handshake exchange was done and did. So smooth. Into the pocket.

Now the twist in this story is that whatever any of them might be doing on the corners or down the street, whenever they passed by my grandma’s porch a noticeable change occurred. All of a sudden, they’d stand up straighter than before and greet my grandma with the most polite, courteous attitude. They always began with “How you doin’ Momma Morris, you need anything?”

No doubt they’d go right back to their ways as soon as they were out of her sight. But when they walked past this sixty-five-year-old woman sitting out on our porch, it was straight-up respect. Total. The unwritten law seemed to be that you couldn’t just walk by and not say “How you doin’ Momma Morris?”

The respect was something that I picked up on very young, something that as her grandson gave me pride, that I vowed to carry with me from that time forward, and that I have in me still.

MY PARENTS, IN DIFFERENT WAYS, WERE BOTH DREAMERS. And each is responsible for planting the seeds of dreams in me—in soil that was already enriched by the general landscape.

Let me add that my serious interest in basketball didn’t happen until I was about nine years old. Even then, the odds were very much against me having any real success as a baller. But growing up how and where I did before that age gave me some unusual skills that would serve me down the line in overcoming those odds.

For starters, I was Chi-town born and bred, Southside, too, and if you didn’t love basketball a little, I’m sorry, but that meant there was something wrong with you! Besides that, Chicago weather, no matter what the season, was like growing up in a climate of extremes that amounted to built-in endurance training.

Fall was my least favorite season. Not because of school. Throughout childhood, school was a positive outlet for me. In spite of being a quiet kid, I was one of the better students and liked the fun activities, including games and classroom projects. There was safety and structure. There was a space to forget worry. But outside and back at home, with the days getting shorter and nights longer, when Mom wasn’t home I couldn’t stay out on the porch behind Grandma as late. The chill in the air was also a reminder that winter was coming.

I could appreciate the sight of the leaves turning the colors of red and gold. Yet the mood of the world around me seemed less festive than in other seasons. The emotion wasn’t something I wanted to name, but in hindsight, I’d call it sad. What I did like about the season as I turned six and then seven was getting to move off the porch and go follow Tragil on the weekends and evenings when she was going out with her friends.

If Mom saw that my sister was leaving to go somewhere and said, “Wait five minutes and then you go follow her,” that was my cue to be on a mission. Out of there like lightning, I kept myself at a distance while following the trail, careful to avoid tripping or making any extra noisy moves that would tip off Tragil or her friends. The trick was never to take my eyes off them but to stay hidden by ducking behind cars. It never occurred to me that I was developing skills for the basketball court. However, I couldn’t have asked for a better early obstacle course with all the weaving and darting between parked cars and trash cans, plus the ducking down and then jumping up and running some more after that. Half the time Tragil would spot me ducking behind a car or almost tripping over my growing feet. But she wouldn’t say anything. I think she wanted me to honor Mom’s request to look after her.

Winters in Chicago were brutal, the worst, but somehow they didn’t bother me as much as fall. After the first heavy snowfall of the season, I’d go out that next morning all layered up to walk to school, not able to feel anything because of the numbing cold, and imagine I’d landed on another planet and this was how we had to walk in our space suits. I maximized opportunities for fun, making snow angels and snowmen and the best snowballs in the neighborhood. Along with having a good arm for throwing, I had my own strategies for being sneaky at throwing snowballs at people—like Tragil and her friends—and then ducking and hiding so they never knew who was responsible.

Most winter nights were too cold for sitting outside late to watch for Mom when she wasn’t home. Instead, I’d wait up indoors by the window, often falling asleep there on the window ledge inside. In the morning, I’d find that someone had picked me up and carried me back to bed. In those instances, I’d run to check in on my mother, and most of the time, to my relief, she would be there in her bed, asleep.

Then came the rainy season, otherwise known in Chicago as spring.

Since everything appeared to be gearing up for summer, spring brought me excitement for what was to come. The first weeks of spring were my idea of breaking out of jail, coming out of the Chicago winter, and getting to go outside to play again. Or, as in the case of the rainy days, play outside on the porch for hours while Grandma sat in her chair under the overhang watching the street.

In just sneakers, jeans, and a sweater, no more winter coat or snow boots, I was out again, breathing the smells of the springtime in the city, waiting for sunnier days, singing, “Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day,” which always got a chuckle out of Grandma.

With a hard little rubber ball someone had given me, I made up rules and regulations for the Rain Game, as I called it. The object of the game was to hit the ball on the wall and elsewhere and get it to come back to me. Out on the window was a metal ring that I would attempt to hit, like scoring a basket, and then ricochet at the right angle to land back into my hands. If the ball hit the ring and then rolled downstairs, the points didn’t count. That also meant I’d have to run after it in the rain and get all wet. At six and seven years old, my ball-handling skills weren’t half bad. Even if they were based on that little hard rubber ball.

The Rain Game helped me pass the time until my favorite season arrived. With the first sign of summer, Grandma would move her chair closer to the edge of the porch and let me sit on the stoop, even run around the front yard and play on the grass. As hotter days wore on, she’d let me go follow Tragil and go places with my cousins, all of us coming up with different games and adventures.