One and the Same (5 page)

Ronde says his old timidity kicks in when he's walking through an
airport or visiting Tiki in Manhattan. “Part of me just wants to hide,” he tells me. “I just put my blinders on and walk fast.”

Will he respond if someone calls out?

“I'll respond. But if someone's looking at me, trying to figure out which twin I am, I'll just keep walking.”

Tiki is the Giants' all-time leader in rushing and receptions. He amassed more total yards in his last three seasons than any other player in the league, setting most offensive records for the Giants, which got him voted three times into the Pro Bowl, the NFL's annual all-star game. In 2005, Ronde became the first cornerback in NFL history to record twenty career interceptions and twenty career sacks. He was voted to the Pro Bowl four times and chosen by the Associated Press for five All-Pro Team rosters (essentially an honor roll, not an actual team).

I ask Tiki if, in the annals of football history, he or Ronde will be remembered as the bigger star. He pauses. “This is what Ronde likes to say, and it's very true: ‘Tiki is the less-talented, more popular twin.' As far as pure accomplishments, far and away, he's better than me. He's always been a better athlete than me. But I was always faster, stronger, and I played the glory position. So people knew who I was, simply because I was a running back. I did an interview with Ronde for
Football Night in America
three weeks ago, and the last question I asked him was, ‘Are you where you are because of me?' And he basically replied, ‘If I
wasn't
your brother, I'd still have been a great cornerback, but I wouldn't have gotten any recognition. Because there are a ton of great cornerbacks that nobody knows.' So I say to him, ‘You owe it all to me!'”

Ronde says, “I'm more diverse athletically. Tiki could never run hurdles; he's not coordinated enough. That sounds funny to say about a world-class athlete, but things are very specific with him, especially in his athletic ability. He couldn't play basketball.”

And Ronde can?

“No, I can't either.” He laughs. “But he
really
couldn't. I'd say I'm more agile. Put it that way.”

What about strength?

“He was always stronger, always faster. He got all the good genes, man.”

The Barbers' story is a classic sports fable: hardscrabble youth, a dad who walked out, a resilient mom who raised the boys alone, working three jobs and shuttling them to football practice and wrestling matches. Both boys were obedient, studious, and smart—Tiki made valedictorian—and both showed incredible athletic talent, although their height didn't bode well for professional sports. Their mom, Geraldine Barber, recalls how the junior high athletic director phoned to suggest gently that she was setting her sons up for disappointment. “She said, ‘I just want you to think twice about letting your boys play football; you know, they're kind of
small. …'
For years after that, every time I saw her, she'd say, ‘I know, I know! I was wrong!'”

Geraldine, a compact, sprightly breast cancer survivor who lives in Virginia, insists that her twins were tenacious and unbowed. “I've always known how determined they were from the day they were born. They fought for every breath they took.” Her sons were born five weeks premature—Ronde seven minutes ahead of Tiki—and they spent their first two weeks of life in incubators. “I'd look down at them and Ronde would be sleeping peacefully, while Tiki would be screaming his head off. It was as if Tiki was yelling, ‘I don't like this; I want to go!' and Ronde was like, ‘Chill; we'll get out when we get out.' And they've always kind of been that way.” Their names were chosen accordingly: Jamael Oronde (Ronde) means “firstborn son,” and Atiim Kiambu (Tiki) translates as “fiery-tempered king.”

Geraldine says when she finally took the boys home from the hospital, she'd put them on opposite ends of the crib at bedtime. “When they were old enough, they started scooting and squirming toward
each other until they were touching. So I got smart: I started putting them in the same bed when it was nap time, and they would just go to sleep like that. I remember once, when they were two or three years old, they were still sucking their thumbs; it was naptime and I said,
‘Go
get on the couch.' One of them lay down; the other lay down right on top of him, put his head in the middle of his back, and they went to sleep. They just gravitated to each other. Maybe that was because they spent nine months—or in my case, eight—in the womb, hearing the other brother's heartbeat.”

“We were always that way,” Tiki recalls. “We
had
to be in the same room. Even when we were fifteen or sixteen years old, we had to be physically together. … Being with Ronde now is still a comfort that I haven't found anywhere else, that I don't think I'll ever find anywhere else. Just to be able to sit with someone and have absolutely no agenda. If there's something to talk about, we'll talk about it. If there's nothing to say, we don't. That level of ease doesn't exist in the world, that I've encountered, except with your twin.”

I don't use the words
soul mates
anywhere else in this book, but it's required here; despite the geographic distance, there is no daylight between the Barbers. They admire, appreciate, and need each other; they constantly extol each other's gifts and characters; and they never argue—in fact, Ronde looks surprised when I tell him that my sister and I sometimes do. “Even now?” he asks, incredulous. “Come on.”

Sitting with each Barber, it occurred to me, They're the paradigm. They actually have what so many mythologize about twins: an unqualified closeness they both view as primal and untouchable, careers they believe were honed in the crucible of their twinship because they egged each other on, and, at least from an outsider's perspective, thriving, separate adult family lives.

Maybe they're in denial about repressed “issues,” maybe they've bought into a fantasy of twinship. But they seem to have the kind of twin relationship by which all others are measured—even mine. I find myself envying the Barbers as I listen to them, then reminding myself
I have what they have, then immediately wondering if I really do. My closeness with Robin resembles the Barbers', but I'm not sure we're as honest, nor as forgiving. I know we don't talk about the cosmic implications of having been in the womb together (they do) and I know we don't always tell the truth (Tiki and Ronde do) or hear criticism with the same certainty that it springs from the most loving, supportive place.

Their loyalty is reflexive. When Giants fans excoriated Tiki for quitting at the top of his game and for making disparaging remarks about his coach and some of his teammates, Ronde didn't waver. “Through none of it would I have said, ‘You should have handled it differently,'” Ronde tells me. “He's my brother, man; I can't see him doing anything wrong. And if he does, I'll tell him. He had enough people ganging up on him; he didn't need me to do it, as well. Whenever anybody would do an interview with me, they'd invariably turn to that question, ‘So your brother …' I'm like, ‘Look, you guys know Tiki; he's going to say what he wants to say. He's an honest person. And if you want to vilify him in your mind for being wrong, then go ahead; that's your prerogative. … But I'm not going to
dislike
my brother because he states his opinion openly. You-all have every right to. But in the end of the day, fuck y'all.'”

During the eleven years when both Barbers were playing, they never missed each other's games—even if that meant watching later on tape—and they spoke on the phone immediately after coming off the field. “Sometimes even before the postgame press interview,” says Geraldine.

Today they talk or text daily, but see each other rarely, thanks to separate cities, family commitments (Ronde has two girls, Tiki two boys), and constant work travel. Occasionally they'll reunite for a charity event or a book promotion. They've conceived five children's books based on their lives (they're not the actual authors), targeted to boys who might otherwise not be readers. And they take their role-model status seriously. “Boys like their sports stars,” Tiki says, “and
maybe if a sports star writes a book, they'll pick it up and read it. We can maybe influence kids to do the right thing. Whether we get involved in books, philanthropy, or education, we have a power and it's doubled.”

Though they're now used to living apart, it was the NFL draft that separated them for the first time. “We spent every waking minute together till then,” says Tiki.

The day of the NFL draft in April 1997, the brothers—at the time, both well-regarded players for the University of Virginia—distracted themselves by playing golf with friends. Tiki got the first phone call, when he was on the back nine: he was sixth pick in the second round. Ronde had to wait three more hours to learn his fate; he was sixth pick in the third round. By that time, they were kicking back with Mom and friends, ordering yards of beer at a restaurant in a Charlottesville mall. “Ronde had two or three cell phones in front of him,” Geraldine recalls. “Tiki had a couple cell phones in front of him, and I'm sitting between the two of them; every time somebody's phone rang, they were all grabbing the phones.” She laughs. “A few minutes later, one of Ronde's phones rang; he answered it, he was listening, and then he kind of sat back and I saw him grin that incredible grin he has when you know he's up to something—he kind of relaxes. I heard him say, ‘Yeah, Coach. That would be great, Coach. Looking forward, Coach.' Finally he hung up and said, ‘Well, I'm going to Florida. I'm a Buccaneer.' He and Tiki toasted each other and then they went off by themselves and had words, just brother to brother, and they came back, sat down, and Tiki put his arm around me and said, ‘When you get back to Roanoke tomorrow, you quit your job. You don't have to work anymore. It's done.' I said, ‘I'm not going to do that. What am I going to do?' And he said, ‘Ronde and I just talked about it; you need to quit. Stay home and take care of yourself.'” She was due to finish chemotherapy the following week. (She's been healthy since—and she did defy her boys and went back to work in county government.)

I ask Ronde if it was hard to see Tiki favored markedly in the draft. “Not at all,” he replies with a look that tells me I just don't get it. “Tiki
was
Virginia football. He was
it
, even though I'm the only three-time all-ACC first-team selection ever, I think.” He keeps doing that—telling me how Tiki excels but then listing his own feats. “Tiki's always been more popular,” he continues, “but I've had more accolades. Back to high school: Even though he was Player of the Year in football and whatever else, I won a national championship in track and field; he didn't—he finished second. I've been in more Pro Bowls and more All-Pros than him, and more first than him.” (There are two tiers of All-Pro teams—first and second—each year.) “So if you were making those judgments based on that, then who's the more successful one? But we're not talking about that.”

Tiki was paid more than Ronde. He says his Giants signing bonus was $800,000 and tells me Ronde's was $300,000 to $400,000. In 2001, Tiki signed a six-year $25.5 million deal and Ronde an $18.5 million six-year deal with the Buccaneers, with a $2.5 million guarantee. Ronde says he's never measured incomes. “Before Tiki got married, it was almost like, what he's got, I got. We shared everything forever. So if it had turned out that I was out of the league after just two years and he played for ten, he would have taken care of me. Or vice versa. I just know that to be a fact.”

The thrill of that memorable draft night was tempered by the realization that the brothers would soon be more than a thousand miles apart. “There was anxiety,” Tiki admits. “First, I worried, How am I going to survive in New York City? I'm a country boy. Two: How am I, for the first time in my life, going to be by myself?”

“It was a tough moment,” Ronde affirms. “I remember when he finally left to drive to New York: I was still in Charlottesville because our training camp wasn't starting for another week. He got in the car, turned down I-29 at Charlottesville, and was gone.” He pauses. “But I wasn't emotional.”

Was he trying not to be?

“Probably. But there was nothing that we could do about it. I didn't get drafted by the Giants; he didn't get drafted by the Bucs.”

It actually looked like they might end up on the same team until the final hour. Says Geraldine, “Jim Fassel, Tiki's first Giants coach, has said to me on a number of occasions, ‘I really wanted Ronde, too. I had great plans for the two of them together.' But it was the luck of the draw.”

“Of course we wanted it,” Tiki says. “And there was a very good chance. I think if he had fallen two or three more spots, the Giants would have taken him.”

“I'm glad it didn't happen,” Ronde says now. “At some point—you understand this as a twin—you've got to stand on your own. … I was finally forced into it and I had to go make my name for myself. And that's kind of rewarding.”

Their first year apart the Barbers bridged the gulf by running up their cell-phone bills (“I bet they single-handedly kept AT&T and Verizon in business,” says Mom), and by buying a home together in Tampa, which they've since sold. But ultimately, living in different cities was more defining than they anticipated. “This question of nurture versus nature on how personalities are shaped,” Tiki says, “I would have argued for nature until I was drafted to New York and he was drafted to Tampa. Because we completely changed. Our interests are now different: he's into all genres of music, primarily hip hop. I listen to jazz and rock music—not hard rock, but Pearl Jam. He plays golf almost every day, dresses casually, has seven tattoos; I have none, and I wear suits. We're just different now.”