The Beat of My Own Drum (10 page)

I joined a gang in order to survive.

My only protection would be to try to outwit them.

One afternoon I was cornered on my way to the store and pinned down—something I hated even more than the beating. The toughest girl in the gang loomed over me and leered, “If you think you’re such a good runner, let’s see you beat my sister—she’s a track star.”

I had no choice but to accept the challenge, unless I wanted another beating.

The gang leader appointed someone to stand at one end of the street—the designated finish line—while the rest stood by my rival and me (she was five years older). My heart was pounding before I’d even started the race.

“On your mark, get set, go!” a voice yelled.

We set off, and it was close from the start, but I ran for my life that day. Those few minutes are another slow-motion memory for me: my arms and legs pumping, my hair bouncing, the other end of the street looming in the distance. She was behind me all the way, but in my mind I was running for Olympic gold.

And I won!

From that day on, the gang members didn’t bother me nearly as much, and I even won their respect. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was my initiation into the East Twenty-first Street Gang.

8
. Batter Head

The side of the drum that you hit

Everybody is a star

I can feel it when you shine on me

I love you for who you are

Not the one you feel you need to be

“EVERYBODY IS A STAR”

SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE

T
he pressure to decide whether I was black or white only intensified when I switched to a new school in the eighth grade. My parents were concerned that the junior high school in our neighborhood was becoming too violent and decided to send me somewhere else.

Under the new equal rights regulations, inner-city children (mostly black) were bused to (better) white schools to fill a government-set racial quota. So I took a bus each morning to Montera Junior High in Oakland Hills, a school formerly consisting of mostly middle- to upper-middle-class white students. I used my cousin’s address as my own so that I could qualify.

Being bused every day from home to school, I would sit in the back with the black kids and play beats on the windows of the bus. With so many kids crammed inside, the windows steamed up, so to pass the time I’d write things in the condensation that people could read from the outside. I might write
PEACE, LOVE,
or
SEE YOU LATER
. It became so natural for me to write backwards that I could do it with any word I wanted. It was as if I’d always been able to.

At my new school I was always hanging out and skipping class. Moms suspected I was doing this, and while checking up on me one day she caught me smoking openly in front of my school. She was so mad, and she told me she couldn’t understand my attitude. All of a sudden she looked sad and asked, “What are you doing with your life?”

“I don’t want to be at school!” I told her angrily. “I don’t care about class. If I’m going to learn, I want to learn something new every day, not once a week.”

She already knew that the only classes I cared about were science and art. I did some drawing and silk-screening, but the subjects were always about freedom and escape. My only other interest was in running track. In my heart I was still determined to make it to the Olympics one day. Life for me during those tricky teenage years was all about competing and staking a claim.

It didn’t help that being part of the black contingent bused in to junior high created an acute divide on campus. There were a couple of other races there, as well as some “mixed” like me, but for some reason everyone assumed there were only two. I was frequently asked, “What are you, Sheila? Are you black or are you white? You choose.”

Under the black faction’s mean tutelage, I vowed that I was black, and my perspective on color became increasingly narrow. Anyone lighter than me deserved to be bullied—that was the rule. My fair-skinned cousin went to the same school, but we hardly
ever spoke, because she’d chosen white. Luckily for her, she stayed out of our way.

As I reflect back now on my hateful ignorance, I know that I was really just externalizing my unacknowledged rage. It was easier to turn it against others than to deal with it myself. A militant, I felt the need to take back control, and I did. Control was something I’d not had in years.

Unfortunately, I received support and encouragement from my fellow gang members. Being part of their group gave me a false sense of confidence, and I soon became one of the leaders. They looked up to me, and we fed each other’s misguided righteousness.

When we found out that Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday wasn’t an official school holiday, we decided to plan a mass walkout. We regarded it as our own personal protest against racism, completely failing to appreciate that Dr. King never would have approved of our actions.

Somebody snitched on us, and the school principal announced to the entire school that any student who walked out that day would go directly to juvenile hall. Our little gang was indignant. Defiantly, we tried to sneak out the back through the woods, but the principal had kept his word and arranged for police cars and paddy wagons to surround the school.

Outraged, we rallied together to decide what to do next. Our plans ranged from beating up the girls who’d tattled on us to spray-painting the walls. In the end we decided to initiate a food fight in the cafeteria. When we got there, though, we remembered that several black women worked there, and we didn’t want to mess up their workplace.

For some reason, I decided that we should collect rocks and create as much damage to the school building as we could, which is pretty much what happened. Windows were broken, glass casings destroyed, and the people trapped inside were understandably
scared. The police moved in to stop us and, before long, a full-fledged riot ensued.

Needless to say, I was in trouble.

With a capital T.

Being summarily kicked out of that school meant I never officially graduated from junior high. Moms and Pops already suspected I was becoming a hothead, but they were shocked to learn that I’d taken it so far. They were furious and, more than that, they were bitterly disappointed.

As ever, Moms took the lead. She negotiated a place for me in a better school in San Leandro for a year, and then she gave me a stark choice. I could either live near the school with my aunt Love, or wake up every day at five
A.M.
to catch a bus across town.

I adored my aunt Love—she was always such fun to be with. She would lock the doors of her house and not let us leave until we sang her a marching song she especially liked or chimed in with her,
Now is the hour (when we must say good-bye)
.

It was Love who took us to Tahoe skiing once and into the country for a hayride. It was Love who took us camping in the valley where Roy Rogers lived. She’d tried to show us the big wide world beyond our funky rental duplexes in the city, but we were freaked out by such wide-open spaces.

By the time Moms gave me her ultimatum, I wasn’t getting along with her at all, so Aunt Love seemed like a far preferable option. I also didn’t want to wake up that early. So I packed a bag and transferred to my aunt’s house and into the ninth grade at San Leandro High.

“This is a clean slate for you, Sheila,” Moms warned me the night before I left. “Don’t mess it up.”

I was in for a major shock.

For the first time in my life I went from being surrounded by people and noise to being by myself at my aunt’s house. My two
cousins weren’t around much, and when they were, they did their own thing. It felt incredibly strange, being in this silent home without parties or music or streams of visitors.

I ran with a pack—hell, I’d been its leader—but suddenly I was packless. I had nobody around to lead. It was such unfamiliar territory, and I was overwhelmed with strange and scary feelings.

I asked myself,
Am I alone?
Yes.

Am I lonely?
I don’t know.

I wasn’t sure of the difference. I just knew I felt friendless and miserable. I didn’t even have Connie to talk to anymore.

The student population of San Leandro High was all white, so on my first day I walked into the cafeteria and felt like there was a spotlight on me. Everyone was staring. I felt strange, ugly, and totally out of place. I immediately realized that this is how I’d made all the white kids at my last school feel. Only now I was the new girl, the brown girl—the one being judged.

I’d never felt so alone.

The next morning I packed my own lunch and rode my bike to school. From then on—and for the rest of that school year—I’d ride off campus every lunch break and eat by myself on a park bench or under a tree.

Was I alone? Was I lonely
?

Both. Definitely both.

By removing myself from school for the break, I at least felt as if I was in control of my aloneness. I told myself that this was solitude of my own choosing. Needless to say, I had a lot of time to reflect—too much.

I began to wonder what it was like for the other colored students at San Leandro. There was a Latina girl in the twelfth grade, and younger black twins who were constantly picked on. Whenever I saw them being bullied, I felt utterly ashamed of the way I’d behaved at Montera.

It was like looking in a mirror and seeing what it was like on the other side of the glass. With no one around me, I had few distractions. I’d always been so busy telling everybody what to do, but suddenly it was just me and my thoughts. Drowning in remorse, I asked myself the same questions over and over again:

Who am I? Why am I so mad all the time?

Why am I so mean?

I was carrying things around inside that had turned me into someone I didn’t like at all. I’d become incredibly angry, and I didn’t want to be angry anymore. Secretly I was still ashamed that everything that had happened to me was my fault. It wasn’t, but I didn’t know that yet.

I was growing tired of my relentless self-analysis, and time spent alone with myself became something to dread. I had music—I’d always had that, although there wasn’t music at my new school—but I needed another outlet.

Running provided the only respite for me, since it was the one thing that made me feel truly confident. Physical activity also kept me out of my own head. By focusing on my athletic goals, my mind didn’t have the luxury of wandering, as it did during my lonely lunches.

I’d always been good at running, but at San Leandro I took up gymnastics as well, which I quickly grew to love. The school offered great facilities, and I excelled on the balance beam and uneven bars. I also continued to shine at track, breaking records in the 50-yard dash and the 220 and 440 relays, which began to bring me a little respect. I still didn’t have any friends, but during that time of awkward adolescence and self-doubt, being a winner made me feel a little more socially comfortable.

For the first time, I enjoyed acknowledgment from my coaches and my peers. Doing well made me feel special. I was different, sure, but I had a talent. This only fueled my commitment even
more. I rekindled my childhood ambition to be an Olympian and made the firm decision that one day I would run in the Olympics.

I was shocked to discover that first I’d need a sponsor in order even to train officially. I knew my parents couldn’t afford anything like that. So I just kept running in the hope that someone might magically offer me sponsorship. They never did.

It reminded me, too, of the time when I was nine years old and wrote to Yamaha in Japan asking them to endorse me as an artist and provide me with a free drum set. They never did, but my father kept a copy of that letter because it always made him smile, especially my postscript: “P.S. I’m a girl.”

Every time I ran, in my mind I was going for gold—the only goal that kept me motivated. I was in it to win it, even if no one else knew that yet.

Soccer had become another outlet and a source of much-needed recognition for me. When I was younger I’d been invited to play as a forward for an all-girl team that wasn’t affiliated with my school. They’d heard I was a good runner and were delighted when I picked up the sport so quickly. Once I got the ball and knew how to control it, I adapted well. No one could catch me.

What I loved even more about playing was winning, which was everything to the team. My competitive spirit really kicked in then, and soon nobody could beat us. Helping them achieve that gave me the greatest satisfaction.

Over time and taking life day by day, with the help of my love of sports and my own intense reflections, I came to a new understanding of how I should try to get along in this world, and how I should treat not only others but myself. During this period of searing self-examination, I became more and more willing to look at myself and what motivated me. But it wasn’t until I received some generous words from an older Latina girl at school that I tried to make reparations for my sins.

I had admired her from afar. She looked a bit like me and could have been one of my relatives. Out of the blue she approached me in the hall one day and said, “I know how it is. If anyone bothers you, let me know and I’ll handle it. I’ve got your back. We have to stick together; there are only two of us.”

That made me think about the twins, so I sought them out and repeated, “I know how it is. If you need anything, let me know. I’ve got your back.”

A few days later I spotted some boys teasing them about their hair, so I stepped in and told them to cut it out. “How would you feel if you looked different from everyone else?” I asked them. “Stop being so mean! What did they ever do to you?” I was so hurt and offended on the girls’ behalf that my conviction must have made an impact. The boys backed off.

I’d been so mad at my mother for sending me away to San Leandro, but I had to accept eventually that she’d been right. As much as I’d hated having to leave my gang, my friends, and my school, moving there was a gift, because it turned my life around. Being on my own sparked a transformation in me. I realized for the first time that I had a choice about how I could behave.