Now Dad had woven his own tangle of mothers and children spanning fourteen years. His passion was sons, if only because the odds and stakes seemed so high. We held him in this weird place, somewhere between hatred and complete reverence. All our friends were fatherless, and Dad was some sort of a blessing, but he made it hard to feel that way. He was a practicing fascist, mandating books and banning religion. Once he caught Big Bill praying at the kitchen table and ordered him to stop—
You want to pray, pray to me. I put the food on this table.
Another time, in the middle of dinner, Bill pronounced that he couldn’t wait to grow up so he could move out, make his own rules. Dad stared hard—
You don’t have to wait. You can go now.
All of us knew he was flawed, but still he retained the aura of a prophet. On our life map, he drew a bright circle around twelve through eighteen. This was the abyss where, unguided, black boys were swallowed whole, only to reemerge on corners and prison tiers.
Dad was at war with this destiny. He was raising soldiers for all terrain. He preached awareness, discipline, and confidence. He went upside heads for shirking chores, for reaching across the table for the hush puppies, for knocking over a pitcher of juice. His technique was random — you might get away with a sermon on the virtues of Booker T., or a woman he left behind in Vietnam. Or you might catch the swinging black leather belt.
Once, Bill and me got to wrestling on Ma and Dad’s bed, and some of the boards in the frame snapped in two. We engineered a sloppy resetting. Dad and Ma wouldn’t be home till after we’d gone to bed. If Dad asks, Bill instructed, just tell him you don’t know what happened.
Dad woke me up first. What happened to the bed?
I shrugged. I don’t know…
He woke up Bill. What happened to the bed?
We broke it wrestling.
I glared, but only inside.
You had to make it worse by lying, Dad said.
He took us downstairs to the back door. Both of you get out. Go out back. You want to wrestle, go out in the backyard right now and wrestle.
Then he shut the door. We stared at each other for a moment, then Bill grabbed me and threw me to the ground. We tangled out there on the dirt for Dad’s benefit for who knows how long, before we realized that he probably wasn’t watching.
Ma came out later, sent us back upstairs. Dad had gone to bed.
My father scared me, but not even fear could alter the basics of nature. I brought home mediocre report cards: Is not working up to potential, Needs to apply himself, Discipline is a problem. Ma would go up to school and come back with migraines — that she passed on to us. Her eyes would go white. She’d dig nails into my arm—
I am not raising nothing niggers. Where is your head? What are you thinking, boy?
I am thinking of Sunday waffles and Morning Star. I am grieving for Lynn Min-mei, apatosaurs, Tom Landry, and Cowboy blue. I am staring three desks over and dreaming of Brenda Neil, dancing in a pink and white gown.
Dad would see me coming like some great lost cause, and clap his hands thrice—
Wake up, boy. Walk like you got business. Walk like you got somewhere to be.
I had my chances to turn this story another way. In fourth grade, Ma and Dad sent me off to apply for scholarships at private schools. I went through the rounds of class visits, noted how much better the lunch was, and then dawdled my way through the standardized tests. I was bigger than multiple choice and bubbles, so I picked answers at random and acted shocked when months later I was rejected by every school.
Now two years later Dad’s methods grew radical. William H. Lemmel Middle School sat on a hill off Dukeland. From its depths, wild rumors spewed — vice principals body-slammed on open fields, atrocities perpetrated in lunch lines, boys walking home in socks. But at Lemmel, the teachers waged Dad’s kind of fight. Across the state, better jobs, better salaries, better living called out to them. But in the midst of Reconstruction’s second collapse, Lemmel fought back. The headmasters arranged their students into teams, and named each one after the Saints — Douglass, Tubman, Woodson, King. They mandated uniforms, formed classes for the ghetto’s gifted, and trumpeted their ostentatious mantra — Lemmel Middle School Is a School for Winners. This redoubled Dad’s efforts, reinforced his mission to ground me in history and struggle. But when Big Bill heard this, he gave me the only words that mattered: Lemmel niggers don’t play.
Big Bill was now a permanent fixture at Tioga, having been remanded from the good graces of his mother. His time was running out. He was entering tenth grade. He was tall and smooth as Kane touching “All Night Long.” He pulled shorties with all the effort of a long yawn, and, like so many, believed that he would make a living off his jumper.
It must have been that summer of fool’s gold, when Bill and John went extreme. They worked together busing tables at a local deli. One Saturday they left work and went riding in a stolen car with our cousin Gary. That evening Dad was informed that his sons were in the custody of the Baltimore county police. Dad drove out to get his boys, and when he had them back at home, he administered a legendary thrashing. The next morning, Dad unfurled a list of labors, and Tioga turned into a work camp. More so even than usual. About that time Bill was permanently assigned a bedroom, which he shared with me and Menelik, who was four. He laced the walls with autographed posters of his favorite ballers, the Human Highlight Reel and the Big Smooth.
Now Ma checked my and Bill’s homework every night. Dad ran a compulsory book-of-the-month club selected from what we considered obscure and irrelevant. Bill requested back issues of Sports Illustrated. I don’t even remember Dad replying. But I do remember Flight to Canada and Dad’s attempts to inculcate us with Ishmael Reed’s unique brand of humor. Bill had his own jokes—
Look at that guffed-up trim, he said, pointing to Reed’s back-cover portrait. This nigger’s got a half fro.
On weekend evenings, released from Dad’s yoke, we would sit out on the front porch with the radio pumping New York straight talk. Frank Ski would take to the one and twos, and drive off Whitney and all the feminized rhythm and bullshit, until Afrika Bambaataa owned the night. Bill would pop a tape into the second deck of his boom box. He’d tagged his moniker — M.C. Destiny — to both speakers with white out. Some nights Dante, from two doors down, would step past his staggering father and come hang. Once, when lifted, Dante’s Dad tried to fit his key into our front door. Dad opened and politely directed him home, then silenced Bill, who’d gone up the steps cackling.
Dante would give Bill some dap — I was not yet worthy — and sit down on the brick steps, nodding to “The Show” or “Paul Revere.” He had it bad for our older sister Kris, and he would groan and razz Bill about this fact. But Bill was too cool. He’d just laugh and search Dante for imperfections — ears like Hawaiian Islands, a scuffed pair of Adidas — and crack on him for an hour. Then he’d punch Dante in the arm, Get off my porch, punk. They were like all the neighborhood laughing boys. Around the corner, the gaping maw of the world waited and they had no idea.
Dad would be in the basement working with his books. He could not understand that we too were unearthing, that we were beholders of sorcery — Phil Collins mixed with the Biz, Ofra Haza, and The God.
