After all this, I could have gotten angry: What kind of dad lets an eight-year-old drive a motorboat basically unsupervised? What kind of dad sics a dog on his kids after losing at basketball? What kind of dad leaves a kid outside a random church and just takes off, without even checking to make sure it’s the right place? What kind of dad makes so many enemies that people fight him in the streets when he’s with his children? His craziness could have landed me in the hospital or the grave. Fuck him, and fuck anyone else who’s on a power trip like that.
I could have taken that road and thought those things.
At every moment in life, there is a fork in the path you are on. And you can choose to go right or you can choose to go left. Every right you take leads you closer to your best possible destiny; every left leads you further away from it. These forks are not just decisions that lead to actions, like saying yes to a job offer, but thoughts that lead to beliefs, like blaming your father for ruining your life.
Your life today is the sum total of your choices. So if you’re not happy with it, look back at your choices and start making different ones. Even if you are struck by lightning and injured, you made choices that led you to that spot at that particular time—and you get to choose how you feel about it afterward. You can be angry at the bad luck that you got struck or grateful for the good luck that you survived.
I’ve made a lot of rights that led me to where I am today, and choosing to appreciate my crazy-ass father was one of them. I also made a lot of lefts in the following years that hurt and limited me. One of my goals in life is to learn from my lefts so I can take more rights.
I never made it to camp that day with my dad. When he took me home after the whole mess, he warned, “I’m about to hear your mother’s mouth when I get home. So after I drop you off, I don’t know when the next time I’m gonna see you again will be because your mother’s gonna be trippin’.?”
He was right: After my mom shut the door on him that day, she didn’t give him another chance to take me anywhere else. The door to childhood adventure was closed for good.
But that was my right-hand path.
Life Lessons
FROM MOM
* * *
Hard lessons are only hard to the weak who can’t survive them . . . and to me.
Christmas with Mom
6
* * *
THUG LIFE
I’ve never done hard drugs, I’ve never been part of a gang, I’ve never smoked a cigarette. And I’ve only stolen one thing in my life, which cost less than fifty cents.
This is not because I didn’t want to do these things.
It’s because my mother wouldn’t let me.
Growing up, I was terrified of her. She was more intimidating than any gang. So there was never a life of crime in the cards for me.
Nancy Hart was four foot ten with a healthy Afro and a beautiful smile, but just one look at her when that smile faded would put the fear of God into anyone—except my dad, because even God wouldn’t put the fear of God into him. She had more strength and fight in her than any woman I’ve met since, with such a high level of stubbornness that you could assemble the leading experts in the world to tell her she was wrong about something, and she’d silence them within minutes—and probably have them doing chores for her too.
After my dad left when I was eight, it was just me, her, and my brother. We lived in a three-story walk-up. My brother and I climbed those stairs so often, we had them memorized: fifteen steps to the second floor and sixteen from there to our floor; thirty-one stairs in all.
Our apartment was small and cramped: The front door opened into the kitchen, where my mom had laid strips of upside-down duct tape next to the sink to catch roaches. Past that, there was a bathroom and a short hallway with one door, which led to my mother’s room. My brother and I slept on a bunk bed in the hallway across from her door. At the end of the corridor, there was a tiny sitting area. We couldn’t afford bookshelves, so everything was displayed in boxes and crates stacked on top of each other.
With Dad gone, my brother began filling in the caretaker role for me—in all the right and wrong ways. My mom gave him a fair amount of freedom, and he would come and go as he pleased. But just like Dad, he constantly butted heads with my mom. If he talked back, stayed out too late, or came home fucked up in any way, my mom would grab a belt in a heartbeat—unless she was in the kitchen. We knew not to make trouble when she was there, because then she’d grab a pan. And she would make sure it hurt.
We lived in an area where anything that wasn’t locked up was stolen, and anything that was locked up was stolen. You had to lock your locks up at night. My brother soon became part of the problem. Any mistake you could make as a teenager, he made. He joined a gang. He robbed people. He dealt drugs.
On the day he started dealing, he came home as proud as can be. His chest was puffed out, his jaw was set, and his eyes were steely. He then made a gesture I’d never seen him make before: He tilted his head upward and a little to the side, until his chin was pointing at me, like he was a Mafia boss.
“Look,” he began in a confident voice. “I know Dad ain’t around. It’s just me, you, and Mom. So I’m letting you know I got us.”
“Huh?”
He winked at me. A slow wink, a do-you-have-something-stuck-in-your-eye wink, a teenager-who-thinks-he’s-grown-up-and-has-life-figured-out wink. “I got us,” he continued. “So if you need anything, you come to big brother and I’ll take care of it, knowwhatimsayin.”
Then he raised his right hand and summoned me with his finger. This motherfucker really thought he was Scarface. “C’mere.”
I walked over obediently. He pulled out a small wad of cash and peeled off a one-dollar bill. The wad was probably all one-dollar bills. “Get yourself something,” he said magnanimously. “Treat yourself to some chips.”
Up to that point, I had no idea what was going on. But as soon as I saw that dollar, I didn’t care. My brother was giving me money, and that was cool. “Thanks,” I responded. “Love you, man.”
He put on a pair of shades and left the house.
* * *
The next day, my mom found his drug stash. He’d hidden it inside the grill at the bottom of the refrigerator. It was the worst place he could possibly have chosen to hide something, because the kitchen was my mom’s world. She knew where everything was and where everything belonged.