My son and I are not perfect—by any stretch. Like any parent and child’s dynamic, ours was complicated. The fact of the matter is, as hard as I tried to be the kind of provider who could keep his life as stable as humanly possible, there were some things I simply couldn’t provide for a boychild who was missing that critical male presence boys need, who craved a father’s love and attention.
For one, the logistics of raising a boy alone were complicated. Showing him how to pee standing up: challenge. Explaining wet dreams: challenge. Giving tips on shaving, butt funk, and condoms: a test for the ages. Illuminating him on the inner-workings of menstruation—at age six!—was a treat. I’ll never forget the day he entered the bathroom without knocking, only to discover me in the middle of changing my pad. He almost passed out. “Calm down, boy,” I snapped when he started screaming. “I’m not dying. I told your ass to knock on the door, and you didn’t, so now you have to deal with this.” That bathroom breakin was quickly followed by an impromptu “birds and bees” conversation that I was not ready to give and he wasn’t ready to receive, but that had to go down anyway because he’d forced my hand.
The biggest test of all, though, was helping my son work through the anger that came from not having his father around. I never told Mark he couldn’t be in his son’s life; in fact, I welcomed and encouraged his presence. But when we broke up and went our separate ways, Mark first had to work on getting himself on a stronger emotional footing. My father played an important role in that; after the big fight that ended with Mark hitting me, my dad took my son’s father under his wing and schooled him on the value of controlling his emotions. He did that because he wanted Mark to be in his son’s life, and he knew that the only way that could happen was if my ex grew himself up a bit and learned how to express himself without the anger. In Mark, my father saw himself, and he deep-dived into helping Mark navigate around the same destructive land mines that nearly destroyed my father and could have easily obliterated his relationship with me. “You can’t spend your whole life walking around mad at the world,” my father recalled telling Mark repeatedly. “You have to be a positive example for your son, so he can be better than both of us. That’s what a good father wants for his child.”
Eventually, Mark got more involved in our son’s life. I’d moved to Los Angeles to pursue my career, but I would send Marcell to my father’s house for the summers so that they could have that father-son bond Marcell craved but couldn’t get while in California with me. Dad would have Marcell out in the backyard of his house in the suburbs, hunting frogs, making art projects in his metal workshop, play-fighting with makeshift swords they built with wrapping-paper rolls. Mark would join in on the fun, or he’d take Marcell for the afternoon to visit with his mom or his other children. At some point, Mark thought he’d gotten himself together enough to actually ask if our son could move back to DC to live with him and his girlfriend. It was a novel idea; a boy needs his daddy. I know this deep down in my soul. But I didn’t trust that Mark was ready to care for Marcell full-time. He was living with a woman I didn’t know, and his living and employment situation were still sketchy as far as I was concerned. “I’m not comfortable with that,” I said as gently as I could. “I mean, you don’t even have a landline. How am I supposed to send my son three thousand miles away from me and you don’t even have a landline? I’m just not comfortable with that.”
“Taraji, come on,” he insisted. “My mom is here, she can help out—”
“But Marcell is not her responsibility,” I interrupted. “He is my responsibility and yours.” Mark was upset, but he recognized that there was truth in what I was saying. Finally, he let it go.
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Marcell and I went home to DC in 2002 for the holidays. We had our annual Christmas dinner at his mother’s house; all of his children were there, as were their mothers, and my friend Pam and her husband, Mark’s best friend. From the moment I walked in the door, something felt off. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but when Mark’s eyes met mine, I had a weird, dark feeling—call it a mother’s intuition. I was heartened, though, to see him interact with Marcell—to see the two of them connecting in the way only fathers and sons can. I even witnessed Mark parent Marcell as the two played tic-tac-toe at the dining room table. The game wasn’t going well; Marcell was yelling, upset that he’d lost several rounds in a row to his father. Mark put his hand on his shoulder and schooled him: “Let me tell you something, son,” he told Marcell. “Don’t you let anger control your life the way it did mine. Use your head, black man.”
What he was saying was practically word for word what my father had told Mark over the years as he struggled with his own anger. I’ll never forget the sound of Mark’s words or the look in his eyes as he talked to our son. Love was there.
That would be the last Christmas Marcell would see his father.
We left for Los Angeles right after the New Year, with Marcell settling back into school and me into work, our hearts full from the quality time we’d spent with our family. But only three weeks later, on January 25, 2003, I got an early-morning phone call from Mark’s mother that woke me out of my sleep. The second I heard her voice—the way she said my name and how her words shook in her throat—I knew Mark was gone.
“Mark was killed last night,” she said.