After listening to her rage against my brother, I left the front door of the house open so I could alert him when he came home.
When I heard him climbing the steps a few hours later, I looked hard at him and rolled my eyes in Mom’s direction. I shook my head no. I waved my hands frantically. I made an X with my arms. I eye-rolled, head-shook, hand-waved, and arm-Xed all at once. I did everything I could without making a sound to set off my mom. And this fool still had no idea what I was talking about, so he walked right through that door and to his doom.
As soon as she heard him, Mom marched to the door and yelled, “Oh, you selling drugs in this damn house?” She raised a pan in the air, ready to bring it down on his skull. Suddenly—and I’d never seen him do this before—he dodged the blow and socked her in the ribs.
Time froze, and the three of us stood frozen in silence, each with a different oh shit look on our face. The next thing I heard was my mother’s voice yelling, “I’m gonna kill ya!” She grabbed not just one but a handful of knives from the kitchen drawer.
My brother wheeled around and leapt down what seemed like the entire flight of stairs. Suddenly, I heard a whoosh in the air. My mom had thrown a knife at him.
She scrambled down the stairs after him, throwing knives until he was a speck on the horizon of the block.
My brother didn’t return home that night or the next day. My mom had my uncle Albert, who was an iron worker, put bars on the window to keep him from climbing up and sneaking in. Eventually, Kenneth called Aunt Patsy, told her he was staying with a friend, and asked her to help calm my mom. She didn’t succeed.
“He can’t be here,” my mom raged. “If he so much as puts one foot inside this house, I’m gonna kill him.”
Time heals all wounds, and after a few weeks, she begrudgingly let him return. That was the end of his drug-dealing phase. I was happy to have him back—and lucky too, because he would soon teach me an important lesson.
7
* * *
THE LEGEND OF FREEBALL
I have a reputation as a guy you don’t want on your side in a fight, because as soon as it looks like someone’s about to be hit, I run. I like keeping my teeth inside my mouth.
At least, that’s my reputation. And it’s pretty much my fault, because it’s part of the sense of humor that comes with being five foot four. But it’s not how I live my life, thanks in large part to my brother.
My lesson in fighting began at football practice, where a teammate kept picking on me. He called me ugly and dirty, and talked shit about my mom. It was meaningless kid stuff, like saying that my mom had an Afro, which she did, but the issue was the tone in which he said it. Kids can say anything in a mocking, singsong voice, and make it sound uncool. “You have ears. Nyah-nyah-na-nyah-nyah, you have eee-ars and they’re on the side of your fay-ace!” So it got under my skin. I told my brother, and he said, “You don’t let nobody pick on you.”
I agreed, but I still didn’t do anything about it. I was hoping my brother would. A few weeks later, Kenneth came to one of our games and watched the kid harassing me. “What’d I tell you?” my brother said while I was on the bench. “Don’t let nobody mess with you. Go stand up for yourself.”
When the game ended, I walked up to the kid and grabbed the face mask of his helmet. Then I dragged him across the field until the mask came off, at which point I began hitting him in the face. When I was done, he was crying. The coach walked over and said, “Y’all be men and shake hands.” We shook hands, and he never talked shit again.
I would have thought that a fight would escalate things. But the fact that it stopped the bullying taught me a lesson: Defend yourself at all times. Don’t let nobody mess with you. If you don’t stand up to them, they’ll just keep bullying you, and it will get continually worse as they push to the edge of what they can get away with. However, if you stand up to them, and they feel fear after knowing what you’re capable of, they’ll find someone else to belittle. Even if you lose or get beat up, at least you can go to bed at night knowing you’re not the kind of person who tolerates being pushed around.
I’m grateful that my brother taught me to stick up for myself, rather than knocking out that kid himself. It empowered me. My father, on the other hand, liked to fight my battles for me. He’d randomly appear at my games drinking a forty, then fall asleep. If there was a call he didn’t like, he’d come roaring onto the field with the forty in his hands, his dick swinging in his sweatpants, pressing against everyone’s face he passed in the stands. Then he’d yell at the coaches and the referee, threatening to kill them.
It was a type of protection that was more embarrassing than helpful. Around school, they nicknamed my brother “Forty” because of it. I was always worried they’d nickname me “Freeball.”
At school, where my brother and father weren’t around to either help or hurt me, there was another bully. He was a big kid with a cast on his arm. He’d constantly stick his fingers in my face and knock my books onto the ground.
One afternoon, I decided that it was time to end it. We were in the hallway, and I snuck up on him and punched him in the face. When he tried to hit me back, I grabbed his cast and banged it against the wall as hard as I could. He started crying, and I was sent to the principal’s office and suspended.
I came home and told my mom everything. I expected her to be furious, but to my surprise, her first response was sympathetic. “You should always stand up to bullies,” she said. “But you need to find other ways besides fighting. I can’t support violence.”
I still thought I was going to get a whupping, but maybe even she saw the irony of hitting me in order to teach me not to hit other people, so she grounded me instead.
Today, I’ve passed my brother’s lesson on to my kids and taught them to stick up for themselves and each other. “If someone is threatening to hurt you, and they’re bigger than you, pick up something and knock them in the head with it. Your problems will be gone.”
That may sound like a violent message, but stopping a bully is different than being a bully. The real message is: You are somebody. You matter. And no one is allowed to take away your right to your property, your right to your safety, or your right to be yourself. Those are things that should be defended.