Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Beautiful Struggle - A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood

Plus I was not alone. We would start off only five or six deep, trooping down Tioga, down Gwynns Falls, and then up the grass hill. But all of us had boys from other districts, and as we traveled you would see a homeboy from summer camp or elementary, whose clique would be assimilated, and in this way we would expand until, atop Dukeland hill, dap was exchanged, and we were many deep. We’d front at the top of the concrete steps, talking shit, cultivating rage until we were ice grilled, until our movements were warning flares and bared teeth.

Then I was alone again, because initially none of my crew was gifted and talented. I soloed into the next level of the Marshall Team—8-16, fewer boys this time, and that meant trouble. Our army was smaller now and could not tolerate pacifists. I remembered who I’d been just a year earlier, spaced out and ready to run, and wanted no part of it. I thought of walking in, smacking the first fool I saw, and taking a suspension like a badge. But that was just the voice of my intelligent armor. I was still a dreamer, if now repressed, was still cupcakes and comic books at the core.

My teachers were more intense, because this was the first big year of our lives, the year that decided which high school we’d get into. In English class, we sat in rows five deep. My counselor Mr. Webster — white, bespectacled, and kind — handed out booklets filled with all our possibilities. Inside were the descriptions of all of Baltimore’s magnet schools, their profiles, requirements, and varying spheres of specialty, running the gamut from music to English to ROTC to engineering and math. I was, still am, a scientist at heart, and aimed for Baltimore Polytech, best school in the city and home to all our future Garrett Morgans and Charles Drews. But there were bigger reasons — in all things, our first concern was security and what we saw in the citywide schools was not great academics but cessation of gun law, a place of reprieve if only because everyone there had come by choice. The classroom came second.

In the new year we shared our gym period with our inverse, 8-07. They walked in with a mean slouch and sat on the other side of the gym bleachers. There was not one girl among them — they were thirty deep, bigger, seemed that they had failed many grades many times. I just sat back silent, Nobody Smiling, told myself I was not afraid. We shared lockers and so as soon as I saw them, I knew 8-07 would try to test us in the locker room. My buddy Jermaine pulled me off to the side and gave me the briefing — Tana, you better not go out like no punk.

I was one of the tallest boys in my class by now, and had acquired enough Knowledge to know that 8-07 would step to me first. My height made me the symbolic head of our squad, even if I had sought no such title. After class, while I got dressed in the locker room, I was awaiting one of the big kids, one of the ones who seemed that he should be off enlisting or driving a truck. Instead, they sent a bizarro, a tall awkward freak with thick glasses and an unfortunate head. He was not a natural, and loped around the locker room like he’d spent the previous year dusting off his jeans and taping his glasses. I understood his bearing, how feeling like you’d do anything to avoid a repeat makes you snarl a little quicker than what, even by the standards of the streets, is reasonable.

But this kid had gotten it worse.

They gathered and he advanced my way. I’d been preparing for this all summer. In my mind I heard the 808 kick and did not speak but raised my dukes. This was my first scrap, the first time I’d felt anger as lighter fluid. This kid was disrespect, an attempt to show that the weakest among them could dominate the biggest among us. And, too, there was the fact that in his weakness I saw a self that I wanted to erase. I swung.

What followed was not glorious and triumphant but a blind rolling around, many badly aimed blows striking steel lockers. It ended in mutual choke holds. Our camps pulled us apart. 8-07 grabbed their net bags and filed out before us.

It wasn’t long before Big Bill was duly deposited back to Tioga. That was the pattern of things. He would steady his ship for a while, earn a reprieve, then return to his earlier self and be condemned to Dad’s care. Linda, Dad, and Ma were all trying to drag him toward the promised land. He was still caught in between, juggling the new Consciousness with everything the streets had told him since he first stood on a corner. Either way, he was about the girls, the mic, and the need to be loved by immediate people, places, and things.

Love was how he got caught up. All boys were judged by arm strength, our varying ability to turn chance encounters into digits and then belt notches. Bill was tall, stylish, and kept a fresh fade. But most important, he did not half step, mumble, or stare at the ground. That certitude was in demand among the girls we knew, in fact, was a prerequisite to any exchange. And so Bill became profligate with the jennys and then, later, sloppy. The girl showed up at Linda’s house in need of some recognition, a sliver of respect. Bill answered the door. He did not usher her in. Linda sat in the back.

She had come up pregnant weeks earlier. Bill had agreed to cover half, and she’d agreed to not bring in any adults. But the child in my brother still caged him. Half of him hoped the whole deal would just vanish. The other half was just dead wrong. Bill played her to the left, did not answer her calls, and went off in pursuit of other pleasures. All she wanted was for him to honor his word. They argued. She yelled and banged on the door. He ordered her to adjust her tone. She didn’t and now he became angry, grabbed all, maybe, hundred pounds of her, and slammed her to the ground.

That was enough to bring out Linda—

Have you lost your mind? I didn’t raise you to put your hands on women. Get in the damn house.

Inside, old girl broke it down, while Bill sat and stewed. Of course it was out of his hands now. Linda called Dad and Bill was ordered to be responsible for his half and make the trek out Route 40 to a country clinic and see the thing done.

After that, Dad cut Bill loose. They’d been at war all his life, but now Bill was seventeen, a grown man in my father’s eyes, and mostly set on whatever path would be. He was remanded back to Tioga, but there was no more checking homework, reviewing report cards, or upbraidings for cutting class. Dad issued the simple ultimatum that all of us lived under — at eighteen you will leave this house — and left the rest in the hands of Big Bill.

Back at Lemmel, the Marshall Team came to an understanding with 8-07. A few fights followed mine, but once respect was assured, our meetings lost their sinister edge and diffused into the everyday roughhousing of boys anywhere. In our second semester, we took gym alone and were left to spar with one another. The boys were still desperate to prove their hand speed and ability to dominate. Me, I just threw enough combos to send the message that I was willing, a few slaps to keep the peace. That accomplished, I came to an accord with my gifted brothers.

There were only seven or eight of us, but a year earlier they could not help but broadcast their contempt whenever I was near. Now, we would build on what we had in common: an obsession with Dan Marino’s rifle. At lunch, we would spread the lore of Mike Tyson, how he knocked niggers out southpaw, how they danced as they fell, rose, and fell again. Our deepest dream was to move through the world with that sort of constant thundering force. Failing that, we banded together and tried to project an aura that guarded against assault.

My pre-school ritual came to include a larger circle of friends. The gifted kids had to be bused in from deeper sections of the West Side. They altered their trajectory and would stop and meet on my porch in the morning. Then we would begin our march forward, shielded by the security of one another. I swooned in the turnaround, and marveled at my own power to remake myself not at some private or county school, where I was unknown, but here on my own soil where once I’d feared for my skin.