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

On weekends, I did projects for school and wrote rhymes. I played tapes of Gil Scott, Malcolm’s “Message to the Grass Roots,” and continued my quest to ingest anything in my father’s book collection relating to the Panthers. It was all so romantic to me. I’d replaced one pantheon for another, Spider-Man and Goose for Robert Williams and Huey. This was not joyful, exactly, but offered me freedom. I could not escape who I was, but now didn’t want to. My new heroes and narrative gave meaning to everything I’d once hated about my life — the banned holidays and fasts, the assigned reading, the angry young boys all around me. Dad noticed, but uttered not a word of pride. Still, I knew how he got down, reserved, with most of his more positive emotions inferred.

I carved out safety at Lemmel, but knew that if I could go to a school where I did not require a security detail, I should do it. My sights were set on the majestic stature of Baltimore Polytech and its twin school Western. In my early days down near Mondawmin, Kris was a junior at Western. On school days we would take the same train to West Cold Spring. I would walk a few blocks over to fifth grade. Kris would wait on the street under the elevated subway tracks. Often I’d see her bus, the number 33 with Poly/ Western scrolling electronically across the front, and I thought it incredible that two schools could hold such sway that mass transit was turned to charter.

The Poly/Western complex was a royal seat in Baltimore. Once they were the exclusive domain of white kids in uniforms. Now like all the old white neighborhoods with prewar homes and yawning streets, they were ours. But unlike everything else we inherited, the great traditions carried on. Western was the oldest all-girl public school in the country. It emerged as a funnel to exclusive schools in the Northeast. Traditions were minted. Big sister juniors adopted little sister freshmen. Seniors wore all white to inaugurate the start of the year. The mascot was the dove. The basketball team was hot and dominant.

Poly stood across the quad, equally venerable and exclusive. Once all boys, it had gone progressive, admitted girls, integrated before any other high school in the city. No boys of sense disputed the presence of young women. Besides, the old ways endured — the orange and blue colors, the great football teams, the rivalry with City College, and most important a steady stream of young scientific minds. Everyone from Poly/Western went to college.

I did well that year, which for me meant a high C, and only one beating from Dad or Ma. I must have done really well, because I don’t even remember who administered it. I was always better when the repercussions were immediate, and the threat of heading to my zoned high school sent me to homework and study. They notified us in the spring. It was like a miniature ritual of college admissions. You could tell that we were different in the gifted program, because while most of the school knew where they were headed, we buzzed with expectation. No one wanted to go to their zoned school.

When I got the news, my mother was at home. I do not remember the color of the envelope or the length of the letter. But I remember jumping up and down and hugging my mother. I remember her smiling at me in actual pride, and this was new. She was often proud of me and demonstrated as much, but it was over potential and possibility, something I had said which made her expect that at some unknowable future date, I would amount to something more than what I seemed to be. Now she smiled at the tangible, at the real, not at what I dreamed I’d be but at that moment what I was .

It was the season of expectations for all of us. Dad had left Bill to his fate. Bill, though oriented to the streets, still had enough wits to know that no one ever pulled a girl by bragging about being a high school dropout. Bill did not even bother applying anywhere aside from the Mecca. By now he’d visited Kris and Kell, had seen the parties, which were next level, and had some sense that college was more than a collection of eyeglasses. That was enough to pull from him the first mature effort of his life — and thus the first meaningful result. He was accepted, the third among three that Dad had steered to Howard.

The rest of my year felt easy and musical. Classes were more relaxed. I wrote rhymes at night. All of us were anticipating the annual eighth-grade trip to Patapsco State Park. My mother took me shopping up at Reisterstown. I bought a fresh blue sweat suit with a matching Duke tee shirt, Starter hat, and a pair of blue-and-white Airs. Afterward we ate fried chicken, corn, greens, and biscuits. I dressed the next day with pride — I had never been so in style in all my life. We were told to bring our boom boxes and dress in our flyest gear. Teachers provided food for a cookout, footballs and softball equipment. They piled us into buses and rolled us out of the dense city for a forty-minute drive into the open. I rolled down the cheese bus window and tasted the air. I had hayfever then, but it must not have mattered because I don’t remember a single sneeze or eye rub.

We walked all across the state park that day, tossing the football, running routes and calling out Henry Ellard or Jerry Rice. And that’s when we saw them coming over the hill, running our way. We were not the only middle-school seniors on the trip. 8-07 in all their deep glory were running down an asphalt path. We made them from a distance, and, not knowing what to expect, we were ready and we were cocked.

We did not run, and as they closed, it became clear that we could never escape, the mentality of war must always be at the ready. Someone would have had a boom box. I like to think “Brothers Gonna Work It Out” was on the deck. But that would be a year too soon. This was spring 1989. I was still a reluctant warrior, artless and gauche. But I had done the Knowledge, and pledged my unwieldy ax to upholding the code.

They slowed down as they came to us, out of breath, some of them putting hands on their knees. They began laughing and a few of us started to soften our stance. But I stood off to the side, confused and convinced that whatever respect was accorded to the other brothers could never extend to me. One of them approached me — What’s up, nigger? — and extended his arm. I tightened in a mix of fear and frustration. I thought of how this would end, just as it began. But then he smiled. I looked down and saw his open hand, universal and at peace. I reached out and gave him a pound.

I wore a powder-blue short-sleeved shirt, matching navy Travel Fox, and stonewashed jeans. I had a green tie-dye book bag, with twin yellow ropes in place of straps. The back festooned with buttons, the totems of my champions — Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X. Nigger, I was fly — my cut, two days old, tops. The angles of my lineup could have cut the chains, freed the slaves. Likely, I hung a wooden ankh from my neck. Likely, I was armed with Knowledge of Self— The COINTELPRO Papers or A Panther Is a Black Cat .

I was thirteen, but I carried that thing, stepped off the porch with the bop of God’s son, floated across the black parking lot of Mondawmin, paid my fare, descended the cavernous escalators, then trained up to Rogers station. I was still a transfer and bus ride away, and yet I was overcome by status. Through all my terror and trembling, through all my torpor and dim wits, I had conjured this passport into the royal city. I wish I had paused on that long subway platform, closed my eyes, and inhaled. I wish I had acknowledged the feeling, held it close, and understood that it was not forever. But I was young and immortal, so I bounded down two escalators, walked a few yards, then emerged into the sunny basin beneath the station.