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

In those days, the Howard Plaza Towers were hot. Dorms built in the style of apartments, they had kitchens, private bathrooms, and sleeping quarters. Outside there was a small plaza, and on weekends Howard students, drawn by the air of lush life, would assemble along the shallow wall, milling and waiting on mischief. Bill and his two friends parked out front, and beelined through the plaza, shit-talking the whole way. They flashed their ID to security and took the elevator up. Of course the dude was a man in his own right and was there waiting, and also more than what they’d pictured in all their big talk and ego.

Nigger, he was stacked like Tony Atlas, I’m talking circa ’76, with the Q-Dog brand on his shoulder. He was down with the Omegas, known as an order of enlightened thugs and collegiate brawlers.

David shrank back at the size of his opposition, and the Greek talisman burned into his flesh, which meant that help was always and already en route. He slipped into double-talk, got to stuttering, and light in his voice. Bill was in the back, shaking his head, and for the honor of his small unknown clan, he stepped up. At first he tried defusion, but the ruckus had recruited instigators and other boys who couldn’t find a party that night or had struck out with some chick. I told you Big Bill was rarely scared, would not back down, and now faced off, not even with the original adversary but just some other kid who wandered in thinking a brawl would make his Friday complete.

They took it outside, but by now phone calls had been placed, and the opposition was deep, hopping out of Cherokees and removing their jewels. Bill and his crew were surrounded in the plaza, three against the horde, when Mitch yelled to Bill — Yo, end this. Bill reached in his dip, untucked the iron, and shot into the air.

All the plaza scattered, ducked, screamed — Nigger’s shooting. One brave one adjusted his cape and stepped up.

Mutherfucker, you ain’t shooting shit. You ain’t shooting a mutherfucking thing.

Bill brought the gat level with his shoulder. Nigger, if you don’t back up right now, I’ma bust you in your mutherfucking chest.

Brain chemicals kicked in, and the kid backed off, and by then Howard security had showed, just one rent-a-cop, but it was now all real.

Young man, put down the gun. Put down the gun, please.

I’m not putting shit down. I’m not putting nothing down.

Young man, please put down the gun. I’m not going to ask you again.

It was then that Bill recovered some of himself. He put the.38 on the ground. The cop approached and grabbed his arm. Bill pointed at some of his former combatants, now across the street watching, and yelled out — What about them?

The cop looked over, and Bill jerked his arm free, broke out. He darted across Banneker field, icy in winter, and then ran through the darkness to the apartment my two sisters shared. He spent the night on the floor. The next morning Mitch and David came through with clothes. That was when he found out — the chick wasn’t even David’s girlfriend, just someone he’d claimed and talked big about.

The stupidity of it all hit Bill square in the face. Here he was at the great capstone of all Negro education, and on a jenny he barely even knew he had placed his life. That shook him. He could not analyze it all. He did not know what this meant about where he should be bound for next. But he knew that the old ways, the old customs and styles of being, the Knowledge which had saved him, steeled him against the scourge, could not help him here. This was not Murphy Homes. He was in another world. He was playing by alien rules.

At home, I struggled through Poly. The spell of the enchanted city had now worn off. After summer school, I spent the year flailing again. I look back now, and I know something had to be wrong. I could not sit still without talking. I could not concentrate longer than fifteen minutes. In class I’d watch the clock until I fell asleep or spend the entire period working on rap lyrics. My head was Penn Station, and every half hour a train arrived dropping off a new batch of thoughts and possibilities, pushing out everything else that was old.

By then Kier was at Poly, too, and inserting himself into the mix. Halfway into the year, someone popped his lock and made off with his hooded Raiders Starter. I caught up to Kier in the hallway, punching his fist into his palm. Somebody had to take a loss. By the end of the day he’d assembled his crew. I was there, laughing with a group of other knuckleheads, egging Kier on.

We stood on the number 33 bus stop, brazenly in front of the school. Across the way were two white kids, one in a red Chiefs Starter, the other in one from the Raiders. It was not their whiteness that marked them, so much as the fact that their whiteness made them a minority in this part of Baltimore, and thus unlikely to have a sizable team that could hit back. We hyped Kier up — Nigger, you ain’t going do shit. He raised his eyebrows. Bet. Then ran across the street.

Yo, can I see that? Can I see that jacket? Yo, that look like mine. Yo, where’d you get that from?

And then he was swinging at the kid in the Raiders jacket. The kid’s friend backed off, like he wanted no part. I stood across the street stupidly laughing with the rest of them. It was all another mask. Inside, I felt flashbacks to my year of terror. But I would not let it show here. Better to move with the sentiment of the crowd and act like I never caught the Rodney King myself.

I failed three classes that year. I got a letter of exile from the magical city. In the old days, Dad would have gone straight for the belt. But I was almost sixteen, and he was counting on the lessons kicking in, the books, the work, the bees and wax, the Ankobia initiation, the Rites, the Knowledge, Consciousness. He was waiting for me to finally police myself. He only looked at me after he saw the report card and shook his head.

I knew I was humiliating everyone I loved. They believed I was different and boundless, that when I looked out on a summer street, I may not have seen what was needed, what was the essence of survival, but what I saw was special and unique. They watched me absorb books about my own, and further, about foreign places and geographies. They knew I’d taught my brother Menelik the theory of the big bang. They believed I was a curious boy. And yet whenever someone threatened to put a grade on it, I fell asleep and lost interest.

In this, Big Bill and I were one. Our folks understood that there was war upon us and that school was a weapon that outdid any Glock. Yet the whole process — with its equally spaced desks, precisely timed periods and lectures, with its standardized pencils and tests — felt unnatural to me. But much as I hated their terms, having been impressed into them, I hated more the failing. So I was left with a great unconscious sadness, an emptiness which, even when I was alone, I was not fully aware. But it worked on me like an invisible weight, altered my laughter, posture, my approach to girls. Fuck what you have heard or what you have seen in your son. He may lie about homework and laugh when the teacher calls home. He may curse his teacher, propose arson for the whole public system. But inside is the same sense that was in me. None of us ever want to fail. None of us want to be unworthy, to not measure up.

My parents could not bank on this, but I was their son, and they were bound to do all they could on my behalf. Dad got real short with the words, but my mother still talked. I remember her pissed as hell that summer, having to cut another check for makeup classes. Still in all we’d be riding down Liberty, and in the midst of another lecture she’d get silent for a second and then start quoting Bob: Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind. She fought to the end so I’d have my shot to do just that. My mother appealed my expulsion to the dean of Poly, stressed my virtues and their belief that someday soon, I would decide to be more than my grades had shown. I was a lucky child, and while in small things I caught a series of bad ones, in the epic sweep, time was on my side. The dean was new, had his own thoughts of reforming Poly so that it stood up to its epic tradition. He began with an act of mercy, waved his hands, and my transcript was spared.