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

I came back that year resolved to make Daniel Hale manifest. I’d been saved from exile, and for all my antics, I still believed in the Poly name, knew in some sense that this was more opportunity than most of the brethren received. I could not conceive laughing that off. I thought of improving my grades enough to qualify for football in my senior year. I started hitting the school gym with some friends. I only failed one class my first quarter — it was my best quarter since Lemmel.

Months earlier, my father left his job at the Mecca. That was the year he took me to see Boyz n the Hood, the touchstone film of our time and manifesto of endangered hominids the world over. Dad had spent the past ten years moving between the Press and his full-time job. The two complemented each other, and through the collections of the Moorland-Spingarn library he lived with a wealth of forgotten arcana, turn-of-the-century pamphlets, the papers of forgotten mystics. But his love was the Press, and for the first time ever, he had built enough to consider making his love his sole income. He gave me a say in his decision. If he left, my brother would still have tuition guaranteed, but since I hadn’t been admitted, my free ride to the Mecca would evaporate.

He sat me down and made sure I understood the consequences. Son, he told me, if I leave, you’re on your own. You’ve not been a great student. If I leave, you’ll have to find your own way in, and I don’t know how much of your schooling we can pay for.

I don’t know how much of what I said affected anything. But even as my grades improved, inside I felt the True Me waiting. I did not want my father tied to that. He left later that year, and began living his dream. He was more of a presence in my school life, and his proximity was just more reason to improve my grades. I was still, as always, scared silly of him. Once I was beefing with my shop teacher over the sort of thing that really boils down to my small right to talk back. Still, it was enough that when I walked past him and bumped into his arm, he cried assault. I was sent to the office. I’d already been suspended for assaulting a teacher in my freshman year. The disciplining principal Mr. Brown, a brother who was well regarded by the kids, explained that I had a mandatory suspension in store, and called my father up to school.

He showed up with that perpetual grim look on his brown face, and I had no idea what torment he had in store. But before he could hatch his plot, he was taken aside by Mr. Brown and they spoke outside of my earshot. On the way home, Dad addressed me in a manner so unthreatening that I was certain it was some sort of verbal trap. I was big by then — over six feet and about 180 pounds, but my awkwardness remained. Was like my brain had not grown into the body, and whereas before my clumsiness was limited, I was now a threat to more than just the pitcher of juice on the table.

Son, you’re growing into a big man. You’re going to have to be more conscious of yourself. You are not a mean kid, but because of your size you will do things that will be seen as a threat. You need to be conscious especially around white people. You are big, and you are a young black man. You need to be careful about what you do and what you say.

I spent the next three days at home, working for the Press but unpunished. I could feel us entering our last stages together. My parents were reaching the limits of their ability to impose their will, which always had been anchored by a physical threat. But Dad believed in the animal nature of us all, that at a certain age the boy becomes man, must be addressed as such, and then pushed out. I was raised with that understanding, with the sense that closer I got to the blessed number eighteen, the more my folks would pull back in preparation for my great ushering into the world.

I thought that this was how everyone came up, and those who did not were not worth consideration. I had no skills, and in the one thing all children are judged upon — school — I had always disappointed. Still, I had that ignorant confidence derived from the encouragement of mothers. I had no idea how I could do it, but the thought of my parents retreating was love to me, was admission that my independent time was approaching.

They were changing too. They were always smart, and kept their arguments mostly hidden from public view. Still, I noted that each of them would disappear for days at a time. My mother would call and check in. Dad would explain that she was taking a break. I put nothing into it. I had so little by which to gauge their marriage. Most of my friends’ parents were single, but what struck me more were the legion of fathers on the lam. From my own father, I got the picture that people meet all the time, think they’re in love, and then it just goes bad. But I esteemed my father so much, even at odds with him as I was constantly, that I could not see anything else.

I was making my way through school, not quite up to standard but better than ever before. I paid attention in my math classes, made an honest stab at homework. After class was out I’d hit the gym and then the track. In March I did a few days of spring football practice, in anticipation of trying out my senior year. I was turning the corner, and I might have made it around, if it all hadn’t come out.

These things are always so stupid when armed with hindsight, but in the moment it seems like all your existence converges in a moment, is out there on the table, and your options are limited. This day, I had a paper due. It was finished but late, and my entire English grade was held in the balance of getting it in. I was in my history class, a period before lunch, when it happened. My teacher was Mr. Stoddard, the sort of liberal white guy who showed us Ken Burns’s Civil War and took a whole period to discuss the impact of Rodney King. I was a fan, and took great pleasure in our back-and-forth. This morning, we were debating the morality of the American Army and the recently concluded Desert Storm. Most of the class went with the country and argued for both. But I was black as Edmondson Avenue and AFRAM, and stood my solo ground. I wouldn’t fight in any American Army against anyone close to my color.

What came next must have been simple clowning, the sort of comment a kid would yell out because he had nothing to offer except the possibility of sparking a good laugh. When I said I would not fight for America, skinny Shawn yelled from the back—

That’s cause you a punk.

He got no laughter, but I felt an old burning in my chest. No one at Poly had ever said anything like that to me. I’d been tested a couple times, but I’d learned how to walk, when to smile, not talk too much, and though I lacked an ill pedigree, I still looked like a kid who knew the rules. I turned around, at the time not knowing who said what, and yelled in typical sixteen-year-old fashion—

Whoever said that ain’t going say it to my face.

The class was absorbed by all the instigating ooohs, and Mr. Stoddard took control and calmed everyone down. But after class my nigger Brady told me it was Shawn who’d made the crack, and this made it worse. He was out of Fallstaff, the softest middle school in the city, where in my hated weaker days, I’d thought I wanted to attend. Shawn was a joker to me, would sit in the back of the class with a stupid grin, dressed like Kwamé. Whatever, I told Brady. Shawn don’t want nothing to do with me.

But a few minutes later, Brady returned, hyping up the whole affair, Yo, Shawn said he want to see you. He said you could see him in the bathroom right outside the cafeteria at lunch.

I walked down with five or six other boys, all hyped on my own scent, and found him standing there with his best friend, Tyrone. I started barking soon as I walked.