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

I was born under a lame sign. Big Bill could make them yell, Go, William, and do the whop. Dad had his flock and thus direct evidence that, in these matters, his was the arm of Thor. But I had taken a wrong exit, picked up a manual written in French, because, in truth, my greatest disaster was that I just did not understand. Jennifer would clip me in the hallway, pull my shirt, punch me in the shoulder, grab at my chair while I reared back on two legs, mash an index finger in my face, then an hour later smile and ask what I was reading. But it never got through.

Page 7: There I am at my seventh-grade locker, halfway through the year of all hell. Teyanda whispers in my ear, Ta-Nehisi, I have a crush on you. I turn and she’s running off, only to turn back for a second, unsmiling through her glasses, and say, It’s true. I am overcome, but still I demand parted clouds and a booming voice. A glad-to-see-you grin would have helped, and furthermore I am not sure what I am supposed to do next. I could walk her home, but Teyanda lives down near Longwood where legionnaires carry war hammers and long daggers in their dip. I am my own quagmire, and so at the end of the week Teyanda extends her right hand to mush my face and sucks her teeth. Ta-Nehisi, I don’t have a crush on you.

I should have known — all of us were damaged goods, and if I missed something it was this: My greatest perils were sudden and defined — a Timberland boot to the dome, the talking end of a three-eighty, a cop looking to make his night. But on the other side, the pitfalls were bottomless. This was the era of high schools fitted with nurseries; HIV was the air. Nigger, that year at Woodlawn, I had a mother or an expecting in every class. And still fools had the nerve to yell, You got a phat ass! from the passenger seat — always the passenger seat — of speeding cars, to sidle up and ask why you never smile. Who knew what this dude was holding behind those cold hazel eyes? Girls of Knowledge would shoot a nigger down without so much as eye contact, because they knew every smile, every infatuated act compromised security and handed us a weapon that we would only deploy for selfish use. So they made themselves into fortresses, and demanded you drop your arms before they even thought about the drawbridge. They had so much more to lose.

Page 12: It is 1992, and I am doing what I have mastered at Woodlawn — sleeping through health class, my head resting on folded arms, folded arms resting on my desk, next to one of Dad’s latest reprints, which, needless to say, was not the text of the class. Ebony Kelly walked by with a stack of papers and tapped and tapped my desk until I came out of the haze. I was an exile then from Poly, banished from the crystal city and denied even the rep of a West Baltimore public school. What karmic poetry — I had spent all those years wrestling with the Knowledge only to become a county boy. I had disgraced my parents, and exhausted by the rigors of it all, they simply threw up their hands and backed off.

You do what you want, boy, Dad told me one day in the car. But at the end of this school year, you will leave my house. You can go into the army, I don’t care. But you will not be here next year.

Dad and Ma believed seventeen was an internship to manhood, that at that point, the child would be what he was. This was my senior year, the first time no one checked my homework, asked if I had studied, or requested progress reports from school. I came in with a 1.8 GPA. College would require a series of awesome labors. I would have to start with the invention of time travel. Still, I was blessed with some understanding of standardized tests, and thus SAT scores that, at least in Baltimore, stood out. And my advanced classes at Poly had softened my landing here in my senior year at Woodlawn. I had three classes after lunch — health, Spanish I, applied math. I showed my respect by sleeping as much as I could and pulling Bs on pop quizzes. The classrooms were crowded and tight. The last thing a teacher wanted was to make me into an issue. They left me to my afternoon nap. I left them to their restless kids.

Ebony had not been informed of the arrangement. She sat at the front of the class, knew all the answers, and was first pick for class errands. She tapped on the desk until I looked up, handed me some inane ditto, then picked up the thin book lying next to my arm.

What are you reading?

David Walker’s Appeal . It’s written by a black guy from the slavery days. He predicted a lot of the stuff they said in the ’60s. They killed him, of course.

She stood there for a few moments, asking more about the book, then gave her impressions of Malcolm’s memoirs and carelessly smiled. That was when I noticed her.

I came to Woodlawn not sure of what was next. Half of me saw myself fulfilling the destiny of those my mother called out as If-I-hadda-had-my-gun niggers. They stood on their corners, their brains otherwise correct, spewing tales of life-altering moments, conflicts which it all hinged on. But they come out losers, and the frame was always the same — If I hadda had my gun, that nigger wouldn’t have said shit or If I hadda had my gun, that bitch would have let me see my kids.

It was taxonomy for losers, brothers who wasted their minds. That possibility, membership in a garbage heap of lost men, hung over me, clouding even my most primal impulses.

But she was black and beautiful like her name, and, wrong as it was, this made her prominent to me. Years ago I had embarrassed my mother. We were sitting with one of her girlfriends in a living room, and now came that predictable moment that I hated. Why do women care so much about the budding romances of young boys?

Girlfriend: Ta-Nehisi, what sort of girls do you like?

Ta-Nehisi: I like light-skin girls.

There must have been a gasp, but I was young and must have missed it, because my next image is postconversation, sitting in the car with my mother staring at me, the car unstarted. Her eyes were power drills, and though she herself was a shade from yellow, she was a patriot of a broader Africa.

Little boy, don’t you ever say anything like that again. You can have your little eyes on whoever you want, for whatever you want. But you remember that these little black girls are somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister — your sister, and someday, somebody’s mother, and when it comes down, the white man won’t take time to make distinctions. You need to check yourself, little boy.

I didn’t get it right away, was even angry at first, but then days piled on to weeks and then on to months, until a shame came over me, and I understood. So by now I knew that “you’re pretty for dark-skin girl” was a hate crime that Ebony probably had to fend off before. We talked reading and politics until the teacher sat her down, and throughout it all she smiled and giggled, and for the first time since Callaway, I was down with someone who was both Knowledged and free.

I watched her in the halls over the following days. I was down with no one here. I talked little out here in the county school — I didn’t even fuck with bucolia like that. I fed myself on my own myth. They were Snap to my Chill Rob G. I was the West Baltimore original, while they just played the part. But their girls, with their wrap skirts, sundresses, and wide-leg jeans, were exotica. She was a duchess among them. She stood out amid the dime pack — the ones who got their hair done monthly and touch-ups on the midweeks. She wore it wrapped or all pulled back into a French roll with blue glitter or curly bangs hanging down the front. They dressed like it was all a fashion show. They dispensed smiles and laughter, as if from a box of exquisite chocolates, with none to spare. All of them except Ebony. She was always laughing.