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

The spring recital was always a coming out — we wore different sets of costumes, tied fabric around our heads, or wore leather helmets with straw spiking out like Mohawks. Dancers and drummers spanned all the ages, from five to seventy-five. This year was bigger, because demand had grown so much that two concerts had been scheduled on two different nights. At the last spring recital, I was young with this, and when they called me out to solo during drum call, all I could do was amble to the middle of the stage, bend slightly forward, and murmur something that got some polite applause but didn’t rupture time and space. Now my hands had been cleaned by practice in the breezeway, shaving goatskins in the basement, and the simple rigors of repetition.

Spring recital came on the week of my driver’s ed classes, and as much as I loved drumming, driving was too old a fantasy to sacrifice for Sankofa rehearsals. The dream crystallized back in middle school. One day I spotted Big Bill’s homeboy Anthony while I was standing on Garrison waiting for the number 91. Anthony was an MC in my brother’s high-school collective, nasty with the lyrics, the sort of odd, quiet kid who sits off in the corner, nodding his head, then grabs a mic and unveils the Cain Marko. Whenever I saw him, I heard his signature couplet—“So they’ll read in the morning with papers delivered / Another whack rapper found dead in the river.”

Anthony’s parents had sprung for a neon-green Jeep with a brown retractable hood, which he later crashed. I was enamored when he offered me a ride, and noted how his system shook the roof and, more than usual, robbed our small talk of any real point. The whip made him limitless. He could have driven to Old Crow and never looked back. From then on, in my feature dreams, I cruised down Garrison pumping Maxi Priest and Shabba, unleashing the base, until I caught the eye of an original Spinderella, Isis, or Terrible T, her tennis skirt fluttering over matching slouch socks, all-white Classics, or pink Air Force Ones.

For driver’s ed, I missed almost every drumming rehearsal that week, which tore my heart and left me mourning in the back of class, while my instructor went off on rights of way, the exact distances from curbs, stop signs, fire hydrants, the weight of a cop’s hand versus red lights. I just placed my palms on my thighs in ready position, leaned back in my wooden chair until I was five hundred years away, until I stood in the court of Mansa Musa, in a kufi and a dark robe. My djembe hung from my shoulders, and when the Lion of Mali nodded, my hands fired and called across the Sahel. The teacher would lower the lights and show films on driver safety. But I would play lead on my lap, imagining dancers who kicked and leaped through the dark like great black flamingoes.

That whole week I felt sidelined and disarmed. I didn’t think about Ebony, pretty boy, or the prom. I didn’t think about my dorm room awaiting me at Morgan or Ma lobbying the Mecca for my admission. In the back of class, I traced my fingers like maps. Back on Tioga they had teased me, said I had the hands of a very glamorous blonde. But now my palms were Himalayas. Callous skin shielded my joints. I was harder now. I could play the traditional rhythm for the dance, Lamba, for hours, just me, a lead, and a djun-djun. I could sit in my father’s basement armed with rope, goatskin, and wood, and yank and pull until spirits said my name.

On Friday, our last day, they gave us a driving test so easy that even I, with all my day-tripping, managed to ace. Ma scooped me up and headed straight for the studio on Eager Street. At yellow lights I exhorted her on — Go, go, go. She laughed and looked cockeyed — Boy, you gonna cause an accident. She dropped me off at the door and I dashed up the staircase in doubles, and now I could hear the drums roaring, and young sisters singing in tongues that they did not understand. But that was always irrelevant. The whole point was to reach beyond the coherent and touch what we were, what we lost, when the jackboots of history pinned us down.

The drumming was so loud when I entered the studio that when the mamas and babas smiled and greeted — they always smiled for me — I could only see them mouthing above the din. The brothers were working the prelude to Mandiani, which is slow like the gathering of warning clouds. Salim, the youthful master, was playing my drum, which normally was nothing, but I was in the mode of a full fiend and had just put on a new slamming off-white skin with a few black freckles. He saw me and stood up and offered me a space and the lead. I sat down and promptly went out of my head. I snowballed high above everything and drove the pace like a warhorse pushed into pursuit.

By the time the sisters got to solos, I’d sweated through my red Sankofa tee. I was standing, my djembe suspended from my waist by my long white strap. They were all lined up, banging their feet in rhythm against the wooden dance floor. They extended their hands like pharaohs, waiting for me to summon them one at a time with a break. But I showed off first, because what Sankofa taught me was that deep down, I loved the crowd, that after days of Dad’s isolationism, I simply could not get enough of the people. I wish I could remember the order in which I brought the dancers out. It must have been by age. It’s all now a blur of images — Milcah’s attitude, me playing slaps and pointing to the floor; Elishibah’s hands reaping the air, her long dreads pulled back on her head and spraying out like a crown of snakes. I know Menes was off somewhere and Salim finished us all up, and afterward we laughed and gave dap.

That whole summer I felt on. It wasn’t just the annual concert — it was AFRAM, Artscape, the random events at community centers, weddings in mosques, to which we were invited to bring our drums. The crowds lost their balance when the djembe hit. Sisters would dance in the aisles. Mamas from other companies would jump on stage. Fat women in tight denim would leap up and move with power and grace. Teen dancers would rush out before their cue. Mama Kibibi could not hold them back. And then there were the faces of my family when I came out to solo — Big Bill, clapping and pumping his fist before adding a few bucks to the pile of money at the front of the stage. Sometimes I’d look out and spot my father, nodding with his eyes closed, letting the drums roar over him.

I could have stayed like that forever, drumming my way in and out of various corners of Baltimore. I did not know where it led, but I would have slept on heat grates, worn scraps and overalls, shaken my cup down on Charles Street, and dined in the basements of churches, if I could have just left things as they were. My talent was second tier and I knew I would always be a workman, a support player for someone else’s glorious show. But I was so in love, and so of the spirit, that I just did not care.

I got Ebony down to class at Sankofa during that summer. She tried dancing, and afterward I cracked jokes because she could barely tie her lappa, because she was behind the beat. She just smiled and jabbed at my arm. Afterward, we’d head down to the harbor to the movies, then out to Burger King and debate Boyz in the Hood versus Menace. Still, we were teenagers, and so always closest on the phone. I apologized late one night, told her I should have taken her hand, that I should have been stronger in what I saw and felt. But we were both the best we could have been. At that age, the deep attractions, the ones that threaten your open future, may thrill you, may kidnap your days, but more powerful is the flood of terror, the nakedness you feel when she only starts walking your way.

The heat rolled in around June, and with it visions of my actual future. I awoke at dawn and saw my mother out back, turned south toward Mecca in prayer, then grinding rabbit bones, collecting herbs, muttering incantations. Even through expulsions, fights, and idleness, she had not lost faith in a voyage to Howard. What I could not understand was that she believed that I was owed, that no matter what I’d done in high school, somehow, I was entitled to see the Mecca, to find my place in the great black cosmopolis. My parents were two-faced. To me, they showed no mercy. They preached from the Book of Fallen Children — Commandment 1: The Child Is Always Ungrateful. At eighteen, the free ride would stop, and I’d be dumped into the mess of the world. But in their private moments, they were soft, cowed by love. They critiqued their own parenting skills and thought of all the ways they could help their kids get ahead.