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.
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.