A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball (15 page)

We all had to go into one of the bedrooms, even though I was pretty sure that only Donny and I were in danger of getting our bare butts whooped. Oh, the terror of waiting for him to come in with the extension cord for the electric piano keyboard that he only used as punishment for serious offenses. I contemplated running away.

“Donny,” I whispered, as the two of us stood there without any drawers on, “I’m gonna jump out the window and leave for a while. You wanna come? Get your pants.”

The thought of getting caught and whupped after running away suddenly seemed scarier than just staying to face our medicine. Instead, we prepared for punishment, all four of us on our stomachs with bare butts waiting for the inevitable three swats of the cord. No more, no less. But that cord was so painful!

Dad walked in and announced we could put our clothes back on. No spanking. Talk about Lucky! Obviously, he had taught us the intended lesson without having to put his hands on us. From that moment on, we braved the backyard each night when we took out the garbage. And lived to tell.

Those experiences were behind my conscious decision later on not to spank my kids—because (a) I don’t believe in whippings and (b) Dad showed he could get his point across without resorting to putting his hands on us. Of lasting importance was the idea that our behavior and demeanor would reflect, bad or good, on the whole family.

Under that heading, Dwyane Wade Sr. scared my brothers and me far away from everything that he considered to be vices that he himself occasionally indulged in. Not just drinking, drugs, and smoking. Dad didn’t tolerate earrings, hats, baggy jeans, none of that. The suggestion of getting a tattoo would bring on a tongue-lashing like you’d never forget.

The rules were rigid but, as he would say, he wanted us to be better than him. And he had another factor in mind: sometimes all it took to get shot was a hat turned the wrong way, or a tattoo or a certain earring, and so he’d rather be a stickler about those things. He’d tell us, “I don’t want to see you dead.”

Interestingly enough, to this day I don’t do drugs, smoke, or drink. Once I could afford nicer clothes (much later) I made up for lost time on the style front. But even when most of the NBA was covered in tatts, I couldn’t go that way. I could admire them on others but I just never wanted to wake up one day down the road after doing something permanent and wonder what I’d been thinking.

Obviously, I grew up seeing many examples of the toll that substance abuse takes. My brothers and I also saw in our household reasons why
not
to drink and get high. Dad didn’t need alcohol to set his vicious tongue free but with a couple of drinks in him, the fireworks flew.

During the entire time that I’d been with my father and stepmom, I saw how hard they tried to give us kids stability and a family life many others didn’t have. Bessie was always very sweet and loving toward me, so all I could feel toward her and Dad was appreciation for the tough task they’d taken on of raising five kids the best they knew how. At the same time, when there was drama and loud, epic arguments and problems with paying bills or keeping food in the house because of the reality of our situation, I didn’t necessarily want to be there.

As time went on, the atmosphere became increasingly uncomfortable and I’d stay out in the backyard even longer, playing alone or with the guys. When we weren’t in our regular season, with Dad coaching, as time went on I’d sometimes find excuses to stay over at friends’ houses. I just needed a break.

Nobody really missed me or had to worry. Maybe that went back to Grandma telling Tragil and me not to be no trouble to anyone. In any case, at school I was known as one of the best-behaved students in the classroom. Rarely did I act out or misbehave.

Oh, occasionally I’d see kids getting attention for being bad and being sent to detention, as if that made them cool, and I’d join in. So every now and again I’d try to get my bad-boy rep going. But once I was sitting there bored out of my mind in detention, thinking about everything else that I could be doing—at a practice or game I was missing—I’d realize that this wasn’t who I was.

School otherwise continued to be a place where I could let loose and temporarily not think about the daily struggles at home and for other family members. In my middle school years, I definitely started to become known for being good in sports. But in academics I went through different stages. The move away from the city to the better schools challenged me at first. Not wanting to look dumb, I wouldn’t readily ask questions if a subject wasn’t being explained in a way that seemed simple or interesting enough for me to grasp basic concepts. Then I’d try to make up for what I’d missed by studying, but I continued to have a hard time retaining too much information at one sitting. With test anxiety on top of that, I would not do well on the exams that mainly determined my grade. But fortunately, I was able to recall an early lesson that had been reinforced by my mother and sister: when in doubt,
ask.

Those first instances were so
embarrassing
when I had to overcome shyness and lack of confidence in certain subject matter to raise my hand. And yet I discovered that teachers actually welcomed the chance to help. If I had the nerve to say, “I didn’t get that, could you go over that again?” a lot of the time I’d see other students nodding their heads. Or if I stayed after class or came back at the end of school to talk to a teacher to address the sections I couldn’t get, that would improve my understanding of the information and my grade in the class.

The truth, as I know now, is that all kids learn differently and at different rates. Without knowing it then, I was practicing a form of helping my teachers to help me—by not being afraid to ask, “Could you dumb it down?”

But it was maybe not so much about making things dumb as it was about helping an adolescent put something into context in the real world. Take math. As one very wise algebra teacher pointed out to me, in following basketball so closely I was already doing high-level statistics—percentages, fractions, probability—without even realizing it. After that, I’d look for ways to convert problems into familiar scenarios and often conquered material faster than many other students. The approach was so successful that even nowadays when sitting down with my business advisers, if I don’t understand all the variables, I’ll have them explain the situation as if I have
x
amount of points and we’re going to be banking on
y
shooting average. And so on. All variations of me helping them help me.

School also continued to give me a social outlet, somewhere that I could be free to express myself and not feel judged. Though I was still that kid who watched and observed more than I talked, my goofy sense of humor was able to come to the surface more. Once I got to know someone, that is. In the process of doing so, I developed great, lasting friendships. In fact, my closest friends today are the same core guys who have been with me from the time I moved to Robbins.

Of course, Demetrius and Donny became part of my inner circle once we were living under the same roof. Then there was Wug, as in my cousin Antoine Wade, who at different points lived in the same Englewood neighborhood as me and then in Woodlawn, also on the Southside. Laid-back, easygoing, and a people person, Wug came to visit periodically and soon became part of the crew. As time went on, I started to call us guys “the fellas.” We all hooped together at different stages but mostly we laughed and hung out. One of the original fellas was Vincent Holmes, the first friend I made in Robbins. Back in the day, Vinny was more of the leader of the crew, someone who was naturally outgoing and vocal. A year or so later, after getting to know Vinny, I met Marcus Andrews, whose family moved to Robbins when he and I were both in the sixth grade. The two of us clicked from the moment we met. Always someone who looked much younger than he was, Marcus was kind of soft-spoken, like me, but he just came across as really cool. Hip. Underneath that laid-back demeanor, though, he had big dreams and recognized that I did, too. Although Marcus wasn’t sure exactly where his would take him, he seemed to believe from the start of our friendship that one day I was going somewhere special. The only other person who really believed that in those early years was probably me!

But not because I definitely had all that it would take. Not in the least.

First of all, when I graduated from the eighth grade and prepared to go to high school, I barely topped five foot five. My long-awaited growth spurt, which was supposed to coincide with hitting puberty, was nowhere to be seen. Second, there was this little flirtation I’d been having with organized football. The thrill that came along with scoring touchdowns was something that could easily become habit-forming. Plus I liked being the kid you didn’t see coming—not big, no, but wiry and speedy, with a knack for catching passes that seemed close to uncatchable.

The main reason I saw no hard evidence that basketball was a viable path for my future was that my only coach through eighth grade—that is, my dad—never indicated that that was even a possibility. Maybe he did have high expectations and was just testing me to see what I was really made of. Another lesson in toughness? Probably. There was no winning, though. Once Demetrius got to high school, two years ahead of me, I was hands-down the best player on our team. If we scored 36 points and I scored 30 of them, according to Dad, I was slacking and should have scored more. Like I said, Denzel in
Training Day.

And that may be the secret of why I had to make myself keep believing in a golden future—simply because I had so much to prove.

So toughness became not just about being able to take everything that was thrown at me but also about finding that seam right through the center of the madness, that path through the defenders to the basket. Life, being what it was and what it had been, made that sometimes impossible. But on the court, I found my sanctuary, my place of escape, where problems didn’t exist.

When I was playing basketball, everything was thrilling. Everything was defined. I didn’t have to worry about where my next meal was coming from, how far the budget was stretched in the Wade household, where my loved ones were, why there were so many like us having to struggle. Basketball didn’t tax my mind or my heart. It was all this ball and this rim and this court.

I didn’t know how far the game could take me. My hope was to follow Demetrius’s footsteps and do well in high school. But I knew this was my home and my haven for as long as I wanted, a place where no one had to know what was going on in my life. Including me.

Basketball was never going to disappoint me. It was going to be the one thing in my life to never let me down.

WHENEVER MY MOTHER TALKS ABOUT THESE YEARS, SHE gives thanks to Dad for always making sure she was included in important news and events of our lives. Then again, Mom was never easy to locate. In the past, Tragil had brought us news of Jolinda Wade, either from direct contact or updates from the grapevine that included my grandma. Suddenly the person we couldn’t locate was my sister. None of us fully knew until much later why Tragil had first been forced into hiding.

The boyfriend whose attentions were flattering at first had quickly turned out to be not so nice. As tough, independent, and smart as my sister had always been, what had happened? Tragil’s explanation was that for most of her life she has been a caretaker, and he had come across as a knight in shining armor—Tragil’s romantic idea of someone to watch over
her
for a change. So he found her vulnerable side and exploited it.

My sister wasn’t clueless. Once he began wanting to control how she dressed, where she went, who she knew, Tragil wasn’t going to stand for that and tried to break things off. He didn’t take that well, and he begged for forgiveness, promised to change, and pleaded for her to take him back.

Tragil desperately wanted to get away from him. But that was going to mean dropping out of high school and not being able to work. Dropping out of school? Tragil was beside herself. Back in our younger days of telling each other our dreams, she and I had pledged to go on to graduate from high school and college. The solution in this case was to send Tragil to San Diego, where an aunt had been living for a while.

And that was how Tragil’s prayers were answered and she was given a way out of the madness and the streets that had only gotten worse in the years after she got me out. At age seventeen, in a completely different world and school setting, she began to re-create herself and her dreams. From time to time, she would call Dad at work from her job, asking if I needed anything. Whatever it was, she’d manage to send me money for it, often going without something she might have needed, and never complaining about her circumstances.

Nobody needed to tell me that she was a hero for her sacrifices. Yet Tragil didn’t see her role that way. In her mind, continuing to take responsibility for me, even when she was thousands of miles away, was what she was supposed to do—because of how our mother raised us from the beginning.

Mom also checked in on me through Dad. At her request, however, he didn’t always report back to me. As she would explain when I was older, “In my sanity or not, I didn’t want you to know I was behind the walls again.”

Though the details are somewhat hazy, it seems that when I had last seen Mom at Cook County Jail, she had sat there for four months, from November to February, awaiting judgment and sentencing—not expecting leniency. After delays and postponements, however, when she went before the judge finally, she was given a reprieve.

What happened?

“The judge in God’s mercy gave me probation. The judge said out his mouth, ‘Ms. Wade, if you come back in front of me, I’ll send you to Dwight Penitentiary.’ ” This was a high-security prison for women out in the middle of nowhere, about an hour southwest of Robbins. Mom remembered, “I got out that February and do you know what? I didn’t give that man a month before I was back in front of him again and he sentenced me to three years for the case and four years for violating his probation. He ran it concurrent.”