Read Online A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball by Dwyane Wade - Free Book Online Page B

needed help.
    And that was a problem that would haunt me, too. Not only was I overly proud but, being born a Capricorn, I was also extra stubborn. Even when better days were upon us, with all four kids back with Mom and living in the apartment at 5901 Prairie, that didn’t change. By the time the hardest period really kicked in, a couple of years later, I was already set in my prideful ways.
    “BOY, GET BACK IN THE HOUSE!” TRAGIL YELLED AT ME ON A gloomy Saturday morning in the fall, a few months after the start of second grade at Betsy Ross Elementary.
    Moments earlier I had been inside our apartment and realized she had managed to slip out the front door—she had cleverly left it open so as not to alert me to the fact that she was going somewhere. That’s when I took off after her. With no jacket, I galloped through the hall, out of the building, and down the steps, scanning to the right and left for any sign of her or her friends.
    Right then she called to me from across the street. Thirteen-year-old Tragil was waiting there alone, arms folded across her chest, ready to put up a fight if I refused to go back inside.
    Hanging my head, I trudged back up the steps. For a minute, I paused before going back inside to decide whether I should go see Grandma or not. In those days, my older sisters, already about seventeen and sixteen years old, were rarely around. Mom was at home. But so too were her boyfriend and a couple of other men.
    That was par for the course when a drop was going to happen soon. If there were drugs for sale in the apartment or the vicinity, any extra people hanging around would be an indication of business transactions—an excuse for a police raid. No matter what was happening, Tragil and I had been taught that when we heard that knock at the door and the bellowing voice of “Police! Open up!” we should always answer, “My mother’s not home!”
    Somehow, whenever that happened, the time it took to answer was enough stalling for the boyfriend and his guys to be out the back door and gone, taking all the drugs and paraphernalia with them.
    Feeling sad because I wanted to be with my sister and not stuck in the house on a Saturday, I comforted myself with the thought that Mom was at least safe in the house. Just knowing where she was helped ease my mind a lot—although, to be honest, I was less concerned about my mind at the moment than I was about the empty pit in my stomach.
    Hunger was starting to get old.
    Obviously, by this time I couldn’t avoid making the comparison between how we were living and how most normal kids were. Not having the new clothes or new shoes was tough. But not getting to eat when I was hungry: that was almost as terrible as the times when I didn’t know where Mom was. What was really messed up was the fact that sometimes I didn’t eat when food was available—all because of pride and stubbornness.
    Case in point: There I stood downstairs on the front stoop, famished, and Grandma was up on the third floor with a stocked kitchen so she could start to cook for Sunday’s meal. All I had to do was to go knock at her door and say, “Grandma, I’m starving,” and she would have put down a huge spread just for me. But I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Afterward, if my grandmother found out that I was hungry and hadn’t told her, she’d get mad and say, “I’m gonna call you every day to come up here and eat, you hear me?”
    Seriously, she would scream my name out her window until I came upstairs, but I was tormented inside: relieved that I’d get to eat but feeling guilty for doing so. The real issue was that I didn’t want Grandma to even think that Mom wasn’t feeding us. That was my mother and I didn’t want her to look bad in my grandmother’s eyes.
    The dilemma had me starting to think about asking for a job as a watch-out boy. I’d seen how kids younger than me in the neighborhood would get tipped now and then with a few dollars just for