I Beat the Odds (15 page)

It had been a challenge for me up to that point to feel real relationships with anyone outside of my immediate circle. I never developed relationships with other foster care kids because I knew we probably wouldn’t be together long. After all, my view of the world was that if you had family bonds, you all got split up eventually. And with foster parents, it was hard for me to believe that they loved me even if they were kind and welcoming. They didn’t birth me; they didn’t hold me when I was little. They might come to love me like their own eventually, but it was hard to believe anyone could feel that way about me right off the bat.

But I felt like the Briarcrest community wanted me there, wanted to build relationships with me, wanted to make me feel welcomed into the school’s family. And I started to feel like the Tuohys really wanted me there, too, and that they might really love me.

I didn’t start out by staying there every night. It would just be a night or two at a time before I went somewhere else. But the Tuohys started asking questions. Leigh Anne isn’t a lady who just lets things go. She asked about my family, and while I wasn’t ready to open up, I did like how she was concerned about me. I liked that she wanted to know where I was going when I left their house, even if I didn’t want to tell her. I liked that she and Sean noticed me. I didn’t feel invisible when I was with them. I liked that Collins was down to earth, not snobby like so many other girls. I liked that S.J., their son, who was just seven at the time, treated me like a big brother when I was over there, just like I had treated my own big brothers, way back when we were all still together.

They didn’t crowd me with emotion, but they also made sure I knew I was always welcome. They didn’t treat me like I was fragile, or with curiosity like I was a strange creature they had to figure out before we could get close. They treated me just like they treated everyone else, and I think that helped me feel so at home there so quickly.

I also got the sense that they seemed to understand what I was trying to do, but that I just didn’t have the tools—or even know what the tools were—that I needed to get there. I wasn’t dumb and I wasn’t lazy. I was lost and hurt and I wanted to work hard but hardly knew where to start because ambition just wasn’t anything I’d ever really seen modeled in my life.

For me just to see how those families lived—all the Briarcrest families that took me in—what their neighborhoods were like, what the rules and expectations were in their homes, had a huge impact because I was able to understand what I’d suspected, that a life like mine in childhood wasn’t normal and it wasn’t okay. And I started to get a much clearer picture of what I was aiming for.

Because my dream wasn’t about making the big bucks, it was about making a better life than what my brothers and sisters and foster siblings and I had all known. Those different families I stayed with all showed me that it was possible to feel safe from violence at night and that there actually are adults who work hard during the day and take care of their kids and encourage them to succeed in school and whatever their dreams are. And the Tuohys were the ones who were able to pour themselves into my life to help me make the most of the doors that I was trying to open.

That partnership was important for all the pieces to fall into place. I was trying to open doors and they were trying to show me the way through. It never would have worked if it had been one-sided: just me pushing but not knowing what to do with the opportunity; or them trying to guide me but me not being willing to do any of the work. There had to be a give and take.

The summer before I began my senior year of high school, the Tuohys invited me to live with them full-time. My mother didn’t really care one way or the other that I was moving out, but I was thrilled. I had started staying there most of the time, but occasionally I still would stay at other homes, too. Having a place where I could say, “I’m going home” was exciting for me. They cleared out the loft room above S.J.’s bedroom. It had been his playroom, but I didn’t mind if the pop-a-shot basketball game stayed, since he and I could (and have) played it for hours at a time. The room had high ceilings, which was nice for me to not feel like I might bump my head if I stood on my toes.

Leigh Anne drove me around to all the different homes where I’d stayed and I collected the clothes or shoes I had left there to always have something to wear for school. And when I carried everything upstairs to put it in the closet, I felt like I finally had a place in a normal home. Every night, Leigh Anne would tell the kids good night by saying, “I love you.” She said it to me, too, and I started to believe she meant it.

Everything was so different from how it had been when I’d been placed with foster families. The Tuohys treated me like a member of the family—a real family—and not just as another mouth to feed or the reason for a monthly support check. I was building real relationships with the people around me; I wasn’t just a special project to them. I was a kid who wanted to feel loved and supported and to know that my dreams and my future were just as important as anyone else’s.

It didn’t take long to adjust to life there. In no time, Collins and S.J. became as real a brother and sister to me as the ones I was related to by blood. I bonded with both of them quickly—and bonding between siblings can mean fighting, too. I would wake up early and be ready to leave for school by six o’clock. Collins, on the other hand, would roll out of bed ten minutes before first period was supposed to start. I love that she is not a high-maintenance girl who needs hours to get ready, but it would drive me crazy. Just like when I had AAU basketball practice as a kid and would always be the first one to practice, I wanted to be the first one to school. That was where I was supposed to be and it was my responsibility to be there on time. Even on mornings when I didn’t have my extra class before school started, I wanted to get there early, and if she and I were driving together, I would start to get nervous and impatient, pacing back and forth and calling upstairs every two minutes, “COME ON!!!” Days we didn’t drive together, she would often meet me in the hallway to hand me my helmet or cleats or something I had forgotten in my rush to get out the door.

The same thing would happen on Sunday mornings. The Tuohys never told me I had to go to church with them, but if I was staying with them and they were my family, I felt I needed to go with them. I’d be the first one with my shirt and tie on, sitting downstairs on the sofa and looking at my watch constantly. I liked church. I wanted to be there on time. I didn’t want to come in late because, let’s be honest, there’s no way someone like me can slip down the aisle into an empty spot in the pew totally unnoticed.

It was those little quirks in our relationship that let me know we were really a family. I could get frustrated or annoyed at someone, and they could get frustrated or annoyed with me. We didn’t have to worry about being polite to one another all the time because I wasn’t a guest. It was my house, too. They used to tease me as we’d drive to church because I would point out various corners where I used to sell papers, including the one where I made the most money, until a Walmart was opened just a block or so away and it took away my business. After a few weeks of that, whenever we’d all be in the car driving somewhere, someone would point to a random place on the street and say, “Did you sell papers there, Michael?” (Sometimes, they’ll even do it in a totally different city, and it always makes me laugh.) I loved the joking because it meant that I was as real a part of the life of that family as anyone else. It was wonderful.

There was just one condition for living with the Tuohys, and this had been made clear to me since I first started relying on them: They wanted to make sure I was going to keep a relationship with my birth family. At no point did they want there to be any kind of a feeling like they had taken me away from my mother, or kept me from her and made me cut all ties. I was nervous about those visits to see my mother at first. Sean and Leigh Anne didn’t push me to tell them why, but it was the same fear I’d had ever since I started living with Tony. I felt like I was fighting for every inch of distance I got between me and the old neighborhood and the thought of going back seemed like it was dangerous because it might pull me back into old habits, old friendships, and old ways of thinking and acting. I didn’t love my brothers or mother any less, but I felt like keeping a safe distance from the’hood, at that point, was an act of survival.

But I went. Every other week or so I drove over to that side of town in Sean’s Ford F-150 truck and I saw whichever of my brothers was around; usually it was Marcus or Carlos. I visited Craig whenever I could. I saw my mother, and it hurt so badly because I hated to see what drugs had done to her life. She was worn out, broken, and just a shell of herself. The loving, happy woman I remembered from when she was clean during my childhood didn’t seem to be there, deep down in her soul anymore.

Eventually, Sean offered her a job at one of the Taco Bells that he owned near her home so that she would have a steady job that might help her stay clean. It was a good arrangement for about a week, but then she started not showing up for work or showing up on the wrong days. She kept at it, showing up occasionally, but at least she was still showing up. I wanted to know she was trying and I was glad Sean cared, too.

Sean and Leigh Anne wanted to make sure that my mother was a part of my football life as well. And that was a part of my life that was growing and taking off in ways that surprised even me.

A
s I mentioned earlier, basketball was my first love. From the time I watched that Phoenix-Bulls game when I was seven, I was obsessed with it. Football would be my favorite sport during football season, but when that was over, I’d go back to basketball. That was where I saw myself when I pictured my future—on the basketball court, the scariest thing to ever block a shot but also totally graceful as I flew through the air taking the ball to the basket. And it wasn’t a crazy dream, either. I was really good at basketball, and a whole lot quicker and more skilled than anyone expected out of someone my size.

I had made enough progress academically in my first few months at Briarcrest that I was eligible to play the last couple of games of the basketball season. First, I played the last five that the JV had scheduled, but, unfortunately, there wasn’t a jersey that fit me. I ended up playing in an old practice T-shirt with the school’s name across the front and the number written on the back in permanent marker. It wasn’t exactly the most sophisticated-looking uniform, but it worked. The varsity season was a little bit longer, and I was able to play the last six games of their season; but by that point, someone had made me a better team shirt with the numbers actually ironed on instead of drawn.

We did very well the next two years and actually ended up as the runners-up to the state Division II title my senior season, and my high school stats were an average of 22 points per game and 10 rebounds; but sometimes I had a frustrating time on the court, since I was still having the same issues with fouling that had always haunted me when I played. The refs seemed to love to blow the whistle at me for fouling the other team even though I actually wasn’t doing it very much at all. I just had so much body, being well over six feet and about three hundred pounds at the time, that it didn’t seem like a fair match-up for whoever I was covering, or maybe they just weren’t used to watching someone that big on the court and couldn’t see around me all the time to recognize that I really wasn’t committing any more fouls than anyone else. It finally got to the point that I could hardly step out on the court without the ref blowing his whistle at me. I was so frustrated that I didn’t know what to do—it felt like the refs were competing to see who could call more fouls on me each game. The Briarcrest coaches, and even the fans, were getting fed up with it, too. They could all see that I wasn’t being overly physical or aggressive with anyone, but the refs seemed to think I was an easy target to make calls against.

The situation finally got resolved when Leigh Anne came marching into the gym before a game one day carrying a video camera. She introduced herself to the referees, pointed me out to them as her son, and let them know that there had been some problems about a lot of unfair fouls being called against me in the past. She told the ref that she would be personally recording the game, and if there were any blatant calls against me that clearly were not accurate, she would be sending the tape to the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association to make sure that the ref never called another game for Briarcrest. That did the trick. Any foul called after that was one I deserved.

The style of basketball they played there was totally different not just from the street-ball rules I had grown up with, but also from the way we played in the city schools. The coaching style was different, too. Tony had been excited about Briarcrest as an option when he found out their new coach was a well-respected high school coach named John Harrington, but for me, the new way of doing things made me back off of basketball a little bit. I stayed with it and played varsity basketball my junior and senior years—but my focus started to shift from the court to the gridiron.

Everyone seemed to think that the football field was the place for me, but I wasn’t so sure at first. I loved the game, but as I started practicing for the season my junior year, I discovered that I didn’t love to play it in such a structured way. At Briarcrest, the game was more mental, while at Westwood, Manassas, and the empty lots around Hurt Village, the game was much more physical. With Coach Hugh Freeze at Briarcrest, we didn’t spend nearly as much time doing weight training as I had with Coach Johnson at Westwood. At first I was a little frustrated, but then I realized that most of my new teammates weren’t going to college to play sports. If they were given an opportunity to play in college, they’d take it, but these were pretty much all kids who were going to college for academics. Their scholarships were going to be for their grades more than for their sports statistics. A guy like me, for whom athletics was going to be my ticket to school, who would have to fight to get the grades to even be considered by a college—I was a new type of player, and I don’t think the coaches at Briarcrest really knew just what to do with me at first.