On the Line Page 4

  We laughed about it, though. Right away, we laughed about it. We sat in the back and turned it into a song. Lyn made it up to poke fun at Isha, but we all joined in soon enough. We sang: “Ride a little, bump a little, tear the mirror off a little…” It came with its own little singsong melody. It got to be a long-running joke in our family, one of those Greatest Hits–type stories you take out and tell over and over again. Isha gets all red-faced whenever we bring it up, whenever we start singing, because it certainly wasn’t her finest moment, but even now, all these years later, that little song can get us going. One of us will fall in to singing, and the others will chime in, and at the other end we’ll just laugh and laugh and remember what it was like out there in Compton, back when we were all still making it up as we went along, learning the game by touch and feel, on some level knowing our world was about to open up for us in a big-time way.

  Serena, this game is mental. Good thoughts are powerful. Negative thoughts are weak. Decide what U want to be, have, do and think the thoughts of it. Your vision will become your life. Hold on to the thought of what U want. Make it absolutely clear in your mind. U become what U think about most. U attract what you think about most. Think. Do. Be.

  —MATCH BOOK ENTRY

  TWO

  The Greatest Love of All

  Away from tennis, we were just a regular family. Sort of. I was the youngest of five sisters. There was me at the bottom, and then Venus, fifteen months ahead of me. I was actually born in Saginaw, Michigan, not far from where my mom was born and raised, but we moved to Compton when I was a baby. Ahead of Venus, there was Lyndrea, whom we all called Lyn, and Isha. The oldest was Yetunde—or Tunde, for short.

  My parents established the tone in our house, but you could say we girls held sway. My parents were disciplinarians, but on top of that we were taught to be self-disciplined. My older sisters used to say me and V had it easy, because by the time my parents got to us they were too tired and worn out to be superstrict disciplinarians, but I don’t know about that. They were still pretty hard on us, but we were even harder on ourselves. We were expected to do our schoolwork and our chores, and to help each other in whatever ways were age-appropriate. Tunde and Isha could help the younger girls with their homework, say, while Lyn and Venus could help me clean my section of our closet. (Notice that I was the one on the receiving end of my sisters’ assists. I knew how to work a good thing, even then.) We went dutifully to our daily practice sessions, but it wasn’t entirely without complaint. Actually, we whined more than we complained, but mostly we whined among ourselves. There was an unspoken rule that any real misgivings we might have had about logging all those hours on the court should be… well, unspoken. We were meant to practice like it mattered, like there was no place else we’d rather be—because, of course, these practices did matter. They were all part of my parents’ plan.

  My mom worked as a nurse. My dad had his own security firm. What that meant, for most of my childhood, was that he was around. Later on, after he’d turbocharged our tennis schedule, I used to catch myself hoping he’d have to go to work and cancel practice, but that never happened; his schedule was flexible. Our practice times? Not so much. My mom’s work schedule was set by the hospital, but as we got older she started to take on more private patients, so there was a little more room. Meanwhile, my dad set it up so he worked at night; sometimes, he worked while we were in school, but it was mostly at night, after we went to bed. When we were home, he was home. Usually, he was trying to talk to one of us about tennis. Trying to get us to watch matches with him on television. Looking ahead to our next practice.

  Daddy carved out some special time for each of us, underneath our hectic comings and goings. He’d talk to us about focus and discipline. His big thing was for each of us to have a plan and to write it down. The plan could be about tennis, school, life, whatever. He’d say, “Meeka, did you have a plan for today? Did you write it down?” By writing it down, he said we would be more likely to own it and to see it through. It can be a powerful motivational tool, I guess, but try telling that to a little kid who didn’t quite see the point, a kid who would rather be doing cartwheels or dancing.

  We sisters all fit into our particular roles. Tunde was the forgiver; she had a heart of gold. Isha was the caretaker; she looked after each of us, and helped to establish a sense of order in our private world. Lyn was our play pal; she was everyone’s favorite knockabout buddy, always up for a new adventure. Venus was my protector. I’m not quite sure how the others saw her, but to me she was like a benevolent bodyguard, on the constant lookout for any situation that might cause me trouble or distress. And me, I was the princess; I was everyone’s pet. Looking back, I think I was more like a pest, but my sisters let me get away with everything!

  What’s curious is that we all kept those roles into adulthood. Even now, I’ll reach out to Lyn if I’m looking to cut up or do the town, or to Isha, if I need help sorting through the twists and turns of my crazy schedule. And so on.

  Another curious side note to how we grew up was that all five girls shared a bedroom, with four beds. Do the math: it meant one of us was the odd girl out, and since I was the youngest that was me. There were two sets of bunk beds: Isha and Tunde, the two oldest, had the two beds on top; Lyn and Venus had the two down below. Every night, I’d have to bunk with a different sister—and here, too, there was a lesson for a lifetime. A situation like that might have messed with my sense of belonging or identity, but that’s not how I looked at it. How I looked at it was it brought me closer to each of my sisters. How I looked at it was I had this great gift that none of the other girls had. It might have been a negative, but I took it as a positive. Each night, I’d crawl into bed with a different sister, and as a result we each had a special bond. Instead of feeling like I didn’t quite belong anywhere, I felt like I belonged everywhere. It was empowering, really. It made for a series of real, close, substantive relationships, and I had it going on four times over.

  I fit myself in, in whatever ways I could, wherever I could—an odd way to look out at the world, but ultimately a healthy one, I think. The constant bed-hopping reminded me yet again that nothing is ever handed to you, not even a bed to call your own. Also, it taught me to grab at what I needed, and to make it my own—and at the same time to make the best of what I had in the first place. There was a lot of love in our house; we were bursting with it. But it took chasing after it each night in this unusual way for me to trust in it; it took reaching for it, and reaching for it, to know it wouldn’t slip away.

  It all goes to character. The way you’re raised. Where you’re raised. How you look out at the world. How the world looks back at you. All of that gets mixmastered together in such a way that you come out the other side a fully formed person—only it took me a good long while before I got my game on in this respect. Fully formed? That wasn’t me, not until I was much, much older. I took shape at my own pace. For a while, I had a real princess-type mind-set. Maybe it came from being the youngest. Maybe it came from smiling my way into a different sister’s good graces each night. Maybe it came from learning to get what I wanted. Maybe I was just spoiled, plain and simple. My sisters took care of me, that’s for sure, and I was pretty good at playing one off another to get what I wanted.

  Perfect example: we used to put on these ridiculous talent shows, but after a while Lyn and V never wanted to participate because I always had to win. That was my thing, winning. Man, I hated to lose! (I still hate to lose!) Isha or Tunde would usually be the judge, and the rest of us would sing or dance or do a little skit. I always sang the same song—Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All”—and if I didn’t win, I cried. (Wouldn’t have killed me to come up with another routine, but I loved that song.) I’d kick and fuss until the judge made me the winner. It didn’t matter if Venus or Lyn deserved to win. It only mattered that I got my way.

  I don’t know why my sisters put up with me, but they did. Lord knows, I didn’t make it easy for t
hem. Actually, I was kind of horrible. (I wouldn’t have put up with me!) Some of the stunts I pulled were off the charts. But cute cuts you a lot of slack, I quickly learned, and it buys you a batch of forgiveness. Once, we’d all been given piggy banks by a Spanish teacher my father had hired to work with us. The deal was if one of us did particularly well at our lessons, we’d get a porcelain piggy bank—empty, but done up with traditional Mexican-style painting on the sides. They were really nice. I think I was the last sister to get one, and when I did I was so proud of myself—but then I broke mine, and I was devastated. It was worse than not earning one in the first place. I’d set it to rest on this wicker bookcase we had in our bedroom, and it toppled over. Next thing you know, Lyn’s piggy bank also broke. After that, Venus’s broke as well. No one could figure out why these piggy banks kept breaking. It was a big family mystery, until about ten or twelve years later when I finally confessed: I’d smashed my sisters’ piggy banks because mine was broken; I couldn’t stand it that they had something I didn’t have. It was the only way I knew to cover this lost ground.

  My goodness, I was awful. But I was the baby of the family, so I got away with a lot. That’s how it goes in some families; the baby gets a free pass, so it took a while for me to figure out this right-and-wrong business. I even struggled with it on the tennis court, where it came up almost as soon as I started competing. Thinking back on it, I can’t believe I started playing in matches at such a young age, because at first my parents were only concerned with form and function. They wanted me to hit the ball properly, to work on my ground strokes, to really get a good feel for my game. With me and Venus, it was mostly about hitting. Over and over and over. With Lyn and Isha, it was also about hitting, but on top of that it was about tactics and positioning. (Tunde had drifted away from the game at some point, as we got older.) I never really talked strategy with my parents when I was little. The concept of hitting it where your opponent isn’t, of playing to win… somehow those things were instinctive with me. By the time I was six or seven, Daddy had me playing in these local leagues, and I knew to move the other girl around. I knew to put the ball away for a winner. I knew from watching all those matches on television, from going to all those tournaments. But I didn’t know it well enough to put it into words. I just knew. Like it was a part of me.

  There was one league I remember in particular, the Domino’s Pizza League. I joined when I was about seven, and my mom used to take me to most of my matches because my dad was usually off at some tournament or other with Venus or Isha. I used to win most of my matches, but my teammates lost most of theirs, so we never really won anything. They had it set up so there were four to six girls on a team. We’d compete individually against the girls from the other team, and then at the end we’d tally up our scores, and whichever team had won the most games would win the match. I’d breeze through a lot of my matches and end up playing hopscotch by myself, or dancing and cartwheeling along on the sidewalk behind the courts. I wasn’t a very good teammate, I guess. I didn’t have it in me to root for the other girls on my team.

  There was this one girl, Anne, who always played me tough. She was good, but I was better. She wanted it, but I wanted it more. Can’t say for sure why I wanted it more, or how I knew to measure my will to win against hers—but this was how Daddy had me thinking on that court. He had me sizing up my opponent, and figuring where I’d find my advantage, without really talking to me about it. It came from all those hours watching tennis on television, watching all those VCR tapes of classic matches. It all just seeped in.

  This one time, Anne beat me pretty thoroughly—only I counted it as a victory for me. I was down 5–2 in games, when Anne made the fool move of asking me the score. Big mistake. Why? Well, you have to realize, in little-kid matches there are no referees. The parents aren’t even supposed to watch. It’s left to us kids to keep our own score and make our own calls, and it was always a special point of pride to me that I called a fair game. A lot of girls would cheat like crazy. A lot of that was because they were just young, and they didn’t know the rules or couldn’t follow the flight of the ball as it went past and found the line, but a lot of that was because they were cheaters. You’d hit a ball that was in by a couple feet, they’d call it out. They’d serve it way wide and insist it was good. Not me.

  Except for this one time, against Anne, when my moral compass pointed in an entirely different direction. For whatever reason it really, really bugged me that this girl couldn’t even keep score. I thought, How can you even ask such a stupid question? Why are you even wasting my time? What’s that about? We were only seven years old, of course, but—still!—it was just counting. We’d been counting since kindergarten. What was so hard about keeping score?

  So what did I do? I glared across the net at poor Anne and said the score was 5–2, in my favor. I gave her my most menacing look and claimed three of those games for myself. I don’t know why I did it, but I did it. And I don’t know why or how Anne bought it, but she bought it. I’m certainly not proud of myself. I don’t think I was a bad kid, even though I was clearly in the wrong on this one, and yet I look back and can’t even recognize my behavior. I’ve tried to understand it. Yes, I was pampered at home by my big sisters. Yes, I was used to getting what I wanted. Yes, I liked to win, no matter what. Maybe that’s all it was. Maybe I just didn’t want to lose. Maybe the fact that this girl couldn’t even count was unacceptable to my entitled self. Whatever it was, I announced the score with such conviction that my opponent had no choice but to accept it.

  I must have felt badly about it, but I played on. I couldn’t lose to this girl, I convinced myself. Especially now. I couldn’t steal all those games and not come away with a victory—a victory on paper, at least. I looked at her across the net, with her glasses and her simple, trusting face, and I thought, How could someone be so naïve? So timid? How could she give back all those games? Underneath feeling bad for her, I was also angry that we were both out there playing to win, and she couldn’t take things seriously enough to keep score.

  Then, after a while, a lightbulb must have switched on in Anne’s head. She said, “Wait a minute. I think I was up 5–2.”

  “What are you talking about?” I shot back. “I’m up 5–2.”

  We went back and forth on this for a couple beats, but ultimately I prevailed. I was meaner about it, I guess, and yet somehow this girl battled back to 5–5. That would have been a real stroke of justice for Anne if she managed to beat me anyway, but for me, at this point, it would have been a humiliation. I know I’d already humiliated myself, but this would have just been humiliation on top of humiliation. And so, in my narrow seven-year-old worldview, I was digging deep and making double-sure this little girl didn’t somehow beat me—even though she already had. It became a real pride thing. A stupid pride thing. She’d been up three games on me, and now she was up three more, and still I talked myself into thinking it would be some kind of victory if I pushed the phony score in my favor.

  Shame on me, right? Absolutely. But I was starting to realize that I loved to win. At all costs. I loved my family. I loved my sisters. But winning just about beat all, in my developing spirit of competition.

  In the end, I held on to “beat” Anne 7–5, and I somehow allowed myself to feel good about it afterward. Like I said, I counted it as a victory. I’d backed myself into an impossible corner, and while I was there I convinced myself that I deserved to win, that I was a better player than Anne, that the win meant more to me than it would have to her. All this nonsense to justify my princess–prima donna behavior. And after I held on to legitimately win those final two games, I went right back to thinking I had more integrity than my opponents, because I never cheated them on the lines. Even in this match against Anne, I didn’t cheat on the lines. If my shot was out, I called it out. If her shot was in, I called it in. I just gave myself a bunch of games when she wasn’t looking.

  I was becoming a real player, but I still had a lot to le
arn.

  My goodness, I had a rotten streak. I was horrible—a real witch! To my sisters. To my little kid opponents. I had this double-dose of mischief and rebellion that couldn’t help but bubble forth. It even came out with my parents—against my better judgment. But I was smart: I always had deniability. That’s what they call it on those Law and Order shows I like to watch: plausible deniability. I could always point the finger, look the other way, or pretend to have no idea there was any kind of trouble. That’s one of the great benefits of being the youngest. People are inclined to see your side because you’re cute.

  Of course, it’s significant to note that I never thought of myself as cute. That might have been my role in the family, but that wasn’t my self-image. I looked in the mirror and saw an ugly duckling. Now, all these years later, I look at pictures of myself from back then and think, How could my mom have let me out of the house looking like that? I blame my sisters, too. Even then, they had a real sense of style, a sense of fashion, a flash and flair. Surely, they must have noticed how goofy I looked.

  But all I got back was that I was cute, so of course I put that to work for me. Once, I “accidentally” hit my dad with a tennis ball, and I used my cute persona to full advantage to deflect the blame. The way it worked, whenever someone was on the other side of the net and a shot got away from us, we were supposed to shout, “A ball! A ball!” Like the way a golfer shouts “Fore!” So one afternoon when I was feeling particularly disgruntled or beaten down by a particularly grueling session, I whacked a hard liner in the direction of my dad, who was picking up balls and had his back to the net. I don’t think I meant to hit him, exactly, but it was clear to me that was where the ball was going, and I certainly had time to call out a warning. But I didn’t. I just watched as the ball smacked him full-on. Startled him pretty good. Stung him, too.