On the Line Read online

  We giggled on the other side of the net, because there’s nothing funnier when you’re a kid than seeing a grown-up get thwacked with a tennis ball.

  My father said, “Who hit that ball?” He wasn’t mad. Or, again, he didn’t sound mad. He sounded curious.

  We giggled some more.

  Once again, he said, “Who hit that ball?” He approached the net. We were trying his patience. That was a line we used to hear a lot as kids.

  I didn’t think I could stand right next to my dad and keep a straight face and maintain my deniability, so before he got any closer I pointed to Venus and said, “Venus hit it, Daddy.”

  Venus looked like she wanted to smack me with her racquet, but she didn’t cover for me. She pointed at me and said, “It wasn’t me, Daddy. It was Serena.” Then I pointed right back at V and said, “No, Daddy. It was Venus.” We went back and forth like this, blaming each other, until Daddy finally got so disgusted with both of us he walked off and left us to figure it out for ourselves.

  There was another time when Venus couldn’t have covered for me if she wanted to. We had just finished a hitting session with this guy named Jumo, who used to come around and help out my father every now and then. Daddy collected a lot of unusual characters when we were living in California, people who had played tennis or had been around the game. He was like a magnet for the tennis fringe, and for a long time he had his friend Jumo meet us at the court to hit with us. Jumo was tall and skinny, with a full head of dreadlocks—not the sort of guy you’d expect to see with a tennis racquet in his hands. He drove this big, faded-green delivery truck. But he could play. That was all Daddy cared about. He liked it when other people hit with us, because then he could stand back on our side and talk to us about our footwork or our positioning or whatever else we happened to be working on at the time. Plus, he thought it helped us to have to hit to a lot of different people so we could experience all these different approaches, all these different styles.

  Jumo was a good soul, too. He brought us oranges one day, for some reason. A whole bag. I was a little older by this point, maybe eight or nine. We put the oranges in the shopping cart while we were hitting, and then I think we must have forgotten about them. At least, my dad must have forgotten about them, because when it came time to work on our serves Daddy said he was going around the corner to get us some Super Socko. That was always another one of our special treats—a sports drink they used to sell in some of the local grocery stores that basically tasted like lemonade. If he’d remembered the oranges, he probably would have peeled a couple and given them to us instead. But off he went in search of our Super Sockos.

  We always ended our practices working on our serves. That’s the way they do it at most camps and clinics and academies, I’ve discovered, but more often than not coaches don’t leave much time for it, which is why I think it takes so long for youth players to develop an effective serve. It’s just been a neglected part of their game for so long. But my dad took a different approach. He had us work pretty diligently on our serves, and that’s probably why it’s such an effective part of our game. We worked on it at the very end of our sessions, but there was no clock on what we were doing. He’d have us out there serving until it got dark—or, sometimes, even after it got dark. We’d work it and work it until we had it down. Then we’d work it some more. The whole time, Venus and I would just talk and talk. The time flew, because we’d be chattering up a storm. It was the only moment during our practice session where it was just the two of us, side by side, so it was like we were catching up.

  Daddy’s routine was to have us toss a football back and forth before we started serving. It sounds like a gimmick, but it’s really not; he saw it in one of his teaching videos and it struck him as a good idea, because the crisp, snapping overhead motion you need to make in order to get a football to spin in a tight spiral almost precisely mirrors the crisp, snapping overhead motion you need to achieve a powerful serve. So that’s what we’d do. Venus and I would stand across the net from each other, close, and start tossing the football. Every few minutes, we’d take a couple steps back, until finally we were throwing baseline to baseline. Then we’d start serving.

  We still toss the football around before we serve—only now my nails are a problem. (Daddy hadn’t counted on that!) Back then, we didn’t care about having elegant fingernails, but now I have to catch the football with the heels of my palms so I don’t break a nail. Venus, too. It’s the one thing we do on a tennis court that looks awkward, but that’s the small price we pay for fashion.

  So there we were, working on our serves. Jumo was gone. Daddy had disappeared into the store. It was inevitable that we kids would dawdle a bit, with no one watching. Self-discipline took us only so far, I guess. I wandered over to our cart and saw that big bag of oranges on top, and without even thinking about it I started smashing them. Here again, I’ve got no justification or explanation for my behavior. It was just that devil streak spilling forth. I picked up a couple oranges and served them over the fence. Then I started smashing them right there in the cart. I was like a wild child. I unleashed on these defenseless oranges. I didn’t think about it. I just went a little crazy.

  I couldn’t sweet-talk my way out of this one, because Daddy came back from the store and caught me in the act. I was swinging so furiously at those oranges, I didn’t notice him return. He took one look at all that mess and pulp, and he could tell right away that I was the one responsible. Venus and the others didn’t give me up. It was on me. I got myself chased from the court—and caught a good whupping, too. And I deserved it, I suppose.

  We tell this story now and laugh about it, but at the time it was upsetting to me that I could have acted so brazenly, so heartlessly. To have beaten back a kindness offered by this good man, for no reason at all. Now, as an adult, I recognize that my actions here offered a glimpse into the mind of a competitive athlete. At least, it offered a glimpse into my mind. Into me, and the young athlete I was slowly becoming. I’ve tried to understand it, and what I’ve come up with is you need a wild streak if you hope to be a serious competitor. You need a kind of irrational killer instinct. You need to put it out there that you’re reckless and unpredictable—not just so your opponents take note, but so that you notice, too. You’ve got to convince yourself that you’re capable of anything, that you will not be denied, that you’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish whatever it is you’re out to accomplish. You need to surprise yourself, too. And you’ve got to embrace the wild, rash abandon that finds you and lifts you and transforms you in the heat of a cutthroat moment. It’s almost like you’ve got to get to that weird place where you can’t recognize your own behavior, and here I certainly couldn’t spot myself in what I was doing. Understand, I didn’t like what I was doing too terribly much. I didn’t know who I was, smashing those oranges. It was a little scary. But on the court, I loved it. On the court, it made sense. And looking back, it’s really the first glimpse I had of the passion I’d soon develop on the court. The passion I’d need to develop if I meant to grow my game.

  The greatest love of all? At first, it was my family. My sisters. But then tennis mixed itself in, and I have to think that emotional attachment to the game was what started to bubble forth that afternoon on the practice court. At the time, of course, I couldn’t put any of this stuff into words. It was just me smashing up a bushel of oranges. After it was over it was easier to laugh about it than to think it through, so I let my sisters believe I was just making some mischief and letting off steam. But there was more to it than that.

  Be strong. Be black. Now’s your time to shine. Be confident. They want to see you angry. Be angry, but don’t let them see it. Play angry, but let them see confidence. Play angry, but let them see patience. Play angry, but let them see certainty. Play angry, but let them see determination.

  —MATCH BOOK ENTRY

  THREE

  Me and V

  One year. Three months. Nine days. That’s the age d
ifference between me and my older sister Venus. These days, it doesn’t seem like much, but when we were kids it felt like I’d never fill the gap.

  She cast a big shadow, I’ll say that. She was taller, prettier, quicker, more athletic. And, she was certainly nicer. There was no living up to her. I certainly tried. I wanted to do everything just like Venus. Like Lyn, too, but Venus was first in line. Whenever we went to a restaurant, my mom would make me order first, because if I didn’t I’d just order whatever Venus ordered. I’d never speak my own mind. When we were little it was always “Venus this” and “Venus that.” “Venus, Venus, Venus.” The more we developed as players, the more I became the tagalong kid sister. That was the perception.

  I still remember this one national newspaper article about Venus that suggested I’d never be anything more than a footnote to Venus’s career. It talked about how in tennis the younger sibling never amounts to much, and how that would be my fate, too. That article came later, after we’d started playing in some tournaments, but it put me in mind of how I felt when we first started playing seriously.

  Imagine somebody writing something like that about a child. Declaring that a younger sibling would never amount to much. It’s harsh, don’t you think? That’s why I always have all this sympathy for the younger siblings, for people like Eli Manning and Patrick McEnroe. Everyone counts you out before you even get started. For our whole life, growing up, we’re like the underdogs.

  I promised myself I’d never forget that article, that one day I’d prove the reporter wrong. It was such a cruel thing to say, but I turned it into some more of that silent fuel. I filed it away for later. Everyone took it as such a big positive for Venus, and for all of us, and for the most part it was just that. With all the excitement in our house when it came out, I thought we’d be off on another one of Daddy’s paper-grabs. There’s no denying that it put us on the tennis map. All of us. But Tunde read between the lines and saw what I saw. She felt what I felt. As the oldest, she was the furthest removed from my runt-of-the-litter perspective, but she understood. She took me aside and said, “Don’t pay any attention to that article, Serena. You’ll have your day. You’ll have your time. And it’s gonna be even bigger.”

  I never forgot that. Filed that away, too.

  Growing up on those tennis courts in Compton and Lynwood and all over Los Angeles, it sometimes felt like nobody believed in me. I suppose I understood it on some level. Clearly, Venus was the phenom, the prodigy, the rising star. But on another level it hurt. Even my dad, who’s always been my biggest supporter, was spending more time with Venus, more time on her game, more time talking to reporters and coaches about her. The more he talked to people about us, the more he took us out to these events, the more connections he made in the game, the more it became about Venus.

  She was the main attraction. I get that now. I get that Venus deserved all that extra tennis attention. I get that you can raise only one champion—until you look up one day and realize you’ve raised two.

  My parents believed in me, in their own way. Absolutely, my mom believed in me. Wholeheartedly. That’s a great word for how she felt about her girls. She believed in all of us, with all her heart, and she had each of us believing in ourselves and in each other as well. We could do anything we wanted, be anything we wanted, accomplish anything we wanted. She had this great way of isolating each of us and making us feel special. Didn’t have to be about tennis. It could be about school, or dance, or gymnastics, or the way we’d decided to wear our hair. She singled us out and allowed us to shine.

  It wasn’t just my parents who believed in me. Venus knew I could play, too. Even when we were kids, she knew I could play. She didn’t understand why she was getting all the attention. She used to tell me I was a clever player, but I think that was her way of putting a positive spin on my game. I was good, but I was more of a counterpuncher. I wasn’t strong, like Venus. I wasn’t an intimidating presence, like Venus. I didn’t have a superaggressive game. I eventually found one when I got a little taller and stronger, but when we were little I was all about lobs and really, really long baseline rallies, and doing whatever I could to break my opponent.

  Venus never held it over me, that her game was bigger and better; she didn’t rub my face in it. She had such a good, kind heart. (She still does!) She was always so positive and generous and accommodating. She just told me to work hard and to play my game. “The rest will come,” she used to say. “Your time will come.”

  As I got older, I started sleeping more and more in Venus’s bed. Even when Tunde moved out of the house and there was a bunk bed to call my own, I still crawled in with Venus most nights, and we’d talk about these kinds of things. You’d think we’d get enough talk of tennis during the day from Daddy, but Venus used to take the time as we drifted off to pick me up and set me right. She could see when I’d had a tough day, when I needed a lift.

  One of the reasons Venus cast such a big shadow, of course, was because she was so tall. Always, always. I used to watch her play and think she was like a fierce swan out there on the court, with this incredible wingspan, able to reach every shot. I just couldn’t get the ball past her. (Nobody could!) In contrast, I was really, really small—the runt of the litter. That’s how I felt, growing up with all these big, beautiful sisters. And it wasn’t just Venus who dominated me on the court. Isha, too, had some serious game. That’s another thing people don’t know about our family, that for a long time Isha was a rising star, too. She could never quite touch Venus’s game, but she was good. In her own right, she was good. She was training to be a champion, just like me and Venus, up until she was about thirteen, when she started to have some trouble with her back and had to step away from the game. That was a real heartbreak for Isha, and for the rest of us, because she had a real shot. After that, she took some time off and returned a couple years later to become a strong high school player, but it was at a different level. And so, when we were kids, I was competing with Isha, too. That made two shadows for me to hide behind.

  By this point, Tunde and Lyn had drifted from the game. Tunde always said she didn’t have an athletic bone in her body, so she was happy to give it up. Lyn was a good athlete, but she started running track in middle school and said she didn’t have time for tennis. Plus, she loved writing and music—she had an artistic soul. From time to time, Daddy would work on Lyn to get her to take it up again because he said she showed a lot of promise, but she didn’t want to play. She’d had enough, she said. So that just left the three of us.

  I didn’t start growing until I was fifteen or sixteen years old, and my “clever” game was a direct result of my size. It came from necessity; I had to compensate. I learned to be resourceful on the court, to work on my shot placement, to out-think my opponent, because there was no way I was overpowering anybody out there. Physically, there was just no way.

  That observation I made earlier about never cheating my opponent on the lines? It didn’t apply against Venus, because the only way I could beat her was to cheat. She knew I was cheating, and I knew she knew I was cheating, but I cheated anyway. If the call was close, it was mine.

  I look back now and hate myself for cheating my big-hearted, generous, accommodating sister. Really, I’m so embarrassed by my behavior, but at the same time I recognize that it goes hand in hand with how I cheated that girl in the Domino’s Pizza League, when I felt I needed to. When my back was against the wall. When it was the only way I knew to compete. I wanted to win so badly that I’d stoop to this, but I guess I didn’t see it as stooping. It was just reaching—in the wrong direction.

  Daddy had us play against each other in practice. Not all the time, but a lot. He tried to get other hitting partners for us, and we’d hit with local teenagers or college players from time to time, but the default option was always me against Venus. We were always around. Anyway, we weren’t really competing against each other in these practice matches. Things weren’t like that between us. They were like that in
my head, but only in my head. I was definitely competing with myself. I was competing against the low expectations everyone had set out for me, against the high expectations they had for Venus. Plus, I still hated to lose, and I knew if I played Venus straight I’d probably lose. So I called balls out that weren’t. I insisted some of my shots were clearly in, when they clearly weren’t. My justification was no justification, really. Venus was better than me, that’s all. Way better. This was just my way of trying to win. It was wrong. I admit it. But it felt to me like I was doing what I had to do to keep pace.

  Venus never seemed to mind. She certainly never said anything. She just accepted my calls and played on—and in this way, I guess, we pushed each other. She pushed me to get good enough to beat her legitimately. I pushed her to get good enough to beat me so badly I couldn’t cheat my way from losing.

  Daddy had this idea that he didn’t want us to play in proper tournaments. He didn’t want us to have to face all that pressure. Also, he didn’t want so many sets of eyes on us, I think. He wanted to give us time to develop as players, before people had a chance to check us out and weigh in on what he was trying to do. He didn’t care for second-guessing. He liked that we could just do our thing on these different public courts, on our own timetable, without having to deal with these know-it-alls in the tennis community who always seemed to have something to say.

  Venus was ready to play in tournaments before I was. First of all, she was older, so she qualified. Second, and more important, she was so physically impressive that I could no longer give her much of a game, even with my not-so-generous calls, and the players Daddy brought around weren’t much competition, either. Very quickly, Venus got to where she really wanted to see how she’d do in a proper tournament, just like the players on television, but my parents wouldn’t allow it. I joined in on the argument, of course. I might have been a notch or two below Venus, but I was pretty good, too. I wanted to play, too. Finally, we wore Daddy down. He said if Venus could beat him straight up, he’d let her play—and I knew that once that happened, I wouldn’t be too far behind.