An Invisible Thread (27 page)

I eventually sold my apartment in Manhattan and moved down to Florida for a while, but I got restless and came right back. I’d like to buy another place in the city someday soon, but more than anything, I want to take a cruise with my whole family: with Annette and Bruce; with my niece Colette, who’s all grown up now, and her husband, Mike, and their daughter, Calli; with my nephew, Derek, and his wife, Brooke, and their son, Dashiell; with my niece Brooke and her boyfriend, Steve; with Nancy and John and their daughter, Jena, and son, Christian; with my little brother, Steven, and his wife, Elise, and her children Olivia and Emily; and, of course, with Maurice, his lovely wife, Michelle, and their remarkable children.

I don’t care where we sail to or what we do. I only care that we are all together on that boat.

I’d like to keep seeing my friend Maurice, if not every Monday, then as often as possible. Looking back on our relationship, I am struck by how unusual it was. We hailed from such vastly different worlds,
and on the surface, at least, we had very little in common. There was so much about Maurice’s life I didn’t know. Only very recently, for instance, did I learn that when I met him Maurice was actually twelve years old, and not eleven as we had always thought. He did not consistently celebrate his birthday as a child, and he may not have even known his real age when I met him. It was only when we started working on this book together that he figured out how old he was back then. I did not make the correction earlier in these pages, because that would not be true to the way the story unfolded for Maurice and I. The point is, there are many things that separate the two of us—age, culture, circumstance—and from the outside we might not seem like your typical close friends.

But I can honestly say no friendship is more important to me—none closer to my heart—than my friendship with Maurice.

After leaving Medgar Evers College, Maurice decided he didn’t want to be a cop after all. He went into the construction business, and he’s now trying to get his own small construction firm—Moe’s Finest Contracting, LLC—off the ground. He goes into old buildings, guts them, and puts in new pipes and wires and walls. He is incredibly talented, and I have no doubt his business will be a great success. He is already able to hire some employees.

In 2010, when Uncle Old got out of prison, Maurice gave him a job.

But the thing that makes me most proud of Maurice is his family. He has been with Michelle for more than fourteen years. He says he is more in love with her now than he has ever been. After his mother died, Maurice and his sisters each received a few hundred dollars in benefits. Maurice used some of that money to buy an
engagement ring for Michelle. They got married in front of a justice of the peace—just the two of them and two witnesses. If his business ever really takes off, he plans to give Michelle a real wedding.

And then there are his children. When I finally met them, I instantly fell in love with all of them. I mean, they are
incredible
kids—so bright, so vibrant, so funny, and overflowing with dreams. Maurice has become a father to Michelle’s son, Ikeem, who is twenty and tall and handsome. He thinks he might want to join the army one day. And there is Maurice’s firstborn, Junior, now seventeen and taller than his dad. His goal is to become a cook. There is Jalique, sixteen, a carbon copy of Maurice at that age; he wants to be a detective. Jahleel, eleven, likes the idea of being a police officer but also loves playing chess. Maurice has two daughters, too, and the first one he named Princess. She is fourteen and nicknamed “MaMa” and “YaYa.” She applied to the Fashion Institute of Technology and hopes to have a career in fashion marketing and design. She is beautiful and a natural charmer. Her sister is Precious, who is eight and enamored with jumping rope and Miley Cyrus. She wants to be a veterinarian and maybe an actress on the side. “I want to go on adventures,” she says.

And there is Maurice’s youngest, Jahmed, who is four. He’s a ball of energy who loves professional wrestling, just like his father does; he’ll show you his replica championship belt and hoist it high above his head in a fierce wrestling pose. It looks like he’s got a ton of musical talent, too, particularly for drumming. I remember Maurice handing him two pencils and watching him tap out an amazing arrangement on the table. “I also know how to make pancakes,” he says.

I cannot get over how sweet and smart and sparkling Maurice’s children are—and what a strong, loving, patient father he is. I see him teasingly try to swipe a candy bar that Princess is holding or wait two hours for Jahleel at a chess tournament or scoop up little Jahmed and sit with him in his lap for a while, and I marvel at how giving and affectionate he is. Maurice offers some of the credit for his parenting instincts to his mother and his grandmother. When he is in the kitchen on Thanksgiving, he says he talks to Darcella and Grandma Rose, and he tells them about his kids. If he listens closely enough he can almost hear them talking back to him, telling him to watch out for this or take care of that. And in that way they teach him to be a good father.

Maurice has also served as a mentor to children in community youth groups, and he is starting a volunteer group that helps disadvantaged kids—acts of kindness that take him full circle from his days on the streets.

“I consider my childhood a gift,” Maurice once told me. “It happened to me so I could learn the right way to raise my children. I saw what my father did, and I might have grown up thinking that was the only way to handle children, like my father handled me. But then I met you, and that’s when I realized there was another way.”

I remember one of the first times I went to Maurice’s apartment to see him and his family. He and Michelle had moved after twelve years in the same apartment in Brooklyn and were now living on Madison Street, in downtown Manhattan. Some people might consider the building run-down, but Maurice sees it differently.

“Compared to the way I grew up,” he says, “I live like a king now.” That is why he named his daughter Princess—“because,” he says, “I think of her as royalty.”

His apartment is a fairly nice size and is filled with laundry and toys and stray sneakers. Through the living room window you can see not only the Manhattan Bridge but, just beyond it, the Brooklyn Bridge. It is a breathtaking view, almost epic, suggesting promise and adventure. On one wall there are framed pictures of the children, on another a small flat-screen TV. There is also an Xbox, so Maurice can school his children in the art of video games just as he schooled me all those years ago.

And then I saw it.

It was in the living room, which doubles as a dining room, and when I saw it, Maurice smiled with pride.

A really big dining room table.

It was so big it went nearly from wall to wall, and eight chairs fit easily around it. If he needed to, Maurice could even add an extension or two and make it bigger. That’s where Maurice and his wife and his children have their meals, talk about their days, kid one another about this and that, and make plans to go to birthday parties and ball games and chess matches, where Jahmed, if he is in the mood, will do a little drumming with his No. 2 pencils.

“You see,” Maurice said to me, beaming, “I told you I’d get a big table someday.”

And then I sat down at that table and had dinner with my family.

Dear Laurie:

I’m writing this letter to let you know the impact you’ve had on my life. When I look back on everything that’s happened, I realize that if I hadn’t met you, I would not be the man I am today. I am eternally grateful for the love and care that you’ve shown me through the years. You’ve taught me how to dream, how to trust people, how to be a productive member of society, and, most of all, how to be a good man and a great father.

It all began on that day long ago when I asked you for money, and you walked right by me. At that moment, Laurie, I’m sure I thought you were just another one of those rich, uppity white people I’d always been told about.

But then you came back, and now I realize how black-and-white my world was before I met you. The beliefs that I’d been raised on were based on only one point of view. My mother and my grandmother were brought up in a time of segregation. That, coupled with a lack of education, is a recipe for distrust. When I first started seeing you, my grandmother would say, “You’d better stay away from that white bitch.” But in time, once she saw how I was benefitting from our relationship, she started saying things like, “That lady really cares about you,” and, “How’s that lady doing? Are you gonna see her again soon?” My grandmother went from flat-out not trusting or respecting you to believing you were a guardian angel God sent to watch over me.

I remember you asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. At that point, I’d never looked that far down the road; I just lived from day to day. I was more worried about what I was going to eat the next day than about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I didn’t know if I even would grow up, given the way I was living, but after meeting you, I began to broaden my view on my life. I began to think I could actually get a job of some kind. For the first time ever, I could picture myself as an adult, and maybe even see myself working as a police officer.

Even then, though, there was a problem, and that was how much I doubted myself. I doubted myself because I’d always been told I was illiterate. I was a bad student in school, so I was given an Individualized Education Program evaluation. My mother attended my IEP evaluation, and for some reason she came out believing I couldn’t read or write. My entire family began to tell me I couldn’t read or write. I knew that I could read and I also knew that I could write, although I wrote very slowly, but because I was constantly teased and reminded that I was illiterate, I began to think that it didn’t matter if I could or couldn’t—that
I was destined to live the kind of life the rest of the men in my family had.

And then, Laurie, you came to my rescue again. Just when I thought I was doomed, just when that first dream you encouraged me to dream had been all but shattered, you told me about how you struggled in school when you were my age. I can’t tell you how much your sharing that meant to me. I started to think that if someone like you—a person who was so articulate, who had such abundance in her life—could have experienced hardships of her own and overcome them, then so could I. After that, I completely ignored anyone who would sing the song of my incompetence. I decided that your opinion of me was fact, and anyone who didn’t agree with it was just plain jealous or unhappy with themselves. That mind-set changed everything for me. To this day, it still helps me deal effectively with issues in my life. To this day, it gives me the courage to dare to dream.

Laurie, there are so many things you taught me, so many experiences I could never have had if it weren’t for you. I remember all the times you took me to see your sister’s family on Long Island, but a couple of visits stand out. I remember the day your niece Brooke was crying hysterically when she found out Santa Claus wasn’t real. I remember thinking, “Uhoh, she’d better be quiet before she gets a beating.” I remember seeing her father, Bruce, come in and thinking, “Aw, man, time for her whipping.” But to my great surprise, and delight, all he did was console and comfort his daughter. He picked her up and wiped her tears, and he whispered something in her ear and then gave her a hug and that was that. I remember thinking Bruce was the best father in the world, and I learned something about being a father that day.

The next visit that stands out is the first time we all sat down at your sister’s big dining room table. I honestly didn’t know that tables came
that big, but that’s not what fascinated me. It wasn’t the food or the nice silverware, either. What really intrigued me was all the love that was passed across that table. There was one story after another and so much laughter. It’s a feeling I couldn’t explain back then, but now I know that feeling is called family. It’s a feeling I get every night when I am with my wife and children.

Because of you, Laurie, I got to see the many different ways people show they love and care for each other. I’m thinking of all those lunches you prepared for me and put in those brown paper bags. I realize some people might not understand why the paper bags were important. But to me, they showed that someone had taken the time to make me lunch. Someone had actually thought of me; someone cared about me. Laurie, you took the time to make my lunches and you showed me that you cared about me, and all those kids at school could see that someone cared about me, too. I just can’t thank you enough for all those brown paper bags.

The times we spent together were the best times of my life. I had tons of fun playing games and hanging out, but I also learned more with you than I ever did anywhere else. I didn’t realize it then, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve started to notice that all those little life lessons I picked up are a guiding force in my life today. Lessons like, “You don’t have to fight all the time to prove how tough you are, Maurice.” Do you remember telling me that? Maybe you don’t. But I’ll never forget it. You showed me it was more important to be mentally tough than physically tough, and that is a lesson I try to impart to my own children today.