It still seems to me that my late best friend, Marvin Barros Jr., was the one who led me to reconnect with C.J. “Marvin, I miss you and now that I have found you, I will never let you go!” I cried as I embraced his lifeless body, lost and forgotten in a pile of dirt and leaves in the woods. As I held him, I remembered how he was counselor and friend to both C.J. and me when we were young and growing up in the streets of Roxbury and how my mother had looked at him strangely the first time I brought him to our apartment to stay the night. How at night, due to his hemophilia, Marvin’s gums would bleed onto his pillow. Sometimes he’d wake up terrified at the sight of his own blood.
Despite the risks, Marvin would sneak onto the court to play basketball once in a while because he loved the game. When he did, we played half-court, on the same team. He would set up his long and skinny six-foot-four inch frame in the middle of the paint while I stood at the top of the key with the ball. I’d lob a pass over my defender to Marvin and sprint to the right or left of the basket. Then he would step toward me and roll the ball off his fingers so I could scoop it in for a sweet layup. Once in a while, Marvin would fake the pass, turn in the opposite direction and shoot a fadeaway jump shot with his left hand. He moved his body slowly and deliberately, like a praying mantis in sneakers. His joints were swollen and painful. An elbow or kick to his frame often meant a week’s stay at the hospital. I would visit, and he and I would race up and down the hallways in stray wheelchairs, eat salty french fries, and play video games all night.
I was devastated when Marvin died the same year I left to play basketball at a prestigious private high school in New Jersey. He called me several nights before his death. “Naj,” his voice crackling and sickly over the phone, “you were the reason I did everything. I did it for the kids. I love the kids, and I just wanted to make life better for them.” Then he spoke to me softly, “I love you.” It was the first time he had said those words to me. He was now twenty-one. I was seventeen. “I love you too,” I responded. That was the last time I ever spoke to Marvin before that encounter in the woods, many years later.
“Little Marvin wanted you to have this.” Marvin’s mother cried as she handed me the gold and silver basketball hoop pendant Marvin used to wear around his neck. When I opened my palm I saw an intricately woven hoop of gold set inside a silver frame, with a silver basketball hovering above the rim. I smiled and clutched the object in my hand. I remembered Marvin’s words: “Naj, now I see what you are doing. At first, I didn’t understand. I wanted you to dominate and prove that you were the best ballplayer in Roxbury. But now I see what you are doing. You are playing ball for a different reason, to become a better person. Now I understand, man. Keep going!” He had been watching the slow and graceful way that I approached the game, as though it was a moving meditation and I was unconcerned about the world around me. And now he had given me a golden threaded hoop and ball, through his mother. I wondered if it was a sign, the threaded net of the basket signaling the way our lives had been woven together through hoops. Was Marvin speaking beyond the grave? “Keep going through hoops! I will be there with you. Nothing can break the bond between us! Nothing. Not even death!” I hoped so.
So fifteen years after his death, when I discovered Marvin’s body, cold and wet, lying in the thick of the woods, I was saddened but not that surprised. I cried and held him close. I apologized for leaving him alone and forgotten as I toiled through college and graduate school. I carried him near a fire burning among a pile of stones and attempted to rekindle his spirit. Then I sat him under an oak tree and fed him water and beer. I sang to Marvin, danced for him, and told him that I wanted to escort him to his resting place. Then as the sun pulled back the darkness of the night, I recognized the first signs of life, ushering him into his new being. I carried his body down to the river and bathed him in morning waters. He lay awake and at peace with me, happy. As Marvin rested, I shared my failings and dreams with him. How to keep going, how to make sense of the ache for meaning black men experienced on basketball courts? Could the game become a tool of liberated consciousness? I asked Marvin to assist me on the journey. “If there is a way,” I said, “show me.”
I left the woods with hope in my heart, even though I had to return to Boston where some of my graduate school professors didn’t think writing a book about religion and basketball was worthwhile. “You have to write white,” one professor explained. “I feel protective of you. You are a black man. The academy will stereotype you as just another black man who loves basketball. You need to demonstrate your grasp of theory rather than focusing on a parochial practice like hoops.” I was hurt and discouraged. How could I explain to him that I didn’t have the privilege of being a disembodied professor? Whatever ideas I professed had to make sense to those who lived in the streets and in black skin. A few days later, another religious studies professor refused to meet with me. “You should really get to know Onaje as a student. He is a really nice young man,” a colleague of his suggested. “I don’t care. I don’t want to know him,” he replied. I felt isolated. Although I was earning a Ph.D. at Martin Luther King Jr.’s alma mater, I was the only black male doctoral student in a department lacking professors of color.1
Nevertheless, I had traveled too far from the streets of Roxbury to the academy to succumb now. After the woods, I took a subway train to Marvin’s old apartment in Roxbury’s Mission Hill projects. I wanted to see his mother and younger twin sisters, to be reunited with them. Little Marvin’s father—Big Marvin—had died of cancer while grieving for his son.
As I walked up the stairs to their front door my heart was pounding. I knocked; the door opened. His beautiful sister emerged, her face beaming with light. “Onaje, oh my God, is that you? Where have you been? We’ve been looking all over for you! Come in. Come in. We’re not going to lose you again.” We spoke for hours, mostly about how life had changed and yet remained the same. As our conversation came to an end, we stood up and embraced. Their mother was not home, but I still felt a weight of guilt and grief lift from my shoulders. I stepped out of their front door into the night, and a cool whistling breeze met my face.
REUNITING WITH C.J.
It was dark; dry leaves swirled through the air. I sauntered down the stairs and onto the main road under dim streetlights. Marvin’s house was inside gang territory, but I was unafraid. “Naaaaaje!” a grumbling baritone voice bellowed from nowhere. I looked around. “Naaaaaje!” I could not figure out where the voice was coming from. Then I peered over and down at a small, beat up old black car with holes on the side, which had stopped inconspicuously near a curb on the road. “Yoooo, what’s up my nigga! It’s C.J.,” the voice rumbled. “C.J.! What? C.J.! How have you been?” I asked. “You know, tryin’ to maintain, that’s all. Just did a bid in prison. Tryin’ to get my life back together, you know what I’m sayin’? The struggle life. Matter of fact, I was just talking about you to G-Big, like, ‘yo, remember when Naje use to give ’em the business on the bball court?’ Definitely though, I want to catch up with you my bro.” “Yo C.J.,” I responded excitedly. “I just came from Marv’s old house! Yo, we’re family bro. We grew up together. You lived right down the street from me. Of course, anything I can do man, to be there for you, I’m there. What’s your number so I can give you a call and we can meet up?” C.J. rattled off his number and then vanished into the night. I stopped, turned, and gazed at Marvin’s old place. “If there is a way, show me,” I had once said. Now I wondered if it had begun.
C.J. had been psychologically scarred by death. Through basketball, he was seeking a second life. As children growing up in Roxbury, we were friends. He lived on Maybury Street, down the block from my grandmother’s apartment. I remember seeing C.J. rush home from school to retrieve his gym shorts so he could make it to the basketball court on time. On the court, C.J. was quicker and faster than everyone else. Shorter too, which is why he was known as “little C.J.” in the neighborhood. Since our apartments were nestled between two gang territories—the Maybury boys and Intervale crew—we walked on the main roads to the Yawkey Club.
C.J. dealt with a crack-addicted and alcoholic father at home. His father was a source of fear and instability for his mother and little sister as well. When C.J. turned seven, his father was imprisoned and he never saw him again. C.J. didn’t know which was worse—a drugged-up father at home or losing him to prison: “I had a father up until those ages, until about seven years old. That’s why I started ended up going to the boys and girls club. At that age he went to jail. Liquor was in his life. Drugs was in his life. He left the house.” The loss of his father to prison pushed C.J. to search for male role models on the local basketball courts. C.J. was short, but he was also ambidextrous. He could bounce the ball with either hand as if it were tied to an invisible string. He loved to move his body in abrupt angular patterns on the court to trick defenders. He would stop and go, stop and go, and his herky-jerky style frustrated opponents. They would sag off of C.J. and dare him to shoot, at which point he would smile, calmly step to the three-point line and fire the ball with either hand. More often than not, his shot was “money,” as he used to say.
What C.J. loved most about basketball was the freedom to move uninhibited across the court, to use his quickness and speed to reach any spot on the floor. Pushing the ball between his legs, dancing from one angle to the next, seeing how fast he could execute each dribble move—it was soothing. Once he reached his sweet spot, C.J. would glide off his right foot with the ball in his left hand before finally switching it over to his right hand for a lay-up off the glass. Sometimes he would sprint to each hoop in the gym, scoring, then driving to the next basket to do it all over again. The predictable rhythm of dribbling the ball and scoring the hoop contrasted sharply with the instability of his life outside of basketball.
Watching C.J., who was a few years younger than me, dribbling down the court and scoring baskets, I had no idea that he would end up in prison just like his father; that he would become a crack dealer and gunshot survivor. The night we met in front of Marvin’s old apartment, the trauma of his past oozed from his skin. His body looked dry and beaten, his eyes were sunken in and hollow. Dark bags hung beneath his eyelids; his lips were cracked black from the stain of marijuana smoke. A noticeable glimmer of light, however, remained in his eyes.
“Standing before the judge,” C.J. later explained. “I’ll never forget. He called me a wounded fox. He said that I was acting out like a hurt fox. He told me that before he gave me eighteen months in prison.” “How did it get to that point?” I asked. “How did you go from running up and down the court in the neighborhood to standing before a judge who gave you an eighteen-month sentence?” “The struggle life,” C.J. responded. “Almost everyone I ever cared for died.” C.J. had been carrying around all those dead bodies, and their weight just became too heavy to bear. I knew then that my grieving for and rekindling of Marvin’s spirit in the woods might become relevant for C.J.’s own journey. If a second life were possible for C.J., I thought, eventually he would have to confront the pain of losing so many loved ones.
THE TOLL OF VIOLENCE AND DEATH
The first person C.J. ever lost was his father. Although initially, the man wasn’t physically dead, he had passed from C.J.’s life when he was locked up. C.J. found surrogate fathers at local basketball courts, many of whom showed him discipline and love. First there was Big Al, a towering man with a grainy voice and an extra dose of tough love. Big Al was strong. He did one hundred push-ups each morning before coaching kids. He was beloved, especially by those young men who did not have fathers at home. “Come on, C.J., get into it!” Al barked when he noticed C.J. jogging up the court. “Push the ball! Go!” C.J. would respond by crouching his body low to the ground and taking off at full speed with the ball like an Olympic sprinter. Coach Al would let out his signature laugh and smile when he saw C.J. respond with such ferocity.
“Get real son!” Coach Barry would scream in his Caribbean accent at C.J. and me if we missed easy layups. Coach Barry was stricter than Big Al. “That ain’t reaaaaal boooooy!” Barry boomed each time the ball clanged off the basket. But most of us ball players loved Coach Barry and found him comical. Sometimes we missed layups just to hear his signature lines. Then on our way home from the gym, if one of us did something stupid, we’d yell, “That ain’t real boy! You better get real son!” and bust out laughing.
Of all our coaches, however, Coach Manny Wilson was our hero. Coach Manny, the first to teach C.J. or me basketball, was like a superman with special powers. He was six-feet-four-inches tall, carried a gun during the day as a Boston police officer, and sported boulders for biceps, calf muscles of steel, and pecs made out of iron. One time I remember Manny calling me over to the bench-press station in at the Yawkey Club weight room. “Come here, boy. Check this out.” Manny flexed his forearm. His bicep swelled into an oversized apple. “Go ahead, touch it,” he said. When I poked his flesh with my right index finger it felt like I hit a rock. Manny opened the gym for us every Saturday morning for a two-hour basketball practice and drove us home during the week if we played games late at night.
“Take that hat off in the gym and give me twenty,” Manny would yell whenever C.J. entered the gym with his hat on. C.J. would drop to the floor and count out twenty push-ups. “One, two.” “Don’t go down for the next push-up until I say down,” Manny would demand. “Hold it there.” Manny would make C.J. sweat for that last push-up. “Nineteen…Nineteen…Nineteen…Down…Twenty!”
Manny also taught us how to play basketball together as a team. We ran a two-three zone defense, with two guards rushing the other team’s point guard at half-court. We played a one-three-one motion offense, guards passing to the wing and screening away, big men moving between the free-throw line and the low post. When we felt anxious during games, Manny knew instantly to call a time-out. “Okay, are you ready to play now? You got the nerves out?” “Yes,” we would respond collectively. “Okay, than get your hands in.” Our hands in the center, we yelled: “One, Two, Three, hard work!” in unison.
C.J. was ten years old when Manny died. Back then I never had a chance to speak to him about Manny’s death. The car accident occurred a block away from Marvin’s old apartment, where I would be reunited with C.J. years later. C.J. had lost another father. “I got my strength, some of my strengths come from Manny,” he explained.
I just remember him like just pulling people off the streets to come in and play basketball. It is still unbelievable that he passed you know? All I remember hearing is that he was in the car wreck and that he was gone, but it is like he’s still here somewhere you know? He’s definitely still here through the basketball league, the Manny Wilson League that we played in, just everything, he was just a big dude. He was strong so that it’s like I got my strength, some of my strengths come from Manny. He was the first dude that really put us in there, put me in there, because, um, it’s still hard to believe that he’s gone, ’cause really he’s not gone. His spirit’s gone but the whole Manny Wilson movement is still here. It’s still here.
C.J.’s mother enrolled him in a predominately white elementary school soon after Manny’s death. During school days, C.J. was able to escape Roxbury’s streets. The arrangement would have been beneficial had it not been for the racism he experienced in the suburbs. Some white students referred to him as a “nigger” when he arrived on campus. To be called a “nigger” confused and robbed C.J. of his identity. He knew that the word signified his people’s enslavement and dehumanization at the hands of whites. He desperately searched for a word that could hurt whites just as much, but their ancestors had not been enslaved and many knew the origins of their progenitors. Since no shield or sword could be found in the English language, he turned to his fists instead.
Racism played a part in my life at an early age. Going to a Janesbe school, about fourteen minorities on the bus going to a predominately white school in Janesbe. A couple of years I was the only African American kid in the class, you know?
I had a couple of kids, you know, they called me out my names and I dealt with them you know? I dealt with them sometime, but after a while I lost my cool because I never, I couldn’t, I never had a name to call them back that matched the names that they would call me you know? And they would get away with it because you know, I was a, like I said, there was only a few minorities going to school and I was like one of the darker shade ones there, so if I was to put my hands on somebody for hurting my feelings, I would get in trouble for it or they would tell them “oh, I didn’t say that” [C.J. speaks with a wimpy “white” voice]. So, you know, I ended up getting kicked out of the school, you know?
As we spoke, it became obvious that C.J. was still haunted by the injury of going nameless in the minds of other people.2 He did attempt to turn the word “nigger” around on the white boys who were unaware that its dictionary definition was “ignorant person.” By stripping the term of its racial meaning, C.J. tried to remove its sting. It was ironic to him that those who referred to blacks as “niggers” were actually “niggers” themselves. His ability to signify on his oppressors through the use of irony helped him cope with the tragedy of his situation.
It was definitely a race thing. Because you know, when you got people using the word “nigger” and they don’t know the definition of it to call you “nigger” and especially if they’re a Caucasian person or another race outside the African American race you take it personally you know? Because if you tell them to define it, they know the definition is ignorant person, but they’re not going to tell you “I’m calling you a nigger because you’re ignorant.” So you get it from all angles and you know, I mean, I dealt with it then, but it’s helping me now because you know, being, seeing certain situations and still hearing things, racism going on now, prejudice and all that.
Recently when I was incarcerated I heard, um, a Caucasian person call somebody a “nigger.” Now me in elementary, I would have beat the person up, or we would have been fighting. But me now, knowing that the true definition to the word is always going to be an ignorant person, I just, I never even, I just washed it away. I didn’t tell the person. I just kept it moving because for somebody to call, whatever race it is, for somebody to call and use that name, that word, they are themselves an ignorant person because it’s a substitute word for ignorant so instead of you using words like that, you can just call a person, “yo, you’re ignorant.” You know, “yo, you’re an ignorant person,” you know? So, I mean, I dealt with it but basketball, you know, it makes up for that because like I said, my best friend was a Caucasian person and I played with everybody, you know? I played with everybody.
Given his early experiences with racism, it may be surprising to hear that C.J.’s childhood best friend was white. He crossed over racial lines on suburban basketball courts too. During the school year, C.J. would collect his Roxbury friends and “barnstorm” the suburbs to play against white players. They would ride on “white” subway routes, where commuters stared suspiciously at their hoodies, Timberland boots, and gym bags. C.J. and his black friends assumed stereotypes about whites as well, believing that white ballplayers were “pure” jump shooters. “They got jump shots,” C.J. would tell his black friends as they rode the train.
I actually, now there’s a new thing going on now where you’ll see a group of kids. You’ll see them at downtown crossing where you can get on the red line, the green line and they got their Champion hoodies on, their skullies, their Tims and today’s stereotype is “oh, they out here, selling drugs, with guns and stuff like that, especially with the book bags on.” But actually they have sneakers in their bags with a basketball, and they going out to Chelsea somewhere, South Boston, from Roxbury, to go play basketball. I mean, me, myself and I, I use to travel, ’cause I use to go to school in Janesbe. I went to Memorial Janesbe Elementary school there and my best friend was a white person, a Caucasian person.
His name was Amos Ferrel, and the funny thing is I live on Maybury Street in Roxbury. He lives on Maybury Street in Janesbe. I bumped into a lot of basketball courts out there. There were a few kids, you know, with nice jump shots out there [laughs], so I had to bring the best defenders out there for that, you know? [laughs] I use to tell ’em “listen these boys got some jump shots out there. We got the dribble but they got the jump shots.” So we would round up and get on the bus and go play basketball.
C.J. is still trying to find his best friend Amos. They were separated on the day C.J. was expelled from Janesbe Memorial School for punching a white student in the face for calling him a “nigger.” “Onaje,” he said, “I have to find Amos one day. If I ever get to tell my story, I want Amos to be there in the audience.”
A white administrator looked C.J. directly in the face on the day he was expelled and told him, “You don’t deserve to be here.” He felt as though she derived satisfaction from seeing him in pain. Years later, he bumped into her at a park in Roxbury. She was volunteering at an all-black lacrosse camp. “C.J., I’m so sorry for what I did to you,” she pleaded. “I’m here today to try and make up for how I treated you kids.” He didn’t pay her apology much mind. He was thankful, but it was far too late.
After his expulsion C.J. returned to the pop of gunshots and screaming sirens in his Roxbury neighborhood. He played basketball often to avoid gangs and street violence. Basketball was a raft that kept him afloat in a sea of hopelessness.
Keep playing because I have, it was either play basketball or be in the house or just be around the way doing nothing and just watching the police fly up and down the street, hearing the shots or things that I didn’t want to be involved in but when it came to going to the boys and girls club I knew there was a basketball and a hoop, and I knew there was somebody that was going to be in front of me and I’d be able to crossover and just go to the hoop and score. I can go hard you know?
Without basketball, man, my life could have been different in a million ways. Without basketball, I know for sure without basketball I wouldn’t be here right now because it took a lot of extra time out of my life, extra time that I would have had to have been caught up in drugs, violence, walking across the street while there was a police chase, getting hit by a car, you know, getting hit by a stray bullet you know, just a lot of pain, you know, because while the whistle is blowing on the court and you’re out there playing, you’re spending maybe two to five hours a day playing basketball hard. Within those two to five hours I was playing basketball I know for sure at least, the way Boston was going, at least two people were dying in the area, or people were getting locked up. Things were happening! Houses were getting, I know my house got robbed once and I was at the boys and girls club playing basketball at the time, you know? I could have been in the house while that was happening and people just took me hostage or killed me because I was there and witnessed what they were doing. So basketball definitely saved me in a million ways, I know.
C.J.’s cousin, Eric Paulding, the one whose face, along with Marvin Barros Jr.’s, adorns the Community Awareness Tournament banner, had not been so fortunate. C.J. and Eric had been inseparable. The two were so close that C.J. wrote a story about him for his elementary teacher. In fact, on the day Eric was murdered, in 1997, he and C.J. were scheduled to meet. As C.J. gathered his belongings and put the finishing touches on his outfit, the words “first teen in 29 months slain in Boston,” flew across the television screen. Then flashed the name “Eric Paulding.” C.J couldn’t believe his eyes and continued to dress as he saw a lifeless body roll across the screen on a stretcher. His aunt confirmed the tragic news. C.J. had lost another loved one.
C.J. had lost his father to prison when he was seven; coach Manny Wilson died when he was ten. He had been expelled from school largely due to racial violence, and now Eric had been murdered. After that, he just stopped caring since people died anyway. What was the point of life? Violence, a foreshortened future, death—that was all that made sense. The gritty logic of the streets made its way into his consciousness. He considered becoming a “street person” rather than a ballplayer, and these two poles of his identity were now at war inside of him. The day after Eric was murdered, C.J. had a basketball game. He woke up early with his dead cousin on his mind and although he was angry, he also knew that Eric would have wanted him to play the game. So he decided to put on his shorts and head down to the court.
“MY COUSIN WAS THERE WITH ME STILL”
During pregame warm-ups C.J. put his “sad face on.” He shot the basketball with his cousin in mind. Normally he would push the ball rapidly between his right and left hands before driving into the lane for a finger-roll lay-up. But now he was lethargic with the ball in his hands. He had no desire to be in control anymore. Control was pointless and too painful. Strangely enough, however, C.J. couldn’t miss a shot, and no one could steal the ball from his hands. Normally, when he performed his quick dribble moves, slapping the ball rapidly to the floor at impossible angles, he could make a mistake. But now the ball took on the personality of a loyal friend. When he pushed the ball toward the rim, it followed. When his palm guided the ball gently to the ground it hit the floor smoothly before rising to a perfect height. Feeling the synchronicity between his body and the basketball, C.J. explained, “My cousin was there with me still.” His cousin had taken over the game just when C.J. had no desire to.
As I spoke with C.J., he explained that his need to rework life’s problems by playing basketball was not uncommon for black boys in the city. Street-ball players, he said, use the game to “take them there”—to take their minds to another place and time. Their game is good, he went on, because their lives are bad. When Eric died, C.J. gave his heart on the asphalt.
Ah, man, playing. I can remember playing one day. I had a game. My cousin, he had passed away, my favorite cousin you know? I wrote a book about him when I was younger and he had got shot and he had passed away and I was down. I was down and I was miserable, but I was like “what am I going to do? I got a game today.” So I went to the game.
I mean it’s funny because I’m not going to say I didn’t want to play. I still wanted to play basketball, but I had that on my mind. You know, and that was serious, you know? Because most people, something like that would have happened they wouldn’t even go to a game, but I still had love for the game and before he passed I know he had love for the game too. So I go into the game, I had the sad face on and I don’t know what it was you know? I just played and I know I wasn’t playing as hard as I use to play, but everything was just, everything was going in man, everything. And I wasn’t shooting the ball hard as I used to, dribbling it hard but I never got stripped. I don’t know why. Usually somebody just come take the ball right out of my hand but it was just the love of the game I had and I believe my cousin was there with me still.
And there’s so much people go through when they’re playing in the city. You know, there’s people who come to the game and they’re alright you know? They had a good day, a good regular day but they come to play. But there’s people, you know, they come on the court, they have issues you know? Some people, they done been through some things but they know basketball is going to take them there, you know, take their mind off of it. And for the most part I seen people, like, they just came from the streets, something happened, or something happen in the house and they’re putting up forty, fifty points, like letting it all out, you know? Like dag, what happened to you today, you know?
So just life man, like that’s why you have so many tough players in the city right now because man, they done been through some things man and everything’s not good. There game is good, because of the things they done been through, the struggle, you know and just life itself. It’s not that easy, so that’s why, they put their heart on the court you know?3
C.J’s attempt to make peace with the death of his cousin on the basketball court was a powerful ritual, but its effects were short lived. No one was there to acknowledge his ordeal, and he swirled into a spiral of despair. He began smoking marijuana incessantly to numb the pain, which got him expelled again, this time from an inner-city school. In fact, school administrators reported him to the police. A few days later he was arrested and assigned a court date where he could be placed in a juvenile detention center. Eventually, C.J.’s mother was offered an excruciating choice: leave C.J.’s fate to the hands of the criminal justice system or send him to an all-black private school in Virginia known for offering troubled youth a second chance. His mother chose Horace Prep. C.J. was cautiously optimistic. He could escape prison to play ball, but he couldn’t run from the memory of his cousin’s murder. Upon his arrival in Virginia, C.J. immediately joined the basketball team and tried to focus on his studies. However, he still felt angry and sad inside, and lacking purpose, he began to frequent Virginia nightclubs where there were local gang members and drugs. The light of basketball slowly flickered out of his life.
You know, I went down there. It was a different experience because it was away from home. I’m on campus. I mean, but I still had things on my mind, but I was down there playing ball you know? I was playing ball and things but now it was easier.
I went because my cousin passed away. I just wasn’t acting right after that. I wasn’t acting right. I didn’t care about a lot of things. I stopped going to school. I started getting involved with drugs, selling drugs, so my mother helped me. She, um, got me out of here. So she sent me down there. As time went by I got involved with going to clubs out there and the same type of things that was going on when I was here, was going on out there. I stayed away from it for a while, because, you know, I was meeting new people, you know, people from New York that I was playing basketball with, things like that. But when things didn’t go right, it was easier for me to lean back to the street life, the easy street life. I lost effort, and you know, focus. I still played basketball, though. But you know I had drugs in my life, you know? I was smoking weed. I was even smoking cigarettes playing basketball. Unbelievable, but you know, um, I just stopped playing organized basketball, that’s what happened, and just started being in the streets.
In 2000, I’m still down there. I come back home on vacation, but I’m still going to school. It’s my last year. I’m not a basketball player anymore. I’m a street person, you know? I’m from the hood. I’m street now and I’m out there, you know, like I said, with the weed, selling drugs, you know, the guns. I was into that, you know? What happen was, uh, one day I came and I was looking for my friend, dude I met down there. I knocked on his door and asked for him, like “is he here?” His sister just looked at me and she just like, started crying and you know? Come to find out that he had got killed down there, you know?
Eventually C.J. learned that as his friend’s body lay full of bullet holes, still shaking in the streets, police officers had stood by and simply watched. He was angry with the police but scared of the people who murdered his friend. He knew that rival drug dealers had killed his friend because they perceived C.J. and him to be their competition. He wondered if it was a mistake to choose the streets over basketball, but he felt like he had gotten too deep into the drug game. “You can’t have one foot in, and one foot out, you know?”
Soon thereafter, C.J. received a call from the dealers who had murdered his friend, demanding a meeting. Reluctantly, he went, knowing “something bad was going to happen.” When C.J. refused their request for him to sell drugs on consignment, gunshots rang out: “Pow! Pow! Pow!” One bullet tore through his arm; another grazed his head. He jumped in his car, bleeding, speeding from the scene straight to the hospital. He gave the surgeon a fake name to conceal the incident from Horace Prep. He was released the next morning; his arm was swollen where the staples fastened his ripped skin together.
PLAYING SHOT
C.J. did not want to raise any suspicions, so he returned to the basketball court where he had a game scheduled that afternoon with his team at Horace Prep. During the pregame warm-ups, he hid out in the locker room, carefully placing the uniform over his thick chest, slipping on his long dangling shorts and his size-nine sneakers. He checked the gaping hole in his arm and slipped a white athletic band over the torn skin. He exited the locker room and stepped onto the shiny hardwood floor.
During warm-ups no one noticed C.J.’s injury. When the pregame buzzer sounded, he huddled up with his teammates, keeping his left arm hidden from his coach. When the huddle broke away C.J. jogged to the half-court circle, crouched down and waited for the referee to throw the ball between the centers.
C.J. dribbled masterfully at first with his right hand. His ambidexterity was paying off, but as the game became more intense and unpredictable, he found it harder to hide playing shot. Anytime the ball rolled to his left side, he had to turn his body and dribble with his right. It seemed strange and unnatural for C.J. to avoid using his left hand, which was more dominant. “What’s all this right-handed business?” the coach screamed from the sidelines. Staring at his coach, he finally blurted out: “I was hurt yesterday. I…I was shot.” He was removed from the game quickly and escorted out of the gym. He confessed everything—getting shot, giving a false name to the surgeon, trying to cover up the injury on the court. Horace Prep sent C.J. back north, his third expulsion in less than eight years.
C.J.’s father died in prison shortly after he returned to Boston.
I had a lot of weight on me and I just came back. I definitely didn’t have any…I didn’t want to do anything. I just wanted to, whatever, I’m breathing, fine, you know? It was like, so much anger. I was still dealing with the guns, drugs, and things like that. And um, brought that attitude back man, and how Boston is here, it was like a great thing. It was a mixture, you know? Going to the parties here getting drunk and everybody’s deep, you know hoodies and you know, they got their guns and you got your guns and it’s just life man, you know, but honestly inside I didn’t really want to be that way you know, but it was just a thing like, I lost all my turns. It was like a one-way alley right now. All my left, rights and I forgot how to take you know, my left turns and things, you know? It’s like my steering car was broke, you know? I could only go straight down the one-way dead end, you know?
In 2000 he was arrested for selling drugs. Shortly thereafter he was pulled over for possession of a stolen motorcycle, drugs, and an illegal firearm. During that time he lost other friends. To numb the pain, he ingested more drugs.
Finally C.J. was sentenced to prison by the judge who referred to him as a “wounded fox.” This particular judge had been aware that C.J.’s father had died in prison, and he attributed C.J.’s behavior to losing his father. Nevertheless, the sentence was for serious jail time. C.J. entered prison for the first time and discovered that the penitentiary was a microcosm of the streets. Violence earned respect, drugs could be sold for money, and gangs defined the rules of the game. In prison, he was taught to revel in crime. “I lost a lot of people so you know? It was my first time doing time, and I really didn’t learn the right things when I went in there. I didn’t know the rules of who to be around. I basically based myself around people who had fun with places like that. So I was having fun. I was having more fun than learning anything.”
After eighteen months he returned to the streets, more lost than ever. Three weeks on the outside and he was arrested again, this time for armed robbery. Although there may have been some police misconduct in the case, he returned to prison for another fifteen months. This time in prison, however, C.J. began to reexamine his life, to try to understand how he had ended up in jail. He also returned to the asphalt courts inside the prison yard. He was short and had never been able to dunk, but all his pent up frustration and anger propelled him above the rim in jail. He dunked for the first time in prison, and he expressed his frustration by putting up insane points each game during rec time. Jail ball became such a critical part of C.J.’s mental health that he begged other inmates to avoid confrontations with correction officers before rec period. Rec time delays meant less time on the court, and prison games started and ended when correction officers said they did. During his last few months in jail, he slowly began to envision other possibilities for his life. He still carried around the heavy memories of lost loved ones, but now there was hope.
Ah, man! You couldn’t believe some of the people they have in there playing ball. Like, you look at them and you like, dag, why aren’t you on the screen right now, you know? I mean they’re dunking on you, they’re crossing over, their jump shot is just natural and people got game. You know it’s just, they channel their anger and their frustration the wrong ways but they just need a little bit of guidance and help, but for me it was like, whoa! I can tell you right now that I was in there. I was dunking on people! I tell my boys all the time “like yo, I was in there. I was doing my thing! I was ballin’ ’em up! I had forty something!” And they’re like, “yeah, whatever!” you know, but I had that basketball in there and all my frustration went out on the court and I did things that people looking at me to this day, people that I did time with, they’re like, “yo, what’s up, you in school yet?” You know, they’re like, “yo, you better get back with the program man, you know?”
Um, definitely I let it all out on the court. I definitely had my time and that was one of the things that helped me learn things while I was in there because I had my basketball. I showed myself that I still got it. Like, my whole momentum, my attitude right now, is running off of basketball because I always said “I’m going to make it, I’m going to make it!” and right now I’m still feeling like I’m going to make it just because I know I can get on the court today and do somebody in on the court so that keeps me going knowing that however, I’m going to make it one day. And if I can get back on track and get into school, I know I’m going to get that basketball fever back. So one way or another I’m going to make it through the basketball you know?
Once C.J. was released from prison the second time, he had begun to turn his life around. He began playing basketball again and even rented an apartment with a girlfriend to solidify their relationship. He was still being followed by police officers. Occasionally, they would bust open his apartment door unannounced in search of weapons and drugs. It bothered him, but as long as they didn’t plant evidence, he wasn’t going back to jail.
A few days after his release from prison we had spotted each other at the crossroads in front of Marvin’s old house. He had already seen so much struggle and death, and as he later explained, basketball was his hope for a “second life.”
Things I have been experiencing from since I was younger till now, just struggle life, but how to maintain the struggle life. How to keep my composure, make it through rough times, you know, just you know, wealth-wise, street-wise.
The only thing I really been winning in so far is basketball if I think about it. Life has been a struggle. I’m a call it losing you know, ’cause it’s an everyday struggle, you know. People need basketball. It’s like…it’s life itself, it’s a part of life, it’s a second life to people.
“How can you achieve a second life through basketball after all you’ve been through?” I once asked C.J. He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that his undoing began with his cousin’s murder. He explained that if he could just go back to that moment in time in his own consciousness, then maybe he could see how he had gone wrong, why he had lived like a wounded fox for all those years. “Maybe if you had fully grieved that day,” I suggested. “Maybe if someone had acknowledged your pain, maybe eventually you would have been able to let him go instead of carrying him around all those years.” “Yeah,” C.J. said. “I did that once in prison. I went back in time to my cousin’s murder, but I never fully got there.” “Maybe that’s the only way for you to achieve a second chance at life,” I said. “To face death.” “Yeah, maybe,” he responded.
Since that day we reunited in the middle of the road, C.J. and I have remained close. I introduced him to Jason, and the three of us played city basketball together. As I thought about C.J.’s story, I wondered whether street basketball could ever be more than a tool of survival for young black men. Could hope ever lead to healing? In the last two chapters, I take up the question of whether the “lived religion” of street basketball can restore a sense of wholeness in the lives of some young black men and their communities.