How to Get Out of Your Own Way Page 3

  Mama would take us to church three to four days a week for services and choir practice. It was a safe haven and I was getting to know God, who was getting to know me. I loved the energy of being around a lot of people because it gave me another stage to crack jokes and do my thing. I would play around and was often too hyper during services when I was really young, because I’d usually get bored just sitting there.

  Mama worked as a waitress at Jordan’s Café and Stops Drive-In, which was on Imperial and Central, but has since been torn down. She used to bring us leftover food and that was like Thanksgiving for us kids. But with all of the mouths to feed we were still broker than broke so the county helped us out with some money. We received social security, food stamps, and county checks, and started getting WIC vouchers when I was in elementary school, after my oldest sister had her first child. A couple years later, when I was in junior high, my other sister had a kid, so we qualified for more. Even back then, I remember thinking, Where is the money going? We had food in the house but there were so many of us—Moms, Pops, my sisters, their kids, my brother and me—that the food would come in and disappear almost as fast. You can’t think that the cereal is going to be there tomorrow so you’ve got to eat five or six bowls in a row to get your share. When I think back on my childhood, there were very few memories that aren’t accompanied by an overwhelming sense of hunger. We were hungry all the time.

  Mornings at my house were real quiet, and some of the best mornings were when we had cereal or oatmeal, or if we were really lucky, Cream of Wheat. When I was a youngsta I used to love eating my cereal, when we had it, and watching cartoons like Tom & Jerry, Thundercats, Transformers, He-Man, Heathcliff, Duck Tales, and Inspector Gadget. I also loved playing video games on the Atari 2600, ColecoVision, and original Nintendo that we got as hand-me-downs from neighbors; Super Mario Brothers, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!, and Tecmo Bowl were my favorites. But most mornings we didn’t have any food, so I was motivated to go to school because that was where I could escape the madness at my house and get meal tickets. Some days, if I didn’t go to school, I didn’t eat.

  Gangs were all around us in that part of the hood, but there were also a lot of good people with incredible hearts, who beyond what money they did or didn’t have would do damn near anything for you. The everyday mission of most good people who live in the hood and who don’t have a bad bone in their bodies was to stay safe, to protect and take care of their kids and their families, to get to and from work or school and stay out of harm’s way, and to pray that none of those stray bullets meant for someone else would end up in them.

  There were a lot of different personalities in the hood throughout all the different neighborhoods I lived in, and back then we used to talk about people who seemed like they did the same thing day after day. I remember way back when I was around six or seven there was a lady named Miss Jameson who was friends with my mother who would sit on her front porch. For what seemed like ten hours a day she would just sit there and peel her beans. Everyone loved Miss Jameson. In Watts there was a super old lady who lived directly across from us on 113th and Grape who would literally call the police if anyone stepped on her grass. Most of the people in the hood had guns and were very capable of hurting this old woman, but she was more gangsta than all of us. Directly around the corner there was the blind man who would give us a few pennies to run to the store for him because his heavy-set wife refused to do it anymore. I once asked my brother, “Why would a man be with a woman he can’t see? And why would a woman be with a man who is blind?”

  He would just shake his head and laugh. It’s funny that when I look back on my life I remember never being afraid to ask questions about things I didn’t understand.

  There was also my mother’s best friend, Blanche. I believe she was part Latina and part white but she had the soul of a black woman because she grew up in the hood. Blanche lived across the street from a burger stand called Lee’s that we went to all the time. Her beautiful daughters were always outside on the porch or in their front yard looking so pretty. If I had the courage to ask them out, I probably would have taken them to Lee’s. My whole family loved Lee because he let my mother keep a running tab that had to be paid at the end of the month. That didn’t last too long because she was always late in paying.

  After my moms and pops broke up for good, my mother met another man who tried to do right by her, and by us. We called him Mr. Charlie and he became my stepfather. Mr. Charlie was much older than Mama—he was retired—but he was exactly what we needed in our lives at that point. He was a good man and taught us a lot. I can honestly say that a lot of who I am as a man came from Mr. Charlie, and for that I will always love and thank him.

  Charlie was definitely a neat freak and was always very strict about making sure we kept things clean and organized. Whenever he had us clean up, he would tell us to get on our hands and knees on the carpet and pick up any piece of lint or dirt in the rug and put it in a trash bag that we carried with us. He had this old, antique leather furniture that was nicer than anything I had ever seen before. Everything in the house was dusted and polished at all times, which was so different from what we were used to, because before Mr. Charlie moved in with us we were just plain filthy. At the time, it seemed tedious and unnecessary, but Mr. Charlie made sure I always paid attention to the tiniest of details, and it’s a habit I’ve carried into to adulthood. He brought a much-needed sense of structure, discipline, and responsibility that we had been lacking.

  We moved with Mr. Charlie to 113th and Grape, in Watts, where I met Daniel, a Latino kid who lived in the corner house right next to the projects. His house backed up on a big field filled with trash that people would just dump there to rot. There was also a huge broken-down truck and the shell of a camper that was getting rustier by the day. Daniel became one of my best childhood homeys. We would find three or four unwanted old piss-stained mattresses in the field, line them up back-to-back, and do gymnastic flips for hours and hours. To us, those mattresses were as good as any piece of real gym equipment.

  Daniel, his brother, my brother, and I would run around his house and the field playing cops and robbers for four or five hours every day. My brother had a big-looking “gun,” which was really just part of a broken car jack. My weapon was not as elaborate, just a piece of wood that I found on the ground. Daniel and I would run through the backyard and into the field to get away from him. Someone would yell, “Okay, go!” and then it was a free-for-all. “I shot you first. No, I shot you first!” The truth is, we loved Daniel’s backyard and that field because we could just run free for hours playing our childhood games. It was the only chance we got to escape from the realities of our lives and the world around us. It’s funny to think about those times, because despite being poor and hungry, we were too innocent to realize how bad things were around us. To us, that was just life. We made the best of it, enjoying the good, and trying not to think about the bad.

  Mr. Charlie was strict, but we were lucky enough to have him in our lives for several years until he passed away. I had never experienced death before, and it hit me hard, real hard. I vividly remember seeing him resting in his casket at the funeral, and touching his hands one last time, as they lay folded across his chest. The coldness of his skin sent a chill through my body that was unlike anything I had ever felt before. It’s one thing when you lose a childhood homey or hear that someone in the neighborhood got killed, and it’s another thing to lose someone you lived and communicated with every day, who watched television with you every night, and whose voice you can still hear ringing in your ears. I remember thinking while I was crying, When are you gonna get up, Mr. Charlie? Then turning to God I asked, This isn’t real, right? He’s not really gone, right? What am I supposed to do now? Who’s gonna teach me the things I need to know about life? I didn’t get any answers, so I just kept crying and missing him. I used to dream about Mr. Charlie a lot after he first died. We lived in that same house for several years afterward. />
  After he was gone for a while, I realized that Mr. Charlie had been a stabilizing influence that held our family together, and once he died, something happened that I’ve never quite been able to pin down. I think the years of dysfunction between my mother and father finally came to a boil, and took my mama over the edge. As a result, she turned to the bottle. She started drinking, and once she got going, she didn’t stop for twenty-seven years.

  I was a hyperactive kid, and I’m not exaggerating. I was the funniest little dude you’d ever be around. I was just way over the top. Everything was on ten. People used to say, As soon as he wakes up he’s gonna be out of here, from the morning on, until he comes back here to take his ass to sleep. And that was the story of my life. People who knew me knew I was the kid who was hyper, funny, loud. I made it a point that everybody around me had a good time. But I had no idea when to stop. I was diagnosed with ADHD and they gave me some Ritalin to calm me down, but that stuff didn’t quite work on me. I didn’t have the radar that told me when to quit. I got kicked out of Grape Street Elementary School because of it, and was sent to what they call a “behavioral private school.”

  My brother, who is a few years older than me, went to the same kind of school. We both wanted—no, needed—attention, and would do anything in the world to get it. I would just try to make people laugh, but that was enough to get me into plenty of trouble. I was the class clown, cracking jokes all day long at anyone’s expense. All I needed was one person to giggle, and I went to town.

  This private school was for students who required a lot more attention to get through their studies. I never had to go to special-ed classes; instead, my classmates and I were classified as “discipline problems,” and the teachers were supposed to help us calm down and get serious about our life. They were facing an uphill battle from day one.

  I was in that school for years, and I never really settled down. There were times I wasn’t sure who acted worse—the students or the staff. I remember seeing some of the teachers beat up the kids and then watch the kids turn around and beat up the teachers right back. There were nonstop fights in the classrooms because even some of the little kids were banging already. What was crazy to me was that this school was located on the grounds of a huge church. In my mind, church is supposed to be a peaceful place, but at times this was more like a war zone.

  The level of dysfunction was crazy. It was like being in a giant juvenile hall, and it created more of a beast in me, because everybody at the school was messed up. Every kid who had been kicked out of public school for academic or behavioral reasons had to go to this school. I was getting good grades, but I loved attention and would get into fights with the other kids. My fighting went to a whole other level once I went to that school. I have to admit, I was bad when I was there: I fought teachers, fought other students. But I had to fight. I had to survive. I wasn’t fighting everything in sight, but if you’re a pit bull and you’re in a corner, you’ve got to fight your way out.

  At this private behavioral school, the carrot they dangled in front of us was called dual enrollment. If you were doing real well academically and behaving yourself, then they gave you a chance to go to public school for half a day and then back to private school for the other half. A few students made it to dual enrollment every year, but for the most part it seemed like they didn’t want many kids to go to public school, and I felt pretty much brainwashed to believe that I wouldn’t be able to survive in public school, so academic success was never something I aspired to. Most students never made it to public school, including me. It was hard to not be bad in that school because if you didn’t step up and protect yourself, then you were looked at as a punk or like you were soft and you’d be a bigger target. In that situation I felt like there was no such thing as staying out of trouble.

  Unfortunately, my home was anything but a sanctuary. After Mr. Charlie passed away, my mama met a man whom I’ll refer to as Bernard. Bernard was a total character. He thought he was the coolest dude in the hood, with his chest hair peeking out of his shirt, jewelry, and general swagger. He was the type of guy the ladies gravitated toward, and I think my mama felt lucky that he chose her, despite all the negativity that seemed to follow him wherever he went. It was tough for my mom without Mr. Charlie around anymore. She was lonely, and wanted to have a man back in her life again to fill that void. Despite his many faults, Bernard fit the bill.

  Bernard was handsome and charming but I just thought he was the absolute worst person on earth. I don’t know how he and my moms met, but I think her confidence had already been shattered because of everything she had experienced, and so whatever the hell Bernard wanted to put her through she just dealt with. We came to find out that not only did Bernard drink but he also smoked crack. He would run off for a while and then he would come back and not be on crack for a while and then he’d go off and do it again. Bernard was incredibly abusive toward my mom and the two of them would argue for hours on end while getting drunk. To all of us kids, and to any rational person, it was the definition of a dysfunctional relationship on every possible level. The worst part about it for my siblings and me was that she always took his side in every single dispute, no matter how big or small. When Bernard came to visit he thought he was the king of the house, and everyone knew it. All of our years together as a family before Bernard entered the picture were thrown out the window. When I made my film debut as an actor in Baby Boy, I felt like it was everything but a movie. It was my life story being played out on film for the world to see. No, I didn’t have kids like my character, Jody, but Ving Rhames’s character, Melvin, was the Bernard of my house.

  In a strange way, being so far removed from it now, I understand the role my mama’s boyfriends and ex-husbands played in my development, and I realize that I might not have gotten out of Watts without them. They became my anti-role-models, everything I didn’t want to become.

  If I learned anything from those early years, it’s that within the bad, there is always the good. For me, the good was a woman named Angie, who drove my bus to private school. Angie instantly took a liking to me, and I will remember her kindness for the rest of my life. She picked me up every single morning in a big yellow school bus, the highlight of my entire day. I would tell her about what was going on in my life. Angie had kids, but sometimes I felt like she considered me another one of her children. She even brought me to church with her family on some Sundays.

  There were days when Angie would feed me and bring me new clothes to wear to school. This was usually anything extra that her son grew out of, but one day she took me to the Slauson Swap Meet to buy a few things. It wasn’t much, only T-shirts and jeans, but it meant the world to me. For the first time in my life, I felt embraced. I felt loved because someone decided to spend that much time and money on me out of the blue. On a bus driver’s salary, too.

  She said something to me like, “Don’t tell anybody that I’m buying you this stuff because I don’t want the other kids to think I’m giving you special treatment. I’m not supposed to give anyone my personal phone numbers, or pick you up on the weekends, but I see something in you. You’re a really smart kid and I see that you have real potential to be something in life. I’m going to help you.”

  Angie recognized the good in me in the midst of all the madness. She knew what was happening in my house and I think that’s why her heart went out to me; she could have gotten fired for coming to pick me up. God has favor on some people’s lives, and I can’t explain, even right now as a grown man, why some people wanted to look out for me.

  I sometimes went to church with Angie, but around the time I was twelve or thirteen I started attending Praises of Zion Baptist Church. My life was about trying to find every outlet to get away from my house, so when I heard from a neighbor that a van would pick us up to take us to the church, I grabbed the opportunity. It was at Praises of Zion that I started understanding the Word of God and lessons of the Christian gospel, appreciating it, and realizing how muc
h it all made sense. For the first time ever the pastor’s words were having an effect on me. I was in a church with at least two hundred other people but I felt like I was the only one there because it seemed like everything the pastor was saying was directed only at me. It was almost like he knew what I was thinking and was reading my mind—and he had the answers. It was the first time God was speaking directly to me through a pastor.

  Pretty much everywhere you went in the hood was someone’s territory, and they weren’t shy about letting you know. I lived in a few different parts of Watts and there were a lot of gangs dangerously close to each other throughout the hood. With all these gangs and gangstas stacked right on top of one another, it never took long for things to set off. Some images that stick out in my memory from those days are of my mother forcing us down under the table at least a couple times a week as gunfights raged in our neighborhood and sometimes right outside our door. I once disobeyed my mama’s orders by peeking out of the curtains and saw a neighbor blasting an AK-47 down the street at fleeing cars. The next morning I found a sea of bullet casings covering the street, as if World War III had taken place in front of our house.

  During that time I saw a lot of drug dealers digging crack out of their asses and selling weed and dope out of their stashes to the dope fiends and weed heads. They sold pounds and pounds of weed, and some of the homeys had safes full of money from selling that shit. Cars would pull up to a well-known spot and you could drive through and get a nickel, a dime, or a dub sack worth of weed.

  I never officially gangbanged, but I did a lot of crazy things that gangstas in my hood were doing. As a kid, peer pressure like that is almost impossible to ignore. I would throw up gang signs and talk the way gangstas talk. I grew up in all-Crip hoods, so every other word was “cuzz.”

  Wassup, cuzz?