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Chapter One

in the beginning

When I pull the letter from the mailbox, my heart starts jackhammering. I return to my second-floor Leimert Park apartment, leaping two white stairs per stride. Sit down at the heavy wooden desk. Tight-fist the letter opener butcher knife-style to steady my trembling hand:

STATE OF ILLINOIS
CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH

    There I am in Box 3, "Child's Name: Michael Gerald Cole." I've never seen Cole attached to Michael Gerald before. I stare like it's the first time. "Single" is marked in Box 5A, not "twin," "triplet," or "quad." Years of thinking maybe I was a separated-at-birth twin ends there at Box 5A. Born at 5:49 P.M. The box below: "Mother's Full Maiden Name: Mariam Cole. Age: 17." So young, I0think. Just a girl. Pregnant at sixteen. But this really isn't about her, it's about Box 7: "Father's Full Name: Legally Withheld." I'm not really sure what I'm expecting to see. I'm hoping for some hint. Some clue. Eye color. Hair color. Height. Initials. Anything. Box 9: "His Age: Unknown." Box 10: "His Birthplace:" blank. Box 11A: "His Usual Occupation:" blank. Box 11 B: "Kind of Business or Industry:" blank.

    The blanks blur together on the page. I don't know who my father is. Don't know one thing about him. This truth seeps through the spaces between my rib cage, straitjackets my lungs. I am not going to cry this time. I slide out the top drawer of my black metal file cabinet. Under "Medical," I file the birth certificate, his punk ass, and all theblank spaces in my life. I slam the cabinet shut.

Chapter Two

the spinners

I've been obsessed with being a husband and father since I was seven years old. Quiet as it's kept, many young black men have the same obsession. Picket-fence dreams. A played-out metaphor in the white community but one still secretly riding the bench in black neighborhoods nationwide.

    When the picket-fence motif was in vogue, only a few of us could get in the game. The swelling ranks of those who couldn't (the Perpetual Second Team) were forced to the sidelines, scowling—and pretending we didn't even want to play.

    The bastard children of these Second Teamers stalk the same sidelines. We rarely sit on the bench. Too restless. We can't figure out if we want to beg to play or raise a stiff middle finger. Sometimes we do both. But usually we strike a cool pose. Hide Huxtable-family dreams in the corner: Can't let someone catch us hoping that hard.

    We know few people believe in us. We struggle to believe in ourselves. So we pose. We have gotten good. We can pose and cry at the same time—no one sees. We can pose and cry out for help—no one hears. We are the urban ventriloquists.

* * *

Of the thirty families that lived in our east-side Long Beach, California, apartment building during the mid-seventies, I never saw a father living in a household. I never even saw one visit.

    There were lots of boys in the neighborhood: Ricky, Dante, Pig Pen, Curt Rock. We rarely talked about our missing fathers. Instead, we poured our passion into our skateboards, our marbles, and our mothers. Yet the unspoken sparkled from our eyes whenever any neighborhood men showed us attention. Once in their gaze, we worked to outperform one another, trying our best to keep the manlight from straying.

    "Watch this! I can do a back flip off the curb.... Heh, betchu a quarter I can make a shot from the free-throw line."

    It's likely one of these men laid the seed that sprouted into a back-flipper before them. Neighborhood rumors have a way of falling off grown-up kitchen tables and splattering on ghetto playgrounds.

    We flipped, pop-locked, and did the Robot for them, but we were knowing: Men weren't to be trusted. Even when our mothers didn't speak these words, their tired lives whispered the message.

    I knew many of these men had kids. Where were they? Why were they watching me spin instead of their own children ? No, these men were not to be trusted. How could I accept their advice when their personal lives screamed, "I'm lost toooo"? There was too much fatherhood failure around. The disease seemed to be contagious given the epidemic in our neighborhood. These men could watch me spin, but I couldn't let them get close enough to breathe on me.

    The ghetto irony: Many of my generation's young spinners have become the twenty- and thirty-something men who can't be trusted. Making children who will grow up to hate them.

    Circumstance, suspect choices, and fear have ways of disfiguring urban hopes with surgical precision. A four-ounce bottle of baby formula becomes much heavier than a forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor. Having five women becomes easier than having one.