The NFL Was Not My Dream

I got out of bed, trembling with fear. I knew exactly where the shots had come from⁠—inside the house. As I walked from the back of the house toward the front, I met my sister in the hallway. We crept forward together, and I clung to her for dear life. When we rounded the corner, I saw my father. He was bleeding and barely standing, held up by my mother.

She gently lowered him onto the steps, and I held my sister tighter, crying uncontrollably. We huddled around him, crying. My mother sat there in complete shock. I could see the bullet holes and the blood pouring from his body. His breathing grew heavier, then suddenly he gasped and said, “Don’t just stand there, Beverly⁠—go call somebody!”

His deep voice snapped us into action. We scrambled frantically. As he lay bleeding on the kitchen steps, I crawled over and held his hand. I told him I loved him, and he told me the same. All I could do was watch as the life slowly drained from him.

The next thing I knew, my mother was rushing my sister and me into my bedroom. She shut the door behind us and told us to stay there until she came back. What felt like hours passed, though it was only minutes, before she returned to get us out of the house. When I stepped outside, I was blinded by the flashing red and blue lights of police cars and ambulances. My mother placed us in her mother’s car, and we drove off to my grandmother’s house just down the road.

I lay in bed that night, hugging my grandmother and crying, unable to understand why my mother had tried to kill my father. The next day I found out the reason why my mother had shot my dad. It was because he was putting his hands on her all the time and that one night she had enough. My dad had also told her that if she ever needed to use the gun against him to do it and she did.

He went out partying that night and came home, unaware that he was about to face the biggest shock of his life. As my dad stepped inside and turned the corner to open his bedroom door, my mom opened fire. She had been standing in the corner, waiting for him to enter so she could kill him. When the first two bullets hit, he bolted toward the garage, with my mother right behind him, shooting without missing a single shot. He reached the garage and hid around the corner, shouting for her to stop. She finally did only because she had run out of bullets.

Later, I found out that the police wanted to charge my mother with attempted murder. But my father lied. He told them a white man had broken into the house and shot him. The officers pressed him hard, even at the hospital, practically begging him to tell the truth. Still, he stuck to his story.

Meanwhile, the police had taken my mother to the city jail. They questioned her relentlessly, trying to get her to confess. But she repeated what my father told her to say: “A white man shot him.”

Despite everything, my father still loved her enough to keep her out of the racist criminal justice system. It was like they pulled off a real-life Bonnie and Clyde act to protect each other. That night, I realized my dad was different⁠—operating on a whole other level.

What I witnessed that night took me on a journey I wasn’t ready for. At just five years old, I had already experienced my first taste of violence.