Friends: A Love Story by Angela Bassett Read Free Book Online

he’d endured, my dad worked hard at his job at Chrysler. Daddy was wise. He liked to read though he didn’t have much time. He was also very gregarious—he was the center of attention in any room, a life-of-the-party type of guy. My father loved to talk and explain and debate and look at things five and six different ways. He really should have been a lawyer. I didn’t like all that debating and arguing. When I would try to keep up, he would talk me down. I would just get confused and get mad. Cecilie could hang with him; her mind was nimble like that. But while they were debating and arguing, I’d say, “This is boring. I’m gonna go play some ball.”
    On weekends my father hung out with his family and fixed things. Dad was very handy. He could fix anything. He’d read fix-it books and might take a couple of weeks to figure the thing out, but he would figure it out and then head to the hardware store. He was the kind of man who wanted to have the tools in the house just in case he needed to fix something. I was Daddy’s boy—he used to drag me all around. “Courtney, roll with me.” We’d go food shopping and run all kinds of errands, but we’d always end up hanging out in the hardware section at Sears. When he was ready to tune up the car or fix whatever, I was his helper. He didn’t show me how to fix anything myself, but I knew all the tools to hand him. He’d tell me, “Courtney, hand me the Allen wrench,” and I’d give it to him.
    My dad was also independent. He was one of those black men who, perhaps because of his life circumstances, was determined to do everything for himself. Most of the time he did—and did it right. But he could be independent to a fault. If he made a wrong turn or we got lost in the car, he hated to ask for directions. I remember driving around in circles, with my mother going, “Conroy, will you stop at the gas station, please?” Cec and I would be in the back seat. “Oh, gosh, Daddy, please stop.”
    My father and I hung out a lot together. But our interests were different. We didn’t have a lot of things in common, and emotionally we weren’t on the same page. I was rough-and-tumble on the outside, but I was also very sensitive. Daddy would laugh at my tenderness. I remember back in the days of the natural and Afro, he gave me an ultimatum: comb my hair or it all comes off. It hurt to comb my hair, so I didn’t like to do it. He told me I’d have to suffer the consequences: the dreaded “bald head.” I remember feeling embarrassed after getting all my hair cut off. I didn’t want anyone to see me just yet. As we rode our bikes home from the barbershop, I asked Dad if we could go down the side streets so my friends didn’t see me. My plan worked beautifully right until we reached the beginning of my block. One of the young twin boys a few doors down saw me. “Ooh, look at Courtney,” he hollered. “Look at the bald head.” I broke into tears. My father laughed so hard he just about peed himself. When I was older—I was in high school—my first girlfriend broke up with me. I was just destroyed. I ran into the house saying, “It’s over, it’s over!” Daddy burst out laughing again. I ran upstairs and into my room. He wasn’t very good at dealing with feelings. Between his insensitivity and the kids on the playground, I learned not to show my emotions often.
    Dad also didn’t know how to have one-on-one conversations about some of the more personal aspects of life. That included the birds and the bees. Beginning when I was about nine or ten, he would come into my bedroom on occasion and ask me if I liked girls. I would just say no—what kid wants to talk about the birds and the bees with his parents, especially at that age? It was territory that I certainly didn’t want to go into. But in reality my little