Wandering the streets at 2 a.m., I saw the blue lights. I
ducked and held my breath, but the patrol car eased beside me. The officer got
out of his car, walked over, and pointed the flashlight in my face.
“Why are you out so late?” My heart started doing triple
time. “Got any ID?” I recognized him, but prayed he wouldn’t remember me. I
handed him my license and dropped my head.
“You aren’t the same Jerry Brooks I knew in high school are
you?”
“That’s me."
“What happened? We thought you’d make it to the big leagues.
You were a heck of a pitcher.”
I blinked away the tears and stared at my ratty tennis
shoes. White officer, black man, wasn’t too hard to figure. I’d be doing time
again. “Yeah, I thought so too, but something else got the best of me. I’m a
professional addict.”
“Jerry, that’s not going to get you anywhere.” The cop sat
down on the curb beside me. He kept going on about how he couldn’t believe it
was really me. I couldn’t either. I’d been using drugs and alcohol to dull my
anger. I hadn’t looked in the mirror for six years. Couldn’t stand what I’d
become. I wasn’t raised to be an addict. My grandmother had taught me better.
“When did you graduate?” the officer asked.
“Dropped out my senior year.”
Glancing down the dark street, I remembered the very day my
hatred started. I was ten years old. Couldn’t wait to see my cousin that day.
It was my first year playing little league ball. A white officer had watched me
play in the neighborhood and asked me to pitch for him. Said I had an arm. I
was the only black player in the league. As I wound up each time, I gritted my
teeth and tried to block out chants of, “You gonna let that n….. strike you
out?” that rose up out of the crowd. After each game, I ran home fast as I
could to avoid the threats.
Not having my daddy around, I looked up to my cousin.
Finally, I’d have a man come to one of my baseball games. My cousin would have
watched me play—if he could have. The day he got out of prison, there was a
scuffle. He was in a group with his buddies when an elderly white man pulled a
rifle out of his trunk, fired into the crowd, and killed him. Maybe not
intentionally, but it was all the same to me. That’s the day the red-hot fire
started in my heart.
I hated all white people.
The officer was still talking to the side of my head,
rambling about my submarine pitch and my fastball from high school. No way
would I have told him, or anybody, how much rage I kept inside. Keeping white
people at a distance meant keeping pain away.
A few months after my cousin was shot, I went to see my
grandmother. Grandma Roenell worked two jobs and slipped me pocket change for
candy before my ballgames. She stood in her bedroom ironing. “Why do you have
to wash white people’s clothes?” I asked. “Let them do their own.”
“Jerry, you better forgive. Hate will do you in.”
“They all hate me.”
“Be different. You’re to love everybody. Black or white.”
She picked up her Bible and told me to come into the den. Grandma Roenell
patted out a spot for me beside her. She licked her finger, found a passage,
and started reading the underlined words.
“God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God,
and God abides in him. First John four sixteen.” I never heard that woman say
anything against anybody—not even against the fool who shot my cousin. Grandma
Roenell died unexpectedly the next day, and the little bit of love inside me
died, too.
The officer’s question snapped me back into reality. “What
are you going to do with your life, Jerry?”
“I’m hooked. I can’t quit.”
“I’m going to make a deal with you. Instead of jail time,
I’m going to recommend you for a drug treatment facility. It’s a
twenty-eight-day program for people who can’t pay.” The officer drove me to the
emergency room for an assessment. In the restroom, I remembered the contraband
in my pocket and whispered, “God, if I throw this away, can you help me stop
drinking and drugging?” Yeah, the desire to drink and use left me, but not my
hatred.
Then I entered MARR, Metro Atlanta Recovery Residence. I
walked into a room full of white guys staring me down. Surprise, surprise. I
was the only black man. For the next sixty days I didn’t say a word. I had to
protect what made me a man—my anger—couldn’t let anybody get close. How do you
survive without hatred? What would be left of me without it? That same scared
little boy I used to be?
Six months into my sobriety at MARR, four white people
showed up. Two men and their wives. Our instructor said, “Everybody’s going
today. No choice.” Twenty of us piled in cars and headed to some white church.
I’d had about as many programs and white people as I could stand.
The same thing every Thursday night—they’d have the room set
up, you know, trying to lure us in. Homemade cookies, brownies, lemonade, soft
drinks. It wasn’t going to work on me. I folded my arms across my chest and
slunk down low in my chair.
Ester Worthington,
one of the white women, was probably twenty years older than me. After they
read the Bible and had group talk, she’d walk over, eyes all watery, and hug my
neck. Sometimes she’d kiss my cheek. “God loves you, Jerry Brooks.”
Stay tough, I
thought. Don’t move a muscle. I
thought, I hate you, lady. I can’t stand
you to hug on me. Deep down, I
was terrified of loving—terrified of becoming that little boy trying to outrun
the chants. She’d just smile and tell me she’d see me next week.
On the seventh Thursday night I didn’t want to get in that
car, but if I didn’t, I knew I might end up going to jail. Once we got to the
meeting, I saw Mrs. Ester, her head bent over by the lamp, reading her Bible.
That night she shared like Grandma Roenell, all about God’s love. I felt my
heart pounding like something was growing so big inside me it was going to bust
loose. They opened the floor for anybody to say anything on their heart. I
didn’t mean to, but I started talking. Just a little bit at first, but Mrs.
Ester said to keep going. I told them about my cousin, how much I loved him, and
how baseball had been my dream. I even talked about Grandma Roenell—what a good
woman she was—that she’d wanted me to make something of myself.
Mrs. Ester hugged me. I hugged her back, not with my arms,
but in my heart. I knew Grandma Roenell would approve. I could almost feel a
sledgehammer knocking off the cement around my heart. But I still had some
softening to go.
After MARR, they assigned me to work at an all white nursing
home. Once again, the only black man in a world of whites. I started out in
maintenance but before long, I was promoted to supervisor. One day, the new
maintenance man was assigned to strip the baseboards. He asked me to show him
how. There he was on his knees with me explaining. One of the residents wheeled
over in her chair. With tears in her pale blue eyes she said, “I never thought
I’d see a black man give a white man instructions. God bless you both.” Her
words settled down inside me. Funny, as I was helping him, the race thing
hadn’t entered my mind. He was just a man who needed my help.
Walking back to my office, I got to thinking. The ones I
hated most had reached out to me. At almost 35, my dream of making it to the
big leagues fell by the wayside. I thought having people cheer for me meant
everything. But I had a new dream forming. Bigger than the big leagues. To
cheer for others. I wanted to help people, indigent addicts, white or black.
People like me.
In 1993, after graduating MARR, I started Soul Changers, a
non-profit recovery home in Hampton,
GA. I didn’t have a 501-c, so the
church managed it for a few years. But in 2000, my good buddy and I re-opened
Soul Changers in Austell, GA. This time, I secured the proper legal
licenses, and rented a house. Two days later, we had two men. Six weeks later,
we had eight men. Nine years later, with God’s help, we’re still going strong.
Two homes stay filled—a women’s and a men’s, all races are welcomed. Guess
what? That friend who helped me start Soul Changers is a white man.
On January 25, 2009, God let me hit a grand slam, just not
in baseball. It was the night I was to receive my sobriety pin. Twenty years
earlier, to the day, I’d been on that dark hopeless street—the place where the
officer helped me. As I sat with 200 people anxiously waiting for the program
to start, I glanced behind me and in walked Mrs. Ester Worthington and her
three friends. This time, I didn’t wait for her to hug me.
I accepted my pin, and gave it to Mrs. Ester. It seems Mrs.
Ester and Grandma Roenell have always known the truth, but my vision is getting
clearer. God’s love is colorblind.