Free A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball by Dwyane Wade

watching—something I did anyway. The thought of the candy that a couple of bucks could buy made my mouth water so much I could taste the sweetness. But here too, sugar fiend though I was, the fear of Grandma finding out how I came by that money had always kept me from going outside the law. A healthy fear.
    Besides, if I could hold out, Tragil might come home later with something for me to eat. Maybe even a glazed doughnut or two that she knew I craved. If not that, tomorrow was Sunday, and after church, there would be open house at Grandma’s—with her country cooking and as many helpings as I wanted of Willie Mae’s soul food.
    With the comfort of those thoughts, I ran back into our apartment, leaving the door open for Mom’s boyfriend and his guys, who seemed like they were getting ready to leave in a hurry. Not sure where my mother was just then, I checked first in her bedroom.
    Not there. Thinking maybe I heard the water running in the bathroom—sometimes a clue that Mom was in there, possibly getting high—I decided not to think about it but just to sit down on the floor next to her bed, turn on the TV, and watch some Saturday-morning cartoons.
    No more than three or four minutes later, I recognized police radio sounds that didn’t seem to be coming from the TV show. Before I had a second to stand and run to the back of the apartment and get up to Grandma’s, the police raid was under way—with as many as three officers coming in my direction.
    In my nightmares, I had witnessed this moment in a kind of slow motion. But now it was happening in real time: my heart pounding in my throat, heavy footfalls approaching, and the shiny metallic glint of a gun coming through the bedroom doorway.
    At that same split second of seeing the silver gun and two policemen stepping into the room with it, I try to slide underneath the bed. Not fast enough! They spot me and in SWAT team speed the two rush to drag me from under the bed, grabbing my shaking body and putting the gun to my head. One of them says in a heavy whisper, “Don’t say anything. You walk and take me to where your mom is.” The other one pushes me, the one with the gun at my head, whispering next to my ear, “Now.”
    Aware for sure that Mom’s in the bathroom doing drugs, I’m not thinking about the gun to my head. I’m thinking about how I can possibly warn her that the police are here, so she can flush the drugs down the toilet. So I’m walking slow, real slow, hoping she heard the radios and the police and the footsteps into the apartment. There’s three policemen behind me, one holding the gun at the back of my head, and I stop at the bathroom. I knock on the door.
    No answer.
    “Mom?” I try to make my voice express alarm that something isn’t right.
    “Yeah, what you need?”
    “Mom, open the door.”
    “No, boy, leave me alone.”
    I can tell by her answer that she’s picked up on my warning.
    One of the police, not Robocop, but another officer who used to wear shades a lot, too, is about to push in the door but just then my mother opens it. No drugs or signs of drug use. Even if the toilet has apparently just been flushed, nobody can prove that there has been drugs.
    The police abruptly move me out of the way and then grab Mom, putting the gun on her, demanding that she tell them where the drugs and the guns are hidden.
    They tell my mother that someone called the station and complained that a person was in our building with a gun and was waving it out the window, threatening people who were walking by. Mom assures them there has been a mistake. When they search the apartment, unfortunately, they find measuring scales that supposedly have drug residue on them.
    For a second time, I had to watch my mother be put in handcuffs, jammed into the back of a police car, and taken down to the station. Out on the porch, fighting back the tears, too proud for anyone to see me cry, feeling anger starting to fill up that hole in my stomach, I