On the Line (3 page)

My mother was pregnant with Venus at the time, and she was out on the court with my dad, working on her forehand and learning
drills, technique, strategy. They were both good athletes, so the tennis came easy. They were both strong, physical, coordinated.
They took to it right away. Before long, they felt like they could hit well enough to demonstrate proper technique and game
strategy. The idea, my dad took to saying, was to teach his girls to be champions, just like the professional players he saw
on television—like Virginia Ruzici!—but that really came later. That was part of the lore that attached to my family after
we started to have some success. The mental toughness, the single-minded focus, the positive affirmations, the mind of a champion…
all that came later, too, after we took to the sport and started to show some talent for it.

Absolutely, Daddy believed tennis was our ticket up and out of Compton, the rough-and-tumble neighborhood in Los Angeles where
we lived, but he also knew we had to take to it. He knew it wasn’t enough to simply teach us the game and train us to be champions.
If that was all it took, then everyone would be doing it. We had to have some God-given talent and athletic ability. We had
to develop a passion for the game and an iron will to succeed, and all these things would take time presenting themselves.
Or not. And so at first tennis was just something to do, a way for us to be together as a family.

Don’t get me wrong: tennis became a real focus for us. Very quickly. It became Daddy’s focus, certainly. And what a lot of
people don’t realize is my mom was with him every step of the way. This was her deal, too. It wasn’t just that she supported
my dad’s vision. She saw what he saw; she wanted what he wanted; she worked for it just as much as he did. She had her own
ideas on how we should train—and even now, she’s one of the best at helping to break down my game and figure out what’s working
and what’s not. When I was little, I actually spent more time hitting with my mom than I did with my dad. Venus was usually
on the next court with my dad. And then, when it was time for my older sisters to hit, Venus and I would start picking up
balls for them.

We all played, all the time. It was our thing. It got to where people would know we’d be out there on those courts every day
after school. There were just two courts at the park in Compton, so the few recreational players there would know to get their
games in during the day, because when three o’clock rolled around Richard Williams would be pulling up in his Volkswagen minibus,
dirty yellow with a white top, with his five girls spilling out onto those courts like they had their names on them. There
were a few more courts at the park in Lynwood—maybe six—but we always used the two at the back, and the people there knew
we’d be coming, too. It’s not like there were too many people playing tennis on those public courts back then. If it happened
that the courts were occupied when we arrived, we waited our turn. We’d do some drills, or some stretching off to the side,
maybe work on our swings. My dad never minded the wait. His thing was: no problem, we’ll fill the time.

The courts themselves were in sorry shape. There was broken glass every here and there. Cracks in the cement. Weeds poking
through. Soda cans, beer bottles, fast-food wrappers… I’ve read articles that say there was drug paraphernalia littering those
courts and that we girls had to sweep the syringes and tubes and plastic bags out of the way before we could play, but I don’t
remember any of that. When I ask my dad about this, he says, “Why you want to dwell on the negative, Meeka?” In other articles
it says we could hear gunshots ringing out while we were playing, from all the drive-by shootings. That I remember full well,
only the shots themselves didn’t sound all that terrifying until I learned what they were. At first, I just thought someone
was setting off firecrackers or popping some balloons, but once I learned what the sound meant it would shake me up pretty
good. “Never mind the noise, Meeka,” Daddy used to say whenever gunfire rang out. “Just play.”

Wasn’t exactly Center Court at Roland Garros, but it was all we knew.

We bounced around a lot, from public court to public court. There was one place we used to play that had these great chain-link
nets. You’d drill a ball into the net, and you’d rattle the cage and feel like you really accomplished something—even though
we were supposed to hit it
over
the net, of course. My dad tried to mix it up for us, but for the most part those courts in Lynwood and Compton were our
home base. We branched out, though—and if we didn’t like a certain park, or a certain neighborhood, we wouldn’t go back.

Once, at Lynwood Park, a group of kids started giving us a hard time. I was probably five or six. Venus and I were hitting.
My sisters were chasing balls. I don’t remember what my parents were doing, but they must have been there, somewhere. These
kids kept taunting us. They called us Blackie One and Blackie Two. It was so cruel, so arbitrary, but we kept playing. Finally,
Tunde stopped chasing balls and chased these kids instead. She was the oldest, so she felt a responsibility to look after
us. She had our backs. I don’t know what she said to these kids when she caught up to them, but they didn’t bother us anymore
after that.

As kids, I don’t think we heard those taunts as racist remarks. They were just taunts. Those kids were just being mean. If
Venus and I had been more typical California golden girls, these kids might have called us Blondie One and Blondie Two. We
were just different; that’s how I took it at the time. We stood out. Might have been something more to it than that, but I
was too young to recognize it. But maybe Tunde heard these remarks a little differently, and that’s why she chased these boys
down.

However it happened, and whatever it meant, I looked on and thought,
Someday, Serena, you won’t need your sisters to fight your battles for you.

O
ver time, Daddy collected all this equipment—ball hoppers, carts, cones, whatever he could find to make our sessions more
like the ones in his books and videos. He really tried to create a professional environment for us on a nothing budget. For
a while, the routine was we had to take out the middle seat in our van so my dad could fit the shopping cart he’d somehow
managed to acquire, which he would fill with tennis balls and wheel out to the court. We must have made an odd picture, crammed
into the van like that with a shopping cart. I’d sit up front with Venus, sharing a seat belt. The big girls sat in back.
The cart would be jammed in the middle, alongside a couple brooms so we could sweep the court. It always felt to me like we
were rumbling along in that van from
Scooby Doo,
our equipment jammed in so tight we’d have to stick our arms and legs out the windows to make room.

My mom would usually meet us at the courts after work. Eventually, it got a little tiresome lugging that cart back and forth
each day with all the rest of our gear, so my father started locking the cart to the rusty fence surrounding the court. Saved
us a lot of time and trouble. This was another example of my parents’ approach: when something worked, they stayed with it;
when it no longer made sense, they tried something else. We still took the balls home with us every night, in buckets and
boxes and milk crates and whatever else we could find to carry them, but now it was much more efficient; now they took up
a lot less room.

Man, those balls were precious to us. They were like money in the bank. I don’t recall that we ever retired a ball from our
collection. Daddy would take the oldest, baldest, flattest balls and turn them into a drill. He’d keep them in the mix with
all the other balls, but when he pitched one of these special balls to us he said it would help us with our speed, our footwork,
our concentration. I hated going after those balls—they just wouldn’t bounce!—but Daddy kept them in play.

“At Wimbledon,” he’d say, “the balls will bounce low, just like these special balls, so you have to be ready.”

Occasionally, we’d hit a ball into the woods or out onto the street beyond the fence, and we’d have to go looking for it before
giving it up for lost. I hit more balls over the fence than my sisters—not by accident, necessarily, but by design. See, I
discovered that when Daddy sent me across the street to collect the ball after one of my errant shots, it meant a break from
the hard work he had us doing on the court, so I learned to play the angles at an early age.

Also occasionally, Daddy would add a new can or two to our collection, and that was always a real treat. Those fresh balls
really popped. You could follow them all afternoon, up against the faded yellow of all those tired old tennis balls. It always
felt like I had to bear down a little harder whenever a fresh ball reached the top of the pile and was put in play; there
was a little more hop to it; it bounced off my racquet with a little more purpose and authority. Plus, it
sounded
great—the music of the game. I never liked to waste one of those new balls with a bad shot. It was like a missed opportunity.
New balls are like that. To this day, whenever I smell a can of just-opened balls it puts me in mind of those new cans my
dad used to bring out, when those brand-new balls made me feel like a real tennis player. They were so clean, so yellow, the
felt so fine like the hairs on the back of your head… it was almost a shame to get them dirty.

Of course, they all got dirty, eventually. Soon, they’d lose that fresh bounce and they’d get all dirty and there’d be no
telling the new balls from the ones at the bottom of the pile—but that didn’t mean we stopped playing. No, sir. It only meant
we’d have to get all these other balls to pop with the same purpose and authority, until my father could get us a couple new
cans.

That was the way of things for the first while. We developed our own little routine, our own little family dynamic, built
around this funny little game. We were little girls smacking a ball around inside a box, that’s what Daddy used to say. And,
at first, that’s all it was. But then we started showing flashes that we could really play, when I was about five or six and
Venus about six or seven, so my parents changed things up on us. They went at it harder. They pushed us harder. That might
have been their plan all along, but they didn’t go harder until we showed them we were ready. And when we were, we went from
playing just a couple hours a day four or five times a week, to three or four hours a day every day of the week. Some days,
we’d even be out for two-a-day sessions, starting up at six o’clock in the morning before school, and then again after school,
usually until dark. In the morning, we’d sometimes get to the court before the sun was all the way up, and Daddy would have
us stretch or practice our swings until we could see well enough to hit.

I still do that, by the way—head out to practice at first light. It’s my favorite time to hit, because everything’s so quiet;
you’ve got the whole day in front of you. I hate getting up early—
really
!!!—but I push myself. You can put in a full day’s work before your opponent even gets out of bed, and that can give you an
incredible psychological edge to carry into your next match, knowing you’re fully prepared, knowing the other girl is sleeping
in while you’re out there sweating. And in those moments when I’m waiting for the sun to finish rising I’ll think back to
those early mornings on those public courts in Compton and Lynwood, keeping busy until my dad gave us the nod to start playing.

It got to be a grueling schedule, but none of us really minded it. Or we hardly noticed. We were all together. It was what
we did, that’s all. We didn’t know any different. We didn’t have a whole lot of friends outside of school. There was only
time for each other, for tennis. My dad tried to make it fun for us. Every session had a theme, a structure. He’d set up all
these creative games, with cones placed around the court, and there’d be a series of challenges we’d have to meet. Sometimes
he’d put up little messages or sayings on the fence around the court to help motivate us, or maybe just to make us smile.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Believe.

You are a winner.

Be humble.

Say “Thank you.”

(This last saying was one of his favorites.)

He’d write out these empowering messages on big pieces of paper or oak tag, or sometimes he’d have us write them out. Then
he’d hang them up all around the court. If there was a theme to one of his sessions—like “Focus”—all the messages would have
to do with the theme. He really put a lot of time and effort into this part of our training, because he believed it was important.
He wanted these messages to resonate, for the visual image of the word to linger in our minds long after we’d left the court.
Years later, when we moved to Florida, he had some signs made professionally, with his most effective messages—and those he
put up permanently.

Basically, he was fooling us into thinking we weren’t working, with all those games and messages, but after a while we caught
on. We didn’t care, though. We didn’t mind working hard. I mean, we were kids, so of course we grumbled from time to time.
Of course we did our little celebration dance whenever it rained, because that meant we wouldn’t have to practice. Of course
I hit a ball or two over the fence to buy myself a break while I went to retrieve it. But it wasn’t so bad. Every now and
then, my dad would reward us with some time to play in the nearby playground, or in the sandbox. That was another great treat
for us girls. I used to love doing cartwheels. Whenever I had a five-minute break, I’d be in the grass alongside the court,
flipping around. I spent a lot of time on the monkey bars, too, as I recall.

Even when we weren’t playing tennis, our games were tennis-related. One of our very favorite family games was UNO, which I
always thought was fitting for us. We played that game all the time—and I mean
all
the time!—and it really instilled a champion-type mind-set. After all, the point of the whole game is right there in its
name—to be number one! No, UNO’s got nothing to do with tennis, not directly, but it’s a great teaching tool for any individual
sport. It instills such a killer mind-set. Every game produces a winner, but UNO is one of the few games I can think of where
you need to announce yourself as the winner just before you actually win, when you’re down to one card, so everyone else around
the table has a shot at you. It goes from every-girl-for-herself to every-girl-gunning-for-the-leader in a flash, and in this
way it can really prepare you for the kind of competition you might face in a crowded tournament field. At first, it’s just
on you to take care of your own game, but then everyone is looking to knock you down. I don’t know if my parents had this
in mind when they introduced us to the game, but that’s the way I always played it.