On the Line (5 page)

Serena, this game is mental. Good thoughts are powerful. Negative thoughts are weak. Decide what U want to be, have, do and
think the thoughts of it. Your vision will become your life. Hold on to the thought of what U want. Make it absolutely clear
in your mind. U become what U think about most. U attract what you think about most. Think. Do. Be.

—
MATCH BOOK ENTRY

A
way from tennis, we were just a regular family. Sort of. I was the youngest of five sisters. There was me at the bottom, and
then Venus, fifteen months ahead of me. I was actually born in Saginaw, Michigan, not far from where my mom was born and raised,
but we moved to Compton when I was a baby. Ahead of Venus, there was Lyndrea, whom we all called Lyn, and Isha. The oldest
was Yetunde—or Tunde, for short.

My parents established the tone in our house, but you could say we girls held sway. My parents were disciplinarians, but on
top of that we were taught to be self-disciplined. My older sisters used to say me and V had it easy, because by the time
my parents got to us they were too tired and worn out to be superstrict disciplinarians, but I don’t know about that. They
were still pretty hard on us, but we were even harder on ourselves. We were expected to do our schoolwork and our chores,
and to help each other in whatever ways were age-appropriate. Tunde and Isha could help the younger girls with their homework,
say, while Lyn and Venus could help me clean my section of our closet. (Notice that I was the one on the receiving end of
my sisters’ assists. I knew how to work a good thing, even then.) We went dutifully to our daily practice sessions, but it
wasn’t entirely without complaint. Actually, we whined more than we complained, but mostly we whined among ourselves. There
was an unspoken rule that any real misgivings we might have had about logging all those hours on the court should be… well,
unspoken. We were meant to practice like it mattered, like there was no place else we’d rather be—because, of course, these
practices
did
matter. They were all part of my parents’ plan.

My mom worked as a nurse. My dad had his own security firm. What that meant, for most of my childhood, was that he was around.
Later on, after he’d turbocharged our tennis schedule, I used to catch myself hoping he’d have to go to work and cancel practice,
but that never happened; his schedule was flexible. Our practice times? Not so much. My mom’s work schedule was set by the
hospital, but as we got older she started to take on more private patients, so there was a little more room. Meanwhile, my
dad set it up so he worked at night; sometimes, he worked while we were in school, but it was mostly at night, after we went
to bed. When we were home, he was home. Usually, he was trying to talk to one of us about tennis. Trying to get us to watch
matches with him on television. Looking ahead to our next practice.

Daddy carved out some special time for each of us, underneath our hectic comings and goings. He’d talk to us about focus and
discipline. His big thing was for each of us to have a plan and to write it down. The plan could be about tennis, school,
life, whatever. He’d say, “Meeka, did you have a plan for today? Did you write it down?” By writing it down, he said we would
be more likely to own it and to see it through. It can be a powerful motivational tool, I guess, but try telling that to a
little kid who didn’t quite see the point, a kid who would rather be doing cartwheels or dancing.

We sisters all fit into our particular roles. Tunde was the forgiver; she had a heart of gold. Isha was the caretaker; she
looked after each of us, and helped to establish a sense of order in our private world. Lyn was our play pal; she was everyone’s
favorite knockabout buddy, always up for a new adventure. Venus was my protector. I’m not quite sure how the others saw her,
but to me she was like a benevolent bodyguard, on the constant lookout for any situation that might cause me trouble or distress.
And me, I was the princess; I was everyone’s pet. Looking back, I think I was more like a pest, but my sisters let me get
away with everything!

What’s curious is that we all kept those roles into adulthood. Even now, I’ll reach out to Lyn if I’m looking to cut up or
do the town, or to Isha, if I need help sorting through the twists and turns of my crazy schedule. And so on.

Another curious side note to how we grew up was that all five girls shared a bedroom, with four beds. Do the math: it meant
one of us was the odd girl out, and since I was the youngest that was me. There were two sets of bunk beds: Isha and Tunde,
the two oldest, had the two beds on top; Lyn and Venus had the two down below. Every night, I’d have to bunk with a different
sister—and here, too, there was a lesson for a lifetime. A situation like that might have messed with my sense of belonging
or identity, but that’s not how I looked at it. How I looked at it was it brought me closer to each of my sisters. How I looked
at it was I had this great gift that none of the other girls had. It might have been a negative, but I took it as a positive.
Each night, I’d crawl into bed with a different sister, and as a result we each had a special bond. Instead of feeling like
I didn’t quite belong anywhere, I felt like I belonged everywhere. It was empowering, really. It made for a series of real,
close, substantive relationships, and I had it going on four times over.

I fit myself in, in whatever ways I could, wherever I could—an odd way to look out at the world, but ultimately a healthy
one, I think. The constant bed-hopping reminded me yet again that nothing is ever handed to you, not even a bed to call your
own. Also, it taught me to grab at what I needed, and to make it my own—and at the same time to make the best of what I had
in the first place. There was a lot of love in our house; we were bursting with it. But it took chasing after it each night
in this unusual way for me to trust in it; it took reaching for it, and reaching for it, to know it wouldn’t slip away.

It all goes to character. The way you’re raised.
Where
you’re raised. How you look out at the world. How the world looks back at you. All of that gets mixmastered together in such
a way that you come out the other side a fully formed person—only it took me a good long while before I got my game on in
this respect. Fully formed? That wasn’t me, not until I was much, much older. I took shape at my own pace. For a while, I
had a real princess-type mind-set. Maybe it came from being the youngest. Maybe it came from smiling my way into a different
sister’s good graces each night. Maybe it came from learning to get what I wanted. Maybe I was just spoiled, plain and simple.
My sisters took care of me, that’s for sure, and I was pretty good at playing one off another to get what I wanted.

Perfect example: we used to put on these ridiculous talent shows, but after a while Lyn and V never wanted to participate
because I always had to win. That was my thing, winning. Man, I hated to lose! (I
still
hate to lose!) Isha or Tunde would usually be the judge, and the rest of us would sing or dance or do a little skit. I always
sang the same song—Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All”—and if I didn’t win, I cried. (Wouldn’t have killed me to come
up with another routine, but I
loved
that song.) I’d kick and fuss until the judge made me the winner. It didn’t matter if Venus or Lyn deserved to win. It only
mattered that I got my way.

I don’t know why my sisters put up with me, but they did. Lord knows, I didn’t make it easy for them. Actually, I was kind
of horrible. (
I
wouldn’t have put up with me!) Some of the stunts I pulled were off the charts. But cute cuts you a lot of slack, I quickly
learned, and it buys you a batch of forgiveness. Once, we’d all been given piggy banks by a Spanish teacher my father had
hired to work with us. The deal was if one of us did particularly well at our lessons, we’d get a porcelain piggy bank—empty,
but done up with traditional Mexican-style painting on the sides. They were really nice. I think I was the last sister to
get one, and when I did I was so proud of myself—but then I broke mine, and I was devastated. It was worse than not earning
one in the first place. I’d set it to rest on this wicker bookcase we had in our bedroom, and it toppled over. Next thing
you know, Lyn’s piggy bank also broke. After that, Venus’s broke as well. No one could figure out why these piggy banks kept
breaking. It was a big family mystery, until about ten or twelve years later when I finally confessed: I’d smashed my sisters’
piggy banks because mine was broken; I couldn’t stand it that they had something I didn’t have. It was the only way I knew
to cover this lost ground.

M
y goodness, I was awful. But I was the baby of the family, so I got away with a lot. That’s how it goes in some families;
the baby gets a free pass, so it took a while for me to figure out this right-and-wrong business. I even struggled with it
on the tennis court, where it came up almost as soon as I started competing. Thinking back on it, I can’t believe I started
playing in matches at such a young age, because at first my parents were only concerned with form and function. They wanted
me to hit the ball properly, to work on my ground strokes, to really get a good feel for my game. With me and Venus, it was
mostly about hitting. Over and over and over. With Lyn and Isha, it was also about hitting, but on top of that it was about
tactics and positioning. (Tunde had drifted away from the game at some point, as we got older.) I never really talked strategy
with my parents when I was little. The concept of hitting it where your opponent isn’t, of playing to win… somehow those things
were instinctive with me. By the time I was six or seven, Daddy had me playing in these local leagues, and I knew to move
the other girl around. I knew to put the ball away for a winner. I knew from watching all those matches on television, from
going to all those tournaments. But I didn’t know it well enough to put it into words. I just
knew
. Like it was a part of me.

There was one league I remember in particular, the Domino’s Pizza League. I joined when I was about seven, and my mom used
to take me to most of my matches because my dad was usually off at some tournament or other with Venus or Isha. I used to
win most of my matches, but my teammates lost most of theirs, so we never really won anything. They had it set up so there
were four to six girls on a team. We’d compete individually against the girls from the other team, and then at the end we’d
tally up our scores, and whichever team had won the most games would win the match. I’d breeze through a lot of my matches
and end up playing hopscotch by myself, or dancing and cartwheeling along on the sidewalk behind the courts. I wasn’t a very
good teammate, I guess. I didn’t have it in me to root for the other girls on my team.

There was this one girl, Anne, who always played me tough. She was good, but I was better. She wanted it, but I wanted it
more. Can’t say for sure
why
I wanted it more, or how I knew to measure my will to win against hers—but this was how Daddy had me thinking on that court.
He had me sizing up my opponent, and figuring where I’d find my advantage, without really talking to me about it. It came
from all those hours watching tennis on television, watching all those VCR tapes of classic matches. It all just seeped in.

This one time, Anne beat me pretty thoroughly—only I counted it as a victory for me. I was down 5–2 in games, when Anne made
the fool move of asking me the score. Big mistake. Why? Well, you have to realize, in little-kid matches there are no referees.
The parents aren’t even supposed to watch. It’s left to us kids to keep our own score and make our own calls, and it was always
a special point of pride to me that I called a fair game. A lot of girls would cheat like crazy. A lot of that was because
they were just young, and they didn’t know the rules or couldn’t follow the flight of the ball as it went past and found the
line, but a lot of that was because they were cheaters. You’d hit a ball that was in by a couple feet, they’d call it out.
They’d serve it way wide and insist it was good. Not me.

Except for this one time, against Anne, when my moral compass pointed in an entirely different direction. For whatever reason
it really, really bugged me that this girl couldn’t even keep score. I thought,
How can you even ask such a stupid question? Why are you even wasting my time? What’s
that
about?
We were only seven years old, of course, but—still!—it was just counting. We’d been counting since kindergarten. What was
so hard about keeping score?

So what did I do? I glared across the net at poor Anne and said the score was 5–2, in my favor. I gave her my most menacing
look and claimed three of those games for myself. I don’t know why I did it, but I did it. And I don’t know why or how Anne
bought it, but she bought it. I’m certainly not proud of myself. I don’t think I was a bad kid, even though I was clearly
in the wrong on this one, and yet I look back and can’t even recognize my behavior. I’ve tried to understand it. Yes, I was
pampered at home by my big sisters. Yes, I was used to getting what I wanted. Yes, I liked to win, no matter what. Maybe that’s
all it was. Maybe I just didn’t want to lose. Maybe the fact that this girl couldn’t even count was unacceptable to my entitled
self. Whatever it was, I announced the score with such conviction that my opponent had no choice but to accept it.

I must have felt badly about it, but I played on. I couldn’t lose to this girl, I convinced myself. Especially now. I couldn’t
steal all those games and not come away with a victory—a victory on paper, at least. I looked at her across the net, with
her glasses and her simple, trusting face, and I thought,
How could someone be so naïve? So timid? How could she give back all those games?
Underneath feeling bad for her, I was also angry that we were both out there playing to win, and she couldn’t take things
seriously enough to keep score.