Over the next year, our schedule didn’t change much and the beatings continued,while my mother tried to paper over the darkness with swatches of light. She Knew I wanted to be a Scout, so she signed me up for a local troop. I still remember putting on that navy blue Cub Scout button down one Saturday. I felt proud wearing a uniform and knowing at least for a few hours I could pretend that I was a normal kid. My mom smiled as we headed for the door. My pride,her smile, wasn’t just because of the damn Cub Scouts. They rose up from a deeper place. We were taking action to find something positive for ourselves in a bleak situation. It was proof that we mattered, and that we weren’t completely powerless.

That’s when my father came home from the Vermillion Room.

“Where you two going?” He glared at me. I stared at the floor. My mother cleared her throat.

“I’m taking David to his first Cub Scout meeting,” she said, softly.

“The hell you are!” I looked up, and he laughed as my eyes welled up with tears.“We’re going to the track.”

Within the hour we’d arrived at Batavia Downs, an old-school harness horserace track, the type where jockeys ride behind the horses in lightweight buggies.

My dad grabbed a racing form as soon we stepped through the gate. For hours,the three of us watched him place bet after bet, chain smoke, drink scotch, and raise holy hell as every pony he bet on finished out of the money. With my dad raging at the gambling gods and acting a fool, I tried to make myself as small as possible whenever people walked by, but I still stuck out. I was the only kid inthe stands dressed like a Cub Scout. I was probably the only black Cub Scoutthey’d ever seen, and my uniform was a lie. I was a pretender.

Trunnis lost thousands of dollars that day, and he wouldn’t shut up about it on the drive home, his raspy throat raw from nicotine. My brother and I were in the cramped back seat and whenever he spat out the window, his phlegm boomeranged into my face. Each drop of his nasty saliva on my skin burned like venom and intensified my hate. I’d long since learned that the best way to avoid a beat down was to make myself as invisible as possible, avert my eyes, float outside my body, and hope to go unnoticed. It was a practice we’d all honed over the years, but I was done with that shit. I would no longer hide from the Devil. That afternoon as he veered onto the highway and headed home, he continued to rave on, and I mad-dogged him from the back seat. Have you ever heard the phrase, “Faith Over Fear”? For me it was Hate Over Fear.

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