In My Skin (10 page)

As the five of us made our way to the starting line, some of the juniors and seniors on the team spotted my Vans and began laughing, giving me a hard time, saying things like “Freshman trying to run in those!” I played along, but the jokes just motivated me even more. I told myself if there are people in Africa who can run marathons barefoot, I can run a mile in a pair of Vans. Coach Mulkey had brought three guys to the track who would serve as our pacesetters, our rabbits, with each of them running a specific time, as fast as we all needed to go. The goal was 6:45 to 7:00 minutes for the guards, 7:30 for the forwards, and 8:00 for the post players like me. Kim explained that if we stayed near the guy pacing our group, we would make our time.

Each coach was holding a stopwatch, adding even more pressure to the whole thing. When it was time to run, I lined up on the inside lane, right in the front. I didn't care that I was supposed to be slower than the guards. I had decided I was going to sprint that damn mile, and I didn't care if I needed to be carried off the track afterward. There were more than fifteen of us, along with the guys, packed on the starting line. And when Kim gave us the signal—“Go!”—and all the coaches started their watches, I took off around the first corner like I was being chased by angry dogs.

We had done some longer sprint workouts in advance of the mile. Our strength coach took us through 100-yard and 200-yard repeats, just so we were prepared to run a little longer, because most of the other stuff we did was on the basketball court: quick and short, stop and start. After each lap that morning, each quarter mile, the coaches would call out how much time had passed, and whether we were on pace or needed to pick it up. I tried to ignore everything, including the time, and just ran as hard as I could. I kept a strong, steady pace through the first three laps, and once I hit the line again to start the fourth and final lap, I gave it everything I had.

I crossed the finish line in about seven minutes flat, beating most of the forwards and even a few of the guards. I stopped running immediately, walked a few steps out of the way, and just fell down on the ground, lying on my back and staring at the sky. My lungs felt like they might explode, and my feet were barking at me. A trainer came over and said, “Good job, but get up! Don't cramp up!” I wanted to yell, “I don't care—let me cramp!” But I pulled myself up and staggered over to where the coaches were standing. I heard one of the trainers whisper to another, “She just ran that time, and in Vans?”

I had also eaten Skittles for breakfast.

MY FRESHMAN YEAR AT BAYLOR,
I was always doing something. It was like I was trying to pack an entire life, everything I had missed out on, into every weekend. I often felt confined, almost trapped, in high school because my dad needed to know where I was at all times, and because he knew so many people, being a cop. When I thought about college, it was like picturing myself on a narrow road that suddenly opened up into a five-lane highway, and I could punch the gas and really start living life. That day when my parents dropped me off, after we said our good-byes, I wasn't just trying to push away my sadness when I walked back to the dorm and started asking about parties. I was ready to let loose. And that's exactly what I did, full throttle. I was burning the candle at both ends, something that would eventually catch up with me toward the end of my sophomore year.

Of course, basketball came first. Everything I did revolved around my obligations to the team, our practice schedule, our games. At the time, though, I wasn't taking into account how important it was to rest and recharge whenever I could. I was nineteen years old, and in a new place where I could flop into bed after a long night, pull myself up a few hours later, go to classes, and still have a strong practice. I had been raised by a man who wouldn't let me ride my bike anywhere except in circles around our cul-de-sac, so I couldn't resist the urge—it felt like a necessity, really—to put down the windows of my Dodge Magnum and cruise the highway to somewhere else, anywhere else, usually with one or two friends with me. That's how I ended up spending a lot of my free weekends as a freshman. When we didn't have a game or practice, you could often find me in Austin (I spent a lot of time on Sixth Street) or Dallas, partying at the clubs. It didn't matter that both cities are about a two-hundred-mile round trip from Waco. Even during the week, I would go out around campus.

Looking back now, I realize I was rebelling against my dad, doing everything opposite of how he would want. Whenever he visited me in Waco, one of the first things he would do is check the miles on the Dodge. He would lean into the front seat and write down the odometer number on some small piece of paper he carried around in his wallet, then compare the new number with the one above it, from his previous visit. Sometimes between visits, he would call me and ask, “How many miles are on the car?” And I would have to walk out to the parking garage and check the odometer. If the number was higher than he expected, he would say, “You drove five hundred miles in a few days?” I would try to give him a lower number, just to avoid the conversation, but it was hard to know how many miles had been on the car the last time he checked. And I wasn't about to start keeping track of it myself. That would just make me paranoid like him.

One time on my way into Austin, I accidentally went through a toll without paying, and my dad received a notice in the mail. He called me and asked where I had been that weekend. I told him I hung out with my teammate Shanay. She was from the Austin area, but I clearly made it sound like we had spent the weekend in Waco. He pounced on me right away. “I know you're lying,” he said. “You were in Austin. I got a notice about the toll.” I tried to talk my way out of it by saying I meant all along that we were in Austin, and that he just hadn't heard me right. But he was annoyed I lied, and I was annoyed he was still trying to monitor my whereabouts, using the only weapon at his disposal: the odometer on the Dodge Magnum.

Another time I went down to Galveston with some friends, for the gay pride parade, because I had never been to a pride event before. I went home to Houston, parked the Dodge at the house of a good friend from high school, then rode with some other folks. My dad called while we were walking along the beach. He knew I had come to Houston—I wasn't sneaking around—so when he called and asked what I was doing, I told him the truth, that I had gone down to Galveston for the pride festivities. Well, apparently that was the wrong answer, too, because he started in on me again. He said, “Where the hell is my car?” And when I told him where I had left it, he just got madder. “What if I needed to service it?” He was always making excuses about the car. But none of it was really about the car. In this case, he didn't like my friend. He thought she was turning me out—you know, making me gay.

A lot of times with my dad, he doesn't actually say what he means, what he really wants. He uses other people, or things like his car, as his way of trying to get what he wants. So, for example, if I didn't go home to visit for a few weekends, he would call and say, “You're disappointing your mother. She misses you.” But then I would call my mom, and she'd say, “Baby Girl, you live your life! I'm doing just fine!” My dad could never just say to me, “Brittney, I love you and miss you. I would love to see you.” If he had actually said that to me, I would have gotten in the car and driven home. Instead, everything was always about something else—something I wasn't doing the way he thought I should be doing it. And it was exhausting, always trying to read between the lines, feeling like I needed to keep my guard up at all times.

That Dodge Magnum was his tool, like a GPS locator, and he used it to keep tabs on me, to continue wielding power over my life.

I
've watched “the punch” at least a dozen times on YouTube. I grimace every time I see it, squinting my eyes as if somehow trying to change the outcome. Most people are spared the misfortune of having their most embarrassing moment captured on video: mine was broadcast live on television, then replayed on the news, then uploaded to the Internet for everyone to see, a cautionary tale for the masses. And yet even if I could press a button and make that clip disappear forever, I wouldn't do it. Because as bad as that moment looks on-screen—and it was a whole lot worse in person—I know now that it was one of the best things to ever happen to me.

When I was younger, the anger and frustration inside me often felt like a living, breathing thing, like a fish caught on a hook, thrashing about, demanding to be released. And a lot of times, the way I chose to release it only made things worse. Instead of the fish swimming away, it stayed in the boat, flopping around and making a mess. I used to believe fighting was a way for me to control things that felt out of my control. I was trying to take back the power, to show everyone they couldn't just say whatever they wanted about me and trample on my feelings. But I've learned over the years that there are painful consequences for letting my emotions fester, and the real turning point came on March 3, 2010, when I punched Jordan Barncastle during a game at Texas Tech. In the days and weeks that followed, I would come to realize I wasn't in control at all, and that allowing my anger to own me was actually making me more vulnerable, not less.

WHAT MOST PEOPLE
don't realize is that the confrontation with Jordan Barncastle actually started a couple of weeks earlier during a game in Waco. Texas Tech was playing a smaller lineup, and Barncastle was guarding me for long stretches of the game, which was a mismatch because she's six inches shorter than I am. To make up for the size difference, she started catching me with elbows, hitting me when the referees weren't looking, just doing some of the dirty stuff that happens on the basketball court. I like to talk trash when I play, get inside an opponent's head, so she's thinking about what I'm saying instead of what she should be doing. But I'm not a dirty player. There's no point to it, not with my size. Why give away the advantage I have by getting caught throwing elbows or grabbing someone's shirt? It's not like I can easily hide out there. At the same time, though, I have to protect myself. I can't just let people hang on me and push me around, especially if the refs are swallowing their whistles. If someone gets physical with me, I will get more physical, too.

Barncastle didn't like it when I started pushing back. I don't know if maybe she thought she could get away with it because I'm taller, as if these little tricks were her way of evening things out, to make it more fair. Coach Mulkey used to get so upset with the refs, because this kind of thing happened more and more as my career went along. It was like the refs had a different set of criteria for fouls when I was on the court. I would have players all over me, double-teams, triple-teams, and they practically had to drag me to the ground before we could get the call. I think that's just a fact of life for big, dominant post players. Look at Shaquille O'Neal: he got mauled out there. It's almost as if the refs have this mind-set, whether it's conscious or not, that a normal foul—a slap or a shove—isn't a foul when someone is guarding a much bigger player. So, anyway, Barncastle and I went at each other hard that first game, and at one point she walked away from me to complain to the ref that things were getting too physical. When she walked back, I said to her, “You think the referee is going to save you?” And then when I scored on her, drawing a foul, too, I called out, “And one!” (We would eventually get a warning from the ref, telling us both to take it down a notch.) I don't buy the idea that female athletes need to be nice and ladylike on the court. The heat of competition burns just as hot for a woman as it does for a man.

When we played Texas Tech in Lubbock two weeks later, a couple of our assistant coaches pulled me aside beforehand and said, “Don't get into it with Barncastle this time.” I told them I wouldn't. But once the game started, it was the same aggressive stuff, pushing and pulling, locking arms, elbows to the body. We were both just going at it again, except now instead of talking trash back at me, she was walking over to the refs during most dead balls, complaining about me. That probably got under my skin a lot more than if we had just kept getting tangled. If you want to dish it out, the way she was dishing it out, you should be able to take it when somebody gives it back. She was playing really aggressive defense, so I was doing the same thing.

And then it got ugly. I made it ugly. We were winning by 16 points, with about nine minutes left in the game, and I was posting up on the low block, using my arms and elbows to get position on her and call for the ball. I remember hearing the referee's whistle and keeping my arms up, because she was still hanging all over me. She grabbed my arm and kind of whipped me around, throwing me out of the play. The foul was clearly on her; the play should have been over. But it wasn't over for me, not inside my head. I was kind of twisted down, still on my feet but wrapped around myself, eyes facing the red-painted wood of the court— and all of a sudden I snapped. A second earlier, I could hear the buzz of the fans, the squeaking of sneakers, the sharp whistle of the referee. But as I rose up tall again, on the spot where she had flung me, everything was a blur. The crowd fell out of view, the other players disappeared from the court, and I couldn't hear or see anybody else except for Jordan Barncastle, in her white-and-red uniform. It was just the two of us. We'd been dancing that line all game, like a pair of boxers, but I had managed to channel my energy and frustration into making big plays. Now all I cared about was hitting her, making her fall. That was the thought flashing through my mind in one split second:
Make her fall.
I whipped my right arm around and tried to connect. It could have been a lot worse. I mean, it was bad enough—I would find out later that I broke her nose—but, thankfully, I didn't hit her square and catch her with my knuckles. I could have done serious damage.