On the Line (11 page)

It’s also not accurate for me to suggest that everyone in the stands was rich, white, and old. Certainly,
most
everyone in the stands was rich, white, and old, but there were probably another hundred or so black faces in the stands,
and maybe another hundred or so who lived from paycheck to paycheck, like most people. There was actually one guy in the crowd
whose voice managed to make it through, and he was really, really helpful to me. I couldn’t tell you if he was black or white,
but it didn’t matter. He was on my side. He kept telling me to hang in there, not to listen to all these people, to just play
my game.

Oh, yeah. My game. For a beat or two I’d forgotten about the match. It was hard to concentrate. I imagine Kim Clijsters also
had a tough time concentrating. There was just too much going on. She held her serve in the first game without breaking a
sweat. A backhand return into the net. A forehand wide. An ace. Another forehand into the net. Four straight points. Not exactly
the way I wanted to start out the match—but then, there was a lot about the match that wasn’t going according to plan. With
each point, Kim got a bigger and bigger cheer, and it only got worse when it was my turn to serve. I remember I missed my
first serve and the crowd was just overjoyed. In tennis, you never hear fans cheer a player’s mistakes, but here they were,
cheering. It was just awful. And then, the biggest, most derisive cheer of all erupted when I ended up double-faulting. Oh
my God, it was such a low moment!

They kept it up for the entire match. No matter what I did, these people booed. Or cheered—a mean chorus that almost sounded
worse than booing. Or—worst of all!—sat in stone silence after I won a point. Kim broke me in my very first service game,
and the first set went downhill from there. She actually won the first seven points of the match, and a tiny part of me wondered
if I’d ever win a point. I couldn’t get into any kind of rhythm. I couldn’t focus or get anything going.

Kim won the third game, too, and when I questioned a call on a ball I thought was out, it was like these people were ready
to string me up.

Somehow, I found the strength to hold serve in my next service game, and then to break Kim back in the following game to bring
us essentially even. For a while, it seemed the crowd had quieted, but then I double-faulted again to start the next game,
down 2–3, and the crowd was on me all over again.

I look at pictures of me from that tournament—all fresh-faced and excited, looking sharp in my pink Puma jumper, my hair in
braids and gathered into high pigtails in back, held in place by my black Puma visor. I looked so cute! And yet these people
were just ripping me. I was just a kid, and they were ripping me. I feel so badly for the little girl I was back then. I mean,
I was still just a teenager! How can you justify treating a child so badly?

It had to mess with my concentration. Kim’s, too. She put out a tremendous effort that day and a stirring show of sportsmanship
under difficult conditions. She got off to that great start, on the back of all this nonsense, but I battled back and held
serve, then I broke her again to go up 4–3. For a moment, I thought I’d put all that ugliness behind me, but I stumbled in
my next service game and let the jeers and taunts start messing with my head. I ended up giving that break right back, allowing
Kim to tie things up at 4–4.

Neither one of us was playing particularly well. My first-serve percentage was terrible, and I was making tons of unforced
errors. I kept hitting balls wide and long—but they were so far wide and long that they weren’t even close! Most of the points
I won were on Kim’s unforced errors, so she was struggling, too. Everything was just
off
.

Kim held serve, then rallied back to break me again to take the first set. On the very last point of the set, I approached
the net, thinking I could maybe force Kim from her comfort zone. I’d only been to the net a couple times to that point, and
here I thought I could push the issue and take control of the match. At first, it appeared I’d do just that, as I went to
put away Kim’s return. I was
right there,
and what did I do? I hit the ball directly into the net, to give the crowd something new to cheer about.

I thought,
Man, I just can’t catch a break!

I looked ahead and couldn’t imagine how the rest of the match might go. I was just going through the motions. We stayed on
serve for the first few games of the second set, but they were ugly holds. I’d go up 40–0 and then give back a bunch of points
before holding on to win. That’s no way to win, if you’re hoping to put any kind of stamp on the rest of the match. I was
defeated, deflated. Emotionally drained. You could see it in the way I carried myself, in the tentative way I returned to
the baseline after each point. I didn’t think I had it in me to keep going. The booing was just wearing me out.

During the next changeover, trailing 1–2 in the second set, I sat down and cried into my towel. I don’t mind admitting it
here. I don’t think it makes me soft or weak, just human. The crowd was all over me. I was down a set. I couldn’t think how
I would get through the rest of the match. It seemed to stretch out in front of me in an unreachable, unending way. At just
that moment, I didn’t care if I won or lost. I didn’t want to go back out there. I couldn’t. And then I thought,
Okay, Serena. You need to be tough
. I thought if Althea Gibson could fight her way through far worse, I had an obligation to fight through this. And not just
fight—I had an obligation to prevail. In my head, it was no longer a battle between me and Kim Clijsters. Now it was between
me and this hateful crowd. Now I would not be denied, and so I summoned whatever reserves of inner strength I could find and
stood to take my place on the court, telling myself I would not lose this match. Whatever happened, whatever would keep happening,
I would not be beaten down by it.

I have to believe there was some racist component to all of this. If it had been twenty years earlier and Chris Evert had
to make a late scratch in a semifinal match against her sister Jeanne, nobody would have booed Jeanne the next day. Nobody
would have suggested that the sisters were conspiring in some way, or manipulating the game. Nobody would have booed some
blond, blue-eyed girl. And nobody would have shouted down her father with cries of, “Go back to Compton, nigger!” I’m sorry,
but that would not have happened—not in Palm Springs, anyway—so you tell me this attack on me and my family wasn’t racially
motivated on some level. You tell me that this mostly white crowd wasn’t beating up on this nineteen-year-old black girl and
her family in part because of the color of our skin. Go ahead and make that argument. I’ll listen to it. But I won’t buy it.
Why? Because I was there. Because I was the target. Because you don’t know what it’s like to have all of this entitled vitriol
rain down on you. These privileged, entitled people were up in my face and all over me and my dad and my sister because they
were denied their entertainment the day before. That’s the bottom line.

I understand that I’m in the entertainment business. I compete at the highest levels of my sport. I know the only reason there’s
all that prize money and endorsement money is because people buy tickets to watch. I get that. But I also get that I do what
I do for me. I’m not out there busting my butt for the blue-haired Palm Springs jet-setter. No, I’m out there for me. People
need to understand that. I’m no different than any other athlete. We play to win, and to prove something to ourselves and
our opponents. If you enjoy watching us compete, that’s great. If you want to root for us and take a little sideline pride
in our accomplishments, that’s great, too. Go ahead and pull for us because we feed off of your excitement. Go ahead and expect
the best from us because we rise to meet those expectations. But don’t take it out on me if you don’t get what you want out
of the deal. Don’t ask me to play in a pain you could never endure. (I
always
play in pain, by the way. Every athlete does.) Don’t hold me to any standard you wouldn’t place on yourself—or your own daughter.
That’s not part of the bargain.

If I’m on my game, I’m on my game; if I’m not, I’m not. But count on me to give one hundred percent, and I’ll count on you
to leave me to do my thing.

D
uring that emotional changeover, all I could think about was my dad, and everything he’d been through. He was born in 1942,
in Shreveport, Louisiana, and he’d suffered all kinds of oppression and racism in his life. He had a tough time, but he was
determined to keep his family from the same tough time. He’d pushed me and my sisters, hard, to become the best players we
could possibly be. Somehow, against all odds and against everyone’s low expectations, he pushed us to the very top levels
of the game. People in tennis seemed to either admire this about him or to resent him for it. There was no in-between. Either
way, there’s no denying that it was because of him that we were even here at Indian Wells. It was because of him that thousands
and thousands of young black athletes could now look to Venus and me as role models. And it was because of him that a great
many of those young black athletes were picking up their first tennis racquets. I thought,
My dad doesn’t deserve this kind of grief. Venus doesn’t deserve it. I don’t deserve it.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I prayed. Right there on the court, during the changeover. I said a simple little prayer
that just about changed my life. I said, “Jehovah, give me the strength to get up from this chair. Give me the strength to
finish this match. Give me the strength to persevere.”

I actually spoke these words out loud. Well, not
out loud
in any kind of public speaking voice, but in a whisper I could certainly hear above the din. I didn’t ask Him to help me
win. I didn’t ask Him to help me with my serve. I didn’t ask for anything but the resolve and strength of character to power
through a difficult situation. That’s all. Really, all I wanted was to walk off that court with my head held high and to somehow
be a better person because of it.

There’s a wonderful scripture in the Bible, Ephesians 6:10–17, that talks about the shield of faith, and I called it to mind
here: “Put on the complete suit of armor from God, that you may be able to stand firm against the mechanisms of the devil.…
Stand firm, therefore, with your loins girded about with truth and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and with your
feet shod with the equipment of the good news of peace. Above all things, take up the large shield of faith with which you
will be able to quench the fiery darts and burning missiles of the wicked. Also, accept the helmet of salvation and the sword
of spirit that is God’s word.”

So I stood and cloaked myself in that shield and went back to work. I tried to tune out the fiery darts and burning missiles
of the Palm Springs set and play my game, to let all that venom fall softly to the stadium floor, and to work my way around
it, and as I stepped back on the court I heard that lone voice of support yet again: “Come on, Serena!” It was such a powerful,
positive cry! A true Godsend.

The “shield of faith” thing helped, too. It really did.
Stand… having on the breastplate of righteousness…
Those words gave me the power to believe that these people couldn’t touch me. It let me feel invisible
and
invincible. Most of all, it let me get back to the game.

Initially, I thought I’d made the situation worse. I took the court after that changeover feeling recharged and refocused,
that the match was now in my hands and in my heart, but then I double-faulted right away. It felt to me like I’d given the
power of that moment right back to the crowd—and to Kim Clijsters. Somehow, I managed to string together a few points in a
row and hold serve. And then, at 2–2, I took the next four points in a row against Kim’s serve, to go up a break. It was a
thrilling turnaround and it seemed to quiet the crowd. They were still on me, but now it was just garden-variety-type heckling.
It wasn’t so personal.

Unfortunately, the crowd wasn’t quiet for long, because Kim broke me right back, bringing the angry mob right along with her.
They were all over me, all over again, and I allowed myself to get swallowed up once more. Kim held serve to go up a game.
Then she pushed me to break point in the next game, which would have put her up 5–3 in the second set and serving for the
match. It was a key point in the match, obviously, and I hated that the crowd was so much a part of it. The only good thing
about all that noise and nastiness was that it seemed to be rattling Kim almost as much as it was rattling me. By some odd
mix of luck, will, and justice, I pushed the game back to deuce on an unforced error. It was like we each took turns being
pushed off our game by the crowd, and now it was my turn to help with the pushing. My serve had been hit-or-miss the entire
match, but here I unleashed a 114 mph bullet for an ace—my biggest of the tournament!—to help me hold and knot the set at
4–4.

Once again, I let myself believe the momentum that had been sucked from that stadium before the very first point was once
again on my racquet—and I carried that belief into Kim’s next service game. Down 30–40, she misplayed a drop shot that I managed
to reach, which put me back up that all-important break. The crowd wasn’t too happy about this latest turn. They’d been relatively
quiet when it appeared that Kim was in control, but now that I had battled back into position to serve for the set, they were
on me again. It was like I’d set them off—and now they were madder than ever, because it appeared I might deny them the knockout
jeer they seemed to desperately crave. At one point during my next service game, it appeared a line call had gone my way,
and the fans started jeering—
right in the middle of the point!

I’d never seen such terrible behavior, and I’d certainly never been on the receiving end! I wanted to climb into the stands
and fight these people, but at this late stage in the match, with the second set finally within reach, I told myself I wouldn’t
let this ugliness push me from my goal. Here again, I was helped in this resolve by that same lone voice of support coming
from the stands: “Come on, Serena. You can do it.”