Excerpts

Chapter One Don't Emulate, Originate Our mom is a Swiss Army knife. Mom was born the youngest of eight brothers and sisters in May Pen, Clarendon, a small Jamaican town with narrow, winding roads that used to overflow with brown people going to and from the marketplace, baskets in their hands or on their heads. In the evenings, Mom's mom, Grandma, liked to host the neighbors at her home, dragging a TV onto the veranda after the sun slipped below the sea so everyone could gather around to watch. Family and friends sat in the yard, drinking island drinks like milo, sorrel, or Wray and Nephew. Grandma knew how to throw a party. She was the Matriarch of the Bryan Clan, a Caribbean Queen. She was dope AF. Mom wanted to get the one thing that no one can take away from you--­education--­so in 1972, when she was seventeen, she immigrated to Brooklyn to chase the American Dream. By then her brothers, our uncles, were already in engineering school in the States; one sister, Norma, was in nursing school in Scotland, while Monica had just completed her education and was working and living in Brooklyn with Leonie. Our family is obsessed with education. Mom wanted to be a nurse, so she studied biology. She loved the complexity of invisible processes at work. But after two years of school, she got pregnant by our father, whom she'd been dating since before she left Jamaica. Grandma and the Aunts thought Mom was throwing away her future by having a child at such a young age--­and out of wedlock! They were furious. They worried she was going to drop out and become a stereotype: a poorly educated, unmarried immigrant who didn't make any money--­with a kid! Correction: kids! That's when we entered the picture--­March 18, 1976, at 1:00 a.m. and at 1:05 a.m. at the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. At four pounds each, together we were about the weight of an average baby girl. Mom was in labor for twenty hours, and Dad was there to greet us on our way out. Our parents married soon after, but it only lasted a few years. When we were four our dad got abusive, and she did what she needed to do to protect herself and her daughters. The divorce, while necessary, left us feeling vulnerable and sad. When Dad left it was like we lost a piece of our family puzzle, and then we started to feel like he saw us less as his children than as a possession over which he shared custody with Mom. Our dad's mother and the rest of his folks started to treat us differently after the divorce: they blamed Mom for not trying to work it out, and we became a proxy for her. After a few visits to our dad's mother that left us reduced to tears in the bathroom because we felt so iced out of their family's love, we realized we needed to be around people who gave us support, not trouble. Dad got remarried and became a piece in another family's puzzle. While we saw him and talked on birthdays and holidays--­even went on a great cross-­country drive with him once when we were teenagers, hitting up diners for breakfast and roadside attractions in the midday sun--­we never really knew what it was like to have a father around. None of this was easy on Mom either. It wasn't like she wanted to be single, but she needed to look out for herself--­and us. Grandma and the Aunts (Monica, Leonie, and Norma) filled any gaps that were left with our father's departure and served as our village, making sure Mom landed on her feet and that we didn't get lost along the way. We spent every weekend with Grandma at her apartment on Turner Place, not too far from our place in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, and soon enough we became known to the rest of the family as the Supremes; or Luke, Leia, and Han Solo; or just the Three Stooges. What can we say--­we shared Grandma's sense of humor, and we all like to joke around! All the while, Mom hustled her way up the ladder from administrative assistant, to executive assistant, to chief of staff to the president of a large hospital, typically taking on a second job to pay for our Catholic school tuition and dance classes. She worked hard. But she also played hard. We learned that from her. She knew how to have fun and she communicated the importance of living it up to feel alive. Above all else--­well, of course, except for us--­Mom loved music. Mom was like a living mixtape, a breathing playlist, a walking Spot­ify. When we were little, we woke up every morning to all different types of artists--­Pat Benatar, Air Supply, Hall and Oates, Fleetwood Mac, Beres Hammond, Sanchez, Supercat, Chicago, George Michael, Bob Marley, Tina Turner, you name it--­blaring on the speakers, making the air around us electric with possibility and joy. Mom bopped to the music while she cleaned the house and cooked up a big pot of oxtail or stew peas. That's how she worked her groove, blasting "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" and "Invincible." She gave us the bug. So, when we were eight and heard that MJ was coming to town on his "Victory Tour," we told Mom we had to go . We wanted to revel in the spectacle--­where the music and the energy and the lights and the feeling all came together as part of a total experience . But the tickets were expensive, and the concert sold out immediately. When we heard, we were crushed. Mom was not. She knew she'd figure something out. Where there's a will, there's a way--­and a Boss Lady. One day at work, her boss asked her to put in a call to a powerful person to get his kids tickets to that very concert. Mom was like, "I don't want to overstep, but my kids adore Michael Jackson. Can I ask about tickets for them, too?" That was how she rolled: working his clout and connections to get tickets not only for him and his kids but also for the two of us and our cousins Michelle and Tracey, who were like our big sisters. When we got to the concert at the Meadowlands and saw that huge stage and the bright lights and felt the energy of the crowd, we were in awe. It was mind-­blowing. We even had good seats! This man we listened to on the radio, on vinyl, on CDs came to life right before our eyes. And he was . . . wait for it . . . moonwalking. Smooth criminal! On this day, Tricia became obsessed with MJ, and for years to come a white glove was never far from her hand. Mom made that magic happen for us. She had a solution for everything. As we said, Mom was a Swiss Army knife. This was just one of the many times Mom refused to let an obstacle get in her way. From small ones like scoring concert tickets to big ones like providing for two kids as a single parent, Mom faced down every problem from a place of strength. We learned that from her. And that's what we want to teach you, too. Excerpted from Double Down: Bet on Yourself and Succeed on Your Own Terms by Antoinette M. Clarke, Tricia Clarke-Stone All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.