LOS ANGELES — Dwight Gayles wanted his daughter Aaliyah to be tough. So he gave her a rule: No crying in defeat or failure. Tears, he said, were for victories.
Dwight wanted to demonstrate toughness, too. So he established a second rule, which they shared: No crying in front of each other — ever.
For Dwight, that meant slipping on a pair of sunglasses when he let go of Aaliyah’s bicycle seat and watched her wobble down the street on her own for the first time or when she moved across the stage at her high school graduation.
For Aaliyah, it meant gulping down the frustration when Dwight backed her down in their driveway, dominating her in one-on-one games when she was only in middle school. It meant biting her lip when she suffered from turf toe or a pulled calf or a fractured ankle. It made her so equanimous that even as she rose to become a top-10 basketball recruit in the country, even as she committed to her dream college, even as she became the first Las Vegas prospect in more than a decade to be selected for the McDonald’s all-American game, she never shed a tear. She didn’t want to cry until she had achieved that ultimate victory: playing in the WNBA.
The rule did make Aaliyah tough, too. So tough that in April of this year, when nine bullets ripped 18 holes through her arms and legs, fracturing bones and wrecking blood vessels, she didn’t scream or shout or cry. As the blood drained from her body, she fought the urge to fall asleep and slip away. And when the paramedics arrived and cut away her clothes, exposing her in front of friends and strangers, she even managed to let out a laugh.
The next morning, at the hospital, after the pain medicine and donated blood had coursed through her veins, after the splints had stabilized every extremity she has, after the vascular surgery stopped her from losing her left leg, she saw Dwight for the first time.
“Dad,” she said, her voice a weak whisper beneath the breathing tube and the beeps of the machines monitoring her vital signs. “I didn’t cry.”