And so Venus Williams begins to talk about the tragedy in her life that perhaps forced her to rethink her commitment to the game, and to wonder if she can ever really escape where she came from.
Yetunde, Venus and Serena’s sometime personal assistant, was murdered in September 2003 — the 36th person to be murdered in South Central Los Angeles that year.
Venus and Serena Williams in 1998
Yetunde hadn’t followed her family to Florida — they left when Venus was eight or nine — choosing instead to stay behind, having a son with Jeffrey Johnson, a member of the notorious Bloods gang. She left him when he was jailed for assaulting a policeman.
Yetunde was sitting in a car outside a house used by gang members, when she was shot by a rival gangster. Was the phone call that told Venus her sister had been murdered something she had, in a way, expected? Venus shakes her head sadly.
Like her mother, Oracene, she is a Jehovah’s Witness. Did her elder sister’s death make her question her faith? ‘No, it was just fate. It happens all the time, to so many people.’ Did she feel guilty that she hadn’t done more to help?
Couldn’t she, after all, with all her money, have forcibly wrestled Yetunde from the life she was living, protected her somehow.
‘You know what, I don’t feel guilty. It would be pointless to feel that. I am less judgmental now, I think. I think of her every day, I try to remember her laughing.’
Mourning
Venus took eight or nine months off from the game to mourn. She also used that time to help her mother fight a custody battle for Yetunde’s children. ‘Happily,’ she says, ‘that is all resolved now.’ Did their mother get ustody? ‘She did. We won,’ she says.
Venus says she never felt the need to rebel, has never, once, behaved like a diva, and the worst thing she can think of to tell me is that: ‘Sometimes, I get up when I want to get up. I have a lie-in. How bad is that?’
She is already past the age — 22 or 23 — when her father had predicted she should have already retired from the game and gone to college. He famously said that he didn’t want a pair of ‘gum-chewing illiterates’ on his hands.
‘I’m not quite ready to retire yet,’ she smiles. ‘But yeah, there are so many things I still want to do. Design my own label, go travelling.
I have been to so many places around the world, but I never get to see beyond my hotel room, and a gym, and a narrow corridor, and a tennis court.
‘I would love to go to Africa. That’s my dream. There are so many kids there who, I think, know of me and would listen to what I have to say.’
She is supporting the American Express RED Card initiative (part of Project Red, a charity started by the rock star Bono. It will mean that American Express, not the customer, will donate 1.25 per cent of every pound spent towards supporting women and children affected by HIV and Aids in Africa).
