Single Mom (36 page)

“And in your
left
hand, your
second
hand, is what?”

“My basketball.”

“That’s right. Because your
books
come first, and that
basketball
comes second. So if you want to play ball, then
first
, you have to take care of them
books
. You hear me?”

Kim cut us off and said, “Your
mother
comes first.” That just messed up my entire groove. I was on a roll for a minute there.

I backed up and said, “Okay, she’s right. Listening to your mother comes first. Then the books. And then me. Because if you want to play ball, then you have to talk to somebody who knows the game. And I know it well,” I told him with a smile. He was getting a kick out of all that attention. That’s why he liked me so much in the first place. A
woman could never take the place of the attention that a man gives a boy. It’s impossible to do. And if it didn’t make a difference, then men and women wouldn’t be from different planets.

Kim threw another monkey wrench in my program. “What about his grandmother?” she asked with a grin. She was getting a kick out of it too.

I started laughing. I said, “Okay. First you listen to your mother. Then your grandmother. Then your books. Then me—”

“How is he gonna listen to his books?” Kim asked.

I said, “Would you just leave me alone. I mean, I’m trying to set up a program here, and you’re just talkin’ to be talkin’. See? That’s why women can’t raise no boys,” I told her. “Y’all talk too damn much, and that just gets boys confused. You got
me
confused now. I was making some good points. Now just leave me and Jamal alone.”

We all broke out laughing and enjoyed the moment. I admit, Kim was far from being perfect, but so was I. Nevertheless, I was learning to feel connected to her and her son. Whether he was my boy or not, we had a lot of fun together, meaningful fun. That was what family was about, feeling comfortable with one another, needing one another and being able to laugh and suck in the good moments as well as deal with the bad whenever they came around. It wasn’t an overnight process for me, but all of a sudden, I was becoming a complete father. Nevertheless, Kim was right, I still wasn’t ready for that “M” word. So I hoped she wasn’t planning on pushing it.

OM
, would you just relax, please. This is
my
Thanksgiving and you’re a
guest
. Okay? Now just sit down, relax, and
be
a guest,” I commented to my mother. She insisted on hovering around the kitchen while I worked on dinner. I wanted her to just enjoy herself and rest for a change. She had been working hard for us most of her life

She took a quick look behind herself and whispered, “I just wanted to say that he seems like a very nice man.”

I smiled. That’s why my mother was forcing herself into the kitchen. She wanted to say something about Brock while he used the bathroom. You know how mothers are, they just can’t wait to say what’s on their minds. I wondered if I would be that way with my sons, and I already knew the answer. Of course I would. I guess it’s all a part of having mother’s instincts. Waiting to discuss things would seem like forever, especially when it involved your kids and dating. You want them to have the best situations and not make any mistakes that you can help them
not
to make. But they go right ahead and make those mistakes anyway, just like I did, and probably like my mother did before me. The sad thing is, families in my mother’s era seemed to know how to hold things together longer. Especially the men. My father may have hit the booze a little too often, but while he was alive, he was always there when we needed him. Maybe that’s why my mother couldn’t bring herself to love another man. She was loyal to the grave. And maybe my sister needed
more of him. Nikita was only eight when my father died. Hell, I wondered how
my
life may have been different had he been alive through my high school years, and beyond.

I looked at my mother and responded, “Thank you. And did you tell him that?” I asked, referring to Brock.

“No, not yet,” she answered. “I just said a few things to him here and there. But I’ll tell him when I’m ready to tell him.”

We shared another mother/daughter smile before she made her way back into the family room with Nikita, Cheron, and my two sons. Nikita and I had made up as usual, and she reluctantly decided to come over for Thanksgiving. I knew that she would. She was never a grudge holder, and once she arrived, she quickly got herself involved with playing video games with her nephews. Sometimes I wished that my sister
could
hold grudges. That way she could stop going out with so many poor excuses for men, because you
are
who you date.

Brock came out of the bathroom with clean and dried hands, and asked me what he could do next in the kitchen. He was being great about things, and had been there since nine in the morning to help get everything ready.

I looked at him and snuck in a quick kiss. “We’re almost finished now,” I told him.

He smiled and said, “Yeah, well, that kiss is gonna get me started on something else that we ain’t even begun yet.”

I gave him an evil eye. “Behave. Okay?” You give a man an inch and even the good ones are capable of trying to sneak a mile. I guess it’s in their genes. God most have spoken extremely loud when he told them to be fruitful, because they surely never forgot. And like I said, many black men were not even familiar with Genesis.

Camellia had asked me before to invite Brock out to church with the family. Maybe that needed to be my next move. In the past, I made sure to restrict Sunday service as a close-knit family affair. Brock had been right all along. I
was
being exclusive. Then again, he had never asked to join us at church either.

“Brock, do you believe in God?” I asked him. Had I asked him before? Amazingly, no. I guess I was also separating church from dates. What in the world was I thinking?! Once I had agreed to let the chips fall as they may, they seemed to be falling all over the place.

Brock frowned and looked at me as if I were a Martian. “Of course I believe in God.”

“So why haven’t you asked to go to church with us?”

“Because that was your private space, and I understood that. So unless we just happened to go to the same church, inviting people out to service is a big deal.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes it is,” he answered. “Unless you’re a Jehovah’s Witness. They invite everybody out.”

We started to laugh. But it wasn’t right. I said, “Why do people have such a problem with Jehovah’s Witnesses?”

“Because they don’t allow you a chance to praise your God in peace. Personal religion should never be competitive. But they’re always out trying to solicit to people. That just doesn’t seem right to me.”

“
All
churches solicit to people,” I reminded him. I took out the ten-pound turkey, basted it, and slid it back in the oven. Brock opened the can of cranberry sauce and slid it out on a serving plate.

“Yeah, but most of them only do it once you’ve decided to show up for a service. They don’t go out and knock on your door to recruit you.”

“That’s right,” my mother said, walking right in on our discussion. “And they’re always passing out those funny papers and carrying on. The Bible is the
only
thing you need to read about God. Who are
they
to say what you need to do with your life? The Bible says, ‘Thou shall not judge.’”

“Amen,” Brock told her with a smile.

I looked at him and grinned.

Mom asked him, “So what church did your family go to?”

“Faith Tabernacle on Stony Island on the South Side,” he told her.

“Oh, I know that church,” my mother responded. She was really excited about it. “They had that real good youth choir.”

“Still do,” he told her. “I even wanted to play the piano because of it.”

“Oh, you play?”

“A little bit, but I’m no Herbie Hancock or anything. I can’t jam on it.”

“And you still go to Faith now?”

“Not like I used to. No, ma’am.”

My mother nodded at him. “Nobody goes to church like they used to. Maybe we all need to start going back again, and the world would be a better place to live. But the Bible said that these last days would come in the Book of Revelations. Do you still read the Good Book?” she asked him.

I hadn’t heard my mother so enthused about church in a long time. Brock was definitely getting her full attention. I knew I wouldn’t hear the last of it when the night was over. I was beginning to fear for my own privacy. My mother hadn’t tried to be my matchmaker in a long time either. Nevertheless, if she kept going like she was with Brock, she would try and tattoo his name on my forehead.

“Oh, yeah, I still read the Good Book,” he answered her. “‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth,’” Brock quoted. That caught my mother off guard, and me too.

“Oh, yeah,” she commented hesitantly. I don’t think my mother had read the Good Book herself in a while.

Brock eased her obvious embarrassment and said, “Don’t worry, that was just my favorite passage. I probably can’t quote anything else like that,” he commented with a chuckle.

My mother said, “Well, we all need to start going again,” and made her way back into the family room.

I looked at Brock and smiled. “She wasn’t expecting that,” I told him.

He said, “I know. But I figured I’d quote something before
she
started to.”

I frowned. I told him, “My mother hasn’t quoted anything from the Bible in ten years.”

“Yeah, well, just in case she did, I wanted to be ready for her.”

We laughed in hushed tones like two teenagers sitting in the back of a classroom.

It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon by the time we were finished making dinner. Camellia, Monica, and Levonne were expected to arrive at any minute. They were involved in a Thanksgiving Day food drive in Chicago’s Rockwell Gardens, one of the worst areas on the West Side. Since I was throwing dinner at my house, I couldn’t make it. However, I still should have sent my two sons. They’d definitely be going the next time. They needed to show some kind of responsibility to the African-American community. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got with myself for not sending them.

Anyway, Camellia had met Brock before, but her two kids had not. I was curious as to what they thought about their mother not having a man in
her
life. I just didn’t know how Camellia did it, and I was afraid
to ask. Or maybe, I just didn’t want to know. I guess she was your typical, hardworking, single mother. She kept herself extra busy to cut down on any long periods of loneliness. Not to say that we didn’t enjoy being busy and making a living for ourselves and for our kids, I just wondered how many of us were honest enough to admit that we would also enjoy relaxing with a gentle man, or that we at least thought about the idea.

By the time Camellia and her kids arrived at my house at two-thirty, we were all anxious to rock and roll with our soul food.

Camellia announced, “Let the soul food party begin.”

I nudged her and said, “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

She said, “That movie did a lot for Chicago and black families, child. Because we
need
to get back to good old-fashioned home-cooked meals and family.”

“Mmm hmm,” Brock mumbled with his mouth full at the table. “I agree with that,” he said.

“I bet you do,” I told him. Since I didn’t have an old-fashioned-sized house like in the movie, we had to eat our food in two rooms. The kids all ate in the family room, with Nikita and Cheron, while the rest of us ate in the dining room.

“Your sister didn’t want to eat with us?” Brock asked me. We still had two empty chairs at the table.

“I guess not,” I told him.

“So how have things been with you, Mother Stewart?” Camellia asked my mother. She got a kick out of Camellia calling her that.

“Denise is going to send me to Florida for Christmas. Did she tell you?” my mother said with a smile. She was bragging. And to think that I had to talk her into going.

“Florida?” Camellia responded. “No, she didn’t tell me,” she answered, giving me an evil look.

“I needed to wait and make sure she didn’t change her mind on me like she does so much,” I told my good friend.

“Well, Florida’s exactly where
I
need to go,” Camellia told us. “Somewhere hot and humid. That way I can lose another ten pounds,” she commented with her rumbling laughter.

“Congratulations,” my mother said with a nod. “I thought you looked a little thinner.”

I looked at my mother and shook my head. “Now, Mom—”

“No, no, Denise. She’s right,” Camellia said, cutting me off. “I lost
fifteen pounds. And I’m working on losing fifteen more. Then I can slip on a skirt and go out and find a good, strong man like Brock.”