Single Mom (47 page)

“Don’t even think about it,” she responded tartly. “I know that’s what you’ve been
plotting
lately.
I know you!
That’s why you took Walter back up to your parents’ house in Barrington. But it’s not going to work. Walter’s not that young of a child anymore. He can see what’s going on. And he knows where he belongs, too. And it’s
not
with people who want to use him as some kind of damn chess pawn!”

Suddenly, I looked around and was embarrassed. We were two black professionals talking loud about our personal business in a crowded public place. I had to calm myself down again.

I said, “Denise, whether you want to believe me or not, I truly love my son. And
yes
, I would like to be with him more than I’m able to now …”

“
Why?
” she cut me off and asked. “Why all of a sudden?”

I wanted to answer her, but I stopped myself. I wanted Walter because it would make me feel like more of a father if I could raise him every day, like Denise had gotten a chance to do. However, I realized that would have been a selfish answer. Everything was still for my own benefit, and I didn’t want to admit to it. The truth was, I couldn’t stand to have her in my way, second-guessing my every move with him. I wanted to be the sole parent.

Denise looked at me and said, “That’s exactly what I thought. You’re the
same
old damn Walter.”

I took a deep breath and was ready to leave again. I couldn’t stand that she could read me so well, and I was disappointed in myself for being so obvious.

“Is there anything else you want to talk about?” Denise asked me, rubbing salt into my wounds.

“My son will get all that he deserves,” I told her as I stood up from my chair. Then I added, “Maybe you need to be
more
concerned about
Jimmy’s
father.”

“Why, because you feel that you’re better than him? You’ve always felt that way, haven’t you? But at least J.D. didn’t have to go to the Million Man March before he started to care.”

I said, “Yeah, he just went to a couple of basketball games instead. My son told me all about it.”

I walked out of that cafeteria feeling more concerned about my future with my son than when I walked in. Denise seemed to be able to draw out my worst behavior. We could not even have a ten-minute conversation without fireworks of some sort. I headed back to my office and couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the day. I must have called my wife at least four times, and left two messages at her office to call me. She finally got back to me around four-thirty.

“So how did things go?” she asked me. “I’m sorry I couldn’t call you back earlier, but I’ve had a real busy day today. These students are always waiting until the last minute to do things. I mean, they wait right up until Christmas Day, practically, to pay their darn bills. And a lot of them are
seniors!
”

Immediately, I had to be thoughtful. If I dismissed how Beverly’s workday went to talk about my own rough day, then I would be proving Denise right again. So instead of falling into that trap, I joked and asked, “Is our baby still all right? Maybe we’ll have an action kid for sure with all of this activity he or she’s been getting.”

“
She
or he’s getting,” Beverly said, correcting me. “I told you, it’s a good thing for mothers to keep working. You wouldn’t want to come home after I’ve been sitting around the house all day anyway.”

“Oh, I believe you there,” I responded. “You don’t have to convince me of that.”

“Okay, so tell me. How did things go with you and Denise?”

I sighed. “Not too well. She’s more bitter than I thought she would be.”

Beverly paused. “Oh,” she said.

I wanted more of a response. I said, “What do you think about that?”

“Well, I’m not in her shoes, so I really can’t say. She didn’t accept your apology at all?”

“Yeah, she accepted it. Then she went on to beat me over the head about how hard it’s been for her. It couldn’t have been that hard. She still ended up becoming a successful woman.”

I shouldn’t have said that, but it was too late.

Beverly grunted. “Mmm. I hope you didn’t take that kind of attitude to lunch with you.”

Unfortunately, I guess that I had. I let out another long sigh. How much more did I have to learn about myself before I could become a man who really cared?

“Is there some kind of class I can take for male insensitivity?” I asked my wife.

“I can check around for you.”

She sounded serious, so I asked her about it. “Are you serious? I was only kidding.”

Beverly said, “Yes, I’m serious. They have counseling for a lot of different things. All you have to do is look them up.”

Suddenly I felt like a nutcase. I tried to laugh it off. I said, “You don’t really believe that I need some kind of counseling, do you? Am I
that
close to my father? I thought I was getting better. What about some kind of counseling for angry single moms. Do they have any of those?”

“Isn’t Denise a member of a single mothers’ club or something?” Beverly asked me.

I had forgotten all about it. “Yeah, well, I don’t see what she’s learning there,” I responded. “I don’t think they’re trained professionals anyway.”

Suddenly, my wife went silent on me. I couldn’t seem to help myself. All I had to do was listen to my own words. How did Beverly even put up with me? Denise was right again.
How in the hell was I doing with my wife? Really?

I said, “Beverly, I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to become a better man. So if you think that counseling will help me, then get me signed up.”

She said, “Stop sounding so down about it. I bet when you get into a
program, you’ll find out that a lot of men felt the exact same way that you do about things. And it’ll be filled with men who really want to make a change. You should be
proud
of that.”

I sure didn’t feel proud. I felt imperfect, as if I had a nagging disease that only professional help could cure. I was checking myself in for selfish manhood.

After her futile attempts to cheer me up, I hung up the phone with my wife and began to gather my things. I wondered if my white counterparts at the bank ever took counseling on how to treat black people, or if such a thing even existed. Sexism, racism, and classism seemed to be three unbreakable chains, not only in America, but around the world. So even if I did succeed in becoming more sensitive, I wondered how that would play itself out in the long run, and if it could change my productivity at the job, for better or for worse. In arenas that called for limited amounts of mercy, too much sensitivity could ultimately lead to a man’s failure.

I sat back in my office chair on the seventeenth floor of the building and thought about my career while staring out at the Sears Tower again. I rarely even thought about my work. It was a blind drive, and I never really enjoyed it.

“Like father like son,” I mumbled to myself. And it was the truth, so what else could I say?

ENISE
, I meant to call you last night, but I just got all caught up in the moment,” Camellia was telling me. She was talking fast and excitedly. “Girl, my daughter finally went out and did it,” she said. It was a quarter to eleven, Tuesday morning.

“Did what?” I asked. I still hadn’t found the time to talk about Camellia’s weight problem. She wouldn’t slow down long enough for us to discuss it. Her feelings about her weight sure didn’t stop her from being active. Or maybe some of her overactivity was about running away from her weight concerns.

She said, “Monica went out and had sex, despite everything I’ve been telling her.”

I tried to stay levelheaded about it. I asked, “How do you know? Did she confess?”

“Yes, she did confess. And if she
didn’t
, I would have been ready to
drag
it out of her.”

“How did you find out? You didn’t catch her in the act, did you?” Now
that
would have been a story to tell.

“Oh, Lord, no!” Camellia responded. “I wouldn’t have been able to stomach that. Just knowing that she’s
active
is heartache enough. Walking in on the act would have been like signing my death certificate.”

“Well, did you ask if she protected herself?” I was prepared to take the discussion step-by-step, and I was already thinking about Jimmy.

Camellia said, “That’s
besides
the point. And you would
never
guess who she did it with.”

I started thinking crazy thoughts and had to stop myself.
Do I
really
want to know all of this?
Monica’s partner didn’t seem like any of my business, unless Jimmy was involved! I stopped breathing for a second. My mood was no longer even-tempered.

“Reverend Gray’s son, Reuben,” Camellia filled in.

I exhaled, but my heart was still racing. “Well, at least she picked a decent boy,” I joked, once I knew that it wasn’t
my
boy.

“How would you feel if Jimmy did it with one of the girls in the choir?” Camellia asked me.

“Which one?” I responded harshly.

We stopped and burst out laughing. I sounded just like a mother, a tough matchmaker. I felt sorry in advance for the first girl that Jimmy would bring to the house.

“Girl, this isn’t funny,” Camellia reminded me. “I’m bringing Monica to the meeting tomorrow night, and I hope that Selena shows up. Monica
needs
to meet her.”

Poor Selena was nineteen with two kids, but I didn’t see Monica fitting in
her
shoes. “I can’t see Monica going down that road,” I commented.

“Well,
I
couldn’t see Monica losing her virginity at sixteen, but she did it.”

I looked at my clock again. I had my third client of the day at eleven. A phoner. “We’ll talk about it, but I have to get back to work now,” I said.

“Okay, we’ll talk,” Camellia agreed.

“Lunch?”

“You name the place.”

“Brenda’s.”

“One o’clock?”

“One o’clock it is.”

“All right, I’ll see you then.”

I hung up the phone with my good friend and planned to talk to her about everything, including how she felt about men. We hadn’t had a good girl talk in ages. Everything was about our children, parenting, educational programs, single-parent issues, etc. What it all boiled down to was that Camellia wasn’t leaving any time to think about herself. However, I wanted to make sure I eased her into things instead of taking her right there. I didn’t want to scare her away and force her to change the
subject on me like she had done so many times in the past. So I met her at Brenda’s Cafe under the downtown Loop at one, and began to talk about my own problems. Otherwise, Camellia would have controlled the entire conversation.

“You know I had lunch with Walter yesterday. We met over at the Presidential Tower for a half a minute,” I said.

Camellia looked surprised. It totally threw her off. “Over at the Presidential Tower?” she asked. “What was up with that?”

“He wanted to apologize for all of the changes he’s taken me through with our son.”

“Mmm,” Camellia grunted. The mission was accomplished. “So what did you say?”

“Well, after I started adding things up, he couldn’t take it.”

Camellia grinned and nodded. “That’s always the truth. I guess they figure that just saying sorry is supposed to make our day and change a rainstorm to bright sunshine. But it doesn’t quite work that way.”

“So anyway,” I continued, “he went ahead and did his usual thing and left early in a hissy fit.”

Camellia just stared at me for a moment. “Well ain’t that something. And he just asked you to go to lunch with him out of the blue?”

“Out of the blue,” I told her. “What, Samuel has never—”

Camellia cut me off and said, “That man ain’t even thinking about us.”

I shook my head. In all of the years that we had known each other, and through all of the meetings we had organized for single mothers, Camellia still refused to talk about her high school sweetheart and the father of her two children, Samuel Woodson. It was as if he no longer existed. Nevertheless, the man still lived and breathed in Chicago!

“So, you’ve never even thought about calling him?”

Camellia was already shaking her head. She held out her hand and said, “Denise, we’ve been there and done that already. Now I have my own life to live, just like the rest of us single mothers.”

“Well, I’ve never heard you tell the women who come out to our meetings that they should never hunt down the fathers. In fact, I’ve heard you tell a few people to go out and
make
those calls,” I reminded her.

“And not
once
did I tell them to expect a miracle,” she responded.

When our food arrived, I immediately thought about the weight problem again. Camellia was having a grilled chicken salad. I had a greasy cheeseburger with everything on it.

“I didn’t know you thought so much about your weight,” I commented. I tried my best to make it sound like the weather.

Camellia said, “I don’t.” She had forgotten all about filling me in on the details about her daughter’s escapade with the preacher’s son. That made me realize that it was the best time I’d probably have to get some answers from her. She was usually always focused on talking about
something
. Suddenly,
I
had the floor, and my plan was working better than expected.