Single Mom (60 page)

“Sir, I wouldn’t advise that. SIR!”

I yelled, “She’s
pregnant!
I
need
to get her out!” and continued with what I was doing.

Beverly screamed and grabbed on to me. I knew it would hurt, but I just couldn’t sit there and do nothing, so I began to push my right foot against the crushed door with everything I had.

“Try and pull your leg out,” I told Beverly.

She shook her head at me.

“Please, Beverly, just try and pull your leg out as I push against the door!”

She grabbed me even harder and screamed, “AHHHH!” as she tried to pull herself free.

“JESUS CHRIST! WAIT FOR THE FIRE DEPARTMENT, SIR! YOU’LL KILL HER, MAN! THINK! THIS JUST ISN’T SMART!”

I ignored the guy, and Beverly was strong enough to pull her leg out. After that, however, her pain seemed to increase. I tried to comfort her but she wouldn’t let me.

“NO, NO, NO!” she ranted, pushing me away.

The guy outside the car said, “Her leg might be broken.”

There was plenty of blood running down her leg, but it looked as if it was cut more than broken. I took my suit jacket off and tied the sleeve around her leg to try and stop it from bleeding.

The fire department, the police, and the ambulance all arrived at the same time and went into action. It was a good thing we lived on the North Side. I don’t know how long we would have been waiting if we lived somewhere else in the city.

I was immediately hauled out of the way.

“THAT’S MY WIFE!” I complained. “SHE’S PREGNANT!”

They wouldn’t let me near her, but at least they took in the information. The guy who had helped me along just looked at me and shook his head. I guess he felt sorry for me. He also looked to be reprimanding me for being so defiant. I ignored him again and concerned myself with my pregnant wife as they led her to the ambulance on a stretcher.

“IS HER LEG BROKEN?! IS THE BABY ALL RIGHT?!” I asked them. I was in a state of panic. I didn’t even realize that I was yelling.

One of the paramedics grabbed me. “Sir, if you don’t calm down, I can’t let you ride in the ambulance. Your wife needs you to be calm. Okay? Please.”

I shut up and climbed into the ambulance and leaned forward to hold Beverly’s hand.

The paramedics advised me not to even speak.

“Your husband is with you inside of the ambulance,” they told her. “He’s holding your hand.”

Beverly squeezed my hand with her eyes closed. I had so many questions to ask, but the pressure from Beverly’s hand left me immobile. Suddenly, I just wanted to hold her hand and cry. I broke down like a big baby.

The paramedic grabbed me again and whispered, “Sir, I know this is very difficult for you, but you have to remain calm. What’s your wife’s name?”

“Beverly,” I told him.

“We’re almost at the hospital, Beverly. You’re gonna be just fine. Your husband is with you.”

When Beverly squeezed my hand again, I was able to gain my composure. She seemed to be in full control of her senses. I think they might have numbed her or something to lessen the pain.

We arrived at the hospital emergency entrance, and my wife was immediately rolled into a room.

A doctor stopped me at the door. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to wait here. We’ll let you know about your wife as soon as we can. She’s in stable condition, we just have to run a few tests on her. So far, I’ve been informed that she’s lost a lot of blood from a cut on her leg, and that she’s going to need plenty of stitches. So what we need you to do is to remain calm.”

I nodded my head and let him walk away. There was a chair right outside the emergency room, but I was too nerve racked to even think about sitting down. I couldn’t remain calm either.

“Oohh, shit!” I mumbled to myself. I began to pace back and forth outside the emergency room like a predator. I kept thinking that maybe I should have just gone to the counseling session instead of whining about it. I should have gone if only to please my wife!

“SHIT!” I screamed at myself again. I ignored everyone inside that hallway.

A nurse asked me, “Sir, is there anything I can do for you?”

Why me?
I thought to myself.
Why did I have to be this way? Why?

“Sir?” the nurse asked me again. She put a soft hand on my shoulder. I was too weak to even respond to her. Before I realized it, she was able to sit me down in the chair. “Would you like me to get you some water?” she asked me.

I shook my head. I just wanted to be left alone.

I sunk my face into my hands and mumbled, “Why me, God? What did I do to deserve this?”

It seemed that nothing I ever did turned out right.
What if Beverly had lost the baby?
I thought to myself.
And what if I had killed
both
of them?

I broke down and began to cry again, thinking of a more urgent question. Knowing that I had almost killed her and our child, I wondered,
Will Beverly still love me when she gets out of the hospital?
I could only hope and pray that she would.

K
IM
and I were talking about moving into a bigger apartment on the South Side when the lease was up in June. The only problem was covering the distance we would have to travel to our jobs. I guess we would just have to leave for work earlier. I was asking Kim to look into finding a daytime gig, and I was poking around at the job myself to see if Roger could get me on line for a daytime position. I had proven that I was accountable. Most of my son’s games were late anyway, so I wouldn’t miss much. I wanted to be home at night instead of Kim and I alternating shifts and sleep until the weekend.

I had been living with Kim and her son for close to nine months, and it looked like I was going to be with them for a while, so I was thinking about expanding what we had. If we were going to add to the family, we would need more space. My mother was in love with the idea, so much so that she started talking about the “M” word. I guess it was no way around it. Mom kept saying, “If you
know
you’re going to be with a woman, and raising children, then the
proper
thing to do is to marry her.”

Denise was getting married to Brock, but I didn’t have time to be jealous anymore. I had to move on with my own life with Kim. That’s just the way it is. You can’t keep holding out on sisters, thinking that you’re going to luck up with some dream girl or some dream situation, because the shit is a long shot. I had to secure what I had. Kim was willing to hang in there for me, so I had to be willing to hang in there for her.

Little Jay’s high school team lost in the semifinals to Fenwick, another school in Oak Park. Fenwick had one of the top high school recruits in the country, Corey Maggett. My son played him toe-to-toe for twenty-eight minutes. Little Jay scored 16 points, had eleven rebounds and four blocks, two of them on Maggett. Maggett still scored 27 points, but he was supposed to, he was a graduating senior. Marc “Speed” Wilkins scored 20 points for Belmont.

Belmont lost the game 67-60, but I was
damn
proud of Jimmy Stewart! I was also proud that he was still pulling up his GPA, past the 3.3 mark. If he kept that up, he would be right on schedule for a Division 1 scholarship. I just had to make sure he got a high enough score on the SATs. I was talking to Denise about summer prep courses. I told her that
I
would be paying for them. I knew it couldn’t add up to all of the years of my absence, but it
was
a start, and it was much better than nothing.

As for Jamal, I had him ready to play in a nine-and-under summer camp. Even Kim was looking forward to it. I told her that her support made sense, because even if we had a daughter, she could expect to have sports all up in the place. I told her she might as well get used to it. Sports and manhood went together like women and Oprah Winfrey, and that was the case in more than just America. Men played some kind of sport everywhere around the world. Women, in fact, were starting to catch on with their own enthusiasm for sports. And since Kim had run track in high school herself, I didn’t think she would have that much of a problem with it anyway.

J.D
.   

W
E
were counting down the days before having our first child. Fortunately, after the car crash Beverly and the baby were all right, but if I didn’t get help on correcting my selfishness, my marriage was definitely in trouble. Beverly had suffered a sprained ankle and needed thirty-two stitches in her right leg. Talk about being fortunate; at the time of the accident, I thought it was
much
worse than that. Nevertheless, her sisters blamed me for careless driving, especially since Beverly was expecting. I couldn’t argue with them, so I kept my mouth shut. Beverly had not told her sisters about our argument inside of the car just before the accident, and I was happy that she had forgiven me and decided to stick by my side. I knew, however, that I wouldn’t have too many more chances to screw up with her. I had to make some serious changes in my attitude and my general approach to the world, which included finding a new field of work that would be more fulfilling to me. Beverly and I had both decided that a real estate venture with my father would not be one of them. We realized that it was necessary for my father and me to distance ourselves so that we could both grow apart, and by doing so, eventually be able to come closer together.

Denise, my son, his brother, Jimmy, and Brock all visited us at the hospital a few days after the accident. Brock was a nice guy. I congratulated them on their wedding plans, and they invited Beverly and me to the ceremony in August. Denise even agreed to let Walter spend the summer with us. In the meantime, I took a leave of absence from my
job to spend time with my wife, realizing that I had to stop taking her for granted. I had to learn how to treat everyone with respect and fully appreciate the things that they do. That was obviously baggage that I had picked up from my father. It was a problem that we
both
would have to continue working hard to solve. I just wondered if it was too late to realistically change; too late for myself, and definitely too late for my father. I was just looking forward to having another child, and being a part of the entire experience the second time around. And maybe that would help to change me.

Walter