Single Mom

  After she had explained her tardiness and sweat to me, I smiled and offered Sylvia some bottled water out of my mini refrigerator.

  “Oh, thank you so much, Sister Stewart, I really appreciate this,” she responded. She took the bottled water and gulped it down without using the plastic cup that I had given her. “Whew, that’s some good water! Praise the Lord! He is so great! Only he can make water this good, sister. What’s the name of it?” she asked, inspecting the label. “Clear Lakes, like in cleanliness.”

  Sylvia was definitely a character. She had been through more men than I care to think of, but she did love her children. I couldn’t hold her jones for love against her. I guess “The Good Lord” was her new boyfriend.

  “So, how much did you say you had saved away for David again?” I asked her. If I hadn’t cut her off, we could have spent a half hour talking about nothing.

  “Oh,” she said, digging through the papers in her purse. She pulled out an account statement and read, “Four hundred sixty-two dollars and twelve cents.”

  “And you still have that in the money market?”

  “Just like you told me.”

  “Okay now, to get even more interest out of his savings, I’ve been looking at some aggressive growth accounts that are yielding as high as thirteen to sixteen percent.”

  “Mmm,” Sylvia grunted. “The money market is only four point five percent.”

  “That’s right. So you see how much of a difference it would make in the long run,” I told her.

  “Three and four times the difference,” she said, with wide eyes.

  I smiled and nodded my head, right before the phone buzzed.

  “Hello,” I answered.

  Elmira said, “It’s Walter, calling you back. He said it would only take a second.”

  “And that’s about all I have,” I told her.

  Walter came on the line and said, “I just wanted to ask when would be the best time to call you tonight. I know how busy you are, and I really need to talk to you.”

  About what? I wanted to ask. But I held my tongue.

  “Tonight may be a bad night altogether,” I told him. “I have a lot of runs to make. How about I just call you tomorrow night?”

  “What time?”

  Sylvia was all up in my face. I had to get off that phone, and in a hurry, especially with “Sister Livingston” in my office. She could read conversations like a detective. In particular if they were with men. She could smell a man in the air like a chef could smell food.

  “I’ll let you know around this time tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” Walter responded.

  I looked at the big grin on Sylvia’s face and realized I had gone past my second.

  She said, “These men believe they can just barge into your life anytime they good and well please. Don’t they, Sister Stewart?”

  I shook my head, smiled, and set out to ignore it. “Ah, getting back to business, Sylvia.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Sister Stewart. I didn’t mean to get into your personal associations. Please forgive me! I had no right to do that. No right at all!” Her apology only prolonged the issue.

  I tried to ignore it again by passing her the information I had gathered.

  “Do you forgive me, sister?” she persisted.

  I looked up and said, “Of course, I forgive you. We’re only human. Only a few of us can live without talking about men, and believe it or not, the men are even worse than we are sometimes.”

  “Yeah, but they talk about us so nasty, Sister Stewart. Do you listen to some of these rap songs they have about us today? These young rappers are talkin’ ’bout doin’ it this way, and doin’ it that way, two at a time and all kinds of nasty, godforsaken stuff. They even got the young women gettin’ just as nasty now. Foxy Momma and carryin’ on.”

  “Foxy Brown,” I corrected her. I only knew because my sons were fans of hers. I had mistakenly fallen right into Sylvia’s favorite subject: nastiness.

  “That’s her! And do you see some of these videos that they’re in?” she asked me.

  Of course I had. I had been the one to turn them off whenever I caught either of my sons watching them instead of doing more constructive things, like flipping through the World Book encyclopedias I invested in, or learning how to better use the computer I had bought. In fact, because of computers and the use of the Internet, I had heard it said a few times that encyclopedias were on their deathbed.

  “Ah, Sylvia, we are really getting off on a tangent here, and I want to get us back on track. Okay?” I said with a lighthearted chuckle.

  She looked stunned for a second, as if I had snatched away her Thanksgiving Day chitlins and called her a sinner. “Ah, you’re right, sister. You’re absolutely right! I need to get this filth from my mind.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at Sylvia. She just couldn’t help herself. Before we could get back to business though, I got another phone call.

  “Is this one really important?” I asked Elmira. My patience was beginning to wear thin.

  “Ah, it’s your son, Jimmy,” Elmira bashfully responded. It wasn’t her fault that I wasn’t getting much done.

  “Okay,” I told her with a pause. I prepared myself for anything. Sometimes I just wished that my sons would call every once in a while and say, “Mom, I love you.” But that was only wishful thinking.

  Jimmy was telling me, not asking me, that he was going to the movies.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Your brother will be getting home from camp before you get back,” I calmly responded to him. “Why don’t you wait and take him with you?”

  “Mom, I got friends going? I get tired of taking him with me.”

  “So, what are you gonna do, leave him at home?”

  “Yeah, he can watch TV or play the video games until you get home?”

  Wrong answer! “Ah, I don’t think so. Okay? Now if you don’t want to take him with you, then you wait until I get home. As a matter of fact, you wait until I get home to discuss this anyway, because I don’t want to hear his mouth about you not wanting to take him.”

  Jimmy said, “Aw’ight.” He hung up a little too quickly. I didn’t have time to respond to his attitude. I would deal with it when I got home.

  When I hung up the phone again, Sylvia lightly touched my hand.

  She said, “Before I met you and Sister Jenkins at SMO, I didn’t have a clue how to handle my boys. But you two have taught me so much, and have given so much of your time to so many others, that I really do believe you all were sent from the Lord. May God bless you, sister. And may he give you the strength to keep doin’ what you’re doin’.”

  I smiled and said, “Thank you very much, Sylvia. Sometimes, you just don’t know how much I need a healthy pat on my back for my efforts.”

  She said, “I know you do. We all need a pat on the back. And sometimes we all are called on by the Lord to be his angels.”

  I nodded. “Well, you’ve surely been my angel, Sylvia,” I told her.

  “And you’ve been mine right back, Sister Stewart.”

  I said, “Okay, now let’s get back to what we were doing.”

  Sylvia straightened up in her chair and responded, “Aggressive growth accounts for my son to get to college.”

  I smiled, shook my head, and got back to my work. Sylvia may have been a character, but she was nobody’s fool; at least not anymore. And I was good and proud of her.

  Every time I even thought about giving up on helping people, I found new strength to keep going. Maybe Sylvia was right, and my gift from Cod was being helped along by words of encouragement and faith from plenty of human angels spread out all around me. I needed every single one of them, too!

  I got home, had a talk with my two sons about family togetherness, cooked dinner, and ended up having yet another conversation with my younger sister. I talked to her about her responsibilities as a mother and how bad habits with men can make her life a lot harder than what it needed to be.


  “Nikita, Mom said that you were out all last night and left her to watch Cheron.” I really didn’t want to be the disciplinarian in my sister’s life, but somebody had to do it.

  She sighed and said, “You know what? I don’t even know why she told you that. She knew I was going out. She said I could leave Cheron with her!”

  “Yeah, well, she didn’t know that you were gonna be out all night. She probably thought that you were just going to a movie or something. And knowing you, I can imagine you didn’t give her any specifics,” I argued.

  Nikita and my two-year-old niece, Cheron, had just moved back in with my mother a couple of months ago to a two-flat house on the West Side that I was helping to pay the mortgage on. I hated to tell Nikita to shape up or ship out, but we both knew that I could if I had to. She had been trying to save up to find a new place of her own, and that was the only reason my mother and I decided to let her stay, rent-free. I had given my sister plenty of money before, but she would blow it on I don’t know what, so I wanted to see how responsible she could be when saving her own money. To hell if I was gonna help her get an apartment and then have my money go down the drain over her stupidity!

  Nikita had a serious problem of being suckered out of her pocket change by these corner-hanging men she likes so much. She reminded me of a younger version of Sylvia Livingston, but at least Sylvia had come to her senses and realized that her children were her priority. I don’t know what it was going to take for my sister to get that message, but she needed to get it fast, because she was nowhere near being a teenager who didn’t know any better.

  “So, does this mean that I have a curfew while I’m living here? Because I’m too old for this shit,” she snapped.

  “Exactly. And you’re also too old to be hanging out in the streets like you do,” I responded.

  “Neecy, I wasn’t in the damn streets! Okay? I’m not out there like that!”

  “First of all, I’d like for you to call me Denise—”

  “What?!” she shouted at me again. “You know what? I don’t even need this shit! So if you and Mom want me to move out, just say the word. Because y’all not gon’ treat me like some damn kid!

  “I go out for one night, and then I have to deal with all of this?! And it ain’t even fair!”

  I was ready to tell her that nothing in life was fair, and that if she thought she could use that as an excuse to fuck up, she was dead wrong! However, before I got a chance to, she walked away from the phone and slammed the door to the second bedroom that she and her daughter were sharing. I had already learned my lesson, but like I kept telling my mother, I could not live Nikita’s life for her.

  My mother picked up the phone and said, “You see how hardheaded she is? She’s just like you were, but at least you knew how to take care of your own kids.”

  I didn’t know whether to take my mother’s comments as a compliment or as a reminder of how irresponsible I had been. I was a lot younger than my sister when I got into trouble, though. Sometimes it seemed as if she was playing a destructive game of catch-up. Nevertheless, dealing with her problems, and everything else that was going on in my life, only added to my daily headaches.

  I hung up with my mother after she made several more comparisons and contrasts between my sister and me, and decided to call Camellia.

  I sighed and said, “Camellia, I’ve been getting my tail kicked from every which way, and I need you as my good friend right now, because I can’t take much more of this.”

  “Take much more of what?” she asked me.

  “Of everything; my sister, my mother, my sons’ fathers, Brock, work. I just need a damn vacation somewhere!”

  “Well, go ahead and take one. I’ve been telling you that for a while. When you have your own business, you can take as many vacations as you want.”

  “Yeah, and then you won’t have any business,” I told her. “Besides, that would be irresponsible to the people who count on me.”

  “Mmm hmm,” Camellia grumbled, “that’s exactly why you’re so burned out now, Denise, you won’t allow yourself a chance to rest. Everybody deserves a vacation, especially single mothers. But we seem like the last to get one. And you can afford it.

  “But anyway, ah, what’s the problem with Brock?” she asked me, changing the subject. “I thought that he was your knight in shining armor.”

  I tried to refer to Dennis by his first name as often as I could, but since he was used to being called “Brock,” the two names became interchangeable. I was one of the few people who actually called him “Dennis.” I guess I was name sensitive because of my own resentment at being called “Neecy” and wanting to reestablish myself as “Denise.” It was just an issue of respect for people’s proper names. Then again, I loved to refer to Walter as Junior, in an attempt at slander. However, he was a Jr.

  Anyway, I answered Camellia’s question and said, “He’s getting serious, and he wants to announce us to the world.”

  “Mmm,” Camellia grunted. Then she started to laugh. “I knew that was coming. But I bet he ain’t talking about no wedding bells yet, is he?”

  “And I’m glad he’s not. That would just make my life more complicated. I haven’t even told either of my sons’ fathers about him. I just didn’t think it was any of their business.”

  Camellia paused for a moment. “You know, I just had a good discussion about that. And I came to the conclusion that the best thing to do in that situation is to be up-front with your children’s father, or fathers, as quickly as you can. That way you don’t feel guilt-ridden when you’re in a new relationship.”

  “Yeah, but are you gonna do that every time you go out with a new man? That sounds ridiculous. ‘Oh, by the way, I’m going out with John tonight.’ That doesn’t make any sense to me,” I argued.

  “I thought about that too, and the conclusion was that we simply can’t date as many men as we would like to,” she told me. “Most of us should have been more picky about our men in the first place, but now we’re forced to be. Because you can’t have all those different men around your kids.”

  Camellia was always thinking of single mothers as a whole, including white, Latina, and Asian mothers.

  “Well, I’m not talking about having every man around your kids. I would never do that,” I responded to her.

  “But you do have Brock around them,” she reminded me.

  I said, “Dennis is a good brother, though.”

  “And that’s the only kind of brothers we should be dealing with,” Camellia said. “I had the same discussion with Monica; ‘If you can’t bring them home for me to meet, then you need to leave them out there in the street. And I don’t expect to meet a new one every other month either!’”

  I burst out laughing and immediately thought about the talk I had that Sunday with my son. “You’re right about that,” I told her.

  “You know I’m right. We talked about this several times. But see, that’s why you need to keep your faith in our meetings,” she advised me. “Whether these evil sisters are jealous of you or not, they still need to hear your story of success. They need to have a concrete example to emulate. They need a monthly dose of you like taking nasty medicine,” she said with a laugh.

  “Yeah, and that’s exactly how I feel sometimes, like nasty medicine,” I responded. I felt better already. Camellia Jenkins was my girl! The biggest angel I knew!

  “So, are you still recruiting white women?” I joked with her Camellia wanted to reach out to everyone. The SMO had become her mission in life.

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” she answered.

  Chicago wasn’t known for its racial harmony. White women did their thing and we did ours. White women always seemed to act as if their problems were so different from ours, except of course when they needed us to beef up their number of feminists on certain political issues. Camellia was out to change that.

  I chuckled and said, “They wouldn’t let us in their organizations unless we were Oprah Wi
nfrey and friends, and only then as their ‘special guests.’”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve never been exclusive like them, and we never will be, she insisted.

  I had some thoughts about that, but I didn’t mention them. I had been around a few groups of upper-class sisters who were exclusive But they were definitely a minority in the African-American community. Most sisters were hardworking, underpaid, blue-collar women.

  “I’m bringing Nikita with me to the next meeting, too,” I told Camellia.

  “Mmm, how’s she doing?” she asked me.

  “I just finished talking to her, as a matter of fact. She’s doing about the same, still denying everything,” I answered. “She told me off and dropped the phone because I had a few words about her hanging out all night and leaving Cheron at home with my mother.”

  “Well, bring her on,” Camellia said. “But you need to drag her behind into church, too.”

  I chuckled and said, “One step at a time, girl. One step at a time.”

  After hanging up the phone with Camellia, I thought hard about calling Dennis. It had only been a few days since we last talked about the extent of our relationship, and I hadn’t called either of my sons’ fathers to break the news. I didn’t know if I really wanted to. I still considered Dennis to be my privacy issue. However, I had allowed him around my sons, Camellia was right about that. And deep down inside I guess I really wanted to bring him closer to me through his interaction with the boys.

  I looked at the clock and it was close to ten. The boys were still up watching television down in the family room. I had smoothed everything out with them, and promised Jimmy that he could go to the movies with his friends that weekend. As it turned out, his friends had changed their minds at the last minute and decided to go on Saturday after their basketball game. I guess I had more angels working for me than I thought.

  Anyway, I walked in the family room to join them, to see what they thought about Brock. I knew they got along with him, but I still hadn’t told them that we were anything more than friends, although I realized they could have easily assumed as much.

  I turned the TV down a notch. They knew they didn’t need it up so loud. It seems like everything boys do is in excess. Then they keep the same habits when they become men.