I said, “You know what, I have to stop calling my sister crazy. I just realized that. But she does need some help. Don’t you agree?”
“Yeah, I agree,” he answered. “But I don’t want to talk about her right now. I want to talk about you. Were you embarrassed tonight?”
“Oh, not at all,” I told him. “I’ve been dealing with my family for too long to be embarrassed, but I could tell that you were.”
“What about when your girlfriend started talking about her weight problems?”
I calmed down and answered, “Oh, yeah. I was embarrassed by that. I’m gonna have to talk to her. I never knew she felt that way. She just seems like nothing gets to her.”
He said, “Some people could assume the same thing about you, that you don’t worry about your public imagery because you’re a successful businesswoman, but you do.”
“Of course I do. My imagery is very important to me.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just glad that you finally see that it’s only imagery, and that you don’t have to hold up to being this super black woman, because that can really mislead you.”
“Don’t I know it,” I told him. “Too many of us get caught up in that stuff. And a lot of us don’t know how to get out until it’s too late.”
“Well, it’s not too late for you. I’m here to tell you that.”
“Well, thank you. I’ll remember that.”
“Now tell me that you love me so I can go to sleep with a smile on my face.”
I grinned. “Just like that?”
“Yeah, just say it like I do.”
“Ah …” I didn’t know that I could actually struggle with that. I hadn’t said I loved him before, I just hinted at it. Nevertheless, Brock was patient with me. He didn’t say another word. And the words finally slipped out of my mouth. I said, “I love you, Dennis, for all the—”
“Wait a minute,” he said, cutting me off. ‘You don’t need to explain it, because I understand already. Okay?”
I laughed out loud, remembering when I said the same thing to him.
“Now let’s just hang up, call it a night, and go to sleep with smiles on our faces and talk again tomorrow. Tomorrow’s a new day.”
“Okay. I can agree to that.”
“All right then. Ciao, baby.”
“Ciao,” I told him with a grin. When he hung up, I actually didn’t expect him to. I wanted more, and he left me hanging. And while I was hanging, I realized that I was becoming attached to him like I hadn’t been with a man in a long, long time. I felt that I was a part of him, and he was a part of me. And I was no longer afraid of that feeling. So I rolled over in bed, with everything done, and fell asleep. How many times had I fallen asleep that easily over the last fifteen years? Rarely! But before I could enjoy it, the telephone rang and woke me back up anyway.
“Hello.”
“It’s me. Mom and Cheron are still over there?” Nikita asked me from a pay phone.
“Where are you?” I could hear the street noise in the background.
“I’m safe. I just wanted to know where they were,” she answered, still protective.
“You actually care?” I asked rhetorically.
She sighed. “Whatever. Just tell Mom I’ll see her tomorrow.”
“And what do I tell Cheron, your daughter?”
There was a long pause. “Tell her Mommy said she’s sorry. Tell her Mommy still loves her.”
I felt a touch of pity. Maybe because Brock had brought it out of me. I said, “She loves you too. And so do I.”
We lingered on the phone for a minute, and I could tell what Nikita was saying in her silence. She was apologizing, and telling me that she still loved me. I knew her. She was my little sister.
I said, “I’m still angry at you, Nikita. And we do need to talk about this. But you go ahead and think to yourself tonight while you’re out on your own. And then we’ll talk again when we get a chance to.”
“Okay. We’ll talk. I gotta go now,” she told me.
I hung up with my sister and couldn’t go back to sleep. She had no idea how much pain she caused me because I loved her so much. I just didn’t know what to do about her. It just seemed to be no way to reach her. But as long as she was alive, I had to keep trying. And maybe God would help me find a way.
A Long Time Coming
N Thanksgiving Day, I was all worked up to give my father a verbal lashing for all of the years of mental abuse he had put me through, and had attempted to pass on to my son. No wonder I was so screwed up and selfish. In spite of fighting everything my father ever wanted of me, I had been fast becoming a spitting image of him, until I was forced to see his, and many of my own, imperfections with clearer vision. However, as we got the house ready for my parents’ visit that evening, Beverly insisted on trying to talk me out of it.
“This isn’t the time to do that, Walter,” she advised me.
Her kin were all going to visit her older sister Elaine for dinner, but I needed to sit down and talk with my family, so we decided to join her family again for Christmas. Beverly was a much-in-demand guest with her pregnancy and all. I was unaware of how much attention expectant mothers could receive from family and friends. Even people in the street seemed to take on a whole different approach to expectant mothers. It was really something else. All the while, I felt guilty all over again for not being supportive when Denise was pregnant with Walter.
I said, “Honey, I understand that you would like this to be a peaceful evening and all, but my father and I need to stop putting this thing off. We need to talk. Tonight!”
“Well, just make sure that you don’t do it at the table. Okay? Because I don’t need to be upset,” she snapped.
She sounded upset already. I looked down at her rounding stomach and thought about the emotional stress that could be passed on to the baby. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I told her.
Nevertheless, I planned on dealing with my father one way or the other, even if we had to take a long drive out in the cold. We were right around the corner from December, wintertime.
“Don’t you think we need to settle our differences?” I asked my wife about my father and me. “I’m thirty-two years old now. I’m not a child anymore. This is absurd. I should have gotten this out of the way a long time ago.”
“Well, it won’t look like you’ve learned anything if you present yourself with a temper tantrum.”
I faced Beverly and asked, “Is that what you think this is, a temper tantrum? I think it’s a grown son demanding that his manhood be respected, and that extends to respect for my son, and for us. Whenever he disrespects me, you, or Walter, he needs to be dealt with on a level of adulthood. But here you are speaking as if we’re kids, asking for permission to be adults.”
Beverly sighed. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. I just think that you don’t need a big buildup like this, that’s all. You need to be more levelheaded.”
I calmed myself down and thought about all of the great advice Beverly had given me. She was a very mature, respectable, supportive, and thoughtful woman. I was fortunate to have her on my side. And she was having my child in May.
I smiled and walked over to rub her belly. Then I kissed her on the cheek.
“What was that all about?” she asked me.
“I just remembered why I love you so much.”
“I didn’t know that you had forgotten.”
“I never have, and I never will. Not as long as you keep being you.”
“And what if I change?”
I stood there cradling my wife and my unborn child. I said, “Then I’ll cry my eyes out and pray to have the woman that I married back again.”
She chuckled and broke away from me. “Let’s finish what we’re doing, okay?”
“What do you mean? We are finished.” I looked at my watch and added, “It’s only eleven-thirty. My parents won’t be here until two.”
“I thought they said they’d be here by one?” Beverly asked m
e, confused.
I nodded with a smile. “Exactly. And that means two. They’re going to be leaving around one.”
She smiled and agreed with me. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. You think we’ll ever be like that?”
“I hope not. But you never know. When this baby comes along, things will get a lot more complicated,” I answered. “Just look at how long it takes for your sisters to get ready. It takes them an hour or so to leave, so you can imagine how long it takes for them to get ready.”
Beverly broke out laughing. “Oh, that won’t be me. I was always the first one ready to go, and to leave in our family.” She was the third child of four daughters.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see when it happens,” I told her.
“Are you planning on helping me?” she asked.
I frowned and said, “Of course I am. What kind of question is that?”
“I’m just making sure that you realize it’s not going to be all on my shoulders. The more you help, the easier it’ll be. Look at your brothers-in-law,” she told me. “Randy is very helpful, and Greg is not, and you can see the difference that it makes.”
Beverly was referring to her sisters’ husbands, and she definitely had a point. A strong helping hand got immediate results.
“I’ll try my best to remember that,” I promised my wife.
By the time my parents arrived, at exactly two o’clock, I was good and leveled. I don’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes when you cool off too much, you forget many of the points that you wanted to make while you were heated.
My mother gave Beverly and me a hug and a peck on the cheek like some political dignitary. Then my father followed up with some rather weak handshakes and shaky eye contact. He was already starting the day off wrong. It almost seemed as if my mother had forced him to accompany her against his will. That brought all of the points that I wanted to make with him back to the front of my mind.
“You need any help with the food?” my mother asked Beverly. She looked around at our empty house and added, “Where is everyone?”
I had already told my mother it would be only us, Nevertheless, she loved being dramatic. Beverly and my mother were like night and day. Whatever happened to the saying “Sons grow up to marry women like their mothers?” That was far from the case for me. My mother and Beverly were both the third child in their families, but the similarities stopped there.
I said, “Mom, this is a private affair between us.”
My father sat down at the dining room table and looked up at a new picture that Beverly and I had purchased only a week before. “Is that new?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s new. It’s from John Ashford. He’s out of the Maryland/D.C. area.
My father nodded. The print of the spectacular oil painting was of a naked black child with dreadlocks, who was playfully running through the bushes from his mother after just getting a bath. Ashford called it Innocence. Each of his pictures came with a short summary and a certificate that explained them to you. Beverly and I bought it as a positive reminder of our expected child.
“Is it an original?” my father asked me.
I grinned. It was his typical question, and the more I noticed myself in him, the more I realized that I wanted to make a change.
“No, it’s not. But I don’t think that takes away from the message. It’s still an excellent painting whether it’s an original or not,” I responded to him.
Beverly swiftly jumped in and said, “You can’t come here and sit down. Everyone has to help set the table. You have a pregnant woman on the premises.” She always knew how to handle my father just right. In fact, Beverly was the social match of anyone. She was simply gifted in that way.
We all set out the turkey, string beans, potatoes, wild rice, stuffing, gravy, buttered biscuits, and cranberry sauce.
“You didn’t fix all of this on your own, did you?” my mother questioned Beverly.
“Not at all. Walter helped me every step of the way.”
“Well, you’re going to need some help around here when the baby comes. Have you two started thinking about a maid or a nanny?”
In the light of a recent child neglect/murder case involving a nanny from Britain, Beverly and I were terrified of the thought, but it had crossed our minds. We had had a long discussion about it.
“We’ve decided that it will be a long and grueling process of selection, so we’ve started looking at different avenues to go in already,” I explained.
“You can never be too careful about that kind of thing,” my father warned.
I never liked any of the day-care providers that I had as a kid. I could not remember far enough to recall any nanny in my life. And I had never asked.
“Did you have a nanny for Walter?” Beverly asked on cue.
I looked at her, smiled, and shook my head. My wife was simply mystical sometimes.
She said, “What, I wasn’t supposed to ask that question?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that you were reading my mind as usual, that’s all.”
“Oh,” she responded.
My mother answered, “Walter didn’t get a nanny until after I stopped breast-feeding him around eight or nine months.”
I was embarrassed. “Look, ah, can we talk about this after we eat,” I complained.
“Aww, what’s wrong, sweetie? Breast-feeding is natural,” my mother teased me.
“Mother, I’m trying to concentrate on eating right now,” I responded. I always wondered why my parents never had another child. When I asked them as a kid, they used to talk about how expensive children were. Then for years, they told me they were considering adopting a little sister, but that never happened. I was tempted to ask about it again, but I changed my mind. It was far too late to change anything. Beverly and I planned to have at least two kids. We both agreed that a child should have someone to share its young experiences with, and Beverly had a great upbringing with her sisters. I just hoped and prayed that we didn’t have all girls like her parents had. But if that were to happen, then at least I still had Walter.
We wasted no time digging into our food. We said a family prayer and began to pass the wild rice and turkey.
“Is this Uncle Ben’s rice?” my mother asked.
Beverly nodded. “Mmm-hmm. Yes, it is.”
One of the reasons why my parents considered child-rearing so expensive was because they were reckless, name-brand consumers. I never had a piece of Kmart or Sears clothing in my life. Everything was from the high-grade department stores. Everything had to be “the best.” However, buying a child “the best” of everything didn’t necessarily guarantee him a healthier childhood. Love, happiness, and sharing good, clean fun with children went a long way, producing confident and progressive adults, who were not hung up on supposed quality.
I thought again about having a good, long conversation with my father while we all ate. He was there physically, but his mind was somewhere else. I hadn’t talked to him about business in a while. Mom told me a few years ago that he was getting involved in real estate again, and I wondered how that was going. My father had talked to me back then about making another killing off white families who wanted to move back into the city. It was supposedly a national trend to regain the cities from black residents who were perceived as running them into the ground. According to my father, the process had already started and was heating up at a rapid pace across the country. He said that I would have known that had I worked in the real estate department at the bank. And he was right, because plenty of bank loans were being secured for new or renovated housing in urban areas. He called it “re-urbanization,” and he wanted to hire some new young white faces to do his handiwork.
“Are you still thinking about re-urbanization?” I decided to ask him. I was curious about it myself, especially if my father may have been thinking of cutting me off, which I strongly doubted. Nevertheless, I did think about it, and with my growing interest to break into some form of entr
epreneurship, compounded by my boredom at work, I could use something new to get me going again.
My father nodded. “I’m looking at a few properties. Yeah,” he answered. He looked alive and inside of the room again. “Why, are you getting interested now?”
I had never told him that I wasn’t interested, he just assumed that I wasn’t because I had previously spent so much time trying to establish my own interests. At the time, I didn’t want to commit to the idea either. If I did get interested, I wanted to try things on my own.
“You still think that you need the right color faces to do it?” I asked him.
He said, “Not in some areas. We have some well-to-do black families buying up urban housing, too.” Then he looked at Beverly and added, “You all are going to need a house soon.”
“Yes, we probably will need a bigger house,” Beverly said. She knew I was about to hit the ceiling, but it was too late.
My father’s comment was true, of course, but I didn’t like how he said it. He made it sound as if we didn’t have a house. I always felt that nothing I did was quite good enough for him.
I snapped, “I can’t seem to get your support or respect on anything I ever say or do!”
“Walter, we respected and supported you on plenty of things. How could you say such a thing?” my mother cut in.
“He’s been saying stuff like that his entire life. He’s never been appreciative of what we’ve given him,” my father added.
“That’s because you’ve been holding it over my head like some kind of ode to my parents!” I shouted. “You’ve done what any parents should do; provide for your child. Yet you think you should be awarded for it. And that’s not the way to go about receiving love from a son,” I told them.
“That’s like every time I buy Beverly some flowers or a bracelet, I turn around and say, ‘See how much I love you’ and expect her to be excited about that. You can’t buy love, you have to share it and make it surround yourself and your children.”
“Walter, we did surround you with love,” my mother refuted. “What are you talking about?”