Single Mom

  “Okay, I’ll have something ready when you get here.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I told her.

  “And make sure you dress him properly.”

  I smiled. Once a mother always a mother. “I will, Mom. I’ll make sure that I’m bundled up, too. See you soon.”

  As soon as we walked out the door and were on our way to the bus stop, I asked Jamal what he wanted for Christmas.

  “A Sony Playstation,” he answered excitedly.

  I didn’t know exactly what that was, but anything with Sony in front of it sounded expensive. “Is that a video game or something?”

  “Yeah, it’s a lot of them.” Then he started naming things that I couldn’t even repeat.

  “Do they have basketball and football cartridges?”

  “Um, I think so,” he answered. He didn’t seem too sure about it.

  I remembered when my brothers and I had a video game called Intellivision. Intellivision had the best sports games ever! You could control nearly everything, and it had an infinite number of plays to choose from, not just a dozen or so like the new games that were out.

  “Well, we’ll see what Santa Claus can do,” I told Jamal.

  He smiled and said, “There’s no such thing as Santa Claus.”

  People waiting at the bus stop with us began to laugh.

  “Who told you that?” I asked him. “And if there’s no Santa Claus, then where do all the toys come from.” I was just asking to see how much he knew.

  “Those toys come from the store.”

  “So they make them at the store? Or do the elves make them at the North Pole, and then ship them to the stores at nighttime with Rudolf and the rest of the reindeer?”

  “Unt unh. There’s no such thing as Rudolf. And reindeer don’t fly,” he told me.

  “How do they get around then?”

  “They run.”

  I was having a good time with him as the bus pulled up.

  He said, “If reindeer could fly, then I would want to get one. Then we wouldn’t have to ride buses.”

  People were really amused at how sharp he was. I was too, but I was getting used to it. Most kids were bright until people stopped challenging them. Then they would fall into a dark stage of destruction. I knew because I was one of those kids. My dark stage didn’t come until much later.

  “He’s really smart, isn’t he?” an older woman asked me.

  “All kids are,” I told her. I wanted to think positive.

  An older man nodded and agreed with me. “Mmm hmm,” he mumbled. “They can use them smarts in the streets, or in the books. But most of them choose to use it out in the streets.”

  “Yeah, well, this one won’t,” I told the older man. I noticed that most people were more negative than positive when talking about a kid’s future. It was almost as if we expected black kids to fuck up. That attitude was pissing me off! I wished someone would have told me that I could do anything when I was young. Even make the NBA if I wanted to. But most people thought of me as just a good high school player, and I fell right into their game.

  By the time we made it over to my mother’s, Jamal had fallen asleep. He usually took naps in the late afternoon because of the crazy schedule he was used to with his mother. As long as he didn’t doze off in the classroom, I didn’t have a problem with it. Kids needed more rest than adults anyway. A nap was good for him.

  Jamal yawned as soon as he spoke to my mother.

  “Oh, so you’re tired, are you?” she said to him. “You can take a nap then. Take your shoes off and lay down on the couch. You can get something to eat when you’re good and ready. Okay?”

  It seemed like Mom treated Jamal better than she treated me. He took her suggestion, and stretched out on the comfortable couch.

  I smiled at her and whispered while we entered the kitchen. “I don’t know, Mom, it seems like you like him.”

  “I do like him. He’s a nice, respectable boy. And I’m so glad that you’re looking after him like you are. Him and Jimmy.”

  “Yeah, it just took me a long time to realize it, Mom. I can’t start all over, but I can pick up where I left off, and that was basically nowhere. So I guess I have a whole lot of catching up to do.”

  “Well, at least you’re trying to catch up. Some of these fathers are not even trying. It’s just sad. Don’t they know that their kids need them in their lives? What is wrong with these young fathers today?”

  I felt guilty. Just a year ago, I was one of those young fathers, but I always cared about my son. I said, “It just takes some deep thinking and a lot of courage, Mom. A good job helps too,” I added.

  “Well, most of them don’t even want to look for a job. A good job is not going to walk up and smack you in the face. You have to go out and find one.”

  I sat down at the small kitchen table as my mother fixed me some chicken and dumplings. She was a chicken and dumplings expert. Trust me! My eyes lit up. Jamal didn’t know what he was missing.

  When my mother sat down to join me, I noticed how everything had been scaled down. We used to have a big kitchen table when my brothers and father were still living. Suddenly, my meal didn’t taste as good as it should have to me. Nevertheless, I tried to think of brighter things.

  “So, Mom, what do you want for Christmas?” I asked, trying to get my mother as excited about it as I was.

  She seemed to be in a daze for a moment. “I don’t need anything for Christmas,” she told me. “Besides,” she added, “what I would want I can’t possibly have.”

  Then it hit me that my mother was thinking about the absence of my brothers and father, too. Maybe that was why she was so happy to see me with Jimmy and Jamal. It served as a new beginning of bonding between a black man and his sons.

  I looked into her eyes and decided to ask her the question I had been thinking about for months. “Hey, Mom … have you ever felt that we would all still be here if Dad was alive and healthy?”

  My mother began to nod and rock back and forth in her chair. She said, “Every time things were going right, something would just go wrong. And every time your father would have the best job, he would get sick or injured. I always wondered what he had done to deserve so much bad luck. I ended up putting a lot of pressure on your older brother to help out, and we all just let you play basketball.”

  I thought back and remembered the arguments that my mother used to have with Marcus. They always seemed to calm down when I was around, and I always wondered what was going on. Maybe I was Mr. Special Son all along, because of my basketball skills and my father’s enjoyment in watching me play.

  “Boys need their fathers or somebody to look up to,” my mother told me. “You remember how hurt you were when your father died?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I remember. I still do hurt. For all of us.”

  “But you had that extra eye from your father that your brothers never got. They didn’t feel as hurt when he died. But you, it just changed your whole attitude about life. I saw the changes happening, but I was too busy trying to hold on to all of you to do anything about it. I couldn’t give that special attention that your father gave you. And poor Neecy couldn’t either.”

  She said, “I remember when your high school basketball coach called me. He was so concerned that you were losing your focus. You remember that?”

  She was bringing up a lot of things that I wanted to forget. My high school coach had basically begged me to go to a junior college to gain a sense of maturity in the hopes of making it to the Division 1 level, but I looked at junior college as an admission of failure and didn’t want to go.

  “Yeah, I remember that, too,” I told my mother, painfully.

  “That’s why I am so excited that you’re sharing with these boys, because they’re gonna need it. And not just for a couple of years, but until they are old enough to stand up on their own, as good men. You hear me? Boys need fathers! All of them! And I don’t care if you’re with their mothers or not!”

  I rais
ed a brow, and my mother went on to correct herself.

  “It would be nice if you all were strong enough to make a decision about a girl and stick to it,” she said. “But I can’t make you do it. And just because you can’t get along with the woman does not mean that you can’t love the son. He’s your flesh and blood. So I would never allow Denise to keep Jimmy away from you, no matter how wrong you were, because you still have the ability to do right.

  “So if you want me to tell you what kind of Christmas present that I want, then here it is: you keep doing what you’re doing with these boys. And you love them just the same, whether they can play basketball or not. So that when they get older, they can know what it means to be a responsible man who loves, cares, works hard, and tries his best to do what’s right.

  “You hear me, Jimmie? So let that be my Christmas present. For as long as I live.”

  I looked into the glassy brown eyes of my mother and nodded to her. “Okay,” I told her. “I’ll do that.”

  She nodded back to me and said, “Good, because that’s all that I want.”

  I left my mother’s house with Jamal, close to eight o’clock at night. By the time we would have made it to a store to buy anything, it would have been closing time.

  I said, “Hey, Jamal, do you want to rent a movie?”

  Of course he did. He said, “Yeah, Alien Resurrection.”

  I smiled. “We can’t rent that one yet. That just came out in the theaters.”

  “So when can we rent it?”

  “Probably next summer. We can see it at the theater though. But not tonight. We’ll go see it this weekend. All right? And maybe your mother will want to go. So pick another movie.”

  “Umm …”

  I said, “I’ll tell you what, we’ll get to the video store first and let you pick what you want. But I don’t know if I want you watching horror movies. You pick a comedy or something.”

  When we got to the video store, Jamal and I picked Toy Story together. I wanted to see that movie myself, because of the different kind of animation that they were using. We got back to the apartment after nine. Then I went and called my son.

  “Hi, Denise. How’s everything going?”

  “Fine. And how are things going with you?”

  “You won’t hear me complainin’,” I told her.

  “That’s good to hear. Complaining rarely leads to positive results anyway.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” I told her. “Is my son around?”

  “Of course he is.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “Hold on,” she told me. It was sad that I couldn’t talk more to my son’s mother, but that’s just the way that things were. Neecy had become less worried about me visiting my son at her house, but I still didn’t feel comfortable over there, so I chose not to. I figured it was best for us to keep a respectable distance.

  Little Jay jumped on the phone and said, “What’s up, Dad?”

  “You tell me. I see your school plays Lewis Academy tomorrow. They have a pretty good team this year.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he answered.

  “What do you think y’all will do?”

  “Well, we’re gonna play to win. We haven’t lost yet.”

  I smiled and nodded. My son’s high school team was 6-0. “That’s a good attitude to have,” I told him. “So, what was your last test grade?”

  “An eighty-four.”

  “In what subject?”

  “Algebra.”

  “Did you find out how you went wrong?”

  “Yeah, I could have gotten a ninety-two. I messed around and rushed a couple of problems.”

  I grinned. It’s funny how right you can be once you start to use your head. I asked, “Were you running out of time when you answered them?”

  “Naw, I just thought I knew it, and it turned out that I left out some things.”

  “Well, you know what you need to do on the next one then. If you get a ninety-six, it’ll bring that eighty-four up to an A. That’s how it works, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “So how is school otherwise?”

  “It’s all right. I can’t complain.”

  “Good. You got any girls chasing after you yet?”

  He laughed and seemed hesitant to respond. We had talked about girls with no problem before, so I realized that something was up.

  “Your mother’s sitting right next to you?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, sort of,” he answered with another laugh.

  I laughed with him. My mother was right. There were some things where fathers were able to relate to their sons, where mothers couldn’t. Talking about girls was one of them. My mother was also right about choosing to be with a girl, and being strong enough to stick it out with her. That was a lesson I had to learn, among many others.

  “All right, well, I’ll see you after the game tomorrow,” I told my son. “We’ll talk about it then.”

  “All right then, Dad. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Before I could hang up with him, I got curious. I asked, “Have you went all the way with a girl yet? All you have to answer is yes or no, and we’ll go into detail about it tomorrow.”

  He answered, “Naw.”

  “Have you gotten close?”

  “Not really.”

  “Have you thought about it?”

  He laughed again. “Umm, yeah.”

  “Well, you know, take your time, man. And whatever you do, don’t listen to those other guys, because a lot of them will lie about it. I’ve been through that stage myself. If a guy says he’s had six girls, he’s probably only had two,” I told him with a chuckle.

  Little Jay said, “I don’t know about that.” He sounded like he doubted my logic.

  I smiled, and knew exactly who he was talking about. “That guy Speed is a senior. So don’t try to compete with him. You hear me? Just play your game and do your scoring in basketball. Because if you hold out long enough, and don’t get tied down, by the time you get in your twenties, you’ll have the pick of the litter with women. Especially if you go pro. Oh, man!”

  Little Jay burst out laughing again.

  I started to envy the boy. I asked, “Has your mom started bugging you about it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you tell her anything?”

  “Yeah, but you know …”

  I smiled. “You didn’t have anything to tell her and you felt uncomfortable about it anyway,” I said, filling in for him.

  “Yup. That’s it,” he answered.

  I could imagine. I was a young guy, too, once. The last thing you want to do is talk about girls with your mother until you’re old enough to handle the embarrassment.

  “Well, look, I’ll see you tomorrow then. And hey, I love you, man,” I told him.

  “I love you, too.”

  When I hung up, I noticed that Jamal was eavesdropping on the conversation.

  I said, “Come here, man.”

  He walked over to me. Then I grabbed him and spun him upside down. “I love you too, little man. You hear me?”

  “Yes,” he squealed through his giggles.

  “You’re my new little homey. And you leave them little girls alone, too. They’ll be around for as long as you’re living. Probably longer. They live longer than we do anyway.”

  He broke out laughing, trying to free himself. I let him go and sat him down on the couch next to me. I said, “Okay, let’s shake on it.”

  Jamal extended his hand. I took it and pulled him into a bear hug. He broke out laughing again. Damn it felt good! I just wished that I was able to feel that fatherly love a long time ago. I wanted to stand up on a tall building and share it with the world. FATHERS, LEARN TO LOVE YOUR BOYS, AND YOUR DAUGHTERS! And the love that they’ll give you back will be unconditional!

  Bulls Tickets

  was giving Denise, myself, and her two sons an early Christmas present by taking us all out to the Chicago Bulls and Indiana Pacers game at the Uni
ted Center. The tickets were an arm and a leg to get, but I figured they were well worth the price, especially with Larry Bird coaching the Pacers. Indiana, a longtime Chicago rival, would be fighting for the lead in the central division of the NBA, for home-court advantage in the play-offs. That meant more games for the United Center and Bulls fans, as well as national exposure and business opportunities for the city of Chicago. So I talked to a few contacts on the job and got in touch with a bookie/ticket salesman for a five-ticket package. They were some good seats, too, right at half-court! It doesn’t get any better unless you’re sitting at courtside. I invited my uncle William, my father’s youngest brother, along with us.

  Denise and her sons had already met my parents. Things went fairly well with them. My parents could see that Denise was a decent, hard-working woman, and that both of her sons were well cared for and respectful. Then Debra talked to Denise long-distance from Arizona. They clicked immediately. I was pleasantly surprised. My sister rarely had much to say to the women I’d dated in the past. She never considered any of them intelligent or independent enough, especially my exwife. I guess my sister would click with Denise. Actually, I expected as much. Denise was a real go-getter. My uncle William, however, was another story.

  Mr. William Brockenborough never let my sister and me call him “Bill” or “Willie.” It was always “Uncle William.” He had aged well physically, but underneath his youthful energy, expression, and truthtelling speckles of gray hair, he was a cranky old man with a biting sense of humor. He also had five children, my first cousins, by three different women. He married and divorced two of them, and was still with the third, with no plans of getting married a third time. “I got too much life still left in me for another marriage,” he liked to tell me. Maybe he wasn’t the best example to have around Denise and her sons. Nevertheless, he was my family, just like Nikita was her family.

  “Light ’em up!” my uncle hollered as soon as Michael Jordan got his first touch of the ball. He sat on the far right, next to Jimmy. Walter sat in the middle, and Denise and I were at the other end.

  I had no idea how things were going to play themselves out. But I did know that my uncle William was a Jordan fan, like the rest of the sports world, while Denise seemed to despise Jordan because of his lack of interest in black community-related affairs. She felt that Jordan represented all that was wrong with blacks in sports in the nineties. Too many of them were shopping around for unlimited sponsorship and more money than they knew what to do with. Then they would spend the money recklessly, and only a few of them felt any responsibility to their communities.