Single Mom

  I shook my head and said, “Naw, you got the wrong man, baby. I don’t pick up no hitchhikers.”

  “Never?”

  “Never in my life! I like to ride with people I know, people I’ve eaten and drank with, people like Denise Stewart and her two sons.”

  “It’s good to hear that,” she told me. “So, are you happy with my answer?”

  “Does a dog’s tail wag when he’s happy?”

  She broke out laughing again. “But I don’t want a dog,” she snapped at me, “I want a man; a good man!”

  I got serious and said, “Denise, that’s exactly what you’re gonna get, for as long as we’re together, and until death do us part. You hear me?”

  She said, “I know, because you’re all into me.”

  I laughed and said, “You got that right.”

  “I just hope this spell I have you under doesn’t wear off too soon.”

  I said, “You kiddin’ me. I’m a long-distance driver, baby. I don’t get bored easily. So get ready to travel around the world for a hundred years. In fact, we’ll be driving in space cars by the time I’m finished with you.”

  Denise asked, “Are you serious? We’re going to travel around the world?” She was calling my bluff.

  I backed off and said, “Well, for now, we’ll do that in the mind and spirit, and then maybe later on, we’ll do it with our actual bodies. Is that a deal?”

  She laughed one more time and said, “It’s a deal.”

  I told Denise I’d call her as soon as I got into Texas that night, and slowly hung up. We could have been talking for an hour if I didn’t cut things short. I wanted to savor her acceptance of my marriage proposal anyway. I was back to feeling good! I was sky high! The next thing I knew, I started singing that same song I was having so many problems with, and couldn’t even help myself, because I knew that the Temptations were not singing about me.

  “Poppa was a rolll-lin’ stone. Wherever he laid his hat was his home….”

  Why Me?

  HAT event do you think you’d like to run?” I asked my son. It was the third Saturday in February. We were on our way to a sporting goods store at the Water Tower Mall on the near North Side to buy running shoes and spikes. Outdoor track practice was starting that coming Monday at his school. Everything had calmed down at Walter’s school since the stabbing incident in September. Denise settled things with the school out of court, and Walter had worked his way up to straight A’s and one B, ironically in gym. He seemed really excited about going out for the track team though.

  He said, “I have to get my endurance up to run long distance. I’m not fast enough yet for sprints. I’m too short for the high jump and long jump, so I’ll probably pick an event right in the middle; the quarter mile. That’s one time around the track, right? I can do that.”

  I broke out laughing. My son was naming about the most strenuous event in track and field, the quarter-mile run. “Ah, are you absolutely sure you want to run the quarter?” I asked. I don’t believe he knew just how tough that race was. “That’s a serious event you’re talking about,” I told him. “Olympic track star Michael Johnson runs the quarter mile. You see how he’s built, don’t you? Those guys are usually tall and powerful, more powerful than your older brother.”

  “Well, I’m only a kid right now. Maybe I can work out.”

  I nodded to him and smiled. I said, “Yeah, maybe you can. Everybody’s not born with speed and muscle. Some people had to work hard at it. In fact, most athletes had to work out. You’re absolutely right.”

  I had never been into athletics myself, so I didn’t know. Yet whenever they interviewed top-notch athletes, they always talked about their work habits, just like businesspeople would talk about reading The Wall Street Journal and staying up on what was going on in the business world. To be the best, you have to work hard at what you do in any arena.

  Walter asked, “Remember that part in the movie Forrest Gump when those metal rods came off his legs and he started running real fast? Maybe if I wear some real heavy shoes or something, I could run just like him,” he joked with a smile.

  I broke up laughing again. I don’t know what his mother was talking about, but Walter was sure making progress from my end of things. When I used to get him on the weekends, he was nothing but attitude. I guess my attitude back then had a lot to do with that. Kids can tell when grown-ups aren’t really giving their all to them. I could surely tell when my father was half stepping with me, so it was obvious that Walter knew when I was doing the same with him. However, I hoped he hadn’t made a 180-degree turn and decided to be on his best behavior with me while acting up with his mother. I set my mind on investigating what was going on.

  “How are you and your mother getting along?” I asked him.

  He looked at me and frowned. “She was acting weird for a while, crying at night and stuff, but now she’s acting better because she’s getting married.”

  Jesus Christ! What a bomb! I thought to myself. “She’s getting married?” I asked, to make sure I heard him right.

  Walter sounded proud of her. “Yup.”

  I guess it was no big deal to him. I was married to someone else.

  I decided to ask him about it. “And how do you feel about that?”

  He hunched his shoulders and answered, “I’m happy for her. At least somebody wanted to marry her.”

  I said, “And how do you feel about Brock?”

  “I like him,” he answered. He had a healthy attitude about it.

  I had run out of questions already. I was supposed to be asking my son how he was getting along with his mother, but after dropping his bomb of an answer, my whole state of mind had been rattled. I could only think about her marrying Brock.

  “How does your brother feel about it?” I asked my son.

  “He likes Brock, too. We all went to Jimmy’s play-off game together.”

  I thought about it. Walter had told me before that Jimmy’s father was back in the picture and that he had been going to all of his son’s games. I asked, “Has Brock ever met Jimmy’s father?”

  My son nodded. “Yeah, they met. Mr. J.D. comes to all the games,” he told me again. “My brother’s team might make it to the state championship if they win two more games. They have a game on Tuesday. They’re in the final eight.”

  Suddenly I felt like a huge outsider, and I wanted to change the subject immediately. I said, “Well, I’ll try and make it out to as many of your track meets as I can. Okay?”

  Walter nodded. No big deal again. “Okay,” he told me.

  Then I changed my mind. “In fact, I’ll be at all of your track meets,” I told him. There I was competing with everybody else, and I couldn’t even help myself. I wondered if I would have felt the same way before attending the Million Man March. I had plenty of time to involve myself in Walter’s life before then. I began to feel sorry for all of the fathers who paid child support or alimony with no personal involvement with their kids. I was fortunate that Denise and I never took that road. I guess she had been supportive of my involvement with Walter. I just wished she could get beyond her personal beef with me.

  We made it to the sporting goods store inside of the mall, and all that Walter wanted to look at were Nikes.

  I said, “Try on these New Balance. I hear that they’re excellent track shoes.”

  Walter looked at them and grimaced. There were Nike Swooshes on everything in the store. I hadn’t seen a New Balance advertisement in ages. Who says exposure doesn’t pay? I wondered how much influence popular culture was having on my son. I knew he didn’t wear oversized clothes, because his school wouldn’t allow it, nor would his mother. But I wondered how many other things he could have been influenced by.

  Nikes it was. The total came to over a hundred dollars. I remember when I could buy two pairs of shoes for half that amount. Then again, that was long before Walter was even born.

  We walked through the mall and headed to the food court to get something to e
at.

  I asked Walter if he wanted to buy any tapes or anything while we were there.

  “No, it’s nothing all that good out,” he said.

  “What about this guy Mase from Puff Daddy’s crew?”

  My son looked at me and smiled at my attempt at being “down.” “I’d rather have Tupac’s new tape,” he responded.

  “Why, is that an East Coast/West Coast thing, and Tupac’s more accepted on the West Coast? He was born on the East Coast, you know. And besides, Chicago is the Midwest anyway. We shouldn’t even be taking sides.”

  Walter nodded and said, “I know.”

  “So do you like Allen Iverson or Kobe Bryant?” I asked him. I had been doing my youth culture homework just for him.

  “I like Allen Iverson, but my brother likes Kobe Bryant,” he answered.

  I said, “I guess that’s because he’s closer to Kobe’s size. Your brother might reach six foot eight before he finishes high school.”

  Walter shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Well, we’ll see what happens,” I told him. “Does he know what college he’d like to go to yet?”

  “Kansas,” Walter responded. “He says he likes how they give the big men the ball.”

  “So he must be expecting to grow taller then.”

  “I guess so. I guess he can grow another inch or two. I wonder how tall I’ll be.”

  I smiled. “Well, I’m only five foot nine. Even your mother is taller than me when she puts on high heels. Your grandfather on your mother’s side was over six feet, and my father is five-ten. So you add that all up, and I’d say you have a good chance of being anywhere from five-eleven to six-one.”

  My son smiled and nodded his head. “I hope I reach at least six foot.”

  “Why, you want to play basketball, too?”

  “No, not really. I just want to be tall.”

  “Five foot eleven isn’t exactly short,” I told him.

  “It isn’t six foot either.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, and there was nothing I could do about it. I said, “It only matters how big your heart is, son. Only the strong survive, no matter how tall you are. You remember that, because there are plenty of six foot eight guys who are doing absolutely nothing with their lives. Some of these guys have weak hearts and weak character.

  “Do you think you have a strong heart?” I asked him.

  He nodded. It looked as if he was trying to talk himself into it. “Yeah,” he answered.

  We walked into the cafeteria section, found ourselves some seats, and both ordered slices of mushroom pizza.

  “How come you didn’t try any Chinese food?” he asked me.

  I shook my head and grinned. “Beverly and I just had some Chinese food last night, General Tao’s Chicken.”

  “Was it good?”

  “Yeah, it was pretty good. I’ve had it before. What about you, you like Chinese food?” No matter how many weekends I spent with my son, it always felt like I was starting over again. I began to think that maybe I could at least keep him for a summer of serious bonding instead of going through the weekend thing. I wondered if Denise would agree to that.

  “Yeah, I like some Chinese food,” he told me, in between bites of pizza. “I like shrimp rolls with duck sauce.”

  “Yeah, that is a good snack,” I agreed. I asked, “Are you planning on going to summer camp this year?”

  He hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “Are those tennis rackets I bought you still in good shape?”

  He perked up and said, “Yeah. I hardly get a chance to play with them though.”

  “How about if I got you in a tennis camp this summer? Would you like that?”

  “Yeah, that would be fun.”

  “Have you ever heard of Venus Williams?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen her play. She’s real tall. Her and my brother would make some tall kids.”

  I almost choked on my pizza laughing. “Is that so? Does you brother like tall girls?”

  “I don’t know. But they can’t be too short. He would have to bend all the way down to kiss them.”

  I laughed again and thought about our conversation. I don’t remember my father asking me much about anything outside of my grades and my career goals, and I lived at home with him until I left for college at eighteen. I wondered how many fathers actually took time out to talk to their sons about what they were interested in. It didn’t seem like many conversations were going on with the Generation X kids whether their fathers lived with them or not. I think more fathers were trying to tell their kids what they did rather than listening to what their kids wanted to do. Fathers were spending far too much time trying to make their kids understand them, instead of trying to understand their children. I wasn’t saying that you let a kid do whatever he wanted to do, because that could lead to disaster. But maybe a different approach to parental communication was needed. Instead of saying, “Listen to me, young man,” maybe we should have been saying, “Let’s listen to you,” and challenge more kids to make sense out of their own lives.

  When we got back to the house after a full day of quality father-and-son time, I couldn’t wait to tell my wife the news about Denise. By then, Walter and I had watched a new movie at the mall’s theater, as well as rented an old one from the video store, because that’s what he wanted to do, check out some movies he hadn’t been able to see.

  I didn’t get a chance to talk to Beverly alone until eleven o’clock at night when Walter was in bed.

  “Guess what?” I asked her. We were in bed ourselves, as usual. It seemed as if Beverly and I did most of our talking at night. We were both such active people during the day that bedtime was one of the few periods where we actually were calm enough to discuss anything in detail, especially when Walter was over.

  “Do I really have to guess, or are you going to tell me on your own?”

  Beverly was nearly seven months pregnant and really showing, but she refused to stay home from work. The spring semester at school was over in early May, and our child was due in mid-May, so she actually planned to work straight through the pregnancy, and there was nothing I could do to convince her not to. I guess that was the nineties woman for you. Beverly had read all kinds of new books and pamphlets that said it was good for her and the baby to keep a normal schedule of activity.

  Anyway, I went ahead and told her the news. “Denise is getting married to Brock,” I said. Neither one of us had ever met the man, but we had heard enough about him through my son to believe that he was at least a good guy.

  Beverly turned and faced me. “Walter told you this?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  She smiled. “I guess now Denise is going to know that we know.”

  I giggled. “I guess she will.” Kids were not known for keeping grownup people’s business to themselves, or at least not my son.

  Beverly thought about it and said, “I wonder if she would invite us to the wedding.”

  I said, “I wouldn’t count on it. The way things are between us, we would probably get into an argument at her wedding.”

  “Not if you kept your mouth shut,” my wife told me. “All you need to say is congratulations, and nothing else.”

  I smiled. “Denise could probably look at me and find something to argue about. We can’t even stand in the same room together.”

  “Well, I don’t believe she’ll be like that if I’m there.”

  “We’ll have the baby by then,” I commented.

  “You think they’re going to have a big wedding?” my wife asked me.

  I shook my head. “I doubt it. Unless he has a big family, because Denise doesn’t. All she has is a sister, a mother, and a couple of girlfriends who she doesn’t really have much time for.”

  “Don’t be surprised. People tend to come out of the woods for a wedding ceremony,” Beverly responded. “You find yourself sending out invitations to people you haven’t seen i
n ten years. Look at how many people I had to invite to our wedding.”

  I said, “Yeah, and they were all your people.”

  “I can’t help that you had a secluded family,” she snapped. “That’s why we have to work on your selfishness now. You know we have another session on Monday evening, right?”

  Beverly and I had gone to three sensitivity classes, and we were scheduled for five more. She had signed us up for an eight-week program. After the first two sessions, I was ready to move on. I had made a lot of progress already. I wasn’t half as bad as the rest of the husbands and boyfriends in the program. Beverly and I were the only black couple there. If you think black families have problems, sit in on a couple of white family discussions. I had a case of minor insensitivity compared to some white men. Black women would never let their men get away with the things that white women allowed. And I wasn’t talking about something I had read, I heard it with my own ears.

  “Yeah, I know,” I mumbled.

  “I know you think this program is extreme, Walter, but it’s a start. Maybe if you can see how crazy these other guys can be to women and their wives, then you can begin to curb your own attitudes.”

  “Yeah, but my attitudes are not that bad.”

  “Nevertheless, we paid for eight sessions, and I expect us to finish them.”

  My mood was soured. I didn’t feel like thinking about those damn sessions! They made you feel so awkward in those groups. I didn’t even like how the guy talked to me: “Walter, what are some of the major concerns you have with women? Walter, explain to the group what your perfect relationship would be? Walter, do you have problems speaking to your wife about pressing issues without feeling surges of anger?” Those sessions made me more anxious than an argument with Denise or my wife ever did. Once you begin listening to that flimflam, you can start to believe that you really are crazy. White couples have been doing it for years. My only question was, did it really help to solve your problems, or did it only make you dependent upon more sessions before you ended up filing for a damn divorce? Plenty of couples who were married for thirty and forty years never had to put up with a shrink session, so why did I?