Single Mom

  I sat there and wondered how Denise would do in one of those sessions. I could imagine her cursing the guy out and asking for a refund. I sat there in bed and grinned at the idea.

  Beverly asked, “What is so funny?”

  I said, “You don’t want to know.”

  She responded, “You just make sure you remember to be home on time.”

  Another thing I noticed was that those sessions seemed to be giving Beverly a stronger voice of authority. Or maybe that was the pregnancy again. Whatever it was, I didn’t like that so much either.

  I was just about to finish up my day at work when Beverly called me at the office to remind me, for the third time, about our counseling session that Monday evening.

  I said, “Actually, I was just finishing things up here.”

  “Okay, well, I’m making us a snack to eat while we’re on the way,” she responded.

  I hung up the phone and shook my head. “She’s about to drive me insane with this,” I mumbled to myself.

  One of my coworkers, Lawrence Isaacs, stopped by to see me before quitting time. He and his wife had just had their third child a few days after Christmas. Lawrence was an easygoing white guy in his early forties, who seemed to know how to turn his assertion off and on when he needed it. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from the guy so that I could last at work and at home without burning myself out.

  “So how’s your wife’s pregnancy coming along?” he asked me.

  I said, “I’m not sure. That’s what I need to ask you about.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, spit it out. Is she driving you crazy yet?”

  “Exactly,” I told him. “Is that normal?”

  He broke out laughing. “Of course it’s normal. You got a lot of different hormones going on down there, pal. But it really depends on each pregnancy. When my wife was first pregnant with our daughter, Anne, I thought for the life of me that I needed an exorcist. But while she was pregnant with my two sons, Larry Jr. and now Michael, it wasn’t all that bad.”

  “You think it makes a difference between boys and girls?”

  “I don’t know, maybe it was just the first-child thing. You have a hundred different myths and old wives’ tales about these things,” he told me. “I’m a guy like you, man. What the hell do I know? I can barely change a damn diaper. I’ll just take over when they’re teenagers, you know, once the hard part is done,” he said with a slap on my shoulder.

  Lawrence just confirmed what I already knew: most men didn’t think twice about being insensitive. That was just the way we were. I couldn’t ask Lawrence about going to some damn shrink! The word could get around at the office, and I could lose the respect of my peers and end up being pushed out of my job.

  I smiled and said, “Thanks, man. It’s good to know that I’m not the first guy to go through this.”

  “Yeah, and you won’t be the last guy either. You just hang in there, Walter. There’s no joy greater than the joy of having a child. Trust me.”

  I drove my car back home as slowly as I could from work that day. I was trying to come up with the strongest excuse I could offer not to go to any more sensitivity sessions. Maybe what we could use, instead, was a trip out of the country. Spring break was coming up for Beverly at the school, and I had already coordinated it with my first vacation week to spend time with her. I thought about ordering two round-trip tickets to the islands, and calling the money I had spent for the sessions a simple sacrifice.

  I had it all planned out by the time I made it home. All I had to do was phone the travel agency that Tuesday, but Beverly was waiting for me at the front door.

  She kissed me on the cheek and marched right out the door, heading for the car in the garage.

  I said, “Beverly, we need to talk. I’ve been doing some thinking.”

  “Okay, we can talk in the car. Come on, it’s cold out here.”

  She was all wrapped up like an Eskimo.

  I took a deep breath and let her inside the car. I didn’t want her to catch cold. Maybe I should have called her on the cell phone to discuss things before I arrived.

  “Okay, what do you want to talk about?”

  Before I realized it, I had turned the ignition key and was driving toward Western Avenue to head north for Evanston where the sessions were held, far away from anyone I knew.

  I said, “You know, I’ve been thinking, Beverly. And instead of going to these sessions, what I really need is a good vacation to the islands or something. Maybe even to Hawaii. We could go on vacation during your spring break.”

  To my surprise, she said, “Yeah, I thought about that myself. After we have the baby this summer, we may not be able to go on a vacation for a while. So that would be a good idea.”

  “That means you agree with me then?” I asked her.

  “Not about canceling our Monday sessions. We’ll just have to miss it that week.”

  Shit! I thought to myself. I finally said, “Look, honey, I’m sorry, but I don’t feel comfortable with this thing anymore.”

  Beverly looked at me with an evil eye. I started thinking of an exorcist myself.

  She said, “We have hardly finished half of the program. Need I remind you that this was your idea?”

  “My idea? All I did was joke about it. You’re the one who took it to the third degree and started calling around.”

  “You still initiated it with all of your past actions. This is actually something you needed to do a long time ago.”

  “So how come you didn’t tell me then?” I was getting so worked up that I hadn’t noticed the light was changing to red. I ran right into a busy intersection before I could try and hit the brakes. I should have swerved to my left, pulled back to the right, and kept speeding through, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I jammed the brakes and an overzealous driver, who was already committed to the green light, charged ahead. Instead of screaming, Beverly braced herself for the hit from our right side, the side she sat on.

  BANG! The car ran right into us. The seat belt was the only thing that stopped my wife from being thrown into my lap. The first thing I did was try and get her loose. She was pregnant!

  I unstrapped her seat belt and tried to slide her out, but Beverly wasn’t helping me.

  “Try and push yourself out,” I told her.

  When she faced me, all I saw was her tears and an excruciating look of pain on her face. “I can’t!” she hollered at me.

  Someone from behind said, “Her leg is stuck.” I looked down and noticed that the car door had folded in on her right leg. The entire passenger-side door had been smashed in. If Beverly hadn’t braced herself, it could have been much worse. As it was, she was still stuck.

  “Someone call the fire department!” the same guy behind me yelled.

  “Fire department? Call an ambulance!” I screamed, grabbing my cell phone.

  “They’re already on the way!” someone else yelled.

  I looked into his face and said, “Thank you.” Then I turned back to my wife. I held her hands and asked her, “How do you feel?”

  She just shook her head and was unable to talk while crying in severe pain.

  “OOHHH, SHIT!” I hollered, clenching my teeth. My emotions were starting to get the best of me.

  “You need to stay calm, sir,” the guy outside the car told me. “That’s not going to do her any good. You have to keep her calm until help gets here.”

  Instead, I tried to position myself inside the car where I could try and push the door off Beverly’s leg. I couldn’t just sit there and wait for help! My wife was pregnant! The stress could have killed her and the baby!

  “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 you
r 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.

  May 1998

  JIMMIE DANIELS

  KIM 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.

  WALTER PERRY JR.

  WE 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 le
g. 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

  DENNIS BROCKENBOROUGH

  OUR wedding date was set for August 15, 1998, and the wedding band that Denise had picked out for me was dynamite! She told me she wanted me to make sure that people would notice it, just in case I went somewhere and forgot that I was married. There was no way in the world I was going to do that, because nothing in the world meant more to me than taking Denise up to that altar and saying “I do.” I never thought that I would ever anticipate a wedding so much, especially after my divorce, but stranger things have happened.