Single Mom

  By the time I left Kim’s apartment, I hadn’t gotten any sex, but I was glad I was gone! I felt like I was on death row in that place. The room was getting smaller and smaller with every question she asked me. I think that was the best thing to happen to me on my first night of work. I felt energized, like walking out of jail again. If I had gotten some sex, I would have been at least a little tired, and I probably would have wanted to call it a night by the middle of my shift.

  I ended up getting to work twenty minutes early and met Roger Collinski, the Polish manager who hired me, at the employee entrance. When I applied for the job, he interviewed me, and we got to talking about our sons and sports. Roger had four sons, and all of them played various sports. He started working the night shift so he could be around during the daytime to see more of their games and practices. I told him I wanted to be able to do the same with my son, and that he was starting high school in September. I think that conversation was what got me the job. Even though I had a record, Roger could relate to how I felt about watching Little Jay run ball. It was like I was getting another chance at being a kid again, and he understood that. I was so happy that he gave me a chance to prove myself that I didn’t want anything to go wrong.

  “Hey, you’re early,” he said to me. His manager’s office was right next to the employee locker room, so I guess he could keep an eye on any stealing. Or maybe that was my guilty conscience working overtime again.

  I said, “Yeah, I know I’m early, but as far as I’m concerned, this job might as well start at eleven. That way, I’ll never be late.”

  Roger looked at his watch and said, “In that case, you’re late right now.”

  I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “It won’t happen again, boss. And you can count on that.”

  Roger laughed and offered me some coffee. He looked like an old-time football player himself. He wasn’t as tall as I was, but he was as thick as me, and he looked as physical in his stance. He had thick graying hair and a bushy mustache to go with it.

  “Yeah, I’ll take some, with plenty of sugar and cream,” I said to him, with a big Uncle Tom grin. I learned how to butter up my employers over the years. It gave me a good reference list for when they couldn’t use me anymore. It didn’t work too well on brothers though. The brothers always thought I was trying to get over on them with some bullshit. I hated working for brothers! A lot of them were the most skeptical bosses in the world. Not all of them, though, because plenty of them were cool. I don’t want people thinking that brothers never tried to help me out, it was just more of a strained relationship most of the time because they knew more about me. Some of those white bosses, on the other hand, were some closet racists who couldn’t even talk to you with a straight face.

  Anyway, Roger gave me a locker number and a dark blue work shirt that had a PPI patch in red and white on the left. The company name was Paper Plus Incorporated. On that first night, I was basically shown the ropes. PPI had three main departments: sales, manufacturing, and shipping and handling. I worked in shipping and handling, which was mostly warehouse work. What we did was stack all of the paper to be ready for shipping, and this paper could get as high as twenty-fucking-feet in the air! If a big enough stack of it happened to fall off from the top, it could put a lump on your head the size of Quasimodo’s hunchback! Other than that, it was a pretty simple job. The hardest part of it would be to just stay up and finish. I would even get a chance to ride forklifts to load up the trucks at the loading docks. When I learned that thought of Neecy and her truck-driving boyfriend. I still couldn’t believe it. If that was the case, then she could have had me back in her life.

  “So what do you think?” Roger asked me at quitting time. It was seven forty-five in the morning. We were lounging in the locker room area. It wasn’t that many brothers working at that place, so I guess I could say I was lucky to be there.

  “I think that this coffee is gonna be my new best friend,” I joked with my new boss. I had my eighth cup of the night in my hand. Roger let the guys get as much coffee as we wanted from the machine in his office.

  He smiled and said, “Yeah, you’ll get used to it. Usually, it takes your body a good week and a half, and then you won’t need as much coffee.”

  “How much coffee do you drink?” I asked him.

  He laughed and answered, “Too much. Actually, I’m down to four cups a night now. When I can get it down to two, then I’ve really done something.”

  “How many did you start off with?”

  “How many did you have last night?” he asked me.

  “I’m closing in on ten.”

  He laughed again and said, “Yeah, I started off with about that much. But we have a five-cup minimum around here. Anything after that, you have to cough up a quarter.”

  I dug in my pocket for some change, and Roger held up a hand to stop me.

  “Jesus, Jay, I was just kidding ya’.”

  I said, “Yeah, well, that quarter thing is a good idea. I’d get down to two cups in a month with that.”

  I liked my new job, and my new boss. Roger was a straight-up kind of guy. Things were looking good for me so far, but I had to remind myself that it was only my first day. Once I got to know more of the guys on the job, that’s when I figured things would really begin to shake themselves out. Hopefully, it would be for the best.

  When I got home from work that first morning, or rather to my mother’s house in North Lawndale, I was beat. I damn near missed my stop on the train and on the bus. I was hoping that I would get enough sleep that morning to get up in time for Little Jay’s summer league championship game at four o’clock that afternoon.

  I don’t remember what time it was, because I never bothered to look, but my mother woke me up that morning to tell me that Kim had called to apologize to me. I had forgotten that we had the same damn phone number for so many years. Kim hadn’t called me in a long while! I had always called her more because I was on the go most of the time.

  “Apologize?” I mumbled to my mother. “Apologize for what?”

  She had this look of confusion on her face. She was dressed and on her way out for work. My mom had been working at nickel-and-dime jobs to pay the bills forever. She could have made the Workers Hall of Fame. A lot of black women could. I couldn’t deny that. They were some hardworking somebodies!

  “She didn’t say what for. I told her you were sleeping and she said to tell you that she apologizes for last night, when you wake up. Now I don’t know what she’s talking about. You would know before I would,” my mom fussed at me. She could have made the hall of fame for that, too. Sometimes I wished that she could just ignore me instead of fussing so much.

  She stood in the doorway as if I had an answer for her. “I don’t know what she’s talking about, Mom,” I mumbled again.

  “Well, I’m goin’ in to work,” she told me. “You got some leftover chicken and potatoes inside the refrigerator. And if you want anything else, you gotta make it yourself.”

  I figured I’d call Kim later on and find out what she was talking about, but then I got curious. I couldn’t sleep anymore. I just knew she wasn’t calling to apologize for not screwing me. She didn’t owe me anything. What the hell was wrong with that girl?! I had no idea that my loving was that strong to her. She was losing her damn mind!

  I stumbled over to the phone in the hallway, pulled it into my room by the cord, and called Kim back.

  “Yeah, this J.D. Did you just call my mother, talking about you wanted to apologize to me or something?” I cut straight through the chase.

  “Oh, yeah, I did,” she said. “Hold on for a minute.” She clicked whoever it was off her other line and came back.

  “You apologize for what?” I asked her.

  “Well, when you told me that you had that new job, and I saw how serious you were about it, I felt bad about myself, and I was sort of jealous. I mean, it all came as a shock to me, that’s all.”

  “Jealous? Jealous of what? You
got a job, and it looks like you’re doing well to me. I don’t even have my own damn place. I mean, what do you have to feel bad about? I should be the one feeling bad. I’m thirty-four years old and still living with my mom.”

  Kim didn’t make any damn sense, and she was starting to irritate me! You would think that she was the ugliest woman on the planet with the way she acted sometimes.

  “Yeah, but I was the one with the reefer, and I got all mad because you didn’t want to smoke it with me. You just wanted to be presentable on your first day of work, and I realized that I had a lot of respect for what you were trying to do with yourself. And when you talked about your son, you seemed really proud of him, and it just all took me by surprise. You looked real good last night, too.”

  I guess she was thinking that everything was going to be all fucked in my life when I came over there. Like they say, misery loves company. I just didn’t realize that Kim was still that damn miserable.

  “Hey Kim, can you answer me a question?”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “Are you enjoying your life? Because it damn sure don’t seem like it.”

  Kim paused for a long time. I was sorry I even asked her that. What the hell was I thinking?!

  “I guess you can tell, hunh?” she asked me back. She sounded real sad about it.

  “Naw, you told me last night that you knew how to enjoy yourself,” I said.

  “Jay, that’s just because I was fuckin’ mad at you last night, that’s all.”

  I think they call it manic-depressive when people go from happy to sad to angry so quickly. But what was Kim so sad and angry about?

  I asked her, “So, you mean to tell me that after all this time, you still haven’t found somebody that you could be with?” I had to hear it from her mouth instead of just assuming it.

  “I wasn’t looking for nobody.”

  “Why not?” I asked her.

  “Were you looking for somebody else?” she snapped at me. She had a good point. I wasn’t. After Neecy, I was just happy to be screwing different women.

  “Why do you like me so much then, Kim? Can you answer me that question?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  I didn’t know what else to say to her, but I knew that she wanted me to do her again. Real good! I could just tell. Kim was strung out on me like a stray cat for food.

  “You still want my company?” I asked her.

  “You know I do.”

  I started to smile and couldn’t help myself. There are so many things that people take for granted in life that it doesn’t even make any sense. For whatever reason, true love, I guess, Kim still wasn’t gonna let me go.

  “All right then,” I told her. “I’ll come back over after my son’s basketball game tonight.”

  “I’m working tonight,” she said. She wasn’t that crazy. She still had her bills to pay. She said, “Why don’t you come over after you get off in the morning and rest over here.”

  That’s a good idea! I thought. It was better than catching a train and a bus all the way back to my mother’s in the morning.

  “Are you sure?” I asked her. I didn’t want to do it if it was going to be a forced situation.

  “Look, is my name Kimberly Booker?”

  “I don’t really know. I never saw your birth certificate,” I joked with her.

  She sucked her teeth and said, “Just be here in the morning. Okay?”

  I chuckled and said, “Yeah, okay.”

  When I hung up the phone with Kim that morning it felt like I had started something I wouldn’t be able to control. The whole thing was her idea. I didn’t like that too much, but I figured I had to stop running away from shit. I was a grown fucking man, still afraid of everything I had no control over! So I told myself that no matter what happened, I wasn’t gonna run away like a punk anymore.

  Time and Space

  IMMY was having a championship basketball game, but Denise and I were not going. She said that her son’s father would be there and that it was their time and space to spend together. It made perfect sense to me, of course, but I was wondering how long it would take for that kind of thing to play itself out in our relationship. Because eventually, we could all end up at the same place at the same time. There was no way of getting around it.

  I took a seat on Denise’s living room sofa and wondered if she had even told her sons’ fathers about our relationship. Since she was running around making phone calls and cooking dinner, I had to wait awhile before I got a chance to ask her.

  It amazes me how much energy women seem to have. They cook, clean, work eight and nine hours a day, and still have time for their kids, their girlfriends, and the men in their lives.

  I sat back and relaxed, reading the Chicago news before Walter came up and took a seat beside me.

  “Have you ever driven your truck to L.A.?” he asked me. He was always asking me where I had been.

  I said, “Yeah, I’ve been to Los Angeles a few times.”

  “What does it look like out there?”

  “It’s real spread out,” I told him. “A helicopter would come in handy trying to get around out there. And the highway traffic is ridiculous. It’s too many cars out there.”

  “What do the neighborhoods look like?”

  “Flat,” I said with a laugh. “They have mountains and stuff out there, but most of your inner-city neighborhoods are on level ground. They don’t really have high-rises like Chicago has. It’s a whole lot of Mexicans, Koreans, Filipinos, and everything else out there, too. More than what we have.”

  “You ever see anybody get shot?” Walter asked me.

  I looked at him and frowned. “Why are you always asking about crime and stuff? That ain’t the only thing going on out there. Why don’t you ask me if they have a lot of swimming pools or something? The weather is always warm, that’s for sure. Or at least compared to what we get over here. Their idea of cold weather in Los Angeles is fifty-five degrees.”

  “So why do they wear long shirts and baggy jeans and stuff out there then?”

  I said, “You know what? I think you’ve been watching too many of those rap videos. They don’t all wear long shirts and baggy jeans out there. That’s just some of them.”

  “You ever get in any big accidents in your truck?” he asked me with a grin.

  The boy just wouldn’t quit. He loved talking about drama, more than any other kid I had been around.

  “Do you ever think about directing movies?” I joked with him. He was definitely the type. His imagination was out there. Walter had the small body and big mind that plenty of directors seemed to have. I started to smile, thinking about Spike Lee and the kind of questions that he probably asked as a kid.

  “Yeah, I could do that,” Walter answered with a smile.

  “What kind of movies would you make?” I asked him.

  “Umm, how ’bout a movie about a truck driver who’s like a hero, who drives from town to town and fights off the bad guys?”

  I started laughing. “That sounds more like a TV series than a movie. I do like it though.”

  “All right, all right, movies,” he said. He was getting excited by the idea. “How ’bout this then, a movie about a black gang that gets sent out in space to a deserted planet, and then they end up fighting aliens and saving the world.”

  I laughed even harder. “That idea has already been done a million different times.”

  “Not with all black people,” he argued.

  “How ’bout a black horror movie? I haven’t seen too many of them,” I suggested to him.

  “Yeah, I could have a boy who gets killed come back from the dead to get his payback.”

  I started to frown at him again.

  Walter changed his mind and said, “No, they did that already, too, in that Tales from the Hood movie. This guy got killed by the cops and then he came back from the grave to get them.”

  “You saw that?” I asked him. I remembered when the movie was being advertised,
but that was a couple of years ago. Walter would have been ten years old, or younger.

  “Yeah, we rented it from the video store. That movie was funny.”

  “Did your mother let you watch that? They had cuss words in that movie, right?”

  Walter looked toward the kitchen and grinned. “They got cuss words in a lot of movies. That don’t mean I’m gonna do it though,” he said.

  “Good,” I told him. “And you remember that you said that.”

  Denise finally walked out from the kitchen and told us that dinner was ready. We both stood up and joined her in the dining room to eat. Denise made sure that we washed our hands first.

  “I already washed my hands,” Walter told her.

  I hadn’t, so I went inside the bathroom to take care of business. When I got back out to the dining room table, Walter was talking about playing tennis.

  “Do you have any rackets?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, my father bought me some rackets on Sunday,” he told me.

  I nodded. That reminded me to ask Denise if she had spread the word about us. I planned on remaining cordial and biding my time until I got a chance to ask her in private, but Walter just kept on running his mouth.

  “Hey, Brock, I shot a forty-nine in miniature golf on Sunday. I’m getting closer to your forty-two record. My father got a fifty-four.”

  “That’s Mr. Brock,” Denise corrected him.