My doctor did know that I was pregnant again, and when I tell you that she was on my heels, she was all over me like white on rice about things I needed to do to ensure this pregnancy was as healthy as possible.
Eventually I swallowed the “pill” and digested the reality that we were having another baby. “Yay!”
It seemed like once I accepted the responsibility of being a new mother again, the weeks flew by. Everything was all good until January 2, 2018. I can remember so vividly, because it was Dakota’s first birthday. I couldn’t believe it; I had an appointment to get an ultrasound done on Dakota’s actual birthday with all those memories of the day Ma rushed me to the hospital. I kept thinking, How is it only a year later? My whole life has shifted.
We still had family in town who came for the New Year’s party and to celebrate Dakota’s first year of life, so I had my aunt and cousin join me at the doctor’s office. I was told I would have to have a cervical cerclage done because my cervix was already beginning to open up. The tears immediately started streaming down my face while I was thinking, Why can’t I carry my babies full term?
My doctor took a look and patted me on the knee for me to sit up. First thing she said was, “You have good instincts Mama!” She only knew from looking at my chart about Dakota’s birth, but didn’t know anything about the instincts I had been forced to mature into for the past year. She explained that my uterus was weak from my pregnancy with Dakota and still hadn’t properly healed. She said that if I hadn’t come in for an ultrasound on that very day, I would likely have delivered my baby early or have had a miscarriage.
They did the cervical cerclage to stitch up and fortify my uterus as an outpatient procedure, right then and there. Then my doctor said something that is hard for an Energizer bunny to pull off. “Shirley, you are going to have to be on bed rest.” I started crying again. I was like, Damn, why can’t I carry my babies? I got to get stitched up, I got to be on bed rest. It was a whole additional experience for my body and mind, on top of the pregnancy and having an infant at home.
For some reason, women feel like it’s a sin and a shame to tell anybody that we are tired after we have had our babies. It doesn’t mean you aren’t the most grateful overjoyed person to have received the gift of life. It means your body either turned itself inside out or somebody turned your body inside out and you are supposed to recover from that. But the baby has arrived, so rather than recover, you have to hop to it.
It means in the case of women with preemies that right after having your body turned inside out you begin dealing with the trauma of the life and possible death of your own child. The mind and the body under the best of circumstances go through war to bring this gift of life, and then everybody looks at you like, Chop chop. Time to show you can feed, diaper, and nurture, when you haven’t even put yourself back together yet. Then if you have more than one child . . . I can’t even finish that sentence. Where did I even get the mentality that I can just do whatever needs to be done no matter what? Where do any of us get that mentality from?
It’s because we live in a society that can block the path at every turn at getting a better education, getting the resources to support our children, finding the love that we are worthy of. Being in survival mode to duck and dodge and strategize to get basic needs met can make anybody feel like they can do anything as long as it takes, with undying endurance. But that’s a myth, Black women aren’t machines. We wear out and, eventually, all that fight catches up with us.
10
Doing What You Have to Do
As a young woman, I had to get shit done or get caught without a place to live, or without a job. I learned a long time ago to be on the hustle at all times, but I never learned to turn it off.
After my mother passed, I don’t know where I got the strength and courage and the ability to be able to do everything. In the aftermath of the pain, I was the Energizer bunny. I had to approve her dress and her makeup. I took her clothes to the funeral home, her favorite church outfit, that green two-piece dress suit with gold trim and jacket that she wore to sing with her rehab choir. They put her hair in a little Afro because it started falling out real bad from the cancer. It was a quick turnaround, not dragging it out two weeks waiting for people to come from down South.
I was so happy about all the people who came. My siblings and close family members were in the front row. My girlfriends and coworkers from the hair shop were there too. People from the rehab in Brooklyn were there. It was an outpouring of love. She was loved by so many people.
I had a smile on my face, like I was entertaining folks at a party. I was strangely happy because I had seen her suffer my whole life, and now she was free. I stood up strong and proud of who she had become in the year that she was clean. I got to see all of it. I saw her live, and become healed, and lose her health all over again. I was happy that she was free from not being able to wipe her own ass. That’s what gave me strength, and it would have broken anybody else down to puzzle pieces.
I sat down in the front row next to Tokunbo and Darryl. Everybody said their word or two about what Mom meant to them, and I just kept smiling, because I was happy knowing that her spirit could hear all of that praise. When everybody had said what they wanted to say Bishop Glanton spoke the Word and it was time for the processional, when everybody walks up with the music playing and goes to the casket to touch her hand, take a last look and say goodbye, then come back around to the immediate family for hugs or condolences.
I sat there with my brothers, smiling and ready to do my part of shaking people’s hands or giving them a hug. The song that played next was “Yes” by Shekinah Glory Ministry. It stirred the memory and the emotions I felt that day when my mother stood in the place where she now lay. Her choir singing, “My soul says yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
Family and friends went up to the casket and walked back to greet me, and I was ready to console them instead of them consoling me, but I just kept hearing “Yes, yes, yes,” and seeing Mom so happy singing with her mouth wide open and, out of nowhere, I broke down, screaming. I leaned back and everything that I had in my soul eternally, everything I had been strong about since I was a little girl and strong about for everybody else, even in that situation, just broke. I wailed from my gut to the ceiling of the church, to Heaven, to God.
I screamed and screamed and screamed, and it was a ripple effect. My brother Tokunbo started hollering, then Darryl broke down. PopaAuntie and Lynette tried to console me, but for those few minutes, I was gone. It was as if all of my emotions hit me all at once in that moment.
I was weak and out of it after that. Spent, empty, as if I had left my body. Everything was gone. I don’t remember anything that came after that moment at Mama’s funeral.
My mom died at forty-four. She didn’t even get to live a young woman’s life. Only clean one year. I felt robbed, not just for myself, but also for my younger brother. I felt lost. Where do I pick up now? For the first few weeks, I was in a daze, going to work at the hair salon, coming home to Lynette’s basement, just numb with hurt and confusion, wondering what happened.
One day I was resting after work and Lynette came to the basement. “Shirley we need to have a conversation. I’m going to move down South. I’ll make sure you are set up when the time comes.” I was half-asleep. So I didn’t feel that I had just been hit in the head. I was like, “That’s cool. That’s cool. You know me. I’m gonna stay here. Go back to school.” I fell back to sleep only half-understanding.
The next morning before light, I was just snoozing away, and I heard hustling and bustling over my head. I heard Lynette’s footsteps coming down in the basement and I looked at my alarm. It was three a.m. “Shirley, we gonna leave and go down South now. You good to stay here another month.”
“What?” I was half-asleep and couldn’t make too much sense out of what was happening. I just said, “Okay,” trying to be nice. I went back to sleep again and woke up a few hours later. I went upstairs and it was empty,
no table, no bed, no couch. Them niggas wiped it clean. I was by myself. I just had my room and a toilet. I had no money. I was working at the hair shop and all of my money was for helping with the bills. I was like, Them niggas left for real.
I was in shock. I went back downstairs and lay down and woke up at eight a.m. because someone was ringing the doorbell. I went up the stairs, and I heard somebody walking through the house. I was scared, about to shit my pants. I opened the door from the basement into the apartment and it was the landlord, who was this African man. He said, all mean, “Where is your mom?”
I said, “She left a couple of hours ago to go down South. She didn’t tell you?”
He said, raising his voice and waving his hand, “Your mom is backed up on the rent, ducking my calls.” He had been hustled by my cousin.
I said, “I’m good to be here though right? Because she said that.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “No! You have until noon.”
He turned around all matter-of-fact. “I’ll be back at noon to padlock it.” He thought Lynette was my mother, so did I, and he took everything out on me that had transpired between them.
I was like, Shirley, do what you got to do. You know how we do, just pick up and roll on when life gets rough.
I called Lateef, the guy I was dating. The hustle was on. He used his truck and I took my clothes and left my IKEA bedroom furniture because there wasn’t any time for all that. Quianna’s mother offered to let me stay with her. She had extra space because Quianna was away at college. So I stayed there in the attic.
The period from 2005 through 2006 was definitely the year of being required to do so much that I didn’t even have time to deal with my feelings. I just knew I had to do what I had to do, and the automatic survival button was in the on position.
So many of us go through the pileup of birth, death, job loss, home loss, major life hurdles with no time to do anything but be in superwoman mode, and our emotions get bottled up and start to make us sick. When Mama died and Lynette moved, I remember people saying, “Don’t hold it in, don’t hold it in.” I don’t know what I was supposed to do with it. I had to live, make money, pay bills, have fun, just like any other twenty-one-year-old Black girl.
I gave it to God, but that didn’t keep it all from settling into my blood, didn’t keep me from reaching for and wanting things to be good with family. That’s all I wanted, family, and to follow what Mama said about staying away from the streets and making something of myself. So right then and there, I started holding on and holding up as a grown-ass woman, because I thought that’s what grown-ass women do. But life doesn’t stop throwing you curveballs. How much holding on and holding up is a woman supposed to do?
11
Postpartum Times Two
In February 2018, I finally had to quit running here and there. The doctor told me “bed rest” in January and in order to carry Denver to full term, it was time to sit my Energizer bunny butt down. I didn’t have a choice; in addition to the cervical cerclage, I had the same life-threatening group beta strep infection that flared up during Dakota’s birth. So I’m in the bed, getting weekly antibiotic shots in my buttocks, while taking care of my nine-year-old and my preemie. I couldn’t have sex. I was on two different vaginal medications that JR had to put up in there every night for me. Where was my womanhood, my body? History seemed like it was repeating itself with more force. It was like I had gone back into battle when my wounds from the previous battle had not yet healed.
I’ll spare y’all the months of watching way too much reality TV, way too much yelling at JR and Demi, and way too many nights trying to sing Dakota to sleep. Luckily, our next baby was carried to term and came into the world a healthy girl. JR and I named her Denver after the city where our love first took root and blossomed.
I was blessed, but I was lost. Think about the short timeline from sitting around on New Year’s Eve only four months pregnant, shooting the breeze, to a year and half later. I had two infants and a preteen, and my body had been through hell. It’s like I went outside of a door where there was nothing on the other side, and the door shut behind me. But y’all know how it is, the world of things that got to get done just kept on spinning whether I came along for the ride or not.
I was raised to believe I was capable of cooking three meals a day, cleaning, being strong, and getting it done. So that’s what I did, until I was “doing” without stopping to assess the wear on my mind and body over the year. Self-care wasn’t something I had modeled for me. The women in my family just “did” until the day when they couldn’t “do” anymore. And all that doing was catching up with me.
I was yelling at everybody all the time. I didn’t have tolerance for anything or anybody and had two crying babies. Poor Demi was doing the best she could to help out. She had followed in her mother’s footsteps and was a good big sister to her siblings. But still, things began to topple. JR had to be on the road, so I didn’t have him right there as my emotional rock, somebody to vent to. That’s when I started accusing him of having an affair.
Denver was about to turn one. Dakota was a year and a half. JR told me to reach out for help. I remember it was summertime. And I won’t forget that JR had just won the Championship with the Eastern finals. After all of that, he just wanted to spend some time with the fellas and go to Vegas. He went. Me being the emotional being that I was at the time, and the postpartum depression setting in double with the two babies, I started calling him and harassing him. I accused him of all sorts of foolishness and affairs. “You just want to go out there and be with somebody else. You want to leave me here with these two babies.”
At the end of the day it was very selfish on my part because he had told me, “Let’s start reaching out for help.” He had seen everything I was going through in the house with the girls and he would do what he could, but a mother is a mother and the kids are going to keep reaching for her. The reality that he kept telling me to get help and I wouldn’t stands out in my mind, in retrospect, along with the pressure of being a new homeowner.
We had just purchased a house in New Jersey. So another move with babies and a preteen. “There’s money babe. Hire someone to help.” But the help I needed was more than just logistical. Things weren’t right in my mind. In my head there was just the pileup and him wanting to go away.
I made it an unpleasant getaway weekend for him. I was calling, accusing, nagging, texting unpleasant messages, nitpicking. I wouldn’t let it go long enough for him to enjoy himself, all because I was unhappy with myself.
I was depressed, which wasn’t a thing anybody in my family grew up talking about. I had feelings I didn’t know what to do with. So I projected it all onto him, rather than saying, Shirley you need help. Hire somebody or something. But it was easier to blame him. He came back at me saying, “I’m not doing anything wrong! When I get back, we have to talk, because you not acting like yourself.” He noticed it in me, and I started to notice it as well. That’s when I began to realize things weren’t right, and I was starting to spiral and started asking myself, What’s wrong Shirley? What’s wrong? I was hitting the wall.
There’s been times in my and JR’s lives and in our marriage where yes, it was him making things how they were and causing issues, but this time, it was me. I just wasn’t willing to get help even though I was falling apart.
Then my body just said no more. One day, I was up, changing diapers, trying to make sure Demi got on the bus, zooming around like a robot, and my sciatic nerve, the single largest nerve in the body, spoke up. I just buckled at the knees and that was that. I couldn’t do anything even if I wanted to. I was forced to call on my cousin and my niece for help with changing diapers. When they left every day, I kept insisting I could handle it from there with Demi’s help.
I was still holding up the exterior of the beautiful wife of an NBA All-Star—hair and makeup on point. I was continuing the work I wanted to do for other mothers with preemies. I was packing boxes for UPS
to make sure other moms could have baby-monitor cameras in the NICU. This part was helping to keep my mind and heart happy. But my body just kept screaming, Sit your ass down!
Both Dakota and Denver survived difficult pregnancies, that was a blessing. But now I was fighting for my mental health.
Pain talks to us, to let us know we are not invincible. The stresses of another difficult pregnancy, the lack of recovery time from Dakota’s birth, and a lifetime pileup of stressors rained down on me. And that was the start of a downward spiral. You know how sometimes you are long past the moment of falling apart, but you keep moving and doing, so you never even feel anything? I was laid up in back pain trying to manage my house from the bed and found myself sliding full speed downhill into depression, unable to function or ask for help. Eventually I had to hire somebody to help me with the kids because, like it or not, I was in so much pain in my body and in my mind, I couldn’t move. Thank God for modern medicine. But medication and the chiropractor were temporary fixes that set the Energizer bunny back in motion.
It was the end of summer, and our regular schedule was for us to leave New Jersey and return to Ohio for JR to get ready for training camp. His little break was about to end. Time to move again: pack the girls’ lives back up, hustle back to Ohio, more mommy stress.
When we first got to Ohio we had to stay in a hotel, because our lease at our previous home there had expired. Me in the hotel with the preteen and the babies, it was a lot. I was so unhappy. That’s what I mostly remember, because with that kind of depression the memory gets foggy too. We finally found a townhouse, and as the wife it was my job to get it situated and decorated. All of this should have been the good stuff. I should have hired the help I needed with the kids, but I was raised to be a strong Black girl and now a strong Black woman.
I was walking around with the same mentality that I have to do everything. I was finally in a situation where the financial freedom was there. I had the ability to pick up the phone and hire whoever I wanted. But I just did not do it, and it caused me to be in a situation where I was drowning, unable to keep my head above water for any decent amount of time.
Mama Bear Page 9