Mama Bear

by Shirley Smith

  JR tried to console me with his sleepy deep voice, “Don’t worry about it babe. Don’t worry.” In retrospect, here I was a few weeks fresh in a relationship and already coming to my man with the bullshit. He must have been thinking, Wait, she ain’t got no father present. Who she thought was her father ain’t her father. . . . I didn’t know it at the time, but I was taking it to him first hoping he would just soothe that daddy-loss and fill in.

  I went back to his place in Colorado, where we set up a life that was domestic and everything just flowed, him on the road a lot, me at home making things nice for us. I put my daddy concerns away so I could try to just enjoy the life God had blessed me with. When I look at it now, I see that I was making decisions and moving around with my daddy concerns in tow the whole time. They say trouble don’t last always, but they forget to tell you that sometimes trouble from every area of your life can flare up at the same time, like roads that all cross in one jumbled-up traffic jam.

  In 2009 the happy roads and the hellish roads in my and JR’s lives met up. I found out I was pregnant. We were so excited. I was twenty-five years old, about to have my first baby, the same age my mother was when she had me. We said if it’s a girl, we will call her Demi, because we both liked “D” names for girls, and it would be easy on a job application—Demi, not something like Deminiqua. If it was a boy that would be a no-brainer: Earl Smith Jr. III. We would keep the male line of his family going.

  That’s when all of the questions of being the daughter of a man I didn’t know started tapping on my shoulder again. It wasn’t long before we found out we were having a girl. I needed to know who I was so I could explain to my firstborn who she was. Like, I was getting freckles. I was in the car looking in the vanity mirror. Will my baby have freckles? My mom didn’t have them. Where were these coming from? My father?

  I started digging and wouldn’t let it go. The first person I called was my mother’s twin sister, Aunt Anita. She didn’t want to vomit it all out at once. “Well you know your mother was messing with this man Gary.” I asked my older brother, Darryl, “Who is Gary?” and he paused like, “Oh, shit.”

  I asked him, “Is he supposed to be my father?” He was like, “Sis I ain’t gonna lie. You look just like that nigga.”

  13

  Seeking My Missing Father

  I want to tell all the women reading this that sometimes in life we have to move out of the way and release all expectations. We have the ability to walk around and have expectations of people because of other losses. We don’t even know if they are capable of reaching these expectations, and eventually the expectations come back around and bite us in the ass.

  Our parents are only human, with limitations just like us. My hope for the readers of my journey is that you can move out of the way and remove all expectations as you grow into the person you want to be. If you are an adult who grew up with an absent parent, my advice for you is to do your own search.

  In life you have to play your part, because otherwise someone will likely point the finger back at you about what you didn’t do. “You knew you had a father out there but you didn’t go search for him.” If you do meet your father, he might even say, “You didn’t try to find me,” while all the while you were expecting him to find you.

  I try in my life to make myself responsible for getting what I need without exerting myself to the point of denying I need help. When it comes to wondering who your daddy is, do your own search rather than relying too heavily on what other people say and on an expectation that he will find you, or someone will just drop the knowledge of his existence, or lack thereof, on you.

  Colorado, February 2009

  All these people were walking around knowing the truth my whole life, but not me. There was no other information that any of my family would give me, or at least no information they were willing to give my worried pregnant self. “Just let it go Shirley.”

  That February I was lumbering around at our place in Colorado with my nine-month self. JR was on the road and I was alone. I called Aunt Anita. “I don’t have nobody. JR is on the road.” She didn’t let me finish. “Of course, I’ll come, but I have to be back in a week. You better hope that baby is on time.” She hopped on a flight from Alabama and I went into labor.

  We went straight to the hospital and it was a false alarm. They said that I wasn’t dilated. “You have to wait until the contractions are three minutes apart.” What did I know? A Baby Story on TLC didn’t prepare me for feeling anxious and I was certain that those first labor pains were just the beginning of what would feel much more painful. The doctors also didn’t know that I was alone except for Aunt Anita, and the clock was ticking.

  I told her, “I’m really nervous because I don’t want to be here by myself.” I googled “how to speed up labor and delivery.” I took a tablespoon full of castor oil and the next day I started having contractions more frequently. That day, it was snowing so hard. My aunt had just gotten her driver’s license, late in life, but she wanted it because my mom died without having hers.

  Aunt Anita said, “Shirley, I’m scared. I can’t drive to the hospital in this.”

  It was past dark, cold as hell and snowing like crazy. We have to do what we have to do. I drove myself to the hospital with Aunt Anita as the passenger.

  At the hospital I was in labor for about eight hours. I would get up, walk up and down the hall, talk to Demi in my belly every time I got a contraction. “It’s okay baby girl.” Then I would go back to my room for the one minute of peace between contractions and stare at the TV hoping to see JR in Miami playing.

  At one point, the nurse asked, “Do you want an epidural?” I didn’t want any medicine. I wanted a natural birth without drugs. I went from walking and watching TV to another routine, in and out of the hot tub while eating popsicles. Then it was time. I was yelling to my aunt, “Hold my leg up!”

  She said, “I don’t know who the fuck you think you yelling at. Calm down.” We weren’t Mom and PopaAuntie, but the odd couple doing the best we could.

  I started pushing and Demi came one, two, three, just like that, easy peasy. Aunt Nita cut the cord.

  Later in the night, I was lying there feeding Demi her first milk and JR was on TV just grinning from ear to ear for the camera. “My baby Demi Smith was born tonight at Rose Medical Center.” I was in the hospital two days and then my aunt had to split, but JR’s mother, Ma, came to town. In my head I was like, It’s okay that he’s not here. My man has a profession where he has to be absent. It’s good, it’s all good. I soothed myself, Shirley, y’all talked about this, you know there was a chance that he might not be there when you have the baby. I stuffed the feelings under the rug and moved on.

  It all went smoothly, but a cascade of other shit started interfering no matter how much I allowed myself to just accept things as they were. People were saying I was a gold digger because I had JR’s baby and I’m from the hood. JR and I were babies ourselves, and I didn’t want to add pressure on his career, so I did the best I could to ignore that negativity.

  At the end of the day all any of us want is to be loved, even if we have to jeopardize things from our sense of self to get it. I didn’t know that I was repeating something to get something. My mother was with a married man when I was conceived. She stayed quiet to not draw friction in his relationship, to not draw friction in her own family. I was doing that in some similar forms. “Shirley just be quiet, don’t ruffle feathers.” I didn’t know my worth yet, so I pressed forward into spaces in my relationship, being quiet when I needed to speak up.

  And don’t you know, you put out one fire and another one blazes up? I’m telling you, 2009 was blow-by-blow, minute-by-minute, joys and pains.

  14

  Paternity Crossroads

  When Demi was six months old, our little family of three was summoned away from our home in Colorado, back to New Jersey. JR was being charged with the wrongful death of his best friend, who died two years before in the car acciden
t that changed his life. Other than the day he came to my housewarming party a month before his accident, I realized that I have only known the JR that walked away from the accident where his friend died. He survived with what seemed to only be external scratches, but there has always been something worn down in his eyes.

  The court appearance was short, but full of cameras, reporters, and questions about JR’s career. At the time he was averaging 15 points per game for the Denver Nuggets. He was to serve ninety days in jail in New Jersey, which got reduced to thirty days and community service. “Okay, baby, you can do this and I’m gonna be right here.” I stayed in New Jersey visiting family so I could be nearby.

  I was on Goldsmith back in my apartment with my brothers. A good place to return to for the month while Demi and I waited out JR’s thirty days so we could go home to Colorado. One day, I was doing my cousin Shantel’s hair, and you know how it is? If you are doing hair or getting your hair done, you shoot the breeze. She was like, “Shirley what is happening with JR and the court case?”

  I basically wanted to change the subject. I just told her, “You can go online it’s all there, the whole world knows.” She pulled out the laptop and got to scrolling through. I looked down over her shoulder and saw the picture of all the cameras in the courtroom and me sitting there with Demi up on my shoulder. Shantel didn’t stop there, she just kept clicking and clicking, the way the Internet will take you deeper and deeper.

  I told her, “Maybe we can look up some ways to help JR out while he’s in there.” She stopped me.

  “Shirley, did you know about this?” She had clicked to some gossip blog. It was a website that talked about this woman Myra who had a baby by JR.

  I just dismissed it. “Girl that gossip shit is what he and I live with constantly. Don’t pay too much attention.” Shantel didn’t say anything, just sat with the laptop and I kept braiding. We were quiet long enough for me to start thinking, This shit better not be true. This baby and my baby are the same age. That would mean he was messing with somebody at the same time that our child was conceived.

  Shantel broke the silence. “If you want me to, cousin, I’ll reach out and find out more. I’ll reach out to her.”

  I shrugged it off and I was like, “Sure call her or email her or whatever. It is what it is.”

  I tried not to think about it, but the next day it was eating away at me, especially the timeline, things he and I were doing the month Demi was conceived, thinking about when he was on the road. I knew our relationship had to be about honesty, but then I got caught in thoughts of How can I bring this to him when he is already going through such a hard time and just trying to get through these thirty days? I reached out to get a message through for him to call me with his phone time and he did.

  I was uneasy on the phone between us. “Demi is fine. Things are good with everybody.” I wanted to do the right thing and not put more on his plate while he was in there. Then I started thinking, Why do I have to hold this and go there by myself? If it’s true, it’s something he did, not me.

  He knew something was wrong. “Seem like you holdin back, babe. You okay, everything okay?”

  I said, “I just have to ask you something. Shantel found some shit online that you might have a child the same age as Demi.” It was quiet for a while.

  He was like, “I heard something like that. I have to take a blood test.” He didn’t deny it, just went straight to the blood test solution. He was like, “If it’s true, are you gonna leave me?” He started reasoning, “If you leave me, I understand, but please don’t leave me.”

  I didn’t know what to do. It was just another thing. Another thing.

  On Sundays after church, everybody would go to Aunt Brenda’s apartment, but that week, I was over there every day. I was looking for the next best thing to a mama. I would have Demi on my hip and would be over there cooking and cleaning and what have you. I found a picture of this baby on MySpace. Her name was Peyton. She was in a car seat and I was like, “Yes, that is his child.” In that same way that my brother Darryl told me, “You look just like that nigga.”

  I printed it out and kept helping with the housework. Then, I just fell apart. I sat down with Demi on my lap on Aunt Brenda’s bed, holding that photo and looking at it, and looking at Demi, letting the reality set in. Aunt Brenda came in and I told her everything. She didn’t say anything. She just held me, and I soaked snot and tears into her shirt. Aunt Brenda took Demi in the front room and I lay down in the dark, no appetite, and curled up in the fetal position. I just wept and cried not even knowing at the time the full extent of the paternal-loss trauma that I was feeling.

  Life had to move on, one foot in front of the other. I just told JR to get the test, and things moved on. Honestly, I cannot remember him telling me it was his. It was just what I already knew that became the reality. JR has another child the same age as Demi. I felt like I couldn’t leave him while he was down and in jail dealing with the misery of a huge loss.

  One of my generational curses is that my siblings and I all have different fathers. I wasn’t bringing that along. I didn’t want my child to have that even if it meant I didn’t have another kid after Demi. But God gave me a purpose and put obstacles in my plan that I learned to turn into bonuses. In order to hold my values in place about no multiple-daddy drama, I had to shift my way of responding to those unexpected absurd surprises that so many of us experience. Peyton became my bonus daughter.

  After JR served his thirty days, we went home to Denver, and life went on as normal. One weekend, while he was busy with training. I decided to go home to New Jersey to feed two birds with one hand. The plan was to visit my family in New Jersey, and JR’s mother was having a hysterectomy and I knew I could be a big help. I was also thinking it would be a good time to do more research on this man who was my father, something that had started nagging at me again.

  It started out as a short weekend for me and Demi that turned into a life change. JR and I were talking on the phone, doing the daily rundown of how was training, how is the baby, and he didn’t skip a beat with what he had obviously rehearsed. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you and Demi to come home.”

  There was a long-ass pause. I was like, Am I hearing this right? I was like, “You don’t think it’s a good idea for me and your daughter to come home?”

  Couples have different versions of how things go. In JR’s version we had an argument. In my version, this news came out of the blue. I was stuck in New Jersey with only a weekend’s worth of things for myself and Demi. “JR? We live there. All of my things are there at home.” I had to tell my brothers, “We not just visiting. I’m moving back in. Me and my baby.”

  A few days later my belongings arrived via express shipment.

  I had quit both of my jobs when I moved to Colorado, so I was going to need to figure myself out from ground zero. I was like, Shirley, pick yourself up. Where did you leave off? I did how I do, I kept it moving. I kept myself busy to avoid dealing with those intense emotions of neglect and abandonment. I put Demi in day care and went back to school part-time at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, while employed as a pre-K teacher in Newark. And I couldn’t help it. I went on a mission to find my biological father. Something in me needed to know that I mattered.

  Demi was a little version of me. I was a baby once. Did my daddy ever hold me? Did he ever look at me and sing to me the way JR did with Demi? Did I ever matter in that way?

  My aunt was like, “Shirley, you don’t even know him.”

  But I told her, “That’s my father. I need to meet him especially since he’s alive walking around out there. Maybe he wants to meet me too.”

  Wasn’t nobody trying to just leave it alone. I was like a dog with a bone once I started looking, and it didn’t take any time. And guess what? He lived near my apartment on Goldsmith Avenue. I ended up back where I belonged, but with a child of my own on my hip who I wasn’t trying to have be out here in this life with no family. I
started focusing my energy that way so I wouldn’t chicken out on meeting him. I told myself, Demi has a grandfather. I need her to meet him.

  15

  True Father

  The other parent or the aunts and uncles in your life might be, “Hush, hush. What goes on in this house stays in this house.” You might not get real answers from them because they are protecting themselves and think they are protecting you from pain, so you may run in circles going nowhere until you do your own research.

  I didn’t have a mold for me to healthily seek a husband. I was a woman who had an absent father. I had to do that work of finding the answers about my father or finding what answers I could. It is only recently that I can see how that effort to find my own answers about my dad has paid off.

  New Jersey, 2010

  I was interviewing people and wrapping them up in my search. Aunt Kathy said she used to see Gary back in the day when I was a baby and would say, “You know that’s your daughter.”

  I interrogated my mother’s twin sister, Aunt Anita, on a regular basis. “Y’all used to roll together. Y’all probably switched men and everything. I know you know something.” Finally, Aunt Anita found him on MySpace and told him, “Shirley has questions. I think you owe it to her to sit down and have a conversation,” but nothing.

  Most people’s stories weren’t getting me any closer to finding him until Sissy, the woman who had been my mother’s best friend, told me he had a white van with red trim and that he was a janitor at a gym. One of my girlfriends and I would ride through the hood looking for him, and then Sissy saw Gary and told him I was trying to get in contact with him. She followed up with him and talked to him on the phone about me. Then I got a chance to talk to him. That’s when I found out this man was married to the same woman since way before I was born. I was a love child.