by Omar Tyree
Since Denise was nearly halfway through the pregnancy, abortion was out of the question. She told me she didn’t believe in abortions anyway. She said that it was for selfish people who had no heart. And she was right, because I was scared to death, and all I could think about from that night on was how much I wanted to be by myself, while focusing on my schoolwork and my future.
A Hardworking Woman
UT see, your situation is unusual for a single mother. Most of us are struggling just to put food on the table. You don’t have that problem. The only thing you need a man for is your social life, really,” an angry mother snapped at me. She had brought her two kids along with her to our monthly meeting place at the Harold Washington Library Center in downtown Chicago. Nikita was there with my niece Cheron, and my sister definitely didn’t need to hear comments concerning my healthy income. She already had enough excuses not to straighten out her life.
A lot of the women in our group looked at me as some kind of Cinderella story, and I got so tired of being in the middle of things that I didn’t know how to respond to it anymore. On one hand, I sympathized with single mothers because I was one, but on the other hand, I wanted to tell many of the mothers there to stop whining so much and get on with their lives. I wasn’t going to apologize to them for having my own money! I worked damned hard for it! Yet, a lot of them wanted to view my success as unrealistic. I’m not saying that every woman had to own her own business, but to provide for your kids, you at least had to be motivated to do all that you could.
Sometimes it felt as if I were being punished for my success. I was being punished for being a single mother, never being married, making a living, staying positive about my future, and for being able to live through hell and actually come out on top!
Camellia stepped in with all of her large frame and came to my rescue. “Look, it doesn’t matter what kind of job you have or how much money you make, if you’re a single mother, there’s gonna be some common issues that we all face. This organization isn’t just for poor mothers, it’s for all mothers.”
When Camellia said that, the two white women in our midst looked relieved. It wasn’t as if they were that wealthy, it was just good for them to hear Camellia’s inclusive position. They had only been to two of our previous meetings, and every time the sisters got a little emotional, they looked as if they were ready to haul ass out of the room. Sometimes, I felt as alienated as they did, and Camellia and I were the ones who had started the group.
“Well, we don’t all have everything in common in here, that’s all I’m saying,” the spiteful sister responded.
Women like her were exactly why I need strength to keep going. Somebody had to be strong enough to show them that they weren’t helpless, and spitting out envious venom wasn’t going to help anyone.
Camellia went on and said, “I think it’s important for us to reestablish what the Single Mothers’ Organization is all about, in order to stop us from getting off track.
“We are organizing for the common goals of day care, health care, affordable housing, personal health, and just having someone to talk to about the everyday hurdles of being a single mom. And no one issue will be handled as more important than the others because they are all important and interchangeable at different times in our lives.
“One mother’s struggle for food and shelter is another mother’s struggle for health care and day care. The need for medicine and a kid’s emotional and educational development are just as important as food and clothing in the overall scheme of things.”
The SMO was approaching forty members, most of whom were black women. There were some long faces and mumbling about Camellia’s comments, but no one stepped up and said anything. Camellia was no doubt our leader, and she ran a tight ship. In another society, she could have easily been a queen. However, in Chicago, in 1997, she was a single woman with kids, like all the rest of us in that room.
By the end of the meeting, I was worn out, from my headache to my throbbing feet. Honestly, I was getting tired of coming. Misery loves company, and there were too many women in the group who wanted to be miserable instead of empowered. They didn’t want to hear my story of self-determination, hard work, and triumph; they wanted to hear my little sister’s story of how some no-good man, and the rest of the world, had done her wrong and messed up her life.
They didn’t want to hear how Camellia and I, both single mothers with two children, had worked out the struggles of parenthood. We had alternated work schedules, watched each other’s kids, and shared a crappy two-bedroom apartment on the South Side before eventually running out of room. That was eight years ago, and we had done a lot of growing up and soul-searching since then.
I was the one who kept all of our finances in order while Camellia, as Jesse Jackson loves to say, kept hope alive by convincing me that we could make it. I wasn’t always a confident and driven woman, but Camellia kept reminding me that confidence can be built by simply believing in yourself and doing things successfully.
Math was always one of my favorite subjects in high school, especially applying how it relates to real life. Somebody had to account for the total cost of diapers, baby clothes, blankets, milk, groceries, educational toys, visits to the pediatrician, and medicine and ointment for the many infant ailments and rashes. If you factor in the cost of day care, things really start to add up. That’s not including your personal monetary needs. Needless to say, I did a hell of a job at keeping us afloat economically, and Camellia kept us looking on the bright side of things emotionally.
Before I knew it, she was pushing me toward a career where I could utilize my financial talents. I didn’t take her challenge seriously at first, but then she started calling around to financial institutions and asking them how “a talented friend” could break into the business of being a financial analyst of some sort. I actually received a few callbacks, and ended up participating in plenty of seminars around Chicago, sponsored mostly by life insurance companies.
It amazed me just how much more I knew about money than people who had college degrees and earned salaries in the high five digits or more. A college degree didn’t mean that any of those people had to stretch a dollar as far as I had. When I learned about money markets, mutual funds, compounding interest, and various types of credit, loans, and low interest rates, I formed an entirely different outlook on my economic future.
I figured that if people who knew less about money than I did could maintain wealthy lifestyles and have nice homes and drive expensive cars, then I knew that I could turn my life around and get with the program. All I needed was an opportunity.
Despite how many of those financial analysts and consultants told me that I really didn’t need a degree, just a few courses in finance and on-the-job training and experience, I still wanted validation; a college degree. Being a single black mother, born and raised in the West Side of a huge city like Chicago, I knew that I would not be taken seriously unless I had that piece of paper in hand. And I knew that a college degree would give me a much stronger voice.
To make a long story short, some of the financial people I met, who were impressed with me, were able to pull some strings and get me a sizable grant to attend Chicago State University, to study business administration. If I got anything above a 3.0 GPA, I was told that I could qualify for a full scholarship. I ended up graduating in three years, magna cum laude, with a 3.65 GPA and had job interviews lined up at several insurance companies. But I wanted to take things even further than that. So what I did was accept the job offer from the highest bidder, and worked for a few years to get my feet wet while saving money and establishing credit. Then I went and got my insurance license from the state of Illinois to become an independent broker and got a low-interest business loan to open up my own office. My plan was to go after as many single mothers in the community that I could, and reeducate them on money and opportunity. In the meantime, I talked Camellia into enrolling at Northeastern University Center for Inner-City Studies fo
r a degree in social work.
Camellia always had bright ideas. It was her idea to work together as parents, to use my talents professionally, and to start an organization to help other single mothers. It took Camellia a little longer than it took me to get a degree, but she did finish, and was immediately hired to work for the city government. The year of her graduation, 1993, we began planning the SMO. And that was our story: two Cinderellas. Then again, I can’t really relate Camellia and myself to Cinderella, because no Prince Charming did a damn thing for us!
“So, I guess the meeting didn’t go how you thought it would tonight, hunh?” my sister Nikita asked me. I was driving her and my niece back to my mother’s house on the West Side. Mom simply refused to move. She said she didn’t want to be a burden to me since I was doing so well. I gave her money whenever I could though, and a lot of that ended up going to Nikita and Cheron.
“I guess not,” I mumbled. I didn’t have too many words for my sister that night. She was itching to ask me for some money, but I didn’t give her the chance. I was tired of giving her handouts. She was still living at home and barely working; twenty-seven years old, and turning twenty-eight. I didn’t even get out of the car to go in the house and say Hi to my mother. I didn’t have time to stop. I had to get back home to my sons. I was so glad they were old enough to stay at home that I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t overdo it though, so I was anxious to get home.
“Tell Mom I said Hi, and I’ll call her when I get a chance,” I told my sister.
Nikita looked at me and didn’t even say good-bye. She slammed my car door with Cheron in her arms, disappointed that she didn’t get a chance to ask me for money. That was typical of her attitude, and I was getting tired of trying to tell her about herself, so I let her go ahead and have her tantrum.
On the way home, I called Camellia from my car phone. We made sure to always talk after our monthly meetings to discuss our progress. I said, “You know what? We’ve survived through so much together, and with this support group, it just feels like we’re starting all over again.”
“Well, Denise, you have to understand that everybody’s not on the same level that we’re on.”
“I do understand that,” I argued before thinking.
“No, I don’t believe you do,” Camellia responded. “The truth is, we’ve been able to do more on our own than some people are able to do in your ideal two-parent families. And that’s not saying that it was fair for us to have to go through all the trifling things we’ve been through, and are still going through, but you have to understand that there is no game plan to this thing. I mean, I would honestly say that we’ve had a lot of the Lord on our side.”
It was also Camellia’s idea that we start attending church regularly. She had a girl and a boy, Monica and Levonne, who were around the same ages as my kids. They were practically cousins. They had all been around one another since they were toddlers. But at least Camellia’s two kids had the same deadbeat dad. She continued, telling me how good a job we had done:
“And like I keep telling people, Denise, you don’t become a parent for a few years and then it’s all over with. Once you have children, that’s it. You’re going to be a parent for the rest of your life, and you’re gonna have to go through a million different changes.”
Camellia was going through some recent changes herself. Monica, her sixteen-year-old daughter, had recently started dating seriously. Two condoms fell out of her purse while Camellia was carrying it from the living room couch back to Monica’s room. That led to an all-night, on-the-spot discussion about the responsibilities of sex, which reminded me to do the same with my son, Jimmy.
“So, did Jimmy like hanging out with his father yesterday?” Camellia asked me. She always managed to do more of the talking between us. You would think that she had called me. We always talked about our kids and their fathers. That was how we met and became such good friends years ago.
“Jimmy’s never really had a problem with his father,” I responded. “He’s been around him enough for it not to be some new experience. If it becomes a regular occurrence, then I’ll have to see how he responds. But the whole thing with Walter’s father hinting about wanting custody all of a sudden is really bothering me.”
“You really think he wants custody?”
“Why else would he start talking about ‘what’s best for our son’?” I asked. It seemed obvious to me. Walter had always been a calculating man, with what I considered a major Napoleon complex. He had a master’s degree in business, and worked for Chicago Federal Savings, one of the largest banks in the city. He didn’t make idle chatter either. Two plus two always equaled four in his book. “I think he took that Boyz N the Hood movie a little too seriously,” I said lightheartedly.
Camellia didn’t catch my humor. She realized full well that it was my ego talking. Deep down inside, I was terrified of losing a grip on my family. Making life better for my two sons was my number one force of motivation.
“Well, I’m pulling up at the house now, Camellia. Let me run on in here and square away these boys of mine, and I’ll call you later on or sometime tomorrow,” I said, as I parked my black Honda Civic. I didn’t need any fancy car to get around in, just something that would be reliable. I did, however, want to allow my sons a chance to grow up outside of the tough streets of the West Side. So moving out to the Oak Park suburbs was a necessity.
“Break a leg,” Camellia joked with me.
“Girl, please,” I told her. “That’s all I would need right now to put me in the nuthouse for good.” When you’re a single parent, you don’t have time to get sick. And that’s the honest-to-God truth!
I walked into my house and found my sons in the family room watching them damn music videos again! They had taped several of those rap shows, and would watch them over and over, or play video games. It was better than having them run around in the streets, so I couldn’t complain too much.
“Anybody hungry?” I asked them.
“Yeah,” they both answered. Usually, if there were no leftovers to microwave, they made themselves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hot dogs and beans, or just ate cold cereal while I was out. I didn’t expect them to try and cook anything. You know how most boys are, they look at cooking as being girlish, but sometimes it’s necessary. I realized that soon they would have to learn how to cook, whether they liked it or not, I just hadn’t gotten around to teaching them yet.
“Okay, well, let’s order some pizza,” I told them. But first I turned them damn videos off.
I was so exhausted that I couldn’t even sit down and eat with them when the pizzas arrived. I changed into some comfortable clothes and was ready for bed by ten-thirty, past Walter’s bedtime.
He pouted. “Aw, Mom, how ’bout eleven o’clock? I’ll be thirteen next year.”
Jimmy laughed at him, and I quickly gave him a look to leave his brother alone.
“Okay, well, next year we’ll sit and talk about it. However, this year, you’re still twelve. Now go on to bed.”
Jimmy would be next, shortly after his brother. I liked Jimmy to be able to watch the nightly news, to see what was going on in Chicago and around the world. I wanted him to see how black men were being portrayed every night, so that he could learn to be unlike what America seemed to expect from him. I wanted to counteract the negativity by making my son sick of seeing and hearing about black men and black boys doing wrong.
I never let him watch those silly late shows unless they had someone with a good message to send to young people, which seemed to be hard to find. Too many black celebrities only talked about making more money or how much fun they were having while hanging out in Hollywood. I didn’t want my son overexposed to all of that. He was already leaning toward stardom with basketball. But I didn’t want to take the sport away from him, especially since he loved to play the game, and was so good at it. I just wanted to make sure he balanced it out with a good education and strong political views on
the world.
Excuse me for treason, but I didn’t want my son turning into another Michael Jordan. For all the years that the people in Chicago treated the man like a god, I have yet to hear him say anything of value, specifically to black boys in Chicago—or to black boys around the country for that matter—who were killing themselves over his hundred dollar sneakers! I wanted my son to have responsibility and a duty to any community that loved and supported him as a successful black man, which entailed more than just dunking basketballs and winning championships.
If any black man could be treated like a god in America, in the 1990s, with all the hell that black people are going through, that man should have strength and dignity enough to carry a torch for his people and make them proud of being black, while giving them inspiration to carry on, which few celebrities seem to want to do. So often I had to ask myself, Lord, where are the Muhammad Alis and Jackie Robinsons of the ’90s? and hope that my own son could fill the void one day.
Peer Pressure
EY Brock, I know you’ve slept with that corporate sista’ by now. The way you’ve been acting lately, I’d say you’ve done her a couple of times. Either that, or you’ve been having a lot of wet dreams about her,” Larry said with a laugh. “Shit, you’ve known her long enough to get some, and you surely haven’t been chasing any other women lately. This sista’s corporate shit is that good, hunh, Brock?”
We were standing near my truck at the shipping dock in Cicero, Freeway Trucking Companies’ Midwest headquarters, right outside of Chicago. Larry was built like an Olympic wrestler with broad shoulders, and was full of bravado. I used to have the same physique and ramrod attitude five or six years ago, but then I stopped working out, and more importantly, I stopped hanging out. I got plain old tired of all the bullshit. Truck drivers were not all beer-drinking, foul-mouthed sex maniacs, but enough of them were to support the stereotype. On the other hand, a lot of the guys were dedicated family men who just happened to drive eighteen-wheelers. I was trapped somewhere in the middle when I met Denise a year ago. Since then, I was leaning toward the latter, the family man image. I had recently turned thirty-seven years old, and my days of kissing and telling were over.