by Omar Tyree
Levonne didn’t want to go to church in the first place, just like my sons and millions of other sons around the country. Church was no thing to his sister Monica, though. In fact, I think she enjoyed churchgoing more than Camellia and I did.
I thought about Jimmy and Monica growing up so fast. I looked to Camellia and I said, “I’ll definitely be calling you tonight, because we have to talk. You know what I mean?”
She looked at her daughter and my son and nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”
Jimmy looked away, embarrassed.
Monica said, “What did I do now?”
Her mother answered, “Whatever you did or ever do, I’m gonna find out.”
Monica sighed, shook her head, and walked off.
“And I’m not joking about that either,” Camellia said behind her.
I said my good-byes and started walking in the opposite direction, toward my Honda. I couldn’t wait to get one-on-one with Jimmy. He sat inside the car and looked out the passenger-side window. Before I even started the engine, I asked him, “Do you have anything to tell me, son? I want you to know that I love you very much.”
I didn’t want to be too hard on him, I only wanted to know if he needed to begin protecting himself.
He sunk his face into his hands and began to shake his head. “What do you want me to tell you, Mom?”
“I want you to tell me if you’ve been doing something.”
He shook his head inside of his hands again. “Not yet.”
“Not yet?” It was the wrong answer! “Look at me when you talk to me, Jimmy. Now you’re about to start high school this year, and you need to stop dropping your head so much. You’re too damn tall for that! If it’s one thing I hate it’s big, tall basketball players hanging their heads low and not knowing how to talk to people.”
I couldn’t help it. I was beginning to get hyper. But I knew that Jimmy could take it. It wasn’t right, but I had been very hard on him before I learned how to be a more sensitive mother.
Jimmy’s response to my yelling at him as a child was probably why he acted so reserved half the time. He just wasn’t going to let anything get to him. I read a book before called Cool Pose that talked about the reserved behavior of young black men, and Jimmy fit the book to a tee.
He raised his head and looked into my face. He had such a delicate face to be so damn tall. And he looked just like my father, chocolate brown and extra handsome. “I mean, I’m not gay, Mom, so of course I’m gonna start being attracted to girls. What do you want me to do?”
I started up my engine and said, “First of all, I want you to respect the rights of women. And just because you think that you’re ready to begin having sex, that doesn’t mean that you have the right to force yourself on anyone.”
“Mom, I wouldn’t—”
“I’m not finished yet,” I said, cutting him off. “I want you to protect yourself from these little hot girls out here, running around with no common sense, getting diseases and pregnant and everything else. And I want you to be honest with yourself about whether you really like a girl, or whether you just want to sleep with her because she likes you. I’m not gonna stand for that! You hear me? If you don’t like her, then just be friends with her or leave her alone completely.
“That’s why so many of these basketball and football players are having so many problems with these women out here now. They think they can just sleep with anybody who says they like them and do whatever they want to with them,” I ranted. I was really going overboard. After I gave my oldest son another look, I could see that I was scaring him to death, and that he would probably not tell me anything again in his life. I needed to calm myself down, get a grip, and even apologize for blowing up at him if I needed to. I just didn’t go about things the right way.
Jimmy shut his mouth and began to stare out the window again.
After a few long minutes of silence, I decided to pull over and apologize.
I touched my son’s left arm, slid my hand down to his, and squeezed it as tightly as I could. “Jimmy, I am so sorry for that, honey. I didn’t mean to go off on you like that, it’s just that … a lot of things have been on my mind lately, and this conversation just really caught me off guard, so I didn’t get a chance to prepare myself for it and control my emotions a little better.
“Actually, we really should have had this talk a long time ago, but it’s my fault because I wasn’t even thinking about it,” I told him. I smiled and said, “I guess that, since you spend so much time playing basketball, I forgot all about the social aspect of your life. Of course, girls would start noticing you. You’re handsome with your height. A lot of tall guys are goofy and uncoordinated at your age.”
Jimmy immediately lightened up with a smile that turned into an easy laugh. It wasn’t fair, but his personality allowed me to get away with a lot more than I should have been able to. That same easygoing nature of his could make a girl believe that he liked her more than he really did. Jimmy was most likely going to be a Chicago “playa” whether I liked it or not. And if I pushed him too hard, he would only learn to ignore me. Even so, I planned to do all that I could to stir him away from using women as scoring boards and as trophies.
“Baby, I just ask you to do me one favor, okay? When you start to go out and date and all, I just want to meet the girl,” I said to him. “And I promise not to blow up again. Can we agree on that?”
Jimmy hesitated. “I mean, what are you gonna say to her?”
“Just regular talk. You know, ‘How do you do,’ ‘I like your shoes,’ that kind of thing.”
He started to laugh again. “What if you don’t like her shoes?”
I shook my head and smiled. “That was just an example. Maybe I might like her hairstyle instead,” I told him. “Or maybe she may play basketball, or run track, or something, and I can ask her about that. You know, just normal stuff.”
He thought about it.
Then I said, “The bottom line is that you really shouldn’t go out with a girl who you’re going to be afraid to bring home to your mother. That should be one of your rules of selection. And that includes white girls, too,” I added with a look.
Jimmy shook his head. “Nah, it won’t be no white girls coming home with me.”
“Well, you know there’s gonna be plenty of them at this high school you’re going to in September.”
“Yeah, but that don’t mean I have to talk to ’em.”
“So it’s a deal?” I asked him again.
He grinned and slowly nodded. “Yeah, it’s a deal.”
“And if I make you feel uncomfortable about it, then I want us to be able to talk about that, too. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
I leaned over and kissed my son on the cheek and said, “I love you,” like a young girl in love. And I was in love, with both of my boys, and I wanted them to always do the right things.
Walter III
cannot understand how children Walter’s age can actually believe that they are old enough to make important decisions about their lives. My son thinks he knows plenty, and he’s not even a teenager yet. Times have really changed from when I was young. When I was twelve years old, back in the seventies, I had to ask my parents if I could even take my bike outside. I spent most of my time at that age collecting comic books and baseball cards. Of course, I wasn’t raised in the West Side of Chicago either.
“Are you interested in comic books or trading cards at all?” I asked my son. Walter, Beverly, and I sat at a table for four at the International House of Pancakes, because that was where my son said he would like to eat.
He devoured his mouthful of pancakes before he answered me. “Spawn is my favorite comic book. I just started collecting basketball cards last year,” he said with a nod, while wiping strawberry syrup from his mouth. “They have a movie coming out next month. They had a TV show that was on HBO, too, but my mom wouldn’t let me watch it.”
Beverly grimaced and asked, “Wasn’
t that the cartoon that came on at midnight? I heard that it was pretty gory, and it had some rather strong language in it. I don’t think that show was for kids. I heard a few college students talking about it.”
Walter frowned at her. “What about Batman then?”
“Well, Batman is violent, too, but at least they don’t show blood flying around or use foul language,” she responded to him. “Do they use that same language inside of the Spawn comic book?”
“No,” Walter answered snidely.
I could see that my wife was getting off on the wrong foot with him, so I quickly intervened and changed the subject.
“How about the WNBA? Have you been watching any of that?” I asked him.
He sucked his teeth and said, “No, man. They can’t even dunk. I saw Lisa Leslie try to dunk on the first game against New York, and she missed it. That was stupid! My brother, Jimmy, can beat all of them. They can’t even beat high school guys. I don’t even know why they’re getting paid for that.”
“Because they’re professionals, and they’ve worked very hard on their skills just like the men have,” Beverly responded. She was obviously pissed at my son’s comments, and she was trying her best to keep her poise.
“Well, you know, that league is just starting out, son. I’m sure that in a few more years you’ll see more women developing their calf muscles so that they can jump just as high as the men. Some things take time,” I said, intervening again. If I wanted to spend more time with my son, I definitely had to try and make him feel comfortable and at home around me.
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” he said, excusing himself from our table.
My wife looked at me and said, “He sounds very chauvinistic, and I do not like it.”
“Beverly, he’s still a young boy. You have to learn those things as you develop maturity.”
“When did you learn?” she asked me.
“It was a lot later than you would think.”
“Yes, and sometimes it definitely shows,” she snapped at me. “I think boys need to be taught a lot younger about how to act in the presence of women, and how to treat women. We are not some kind of second-class citizens just because we’re less physical than guys are.
“You see that my nephews know how to act,” she commented.
I didn’t want to go into the discussion any further, so I took a sip of my coffee and proceeded to daydream. I hadn’t been a so-called “roughneck” in my adolescent years, but I wasn’t as “soft” as Beverly’s nephews were either. I tried to play ball with those guys at a family picnic once, and they were so busy trying not to get dirty that it wasn’t even fun. It’s rather hard not to let the boys be boys in America, or in any other society for that matter. It’s in a boy’s nature to be unruly. When they don’t have enough opportunities to roam on the wild side, their natural desire to take risks will only manifest itself somehow later on in life, like with my infatuation with Denise.
When Walter walked back out from the bathroom, I made sure to look and see if his hands had been washed. Fortunately, they had been. Beverly always checked her nieces and nephews for clean hands at the table, and I was sure that she would have commented on that as well. In fact, she seemed to be three times more alert about my son’s habits ever since our conversation about custody.
“So, what are some of your hobbies, Walter?” she asked him as soon as he sat back down. “Can you swim, play the piano, or do you just like football and basketball?”
She had been around him enough to know that he liked football and basketball, but she had never explored his other likes and dislikes. To be honest about it, I hadn’t explored his likes and dislikes either. Beverly had asked a good question.
“Umm, I like to swim. We learn different swimming strokes at camp.”
“What about golf or tennis? Have you ever thought about those sports?”
“Yeah, we have a tennis court at the playground that’s near my house. At first, I didn’t know how to play. Those white kids were beating me all the time, but now I’m better at it. Next year, I might get my own racket and join this tennis team they have.”
I was surprised. Beverly had enlivened him. Usually my son was either smart-mouthed or closed-mouthed with us.
Beverly looked at me and said, “We could buy him a tennis racket and a can of tennis balls, Walter. What do you think about that idea?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I guess Beverly was warming up to the idea of getting to know my son a little better, and that meant the good and the bad. I had always thought that she would be a great partner in the child-rearing department, and I was right.
“Sure, we could buy him that today,” I answered her. “And then we could go out somewhere and play miniature golf.”
My son was all smiles. “I like miniature golf,” he said. “My mom’s friend, Brock, took us to play miniature golf a couple of times.”
Walter caught us off guard with that comment. My wife and I looked at each other.
“His name is Brock?” I asked him instinctively.
“No, that’s his last name, Brockenborough. His first name is Dennis, and he drives an eighteen-wheeler truck. He let us ride in it a couple of times, too.”
Beverly and I were speechless. Walter didn’t get it at all. Kids are like that, they just say different things without realizing the impact that they have.
“So, ah, how long have you guys all been friends?” I asked him. I couldn’t help to be curious. If there was another man spending quality time with my son, through an association with Denise, then I thought it was only fair that I know about it. It wasn’t as if I were a lost-and-found dad who hadn’t been around his son. I didn’t like being kept in the dark about that kind of thing. I would rather have Walter’s good or bad male habits coming from me than from some other man. Or at least, I would like to have the opportunity to know that someone else was stirring the pot.
“Since last year,” Walter answered. “But me and Jimmy just started hanging out with him a couple of months ago.”
It was a good thing that we had all finished our food. Had my son told me about “Brock” half an hour earlier, it could have spoiled my appetite. It wasn’t as if I were concerned about Denise’s social life, it was just that it was spilling over to my son without me knowing about it.
“Ah, excuse me, we’ll have the check now,” I said to our waitress.
Beverly still had not said a word.
“Well, I guess we need to go home and get changed,” she finally commented as we all stood. I guess she was going to try and ignore the issue, but I sure wasn’t. I made a mental note to give Denise a phone call the first thing that evening.
When we walked out to the car, I asked my son, “Is Brock your mother’s boyfriend, or just a guy that she knows from somewhere?” I knew better than that, but I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about it. If Denise had the man around the kids, then he was definitely more than just a friend. She rarely mixed her personal life with her sons. Even when I dated her, I wasn’t around her son, Jimmy, much.
“Well, they go out and stuff, sometimes,” Walter answered.
Beverly gave me the evil eye. She let my son inside the car and shut the door in order to have a word with me before I continued with my interrogation.
“Walter, please, let it go,” she said. “Let’s just have a good time with him today.”
“Let it go?” I asked her, a little too excitedly. “How can I let this kind of thing go? I didn’t even know about this man. I told her about you.”
Beverly sighed and said, “Look, we’ll talk about this later on. Okay? It’s not fair for you to keep asking him questions about it. He doesn’t know what’s going on.”
I childishly said, “If he thinks he knows everything else, how come he doesn’t know what’s going on here?”
On that note, Beverly shook her head and climbed in the car. I got in after her, planning on holding my tongue for the rest of the ride. My wife was right; it was no sense
in taking anything out on my son. He didn’t have any control over anything. I still wished that he had told me about “Brock” a lot earlier, though. A year seemed far too long to be left in the dark.
We bought a pair of quality tennis rackets and two tubes of tennis balls from a sporting-goods store before going out to play miniature golf. I had gotten over the initial shock about Denise’s friend, but I still planned on calling her before I went to bed that evening.
Once we got Walter on that miniature golf course, he turned into your average twelve-year-old kid, competing against us on strokes, while maintaining an overconfident and youthful swagger.
“I’m Tiger Woods!” he joked, like in the popular Nike commercial. I had to laugh at that one. He was beating us both; me by four strokes and Beverly by six, as we neared the eighteenth hole.
“Well, then, loan me a million dollars, Tiger. You can afford it,” I joked back to him.
Walter looked at me and frowned. “No way, partner. No freeloaders allowed.”
“Freeloader? I said loan me a million dollars, not can I have a million dollars.”
“All right, but you have to pay fifteen percent interest on every year that it takes you to pay me back,” he told me.
I looked at Beverly and she broke out laughing.
“You mean to tell me that you would make money off your old man?” I asked with a smile.
He looked at me and said, “Business is business, Dad. I can’t break the rules for nobody.”
Beverly laughed again. My son knew that I worked as a corporate accounts executive at Chicago Federal Savings, but I never realized that he understood banking so well. I was actually proud of him. Unfortunately, on my part, I was forever underestimating him. I guess that’s what can happen when you’re not around a child as much as you could have been. You can easily underestimate, or even overestimate, their potential because you’re not that familiar with their normal levels of acceleration and retention. I think his mother’s career in financial consulting, however, accounted for a lot of his knowledge on money. That was one of the many reasons why I could never tell her I was the son of a millionaire. I kept thinking that she would eventually try and take me to the bank.