Single Mom

by Omar Tyree

  “You see that?” Roger told me, smiling. “Now your boy’s in good shape. Belmont Creek will definitely get him ready for college.”

  Whitney Young High School would, too, I thought to myself. Whitney Young had a reputation for academics, a magnet program, and they were on the rise in basketball, too. But you had to kick ass and take names to even get in there. Many Chicago kids couldn’t get in.

  Anyway, I thought about Little Jay’s future that whole night at work. Before I knew it, it was checkout time again.

  “Man, you were working like a maniac tonight. You took some speed before you came to work, some No-Doz or something?” my co-worker Orlando asked me.

  “Naw, man, I just had a lot on my mind,” I answered him.

  “Lando” was one of the few brothers there who worked with me. There were two Mexicans there, too; Eduardo and Jesus, pronounced “Hey-Zeus” in Spanish. Once I got to know him better, I would joke with him every now and then, about giving me the power of Hercules. I don’t think he got the joke at first, but after a while he caught on. The rest of the guys were Polish, Irish, and Italian. Chicago was a very ethnic city, like most big ones are.

  When I was walking out that morning, Roger pulled me aside and said, “Remember what we were talking about last night?” He was speaking in low tones.

  I looked at him confused.

  “You know, about teamwork and talent with our sons?”

  I said, “Oh, yeah. What about it?”

  “Well, sometimes you have to make sure that you’re always prepared, regardless of what everyone else is doing. You know what I mean?”

  At the time, I was just thinking about getting over to Kim’s house and getting some rest. I said, “Yeah, I know what you mean. And the cream rises to the top.” I was bullshitting again, just staying in good with my boss.

  He said, “Yeah, but sometimes the cream has to learn how to keep a good team together by making crucial decisions and sacrifices.”

  “Unh hunh,” I mumbled with a nod. I was just ready to get out of there.

  Roger gave up on what he was trying to tell me and smiled. He saw that I was itching to go. “I’ll see you again tonight, Jimmie,” he said to me. “Get yourself some rest.”

  “Definitely,” I told him. On my way to the train, Orlando stopped me on the street and asked me what the boss had talked to me about.

  “Nothin’. Just sports, education, and leadership and stuff,” I told him. I didn’t think much of it.

  Lando looked at me and asked, “You like that guy, man?”

  I did like Roger. “Yeah, he’s all right,” I said. “He don’t give me any problems.”

  Lando was a short, secretive-looking brother. He was the kind of man who always had some undercover news. He said, “I don’t trust that white boy, man. I wouldn’t get too close to him if I was you. You know how these white boys with a manager position are. They’re laughing and joking with you one week, and firing you the next.”

  I looked into Lando’s small, frowning face, and all of a sudden, Roger’s advice made perfect sense to me. He was telling me not to get mixed up into the crowd. He was telling me to always make my own decisions. So I did just the opposite of what Orlando was telling me. I didn’t get close to him and the other guys. Roger was the one who had given me the job, so I considered him the first man to trust.

  Sure enough, after a few more weeks, people were getting fired, and Lando was one of the first on the list. I had been through that same shit countless times before, but not this time. Lando had complained, but he was always disappearing on the job. He was forever taking extra-long breaks and getting out of doing shit. I would have fired his ass if I was the manager, too! That’s what Roger meant when he talked about keeping a good team together by making crucial decisions and sacrifices.

  I appreciated Roger for taking a liking to me and looking out for me like he did. White, black, green, or yellow, if a man looks out for me, then I have to respect him for that. There are too few real friends in this world to turn down a sincere handshake just because of the color of the hand. It took me thirty-four years to realize that. A lot of brothers would never trust a white man; we have too much baggage in our history of their wrongdoings. But I was glad that I trusted Roger. He turned out to be a real friend.

  Anyway, I got over to Kim’s place that morning, and her son, Jamal, was staring me in the face as soon as I walked in.

  “Hi,” I said to him. What else could I say?

  “Hi,” he said back. He smiled with a bunch of energy and jumped on my legs.

  I reached down and lifted him up into the air. He felt heavier than I thought he would be. I was a little drained in the strength department from working all night. I damn near dropped the boy.

  “Watch that!” his mom yelled at me.

  I laughed it off and put him back down. “Shouldn’t he be in summer camp somewhere?” Neecy had always sent Little Jay and Walter to camp.

  “These camps cost too much,” Kim told me. As soon as she finished saying it, she realized that she was wrong. She started acting shaky, just like a guilty person. I was very familiar with the nervous energy that guilt could cause. I mean, how much of a financial burden would it be to send your only kid to summer camp? I never had any stable money to do it with. If I did, I would have been able to move out of my mother’s place a long-ass time ago! Kim had stable money, she just wasn’t looking out for her son’s best interest. I was beginning to think more like a responsible parent before I even knew it. I knew right from wrong when it came to kids. I just had to begin applying myself.

  “Maybe I’ll send him next year,” Kim told me.

  I was tempted to ask her how much the summer camps cost, but I decided not to. It wasn’t my decision to make. But I did care about it. Jamal should have been with other kids somewhere, enjoying the summer and his youth. You’re only young once. I wish that I could have been young again. I would have done a lot of things differently.

  “You play basketball?” Jamal looked up and asked me. As a black man in America, once you reach a certain height, that question will always be in the back of people’s minds, especially with the popularity of the NBA and the connection to urban playgrounds in the ’90s. Hell, in five more years, with the start-up of the WNBA, people might start to think of tall black women as bailers too. Maybe Neecy had a point about overemphasizing basketball. That’s not all that we do.

  I said, “Who told you that?”

  Jamal smiled and said, “My mom.”

  I figured that. I guess she was going to try and use her son to get closer to me with the whole basketball thing. That wasn’t right either, but I was too tired to think about it. I just wanted to lay down. “Well, not anymore. I just watch the game now,” I told him. Then I asked Kim if I could lay down. She led me to her room.

  Jamal followed us in.

  “No, Jamal, he can’t play with you right now. He’s been working all night and he needs his rest,” she said, closing the door and pushing her son out. She made it sound as if we were going to play when I woke up. I wasn’t planning on it.

  Kim stuck her head back in the door a minute later and asked me if I wanted some breakfast.

  “If I’m still up when you finish, I’ll eat it,” I told her. “But if I’m not …”

  She smiled, all happy-looking, and said, “I told you my son likes you.”

  I shook my head and stretched out on her king-size bed. She actually had a king-size bed and was complaining about the cost of sending her son to summer camp! I couldn’t believe that! I had heard about single mothers who spent more money on themselves, but to actually be that close to it was ridiculous.

  I ate a little bit of Kim’s scrambled eggs, sausage, and pancakes and fell asleep. When I woke up, it was two-thirty in the afternoon. The only reason I was up was because Kim had to go to work. She was making a bunch of noise in the room while she got dressed.

  “Where’s your son?” I asked her. I just knew she was
n’t going to try and leave him there with me.

  “He’s going over to his grandmother’s. Why, you thought that I would try and get you to baby-sit?” she asked with a grin.

  I smiled back at her. “I was just making sure that you wasn’t, because I got somewhere to go.” I didn’t really feel up to making it down to Neecy’s office, but at least it was the truth.

  Kim asked me, “When are you leaving?”

  Actually, I didn’t feel that tired anymore. I said, “I might as well leave now.”

  “You don’t have to leave right this minute if you don’t want to. I can give you the extra key, and you can give it back to me when you come back,” Kim told me. She was really coming on strong!

  I said, “Naw, I’m late already. I need to get going.”

  “Well, I can give you the extra key anyway, in case you wanna come back and get some more rest.”

  I started to feel like a turkey being fattened up for the kill. I jumped up out of that bed and got myself together. “When are you getting off work?” I asked her.

  “Eleven o’clock.”

  “Damn. Well, I won’t see you again until tomorrow,” I told her.

  She started smiling and said, “Or, you could stop past my job.”

  I looked her over. Kim was wearing this tight black uniform that hugged all of her curves, with a skirt that stopped well above the knees. I started wondering what the rest of the women at her job looked like, just out of curiosity. “Where is it at again?”

  Kim wrote down the address, got me something to drink, and we all left without me getting that extra key she kept pushing.

  “Tell Mr. Jay bye,” she told her son.

  Jamal smiled at me and said it.

  I told him, “Bye, little man,” and headed on my way. Kim wasn’t even trying to hide anything. She was being outright bold about wanting me in their life. I just wasn’t trying to commit to the idea.

  I jumped on a bus heading to Halsted Street and found myself getting nervous. I really didn’t feel up to arguing with Neecy. I was already two hours late. Maybe she would have some other things to do by the time I got there. I tried to convince myself not to go, but my manhood wouldn’t let me back down. I used to rule this girl, and I didn’t care how successful she was, I couldn’t allow her to turn around and rule me! So I planned to march into Neecy’s office like a man and set her ass straight!

  This tall Hispanic babe was her secretary. I said, “I’m Jimmie Daniels. I had an appointment to see, ah, Denise Stewart, at one o’clock. Is she still in, or is she busy?” I was dying to call her Neecy, but I was willing to bet that if I said it, her secretary wouldn’t know who the hell I was talking about.

  “Ah, yeah, she’s still in. Hold on one minute.” She buzzed Neecy on an office phone. “A Jimmie Daniels is out here to see you. He says he had a one o’clock appointment … Mmm hmm. Okay.” She hung up the line and said, “She’ll be with you in five minutes.”

  Shit! The last thing I wanted to do was sit out there and think about what I wanted to say to her. I just wanted to be raw and spontaneous. Sometimes, when you think too much, you end up ruling out a lot of things. Then again, sometimes you get a chance to think of some better things to say, and that’s exactly what I did. So by the time Neecy and I were sitting face-to-face in her office, I was totally at ease.

  “How long have you had this night job?” she asked me.

  “Not even a week,” I told her.

  Neecy was wearing a navy blue business suit, an off-white blouse, and a colorful scarf around her neck. I had on the same pair of blue jeans, blue shirt, and brown shoes that I had gone to work in the night before. But so what?

  “First of all, you’re late.”

  “And I still made it here,” I told her.

  “Is that all you have to do, just make it there, not on time or anything?”

  “Am I checking in at a clock down here? I make it to my job on time.”

  “Is it stable?” she asked me.

  “I hope it is.”

  “And what if it’s not?”

  “Then it’s back to the drawing board.”

  She nodded her head. “I see. Well, your mother seems pretty excited about it,” she said to me.

  I got slick on her and said, “Look at it this way, if Little Jay got an A on his first math test, that wouldn’t mean that he’s gonna get an A in the class, but he would be off to a good start, right? Now wouldn’t you be happy with that?”

  Neecy was trying her hardest not to smile. I was glad that I got a chance to wait before I talked to her. I was going to show her ass that I was still intelligent, and that I could sit there and beat her at her own damn psychological games.

  She started to shake her head and said, “You know, I just don’t know what to think about you. I just keep thinking that I’m gonna get burned again. Or, rather, that your son is gonna get burned,” she said, correcting herself.

  “I know you want to see me do well, Denise. I want to do well, too,” I told her. “You think I liked being a fuck-up for so long? You think any man likes that shit? Hell no! But you can only play the cards that you’re given until you get a better hand. So that’s what I’m trying to do now. I’m trying to establish some type of longevity, and something to look forward to in the future.”

  I could tell that Neecy wanted to care about me. It may not have been a romantic thing anymore, but she still cared about me as her son’s father and as a black man struggling to survive. I could see it in her eyes, no matter how tough she tried to be with me.

  “And you think that your son’s playing basketball is gonna be that future for you? What if he gets his feelings hurt like you did, and he finds out that he’s not as good as we all think he is? Then what?”

  It was a good question. I was stuck for a second. Then I said, “What if after you got your degree in business, nobody wanted to hire you? What would you have done?”

  She shook her head in denial. “There was no way it was gonna happen. I knew what I was capable of before I even went after the degree. The degree was just icing on the cake.”

  “So, you were that confident, and here you are,” I said, looking around at her office.

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t going up against one-in-a-million odds either,” she argued.

  “You wasn’t? A single mom with two sons, going to college and becoming a successful businesswoman with her own office and payroll? Oh, yeah, I read about that every day,” I told her sarcastically.

  Neecy finally broke a smile, but she still wouldn’t soften her toughness. “You may not read about it every day, but us single mothers are out here getting the job done however we have to, and that’s a fact. But young black boys playing professional basketball is still a long shot, no matter how you try and slice the cake. I just don’t want my son to go through the same things that his father has.”

  “He won’t,” I told her.

  “And what makes you so sure?”

  “Because you’re his mother. And I’m damn sure that you’re gonna tell him how I went downhill, if you haven’t already told him. I’ll make sure that I tell him too, but only when the time is right.”

  “And when is that?”

  “When he needs some inspiration, some moral support, or just plain old empathy,” I told her. I was poised and logical. I said, “Don’t take the boy’s dream away, just because you’re afraid of it not happening. You should never do that to a kid. That’s what’s wrong with so many black kids out here now, they have scared parents snatching their dreams away.”

  “It sounds more like it’s your dream to me,” she responded.

  “Yeah, well, maybe it is. Maybe I need some inspiration. Is anything wrong with that?”

  “It is when you use people.”

  “Oh, so is that what you think I’m doing, using my son?”

  “You tell me.”

  By that point, I was just plain disgusted. I didn’t even feel like talking anymore.

  Neec
y said, “Let’s say that he couldn’t play basketball, and he was just an average kid with average height. Would you still be this interested in him? You weren’t when he was younger.”

  “Aw, now, see, that’s a bunch of bullshit!” I cursed at her. “You know damn well I’ve been a part of his life! Money ain’t every-fucking-thing, Denise! Okay? Now you go home and ask Jay if he loves his father. And he’ll tell you! Okay? So don’t run that shit on me!”

  I got so excited that I didn’t realize how loud I was getting, or that I was standing, until I finished my statements.

  Neecy looked embarrassed. “I didn’t say that you were never there—”

  I cut her off and snapped, “Yeah, whatever. You just save that shit.” I headed for the door and left it open when I walked out, because if I would have closed it, she wouldn’t have had a damn door!

  Neecy had lost all of her love for me. I couldn’t see how she could get so cold. She was an Ice Lady! I felt sorry for her in a way. It was like she had floated off to her own island somewhere. And as far as the whole thing with me “using” my son, I wasn’t going to pay that shit no mind. I planned to keep supporting him and going to all the games that I could. Neecy had the problem, not me. I was doing the right thing. Just because she was angry about how I had been in the past, it didn’t make her right to predict how things were going to be with my son and me in the future.

  I walked out of her office building and onto Halsted Street and looked at the piece of paper that Kim wrote the address of her job on. I was hungry as hell, and I wondered what they had on their menu. I wanted to get Neecy off my mind as quickly as I could. I figured if I could fill up my aching stomach and my sore eyes with the sight of Kim in her work uniform again, it would do the trick for me. One thing was for sure, I would take Kim’s down-to-earth sexiness over Neecy’s high society beef any day of the week.

  Slow Down

  didn’t want to call Denise back until I had a chance to go over things in my head. Once I did have a chance to think, I invited her out to a Friday night dinner at an Indian restaurant called the Eastern Spice. I had another three-day trip coming up and I wouldn’t see her for a while. If we didn’t talk before then, I had no idea when we’d be able to sit down and discuss things. I wanted to get it out of the way beforehand, to have a clear head while out on the road.