Single Mom

by Omar Tyree

  Beverly said, “It just makes me think that all men are suspect.”

  I wanted to pull my hand away and couldn’t. I said, ‘You know that’s not true.”

  “So what makes it happen then? Why do so many men do it?”

  I felt like it was her hormones talking again, and honestly, I didn’t want to answer her question. “I’m sure you can come up with plenty of answers to that yourself,” I responded.

  “But I want you to answer my question.” To make matters worse, she turned and faced me.

  I couldn’t even look at her. I felt guilty for all men. Men cheat because sex, to them, is as natural as breathing. And it has absolutely nothing to do with love and commitment. But I couldn’t tell my wife that. She knew that anyway. Most mature women knew it. Yet they would fight it until they entered the grave. Nevertheless, all men were not cheaters. And many of them were committed wholeheartedly to their wives and families.

  I wish that I was innocent enough to look into my wife’s desperate eyes and tell her that the average man never even thought about another woman, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t the man to answer that question. I had too many strikes against me, and as crazy as it sounds, I didn’t want to put a hex on myself by saying that I would never cheat. It just seemed like too much pressure to live with. But what the hell, I had taken a woman to the altar and said “I do.” That was pressure enough. I had already made the commitment. I guess that was why so many men considered marriage the ball and chain. They had to ask themselves the question, Can I actually deal with not having any other woman for the rest of my life? And many of them were responding, “Hell no!” That was the truth, and nothing but the truth; a truth that most women didn’t want to hear.

  “You really want an answer for that?” I asked my wife, stalling.

  ‘Yes, I really do.”

  I nodded. I said, “Men and women have different biological functions. You do understand that, right?” I was attempting to figure out an answer as I went along.

  Beverly just stared at me. She wasn’t going to help me out at all.

  I added, “Most young women desire long-lasting love affairs from the beginning of their interest in boys. For boys, on the other hand, much of their early dating boils down to experimentation, confidence, and practice. And once a lot of these young guys get any kind of consistency going with women, they are just really reluctant to give that up. Therefore, it takes a lot more maturity for a man to bring to a close his free-roaming sex life. As for young women, they are more interested in trying to keep a man, so marriage makes more sense to them.

  “Am I making any sense to you?” I asked my wife.

  “So once a man decides that he is mature enough to get married, and then he turns around and cheats, what happens then?”

  I paused. “He breaks his vow, and he pays the cost for it whether he’s caught or not, because he feels ashamed of what he’s done. And if he doesn’t feel ashamed, then all of his morality has been lost.”

  I hoped and prayed that Beverly would be satisfied with that, because I honestly had nothing else to add to the discussion. A man spreading his human seed across the land was a very natural thing. Polygynous marriage would then solidify a dominant man’s genetic placement and family. And at one time, that marriage arrangement was the natural way of colored peoples who still make up the overwhelming majority of the world’s population. So maybe monogamous marriage, a European philosophy, which has never been without prostitution, slaves, and mistresses, was what was unnatural and unrealistic. Nevertheless, there was no way in the world I could have a sane conversation on such a thing with my wife, a 100 percent American. She would only believe that I was thinking with my wrong head again, a battle that women would never have to fight.

  My wife squeezed my hand and pulled me closer to her for a kiss. “I wouldn’t be able to take it,” she told me. “I mean it.”

  I know she did. And I couldn’t wait for her to go to sleep. Because as long as she was awake, I couldn’t sleep. I would have been up all night trying to soothe her insecurities, and I didn’t know if I had the energy or the words to do so. So when Beverly fell asleep in my arms, I thanked God and asked him to give me strength to hold up my vow to her.

  One-on-One

  HERE were so many things going on in my mind that I didn’t know where to start. It was Friday night, and Denise was coming over to visit. I don’t know why I always waited until the last minute, but I was hurrying to finish my spaghetti dinner and corn while I straightened up my two-bedroom apartment. I had a nice place in an okay area on South Eighty-first Street, but every time Denise would visit, I thought for some reason that I should have had more. I did own a small house with my ex-wife, but during the divorce settlement, it got too complicated to keep. Luckily for me, we didn’t have any children, or I may have been forced to keep up the payments on the house to support a separated family.

  Anyway, a few of the things on my mind concerning Denise and me included where we would live if we ever decided to shack up. Would I move into Oak Park with her and her sons? I didn’t think so. Would we buy a new house together? Maybe. And how would her sons and their fathers respond to that? There were plenty of questions to ask and answer that I always pushed to the back of my mind. Nevertheless, they were serious issues that needed to be discussed between us. I thought about those issues more intensely every time Denise would visit me.

  She arrived at my two-story redbrick building around eight-thirty, wearing a mint green velour dress that stopped right above the knees. And boy did she look good!

  “Wow! I’m speechless,” I told her.

  I was wearing a pair of plain black slacks, black shoes, and a colorful, Bill Cosby-like sweater from his old “Huxtable” days.

  “Thank you,” Denise responded, handing me her coat. “I see you waxed your hardwood floors again,” she walked in and commented.

  “Yeah, I always want them to look nice for company,” I said with a grin.

  “Hardwood floors always make a place look so spacious.”

  “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? Here, have a seat and I’ll put on some music. Is there anything you’d like to hear?” I asked her courteously. She sat back and relaxed on my black leather sofa. My pad was all bachelor, but it had gotten boring to me, to tell the truth. I wanted a change in scenery.

  “No, not really. As long as it’s mellow,” Denise responded.

  I walked over to my stereo system in the corner of my living room and put on LSG: Gerald Levert, Keith Sweat, and Johnny Gill. Denise recognized the CD immediately, and began to nod.

  “They have some good music on here,” she said.

  “Yeah, they do. So how long are your kids staying over at Camellia’s?” I asked.

  “Until Sunday morning.”

  “That means you can stay over for two nightcaps then,” I teased.

  Denise smiled and said, “If I want to, yes,” teasing me right back.

  I walked over and sat on the leather sofa beside her. “So, we’ve come a long way. Don’t you think? I remember when you first came over to visit me, and you started to walk around like you were interested in renting the place.”

  She broke out laughing. “Yeah, because Camellia and I couldn’t afford a place just like this one years ago. It just brought back memories of all of our struggles and successes.”

  I said, “Did you ever get a chance to talk to her about her weight concerns?”

  “No. Not like I wanted to. She just kind of blew the whole thing off, as if she didn’t want to remember. I’ll catch up to her about it.”

  I nodded. I said, “You know, when we first starting seeing each other, a few guys at my job figured that you would have turned me down because you were considered a white-collar woman.”

  Denise frowned and shook her head. “I never got into that kind of thing. I’ve had all that I could stand with that from Walter’s father. He kind of reminds me never to be that way.”

  “So he was heavily int
o class systems?”

  “Was he? He still is, but he’s coming around. He’s been hanging out with his son a lot lately. He got inspired after the Million Man March. I was surprised that he even wanted to go, as selfish as he is.”

  I smiled. I never participated in the march. I had a run to Arizona that week, and I stopped over to visit my sister in Tucson. I thought it was a good idea and everything, I just didn’t go.

  I thought about Denise and her sons, and asked, “Whatever made you name both of your sons after their fathers? I always wanted to ask you about that.” We had never gone into detail about her past relationships. I had never pressed the issue either. I figured it would all come out in time, I just never realized how much time it would take.

  She hunched her shoulders and answered, “I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t think about too many names. Name giving is usually something that a mother and a father participate in.”

  “Their fathers didn’t participate at all?”

  “Jimmy’s father was very pleased with it. He was just upset about not having Jimmy spelled the same way as his.”

  “How does he spell his?”

  “With an i-e at the end.”

  I frowned. “The i’s are generally how women spell their names. Like Toni with an i as opposed to Tony with a y.”

  Denise smiled. “Yeah, I know. But he didn’t care. And Walter Perry didn’t want me to name his son after him at all, especially not the last name. I did it anyway,” she told me. “And it’s sad, because I was vengeful at the time. I named Walter after his father in spite, just to let the man know that he could never forget about his son.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “How do you feel about them now?”

  “I don’t. I’m just happy that they both decided to come back into their sons’ lives. That’s about all that I can ask from them. I wish that it wasn’t because of basketball and pigheadedness, but I’ll take it any way that I can get it.”

  I nodded. “You know, you’re unique in that way. It seems like a lot of mothers only want to deal with their children’s fathers on their terms.”

  Denise disagreed with a strong head shake. “That’s not the case. Many mothers just don’t feel like putting out the extra effort that it takes to get the fathers involved. I mean, these deadbeat dads have to want to do it. So all of the blame shouldn’t be put on the women. And you have to remember as well that in a lot of these single-parent households, the fathers were the ones who walked out to begin with. Or else they forced the women to leave because of the man’s terrible behavior.”

  I thought about it. “Yeah, I guess that’s right.”

  “It is right. But it’s also wrong. I just wish that more of these brothers could learn to love themselves and others and stop being such cowards about it. Sometimes it’s just about sharing time.”

  “So what’s a mother supposed to do for money?” I asked her.

  Denise sighed. “It’s not an easy situation to even talk about. I just don’t know what’s going to happen when they do away with welfare,” she said. “At our SMO meetings, we discussed the idea of the government figuring out a way to train uneducated and unskilled men who have children, so that they can offer them quality jobs to support their kids, and use that in place of the present welfare system that seems to reward poor women for having more children with absentee fathers. And then allow these mothers to find jobs, too.”

  I laughed at the idea. “Then what happens to the jobs for these guys and girls who busted their asses in college? Hmmph.” I grunted. “That jobs-for-everybody idea only happens in socialistic countries, not in America.”

  “We’re going to have to find a way somehow,” she told me.

  I responded, “Well, I figure that even when these fathers don’t have the jobs or the income, the time that they do spend with their kids is time where the mothers don’t have to pay for child care, especially if these fathers aren’t doing anything else with their lives.”

  “Exactly,” Denise agreed. “I’ve never been the type of mother to keep my kids away from their fathers, so they don’t have a lot of the negative baggage that some of these kids have. But Walter used to have a real problem being with his father. They’ve been getting along a lot better lately. And it’s just like I said, I’m very fortunate that they’ve both decided it’s better late than never to spend time with their sons, despite how I feel about them, or how they feel about me.”

  After that, I asked Denise if she ever thought about moving into a larger house.

  She smiled, catching on to my gigantic hint. “I guess I would have to think about that if I were going to include someone in the family.”

  I backed down and said, “I was just asking, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she responded. I guess she could tell that I was still a little gun-shy.

  Then I got restless and asked her if she was hungry.

  “I’ve been hungry ever since I walked in that door,” she answered.

  “Well, the food should be nice and ready to eat by now. Let’s walk on over to the kitchen then. Shall we?”

  Denise extended her hand and said, “You lead the way.”

  I helped her up and escorted her to the chair at my kitchen table. I rarely used the dining room unless I was having more than one or two people over to eat. I usually ate inside of the kitchen or in front of the tube.

  “What kind of place did you and your wife live in again?” Denise asked me as we packed our plates with spaghetti, meatballs, corn, and buttered biscuits.

  “A three-bedroom bungalow. It was nice, but very small,” I told her. “In fact, this apartment has much more open space.”

  Denise nodded and said, “Yeah, some of those bungalows are nothing but a bunch of walls.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  We said a quick prayer and began to munch down our spaghetti.

  Denise started to smile and then laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I’m just remembering the face my mother had when you quoted from the Bible.”

  “Yeah, I wanted her to know that I was a God-fearing man.”

  “Are you really?”

  “Yeah. Nobody wants to die without being saved by the Lord.”

  “Is that your translation of what it means to fear God, a fear of dying without being saved?”

  “Yes, indeed,” I answered.

  “Well, if that’s the case, then everybody’s God-fearing, because I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t want to be saved before they leave here.”

  “Oh, trust me, Denise, there’s plenty of psychos who really don’t care,” I told her.

  “I’m talking about people who we know, not Charles Manson types.”

  “Hell, I think even crazy Charles is scared of Him by now. He’s had a long time to think about it.”

  Denise began to smile again. “Is God a Him?”

  I smiled back at her, as we talked between mouthfuls of food.

  “I guess that’s just what people are used to calling Him.” I shook my head at my goof. “See that, I’ve done it again.”

  “It doesn’t bother me. Women actually refer to God as Him more than men do,” Denise suggested.

  “That’s because women speak about God more than the men do in general. You can hardly get the average man to go to church, unless it’s a funeral.”

  Denise laughed and had to stop to finish her food. “Why is that?” she asked me.

  “That’s easy. Most men are egotistical enough to believe that they control their own destiny.”

  “Don’t we though?”

  I swallowed my food before answering. “To a certain degree. But I guess men believe that they have a lot more control over the world than women do.”

  Denise nodded, still eating. “Mmm hmm,” she mumbled. “And they do, just not as much as we allow them to have.”

  “That’s true, too. People allow others to control.”

  Denise agreed. “It’s chan
ging though. More and more women are beginning to understand their own power.”

  I paused for a second. I had a thought on the power issue, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bring it up or not. After thinking it over, I decided that I would.

  “Do you think that this realization of women’s power has been good for black people or bad? I mean, I can say that it’s definitely been good for the sisters, but how has it affected the black community as a whole?” I really wanted an answer to that question. Because it seemed that the more black women amassed their own wealth and power, the less qualified black men were becoming, which led to more broken unions that could have been healthy families. I was still afraid to even ask my sister, “D. Brockenborough,” if she had started dating white men in Tucson.

  Denise nodded and raised an index finger as she finished her mouthful. “Camellia and I thought about that a lot, especially after starting up the Single Mothers’ Organization. We kept hearing sisters say that brothers were intimidated by their success and willpower. Now, what are we supposed to do, act meek and giddy for these brothers? Fuck that! We have children to raise.”

  I broke out laughing. “That’s the same thing I told Larry when he complained about it,” I responded. “But that still doesn’t answer the question of what happens to our community at the outset of all of these broken unions?”

  Denise gave me a long stare. She said, “I see where you’re going with this, and it ain’t gonna work. I’m not going to tell sisters to stop moving forward and doing what they need to do because these brothers have ego problems. That’s on them.

  “What they need to do is shove their damn pride in their back pockets and learn how to stick it out with a sister who will support them,” she said. “But no! All I hear are brothers talking about how the white man has his foot on their neck and how they can’t get a break, and all that other bullshit, as if we’ve had it easy as black women.

  “Now, we never talk about it much, because I’m not really into the class and money thing, but I make a little more than you do right now, and I’m a strong sister with two growing sons, and yet you’re not intimidated by me. So what are your thoughts on your own situation? How come you were able to stick it out?”