“So, y’all at my table bragging about some high school dropout, who’s poisoning our kids with trashtalking set to music?” my father said. “He isn’t doing anything but bringing down the community. Probably the reason the school is in such bad shape now.”
“Well, not exactly, Dad,” Evan said. “He’s actually trying to give back.”
“What?” I asked.
“He’s been talking about coming to Black Warrior and donating some money to the school. We’re trying to get a date together right now. Could be as soon as the week after next.”
“You didn’t tell me about that.”
“It could still fall through,” Evan said. “He’s coming off of his promo tour and getting ready for a world tour later this year. I didn’t want to speak before anything was confirmed. He’s trying to get BET on board.”
“Well, you can pump blood money into that school if you want,” my father said. “It won’t make things better.”
“Oh, Jethro,” my mother tried correcting him, “what do you want the boy to do? Give back or not? If the school needs money, they should take it. Just imagine if all these basketball players and football players and rappers all went back to their hometowns and gave away money. Look, let’s not ruin Journey’s birthday dinner talking about this. We should just discuss positive things.”
“Thank you, Mama,” I said, not knowing I’d want her to take that back in ten short seconds.
“Fine with me,” my father said, turning to focus on me. “When are you and Evan going to give me a grandbaby?” he asked. “You’re thirty-three. You don’t want to wait until your eggs dry up.”
“Dad—how could you even say something like that? Look, my eggs aren’t going anywhere,” I said, avoiding looking in May’s direction. I hated it when he said things like that in front of her. “I’m fine.”
“Well, what’s the holdup?” he continued. “You got a husband, a good job, a home.... Do you need something else?”
Everyone at the table stopped eating and looked at me. Even Evan. He’d been working on me about this for a while now. It had turned into a regular argument and once it was clear that I hadn’t made a decision and wouldn’t stop taking the birth control pill until I did, he simply stopped having sex with me. He’d been claiming he was tired, but I suspected he was just trying to punish me by controlling me in some other way.
“It’s not about what I need. I just want to do some other things in my life before I have a baby. I mean, I want to travel. I’m thirty-three and I’ve never used my passport.”
“Well, you should’ve thought about that when you were younger,” my father said.
“Where you want to go? Spring break in Cancun or something?” Jr laughed.
“You two back off,” my mother said. “Journey, if this is about travel, why can’t you and Evan just take a trip together. You can go somewhere special before you have the baby.”
“That’s not what—” I tried, but Evan cut me off.
“We’ve actually been talking about having a baby.” Evan slid his hand on top of mine on the table. Everyone got quiet. “Maybe this summer.”
“Wonderful!” my mother shouted as if she hadn’t heard anything I’d said and only Evan’s words counted.
“Really?” May looked at me glumly.
“That’s not what I said,” I murmured to Evan. “I said we’d talk about it this summer.”
“Oh, I’ll have to start collecting squares for a quilt,” Nana Jessie said. “I can cut some of my mama’s old dresses.”
“That’ll be good luck for her,” my mother cheered. “Oh ... a girl, a baby girl. Finally another girl in the family.”
“Who said it’s going to be a girl? I never even said I was going to—” I tried, but this time my father cut me off.
“Ain’t gonna be no girl. It’s bad luck for the first baby to be a girl. Got to be a boy to pass on that blood line.” He nodded to a smiling Evan and then glanced disapprovingly at Jr.
“Yes, sir,” Evan said proudly, poking out his chest like my father.
“Now, after the boy, then you two can go right on and have a girl quickly,” my father went on. “Don’t wait like me and your mother did with you. Had you and Jr too far apart. That’s why you don’t get along. Have them back to back.”
I kicked Billie beneath the table. Along with my father’s long prayers, she’d seen this too many times at the dinner table—me entangled in the vector of my family’s trajectory planning. Usually, Jr just went along with the plan; I took the approach of holding out until they changed the subject; Justin just ran away. As everyone else continued to eat and sip on their iced tea merrily with the thought of my two children, I looked to the tenth chair in the dining room set, empty and tucked away beside the china cabinet, and thought of Justin. Sometimes it seemed like he was the lucky one.
“So, I guess my baby sister’s going to beat me,” Jr said, walking me and Evan to the door after May and I’d helped my mother clean the kitchen. Billie and Mustafa left early to give Nana Jessie a ride home and my father departed with a plate he was taking to Mother Oliver, who’d been on our shut-in list at the church for years.
“I’ll go get the car,” Evan said, rushing out ahead of me.
“Beat you at what?” I asked Jr.
“Having a baby.”
“That’s still to be decided.”
“Children are great. A blessing to any family.”
“What do you know about it?” I asked. “You sound like you have one.”
“Journey,” he said, looking off, “just do it. Stop being so stubborn.”
“Stubborn? You make it sound like I’m buying a car.”
“You never could commit to anything.”
“I can commit to not listening to you.”
Jr had a way of twisting what seemed like human concern into the platform for an insult. I had to fight back or be slaughtered.
“Journey, I’m not trying to argue with you,” he said, opening the front door and gesturing for me to step outside. Evan was already sitting in the car at the head of the oval driveway that parted before the front door. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“What’s up?” I asked, already knowing what he was about to bring up. Whenever Jr did take time to talk to me—and it was rare—it was either to say something bad about Justin or bring up my taking over the entertainment ministry at the church. Besides the children’s ministry, which Jack ran, the entertainment ministry was the biggest department at the church. Newly formed, it included dance, our visual arts direction, theater, the orchestra, the marching band, all of the choirs, and the biggest deal at the church since my father announced he was considering a move to television—audio and visual production. When all of the smaller ministries were organized under the umbrella of entertainment, my father instructed Jr to appoint a salaried director. The sixfigure position would be the seventh of its kind at the church. Included were Jr’s leadership of all of the ministerial directors, my mother’s position as the executive officer of the women’s clinic, the church’s executive director who presided over all financial matters, and Jack, who doubled as assistant pastor and director of the children’s ministry.
“I think it’s time for you to come be with us,” Jr said. “You know I still have that position open and waiting for you.”
“We talked about this before.” I stepped down to the bottom step. “I’m at the school ... I love what I do.”
“Would you stop being selfish and think about your family ... our legacy? This is your father’s church. We can’t entrust such a big role at the House to an outsider. Someone not in the family. There’s too much at stake for us to do that again.”
“Outsiders? Are you still angry about Jack? Is this about him?”
Jack had been a pebble in Jr’s shoe for some time. Our father appointed him as assistant pastor and when he put him in a fully salaried position over the children’s ministry—with equal pay to Jr—my brother took it as a pers
onal attack. Suddenly, Jack couldn’t be trusted and Jr was waiting for him to mess up.
“Don’t bring that nigga up in front of my father’s house.” Jr raised his voice in a way that wasn’t at all normal—even for him. I’d pushed a button; that was clear. I just didn’t know which one.
“Look, I don’t see why you think I’d be better for the job than anyone else. I have no training. No experience. I’ve been teaching all of my life. I don’t know how to do anything else.”
“You grew up in that church. You and I know what the people want. That’s all it takes,” he pleaded as we stood next to the car. “And we can pay for you to go to graduate school again—get an MBA this time.”
“It’s a big undertaking.”
“You ever think maybe you got more to offer the world than just teaching some badass kids how to sing? Like maybe there was something else out there for you?”
In true Jethro, Jr style, he was tunneling into me now. Digging so deep that his insults rang with a kind of honesty that made me second-guess my own feelings.
“Your place is in the church, Journey,” he added. “Don’t forget it.”
Chapter Five
The ride home from my dinner celebration was so quiet that I could hear the loose gravel on the road skeet beneath the tires and pop up against the bottom of the car as Evan and I drove along. The grainy bursts reminded me of the hits I’d been taking all evening at my birthday celebration.
I was no fool. I knew Jr was just trying to twist up my thoughts to get his way, but I kept thinking maybe in his errors there was something correct. Maybe he was right. Maybe I couldn’t sing because I hadn’t been singing. Not outside of my classroom. Then I started thinking about why I’d left the choir in the first place. I said I wanted to focus on my students. It was true, but really, right before I left, I just kept feeling like I’d done everything I could do for the choir. It had been twenty years. I was ready to move on. But to what? Shifting things around in my purse, my eyes went from the empty passport to the empty notepad. Even thinking I could make up the next step hadn’t helped me find one.
It might’ve helped if I could talk to someone about these questions that were pitching against my brain, but Billie was so busy getting over Clyde and sometimes talking to my mother seemed impossible—she was so caught up in the things she wanted for my life. Then there was my perfect husband—the other person I was taking hits from all night, who was sitting next to me in silence.
I was still reeling from what he told my parents at dinner and I had nothing to say to him.
Evan hadn’t necessarily been in rare form. His desire to be in the good favor of my father usually led to him agreeing with my father’s constant hovering and dictation over my life. But he’d had some nerve twisting my words in front of my parents and making it seem as if we’d discussed and agreed to something he knew full well I said I needed more time with.
By the time we neared our house and Evan turned onto the dark, winding half-mile road that led to the driveway, I realized that my silence wasn’t being refuted. In fact, it was becoming clear that Evan wasn’t speaking to me either. As we swung into the driveway, I noticed that he hadn’t turned on the radio, opened the windows, or even let down the top—as he usually did during these warmer spring nights. Disgusted that he could be playing upset when I was the one with reason to be on edge, I rolled my eyes and looked to him as he turned off the car. His face was tight and dismissive. He saw my glare, but he only slid the key from the ignition and opened his door, letting out an exaggerated groan.
“Okay, then,” I said, still sitting in my seat as I waited for him to dare not come open my door. I was ready to fight. Not only had he discounted my feelings, but now he had the nerve to downplay my position by having his own. This was typical Evan. In any situation, he had to be the center of attention. Even the attention he gave on his own seemed to come with a price tag.
I sat and watched as he walked slowly and methodically from his door and then over to mine, taking his time as if helping me had now become a chore.
“So, you didn’t want to open the door for me?” I asked.
“Don’t start,” he said gruffly. “I just want to get in the house and go to bed. I don’t want to argue.”
He slammed the door behind me and headed quickly toward the house. I knew what he was doing. He wanted to let my anger roll away in the middle of the night and then wake up in the morning cheeryfaced and smiling, as if nothing had happened. Like my brother and any other man who ever tried to close a conversation by saying, “I don’t want to argue,” he meant he wanted to avoid a confrontation and quietly get his way. But it was too late for that. My birthday had already been ruined and I was ready to fight.
“I want to talk about what happened.”
“Journey, I’m tired and if I was slow opening your door, I’m sorry.”
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how you acted in front of my parents,” I blurted out, charging behind him into the house. “You spoke for me like ... like ... it’s the Middle Ages or something.”
“Don’t overreact. No one was trying to speak for you. I was just answering their questions.” His voice sounded more pained and stressed with each word. He was trying to make developing an explanation for my questions seem like work, so I would appear more ridiculous. Like I was being irrational.
“Don’t patronize me. You know what I mean, Evan. You know I never said I was ready to have a baby. I said we could talk about it this summer. Not go ahead and get pregnant. That’s a big step. We need to figure it out.”
“A big step? Figure it out?” His voice grew loud and echoed up and down the stairs in the middle of the vestibule. “Do you see this?” He raised his hands and turned around, looking at the house. “Do you see our lives? We’re married. Are you going somewhere? Do you plan on going somewhere? What do you think is out there? Somebody else? Something better?” He walked over to me and stared into my eyes. “’Cause I know ain’t no man gonna love you like I can. I’m not going anywhere and if you’re not”—he put his arms around my waist—“there’s nothing else to figure out. Let’s not fight about it.”
I heard everything Evan was saying and it made perfect sense, but I wanted more time and I couldn’t find another way of explaining it to him.
“It’s more than that,” I said.
Evan dropped his hands and turned his back to me. He was quiet and he raised his hand to wipe his face.
“What more do you want from me?” he asked, his voice helpless and broken. “I’m a good husband. A good provider.” He turned to face me. “I come home every night. I don’t cheat on you. Never have. Not in twenty-five years. Never.” He came closer and I could see tears in his eyes. “I haven’t tried to do anything but love you and make you happy. Provide a life for us. I waited ten years just to be your husband. I promised you I’d give you everything and you have it. Why can’t you just do this for me?”
He looked at me and as we stood there quietly, motionless, I watched as his chest just sank in. Seemingly crushed, he slowly pulled off his tie and walked up the spiral staircase to our bedroom.
Lying in bed beside Evan, his back twisted tight and his face pointed away from me, I struggled hard to keep my position. But I was hurting now. The anger inside of me began to lessen as I suffered Evan’s pain. My feelings aside, I knew Evan was a good man. He was right. He was a great husband and I didn’t want to hurt him.
From my side of our king-sized, four-poster bed, my thoughts drifted to the beginning of my relationship with Evan. Before the pressure and everybody’s opinions. Before we could even imagine sleeping in a bed together, in a house that was our own, in a town that we’d sworn was too small to ever consider for forever.
He’d asked me to be his girlfriend in the third grade.
“Just be my girl until Anne Toomer moves back here in the summer,” he’d begged, splitting a little piece of Mary Jane candy with me at the r
iver behind my daddy’s first church where they used to baptize people. “You gonna give me candy everyday ?” I asked, unsure of what a girlfriend was anyway. “My mama says ain’t no chil’en supposed to have sweets every day,” he responded. I sighed and then he gave me the other half of the Mary Jane. “I guess I can disobey her though ... for you Journey Lynn Cash.” I ate Evan’s piece, Anne Toomer never came back to Alabama and we’ve been together ever since.
He’d been my best friend. Twenty-five years. That had to count for something. I could trace nearly every smiling moment of my life back to him. And while this knowledge—that I’d only realized a few years ago—both annoyed and stunned me at the same time, it was comfortable and Evan’s presence alone always made me feel connected to something. He wasn’t perfect, but I loved him.
Being a mother wouldn’t be a bad thing I supposed. I thought of how much joy my brothers and I brought to my parents’ lives, the fact that May couldn’t even have children, and Zenobia, a girl with the rest of her life ahead of her, had one she couldn’t even take care of. Suddenly, laying next to my husband, my feelings seemed selfish. I was scared of something Zenobia went running toward and May dreamed of. Opal’s mother was right. It was the next step.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly, not knowing if Evan was still awake.
He exhaled and rolled over onto his back.
“I didn’t want to fight,” he said.
“I know,” I said.
“I don’t know what came over me at dinner. I’m just so excited. I can’t wait to be a father.” He looked at me sadly. “But if you want to wait.... I guess we can talk about it this summer.”
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