So You Call Yourself a Man

by Carl Weber

  Jackie and I had been sleeping with each other for almost a month. We got together only a day after we’d nearly been caught by Alison. I hadn’t even gotten in the door from work that day when Jackie’s car pulled into my driveway. Everyone in the congregation knew that Alison went straight to the hospital to see the first lady and didn’t come home until visiting hours were over, so by the time Jackie entered my house and my front door was closed, it was on. Once we consummated our relationship, we couldn’t stay away from each other. Jackie was like a drug, and I was an addict that had to have a fix at least once a day. We met in every cheap short-stay motel in Brooklyn and Queens, and it never seemed like enough. We both longed to spend more time together. So when this business trip to San Francisco came up, I insisted Jackie come along with me. I had the time of my life, being with Jackie without looking over my shoulder, fearing we might be seen by some church member. The trip was something I thought I’d never regret, but now that Alison had told me she was pregnant, I felt guilty. I think Jackie knew it, too.

  “So, where does this leave us?” We’d just finished making love and Jackie was now playing with the hair on my chest. I was lying on my back, staring at the ceiling as I daydreamed about fatherhood. I began to contemplate packing my bags and heading home. There was no doubt I was in love with Jackie, but for the first time, I realized my place was with my wife, Alison, and our unborn child.

  “I’m not quite sure what you mean.” I was lying. I knew exactly what Jackie meant. What I didn’t know was the politically correct way to say there was no us now that my wife was pregnant.

  “Where does you and Alison having a baby leave us? You know, us, as in, you and me? I thought we were going to be together.”

  I took a long, deep breath. “I don’t know, Jackie. Why don’t we just take it one day at a time?”

  “What? Oh, no you didn’t!” Jackie rolled those beautiful green eyes at me with jealous anger, then threw the covers to the side and got out of the bed. “You’ve been screwing me every day for the past month and now you wanna take it one day at a time like I’m some whore you can discard at any time? I’m not a whore, Brent. You don’t just pay me and I go away. I’m in love with you.”

  “I never said you were a whore, Jackie, and I love you too. But we’re both married, and even if we weren’t, the fact that you can’t have kids stands in our way.” Jackie sat up wide-eyed, bucking at the chance to lash at my remarks. I jumped to my own defense before a word was uttered. “Oh, c’mon, Jackie. It’s not fair that you’d look at me that way. We’ve discussed this before. I want a family. I want to be able to go outside and throw a football with my son and go to gymnastics with my daughter. You can’t give me that, and you know how bad I want a child.”

  “No, Brent. You’re the one who’s being unfair. I apologize that I can’t have your baby, but it’s also not under my control. If you love me so much, then what’s wrong with the thought of adoption? We can do the same thing the white people do in Asia. We can go down to the Islands or even Africa and get us a baby—a little boy. We can even name him Brent Jr. How about that? I’d love him and care for him as if he was my own.”

  I let out a laugh, but by the look I received, I could tell I’d pissed Jackie off. “You can’t be serious. You barely take care of the children you’ve got. Who’s going to stay home with the baby? You or me?”

  Jackie didn’t have an answer for that right away, but I could see tears start to fall. I walked over and wrapped my arms around my lover’s narrow waistline.

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy, Brent. I just need to know that you love me.”

  “Of course I love you. You know that. Now com’ere.” I kissed Jackie’s neck, figuring that some sex would be the key to calming the situation down. Then things would go back to the way they were.

  Jackie pushed me away. “No, I don’t know it. I’m starting to think you love her more than you love me. I guess the question is, do you?” Jackie posed, sistah-girl-style, waiting for an answer.

  “No, Jackie, I don’t love her as much as I love you. I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you, but I do love her. I love her a lot. She’s having my child.”

  “Well then, you’re going to have to make a choice. I’m in love with you, Brent. I’m willing to give up everything for you. I just want you to do the same. I’m sick of living a lie.”

  Feeling torn inside, I paused before answering. Truth is, I’d never felt so alive as when I was with Jackie, but the bottom line was, Alison was my wife, and she was having my child.

  “Answer me, Brent.”

  Finally, I cleared my throat and spoke in a firm voice. “Jackie, please don’t force me to make a choice we both might regret.”

  “Answer the question. Should I stay or should I go?”

  “What do you want me to do, Jackie? Leave my wife and unborn child and move out here to San Francisco with you?”

  “That’s exactly what I want you to do.”

  “What we have is good, Jackie, better than I could have ever imagined, and I don’t want it to end…but I’m not leaving my wife for you or anybody else.”

  Jackie’s eyes filled up with tears again. “So, there it is. I asked you to make a choice and you made it. I just hope you can live with it.”

  Jackie stomped over to the closet and pulled out a suitcase.

  “Why are you doing this? You knew I was married when we started this whole thing. You’re married. You said you just wanted to have fun.”

  “In every affair there comes a time when the mistress wants to become the Mrs. I just realized that I’m never going to be the Mrs.”

  27

  James

  I’d been waiting for almost a week before I finally got the call I’d been expecting from my mother. She left a vague message with Cathy that she had something she wanted me to pick up at her house. Of course, this drove Cathy crazy, but it wasn’t the first time my mother had received deliveries for me and refused to share any information with my wife. She loved Cathy, but she was very good about protecting my interests. Besides, the things I had delivered to my mother’s house were normally just gifts for Cathy that I didn’t want her to open before her birthday, so my mother’s secret-keeping was pretty innocent, at least until now.

  I knew that this time the delivery would be the results of the DNA test, which were supposed to be sent in a plain envelope without the company logo on it. With the unmarked envelope, I was confident my mother had no idea what she was keeping for me at her home. I had decided to have the results sent to my mother’s house instead of Sonny’s because I couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t open the letter before I had a chance to pick it up. I trusted him to keep the original DNA testing kit, but his curiosity would very likely get the best of him if he knew he held the results in his hand. I didn’t want to risk that.

  The call from my mother had come in the morning, and the wait to go over there and get it felt like torture. I wanted to go as soon as possible to get an answer about Marcus’s paternity, but I couldn’t leave until late in the afternoon, when my boys were off at Little League practice. They loved my mother, mostly because she was the type of grandma who spoiled her grandkids, so if they knew I was going to see her, they would have insisted on going with me.

  All day, as I counted the minutes before their practice, Cathy bugged the shit out of me, trying to figure out what my mother could possibly have at her house. No doubt she assumed it was another gift for her, even though it was nowhere near her birthday or our anniversary. I made a mental note to stop at the mall and buy her something after I went to pick up the mail. When Cathy finally got the boys in the car to take them to practice, I had to stop myself from running to my car before they were out of the driveway, then I had to remind myself to drive somewhere near the speed limit.

  When I pulled up in front of my mother’s house, a wave of nostalgia washed over me. This was the home I grew up in, and memories flooded me as I sat, my engine
idling. I looked up at the roof where I broke my left arm when Sonny dared me to leap off it in the fifth grade. My eyes traveled to the porch I used to jump from with my skateboard, then to the bump in the sidewalk where we used to pop wheelies on our dirt bikes. Those were the good old days, when life was simple…not the mess my life was now.

  I felt like a little boy again, and although I didn’t want to admit it, I wanted my mother. When my father died when I was seven, my mother stepped up to the plate, working midnights and taking care of me and my little brother and sister. She was always the one who could make everything all right, no matter what.

  I still kept a key to my mother’s house, so I let myself in. As soon as I walked into the house, the envelope seemed to jump out at me. It was sitting on the telephone stand where my mother always kept her mail.

  “James, is that you?” my mother called out from the kitchen. I could smell her famous mustard greens and fried chicken. Usually, just the aroma of my mother’s cooking could throw me into an incredible hunger, but today, I was too worried. I had no appetite.

  “Yeah, Ma, it’s me.”

  I picked up the envelope, but my fingers froze as I tried to open it. I heaved a deep sigh, walked around in a circle, then repeated the same steps counterclockwise. What was I going to do? This letter was like kryptonite to Superman. It could blow my newfound security with Cathy and my two sons straight out of the water. I kept saying to myself that I was going to tear it open any second now, but some invisible hand stopped me. I was too afraid. Finally, my mother came out of the kitchen, wiping her plump hands on her full-length apron, which covered her heavy girth. For a while, she watched me as I paced the room, holding the envelope clasped tightly in my hands.

  “James, what is it?” My mother knew me like a book.

  “Ma—” I couldn’t finish the words because I didn’t know where to start.

  “What is it?” she repeated. I walked into the living room and my mother followed.

  “You don’t wanna know, Ma,” I sputtered.

  “Let me see that envelope.” My mother took it out of my hand and I didn’t protest, not even when she opened the envelope and read the enclosed letter. Her eyes searched my face for some explanation, but I still couldn’t speak.

  “James, what have you gotten yourself into? This letter says that there’s a ninety-nine-point-nine percent chance that some child named Marcus could be your son. What is going on, James?”

  I had to sit down before I collapsed. I took a few backward steps until I bumped into the nearest chair, then fell into it. So many times in recent weeks, I had tried to convince myself that a DNA test would solve all my problems. I guess because I wanted it to be true, I believed that the results would tell me what I wanted to hear: that I was not Marcus’s father, and I would no longer have to deal with Michelle. Hearing my mother read the exact opposite of the news I wanted was a cold slap of reality, and I was struggling to process it. How could this really be happening?

  My mother, on the other hand, had already processed the information in the letter and wanted some answers now. “James, is this true? Did you know about this child?”

  I regained my senses enough to finally respond. “Ma, it was a mistake. Cathy and I were separated when I met Michelle. I just found out about Marcus.”

  “How old is this boy?”

  “He’s three.”

  “Have you seen the child?”

  I nodded. “I’ve been babysitting more than you’d believe.” She listened as I told her everything, from the first late-night phone call from Michelle to how she had been manipulating the situation. “But I still didn’t want to believe he was mine, Ma. That’s why I got the DNA test.”

  She looked down at the letter she was still holding. “Well, from the looks of this test, you’d better start believing it.”

  “What am I gonna do?” I asked. I felt bad about bringing this drama to my mother’s doorstep, but part of me still wished she could just make it all better, like she could when I was a child. But I knew that wasn’t possible, so the most I could hope for were some ideas about how to handle things now that I knew for sure I was Marcus’s father.

  “Well, since you had this delivered to my address, I’m assuming that Cathy doesn’t know anything about it,” she said.

  “Not yet. She thinks the reason I’m out so often is that I took on a second job.”

  My mother raised her eyebrows as she recognized the web of lies I’d been weaving. “Well, I don’t exactly condone you lying to your wife, James, but in this case, you might have been right. I don’t know how she’s going to take this news, considering you two have just started working out all your other issues.”

  “I know,” I agreed. “That’s why I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to tell her.”

  “Well, eventually you might have to, but not yet. At least wait a while. It looks like you and Cathy might make it, but things are still a little delicate. This would only tear apart all the work you’ve done to fix your marriage, and I would hate to see you lose your family over this mistake,” she said. Though she referred to it as my “mistake,” she knew it would undoubtedly be termed an ultimate betrayal by my wife, which was why she was advising me to keep Marcus a secret.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can keep the secret, Ma. If she thinks I have a second job, she obviously expects to see some money, and I can’t keep borrowing from my friends forever.”

  “True. I have some ideas about how I can help you with that.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “But first, I want to meet this child for myself.”

  I looked up at her, not sure how I felt about her request. Was it really a good idea to let her meet Michelle and Marcus? My mother had been known to go off a time or two when she thought someone was threatening one of her children. Michelle, with all her threats to tell Cathy, was clearly not someone my mother would like. I couldn’t risk letting her get indignant with Michelle. It would only give Michelle one more reason to want to pick up the phone and call my wife.

  “I don’t know, Ma. You and Michelle might not—”

  “Nonsense,” she said, obviously trying to sound innocent. “I understand what you’re trying to tell me, James, and I will not do anything to upset that woman. But that boy is my grandson, and I want to see him for myself.”

  I stood up reluctantly, still trying to protest. “But Ma, maybe—”

  “Now, James. I want to go see him now, so call that girl and tell her we’re coming.” She spoke in that tone that I’d come to know so well as a child. When she spoke this way, Momma was giving an ultimatum. Although I was a grown man, I was still powerless to deny her orders once they were given this way.

  She smiled at me, satisfied that I’d gotten her message. Placing the DNA results on the telephone table, she said, “I’ll just go turn off the stove while you call and tell her we’re on our way.”

  I pulled out my cell phone and waited for my mother to leave the room before I made the call. I dialed, and my stomach twisted and flipped as I waited for Michelle to answer. When she picked up the phone, I wasted no time with small talk.

  “Michelle, my mother wants to meet you.”

  “Oh, hello to you too, James,” she said sarcastically, “and hell, no, I don’t want to meet your mother.”

  “Why do you have to be this way?” I asked.

  “Because I can,” she said with a quick laugh. “Besides, why would I want to meet your mother? It ain’t like you and me are a couple or something.”

  Thank God, I thought. “No, we’re not, but you are the mother of her grandson.”

  “Oh.” This stopped Michelle’s roll for a moment, like it just dawned on her that this wasn’t all about her. There was a child involved.

  Suddenly, an idea came to me. Ma could help me keep the secret from Cathy, and I wouldn’t have to be out of the house as much as I had been lately. “She wants to babysit,” I said, knowing my mother would most likely go along with this.


  Michelle sucked her teeth, picking up the attitude right where she left off. “I don’t know this woman.”

  “I know, which is exactly why I want to bring her by now to meet you. Trust me, you’ll like her,” I insisted, banking on my mother’s promise that she would behave herself around Michelle.

  “Now’s not a good time. Besides, I don’t think I want her babysitting Marcus. He’s afraid of strangers,” she said in all seriousness, forgetting that she had left me to babysit him the very first night he laid eyes on me. Now I saw what this was all about. Michelle knew she was threatening the stability of my marriage every time she called me out of my house at night to watch Marcus. Allowing my mother to take over some of the babysitting duty would take away that hammer she’d been holding over my head.

  “Michelle, she wouldn’t be a stranger to Marcus. She’s his grandmother, for God’s sake.”

  Ma had come back into the room at some point during my conversation. I don’t know how much she heard, but she obviously knew that I was getting nowhere close to convincing Michelle to let us come over.

  “Let me talk to her,” Ma said, reaching for the phone. I handed it over quickly, glad for some relief from Michelle’s constant arguing.

  “Michelle, my name is Mrs. Robinson, and I’m James’s mother.” Her tone was gentle yet firm. She didn’t pause long enough to give Michelle a chance to protest when she said, “If I have a grandson in this world, I’d like to see him. I may be of some help to you. I am a retired nurse, so I know how to care for children.”

  When she did finally give Michelle a chance to speak, Ma’s expression told me that she wasn’t getting any of that famous attitude I was so accustomed to hearing from Michelle. I was glad that as bad as she was, Michelle still had enough sense to show some respect to her elders. In fact, the conversation went on peacefully for several minutes, and Ma even laughed a few times during the call. By the time she hung up, Michelle had agreed to let us come over so Marcus could meet his grandmother.