Choose Me

by Xenia Ruiz

  I followed him to the door. “He’s a believer, Pastor,” I said meekly. “He’s a good man.”

  “A good man and a godly man are two different beings.” At the door, he turned to me slowly. “A good man is concerned with pleasing himself and others, while a godly man pleases God.”

  I nodded silently, knowing no defense would be justifiable in his eyes.

  Pastor Zeke put his hand on my shoulder. “I know you will do the right thing. Read your Bible, Philippians four, verses eight and nine. ‘Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just…’”

  “‘If there he any virtue, and if there he any praise, think on these things,’” I finished the verse.

  “Amen.” He gripped my hand with a reassuring squeeze before going down the steps. “Sister, you have my numbers. My door is always open. Call on me anytime. If you’d rather talk with a Sister, let me know, alright? Alright. God bless you.” At the front gate, he exclaimed, “I hope this rice pudding makes it home!”

  That night, I laid awake thinking about what the pastor had said, about his definition of a good man and a godly one. I knew God had intervened once again, sending the pastor to the rescue. Everything he had said was true, with the exception that I needed a chaperone. I was an adult, not a teenager who couldn’t control herself. But by his admission, Adam was finding it more difficult to control himself. If the pastor had not come along, I wondered if I would have been able to stop Adam. I knew I had to end it with Adam for good, but how and when were the questions.

  When the phone rang later that night, I thought it was Adam, but it was Eli, calling to say that he and Tony were crashing at their father’s. He promised they would come home the next day in time for the shopping, matinee, and dinner we had planned. After being home only two days, we had barely spent any time together and I missed them. When they were growing up, I couldn’t wait for Anthony’s weekends so I could enjoy a couple of days of solitude. Back then, the weekends didn’t come fast enough. Now, even when they were home, I had to share them with their father, their friends, and the rest of the extended family. Suddenly, being alone was losing its allure.

  I spent the next morning doing late-autumn yard work, raking leaves and covering my rosebushes as I listened to my favorite Christian salsa group, Querubín, on the portable stereo. Inside the house, I could hear the faint ringing of the phone and I turned up the music, letting it fill the air, allowing the words to sink into my spirit. I didn’t check my messages until I was in bed. There were two from Adam.

  When Tony and Eli came home, we went to Water Tower Place, saw an independent movie I had been wanting to see, and then had dinner at Shaw’s Crab House. Afterward, they went out with friends. Sunday came much too fast and after church, they were packing their weekend bags to go back to school.

  “So, Adam seems cool,” Eli said, stuffing his clothes carelessly into his bag. “You going to marry him, huh, are ya, Ma, are ya?” He poked me playfully in the side, grinning his infectious smile.

  “Of course not,” I answered quickly, pulling the clothes out and rolling them properly.

  Tony didn’t say anything as he packed his toiletries.

  “We’ve only known each other for three months,” I added.

  Tony shrugged. “It’s your life, Mother.”

  Determined to begin weaning myself of Adam, I didn’t return his calls. I knew avoiding him wasn’t the solution, but I wanted to say the right words without hurting or judging him. I could sense God was preparing me for Adam’s departure, giving me the patience to wait for the right time, the right place to talk with him. Predictably, God tested me as I was in bed trying to read the lessons for the next Bible study class. When Adam called, I was marking Psalm 144 with a highlighter: He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge. Instinctively, I picked up the phone, expecting the boys calling to let me know they had arrived safely.

  “I called you,” Adam said, the annoyance in his voice palpable. “Twice.”

  “I’ve been with my sons.”

  “I just wanted to know if you were still coming to Kia’s party next weekend,” he said. “My mother wants to meet you.”

  “I forgot about that.” What was the sense in meeting his mother if it would soon be over, I thought. There was a weighty pause and I highlighted the passage again. “We haven’t talked,” I said hesitantly.

  “About Thanksgiving? Look, I’m sorry about what I did. Losing control like that.”

  “It’s not just that, Adam. It’s the sex issue,” I said, relieved I finally got it out. “And your expectations and—”

  “Can we not do this now?” he asked gruffly. “Let’s have lunch tomorrow. I’m going out for a run. I need to relieve some … stress.”

  I imagined him in his navy blue running suit, the one with the glow-in-the-dark letters that read: “Caution: Running While Black,” the one that had become tighter lately. My stomach did a flip as I envisioned him changing his clothes. It wasn’t until I hung up that I remembered he said he had stopped running at night.

  Carol Stream was about forty-five minutes from the city. It was a nice long drive during which Adam and I listened to music and talked about work, my sons, and his protégés. During the past week, we met for lunch only once because Adam claimed he was busy with work. He briefly brought up Thanksgiving night, but only to apologize once again for his behavior, never touching on the underlying problem of our conflicting expectations. When we parted, he kissed me quickly without holding me in his arms. I found myself not craving more, and surprised I wasn’t angry. Yes, God was working in His mysterious way.

  Kia’s party was well underway in the lower level of Jade’s town-house. I noted that there were more adults than children at the party. It reminded me of the celebrations my family used to have when Maya and I were kids, the kind where the birthday child was usually asleep by the time the cake was cut. From what I could tell, Mrs. Naomi Black was an outspoken woman who carried a lot of weight with her eyes. She was as polite to me as Jade was in the beginning and periodically, I caught her scrutinizing me. As soon as Adam left my side, she appeared suddenly as if she had been waiting for the opportunity to ambush me.

  “What church do you attend?” she asked pointedly.

  “The Community Church of Christ in Austin. It’s on Menard.”

  She nodded. “Love tells me you have children?”

  “Love?” I asked, confused.

  “That’s what I call Adam. I wanted to make ‘Love’ his middle name but his father wouldn’t have it.”

  “Oh. I went through that with my ex-husband. He didn’t want me to give my sons Spanish middle names, but I did anyway,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound smug. Wondering how much information Adam had given her about me, I confessed the facts before she could ask: “I have two sons, nineteen and eighteen.”

  “You must’ve started really young.”

  I smiled, accustomed to the statement. “I was nineteen when I got married,” I explained, making sure she knew I had not been an unwed teenage mother. I could see her trying to do the math in her head, so I helped her out. “I’m forty. I had my first son when I was twenty-one.”

  “You know Love is thirty-six.” She said this like I was robbing the cradle.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “He said you’re from Puerto Rico?”

  “My parents are. I was born here.”

  “Interesting. I didn’t know there were Black people in Puerto Rico.”

  “Oh, yeah. We’re all over.” She gave me a reproachful look, and I realized my words might have come across as sarcastic, or condescending. I felt awful, remembering I was speaking to an elder, not to mention the mother of the man I cared about. Before I could rephrase my statement, Adam came down the stairs carrying a big sheet cake; he was followed by a serious-looking Asian man whom I assumed, judging by the look on Jade’s face, must have been Kia and Daelen’s father
. The man was carrying a huge box in front of him, which he set down at the bottom of the stairs. Recalling how tense things were between Anthony and me following our divorce whenever we happened to be in the same room, I immediately smelled trouble. I prayed Akil would get lost on his way back from getting more ice.

  “Look who I found at the front door,” Adam announced. Adam placed the cake in the middle of the decorated birthday table and patted the man on the back.

  There was silence all around, until Kia and Daelen yelled in unison, “Daddy!”

  “Hey, there’s my birthday girl!” he said. He scooped both children up in his arms and laughed. “And my little big man.”

  Adam stood between his mother and me. “Meet the ex-husband, Brandon Cho. He said he’d behave,” he whispered.

  “You should have closed the door on him,” his mother said bitterly.

  “Now, is that Christian?” Adam rebuked her good-naturedly.

  “Is that my present, Daddy?” Kia asked. “Can I open it now?”

  “Of course.”

  “First, we sing ‘Happy Birthday,’” Jade said, with exaggerated sweetness.

  “She can open it if she wants,” Brandon said, glaring at her.

  “After we cut—”

  Before she could finish, Kia began tearing at the wrapping paper. She squealed with delight and began jumping up and down when she saw the box photo of a battery-powered miniature terrain vehicle in the quintessential pink. “Mommy, look. It’s just what I wanted!”

  Jade quietly began lighting the candles, forcing a smile. I felt for her, the embarrassment of losing face in front of her children and family, reduced to nothingness in her ex-husband’s presence. But like a good mother, she tried to make the best of an uncomfortable situation.

  After that incident, Brandon seemed to settle down, and everyone relaxed. Then Kia showed her father the doll that Akil had given her.

  “Who is Akil?” he asked, spitting out the words.

  “Mommy’s boyfriend,” Daelen said, pointing toward the stereo where Jade stood talking and laughing with Akil, who had returned with the ice.

  Luckily, Adam overheard the exchange and intercepted Brandon just as he was headed toward them. I felt my stomach tense up as I watched Adam pushing Brandon toward the spiral staircase, talking softly to him and prodding him up the stairs. Initially, Brandon struggled against Adam, but he was shorter and leaner than Adam and he lost the battle. Fortunately, everyone was involved in the kids’ dance contest at the opposite end of the room, laughing at their antics. I saw Jade with a worried expression watching the exchange, and, almost simultaneously, we both walked toward the staircase just as we heard loud scuffling and then a couple of thuds that sounded unmistakably like blows.

  Jade started up the stairs. “Adam?”

  “Everything’s okay, Jade,” we heard Adam say, though his voice sounded strained. “Stay downstairs. Brandon’s going home now.”

  Jade looked down at me, wide-eyed, on the verge of crying. When we heard the front door slam, we hurried up the stairs. We found Adam washing his face in the bathroom sink, blood dripping from his nose. He half-smiled sheepishly. “He head-butted me.”

  “Oh, Adam. Are you okay?” Jade cried.

  “Is it broken?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. It stings a lot, though.” He tilted his head back, revealing blood splatters on his shirt.

  “Don’t do that,” I told him. “Pinch your nostrils.” I gave him some toilet tissue.

  “Ooh, I hate him,” Jade said angrily, her eyes teary. “He still manages to ruin everything.”

  “Adam? Jade?” Mrs. Black called out.

  “Go head her off,” Adam told Jade. “Don’t let her see me. She’ll have a fit.”

  “What do you want me to tell her?”

  “Tell her I had to take Eva home. Anything.”

  As I drove Adam’s Nova onto the expressway, he periodically examined his nose in the vanity mirror, groaning. It had stopped bleeding but was swelling up quite a bit and his eyes were turning black.

  “Maybe we should go to the ER,” I suggested.

  “It’s not like they’re going to put a cast on it. They’re just going to pack my nose with cotton. I already did that.” He turned his nostrils toward me, showing me the toilet paper he had stuffed into them. It wasn’t funny, but he looked silly and I couldn’t help but smile.

  We were on Lake Shore Drive when I noticed Adam glancing at me, like he had something to say. Finally, I asked, “What?”

  “You’re driving kind of fast,” he said tentatively.

  “What?” I glanced at the speedometer. “I’m doing fifty. Fifty-two.”

  “Speed limit’s forty-five on LSD. You know the cops here don’t play.”

  “Stop being a backseat dr—”

  Before I could finish, I had to brake suddenly as traffic slowed down for the blue flashing lights of a cop car; it had pulled over a black Mustang on the shoulder. I decelerated and got a glimpse of the driver, a habit of mine, and noted he was Black.

  “DWB?” Adam asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “You notice that too, huh?”

  “Can’t help it. It happens to my sons.” As the traffic slowed to a crawl, I asked Adam about Jade’s ex-husband. “Was your sister’s ex ever violent?”

  “There were some incidents where she had to call the cops.”

  “He seems to love his kids a lot.”

  “Yeah, he does. Which is why I let him in.”

  “You’re going to make a great father. Someday.”

  “I think I make a better uncle.”

  “But you want to have your own kids some day, no?”

  He didn’t answer, so I didn’t press. We were nearing Montrose Harbor so I turned into the next off-ramp, driving down the winding road until we reached the deserted parking lot. There was no one around for miles since the beaches were officially closed, not to mention Chicago was getting an early blast of winter weather.

  “Where are we?” he asked, as I parked the car.

  “Montrose Beach. My family used to come here when I was little. Me and Maya would pretend we were orphans because our parents would ignore us.” I smiled as I recalled the memory. “Then I started bringing my boys. I still come here every once in a while to clear my head.” I thought back to that day in August when I had danced and it rained, and I had my brief encounter with the married conga player. I remembered thinking, Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it. I wondered if I had willed Adam into my life.

  He still hadn’t answered my question, and I thought he might be deliberately avoiding the topic, hoping it would go away. I didn’t want it to end, but it was obvious that there was no future for us. I had known this for some time but had refused to face it, hoping we could continue the relationship in its current uniform state, which was as much naive as it was impossible.

  “I was never one of those men who felt a need to produce a child just for the sake of having someone that looked like him, to carry on his name,” he finally answered, squinting through the windshield. He turned to look at me. “I thought I wanted kids, you know. But I think they’re too many kids out here. Too many kids without fathers.”

  “True.”

  “Plus, I’m sterile,” he added quickly and quietly, looking away.

  “What?” It was a surprised response; I heard him perfectly clear.

  “I can’t have kids,” he said to the passenger window.

  “Because of the cancer?”

  “No. A lot of men have kids after TC. I found out before I started treatment, when they did the initial testing. It’s funny: I spent so many years worrying about birth control, and all that time, I was sterile.”

  As I caressed the soft leather steering-wheel cover, I wanted to believe him, but the Evileen who mistrusted everything had heard that line before.

  “Look at me. I’m not lying,” Adam said, reading through my silence.

&nbs
p; I looked at his face, serious and sincere. “I didn’t say you were.”

  “I can show you my test results.”

  “I believe you,” I insisted. It was true, though I didn’t know why I believed him. Perhaps because I wanted to believe that a man who had suffered from something as devastating as cancer wouldn’t lie about something as serious and personal as infertility. Or maybe I wanted to believe Adam could be the one, that if he couldn’t have children, it was one obstacle out of the way.

  “Do you?” he asked skeptically.

  I scooted across the seat and leaned into his chest. In the vanity mirror, I saw him cringe. I lifted my head and looked at him. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. My chest has been kind of tender lately.”

  “Adam, you need to get that checked out. Tender breasts are a sign of TC.”

  “They’re pecs, not breasts,” he said defensively. “And how do you know?”

  “I read up on it. On the Internet.”

  “So now you’re an expert, Doctor Clemente?” he said facetiously, smirking. “I didn’t even have any symptoms the first time. I just happened to go the doctor ’cause I had … for something else, and they found the cancer.”

  “Either way, I think you should call your doctor.”

  He smiled. “I don’t need two mothers.”

  “I’m serious, Adam.”

  “I’m serious, Adam,” he mimicked.

  I poked his nose gently and he winced, laughing. “Okay, okay. I’ll make an appointment.”

  We eyed each other and he leaned in for an instinctive kiss. With his swollen nose and blackened eyes so close to my face, he looked sinister, like a monster. I didn’t want to encourage him so I pulled back.

  “Remember making out in the backseat?” he whispered. “When you were a teenager?”

  “I never made out in the backseat of a car when I was a teenager.”

  “You lie.”

  “I’m serious. I was a virgin ’til I was eighteen, then I moved in with my boyfriend who then became my husband, so we didn’t have to … you know, ‘do it’ in a car.”