“Ma, come on. I really need to talk about this with you,” Antonyo said as he stood from the bed after his mother’s foot gesture. “I just had a horrible nightmare with Clarke begging and crying and Sheldon acting like the proud papa while he insinuated that I was just like him.”
Trina immediately returned to her seated position on the bed, watching Antonyo as he paced from one end of her bedroom to the next. Once he finally stopped and stood still at the bottom of the bed, he looked over to find a big ole cheese-eating grin on his mother’s face.
“Ma, how can you possibly find anything funny or amusing about this?” Trina once again nestled herself under the beautiful gold-colored comforter that lay atop her queen-sized cherry wood sleigh bed before responding with her final words to her child.
“Antonyo, I am not the person with whom you need to have this conversation. I suggest you go back to your room and talk to God. Sounds to me like He is trying to tell you something. Now get out. I’m going back to sleep.”
Chapter 16
Clarke sat up in the hospital bed, staring into the beautiful sleeping face of the daughter she had just given birth to not more than six hours ago. She could not believe the overwhelming joy she felt in her heart for this precious child, who only a short while ago had her screaming in overpowering agony. She also had just as hard a time believing that the father of her child had missed the entire labor and birthing process.
Seven and a half months ago when Clarke broke the news to Antonyo about her pregnancy, he was furious at her for “getting herself pregnant.” Those were not his exact words, but they may as well have been. He stomped around her front yard, screaming and yelling, acting in a way she had never seen him before. Clarke was pretty much prepared for his anger, considering the fact that she had actually tried to trap him by intentionally getting pregnant; however, by the time Antonyo stomped away from her house that day, she would not have been the least bit surprised if she never saw him again.
But to her total surprise, he arrived on the doorstep of her home early the next morning, retracting all of the venom he had spat at her not twenty-four hours previously. Antonyo had stated to her that he’d given things some serious thought and decided that he did want to be a father to his child. That news alone caused Clarke to shiver with joy, but what he said next accounted for her near fainting spell on her front porch.
“Clarke, not only do I want to be a father to my son or daughter, but I would also like to try and make a real relationship work between us. I know I said some hateful things yesterday. If you never want to speak to me again because of my immaturity and stupidity, I will understand. But I’m just asking you to take a few days and think about it.”
Without a second’s hesitation, Clarke hurled herself into Antonyo’s arms, kissing his face hysterically. Her plan was coming together much quicker than she ever imagined it would. She could not have been happier. Whatever happened to change his mind did not concern her in the least. Clarke only cared that his mind had changed. She would now hold the privilege of being the only woman in his life.
Thirty days later, the newly crowned couple moved into their own small but cozy two-bedroom apartment. The money Antonyo had saved as a result of having his former harem support him enabled him to pay the first year’s lease and security deposit in its entirety at signing. Clarke continued to work her part-time job, while Antonyo maintained his supervisor’s position at KLR. Within a month, their love nest had been completely furnished, including a fully stocked nursery for the baby.
During those initial two months together, Clarke could not have been happier. Antonyo had been attentive, generous, and seemingly excited about their pending bundle of joy. Clarke knew, of course, Antonyo had not yet fallen in love with her. She held no illusions regarding that area of their relationship; however, with the way things had been progressing, she was certain his complete devotion would eventually be hers. Until that time came, she remained content in lavishing him with the love she knew that she would always have only for him.
When Clarke had entered her second trimester, things within the couple’s cocoon of well-being had taken a dramatic shift. Clarke began to notice restlessness in Antonyo. Little by little, week by week, the fragile peace the two had built began to disintegrate. Clarke tried remaining positive, believing that her man’s antsy behavior was the result of her expanding figure and not his previous inability to sustain a monogamous relationship.
Over the past several weeks, evidence, mostly circumstantial, had begun surfacing, indicating that Antonyo had gone back to his playboy ways. He began staying away from home more often, returning later in the evenings as time went by. Antonyo explained his absences and extended late nights by simply stating he was hanging out with his cousin, Darnell, who had recently been released from prison for the second time. Clarke had met Antonyo’s delinquent relative on just one occasion. Even after such a brief acquaintance, she found herself almost as uncomfortable with her man hanging out with Darnell as she did with the possibility of him seeing other women.
Then an old name resurfaced—Lynn. The same Lynn who caused a big stink when Antonyo informed her he would no longer be seeing her once he decided to make a commitment to Clarke and their child. In the beginning, Lynn called Antonyo’s cell phone up to forty-five times per day for more than a month and a half. One of those times, Clarke answered his ringing phone while he was in the bathroom. The ensuing conversation was none too pleasant:
“Why are you answering Tony’s phone?” Lynn asked indignantly.
“Why are you constantly calling Tony’s phone?” Clarke had replied.
“Why shouldn’t I call him? Since I want to talk to him, it makes perfect sense that I would call him, right?”
“You need to leave him alone. He is with me now. We have a child on the way. We are trying to build a life together. Why don’t you just go away, Lynn?” Clarke stated as politely as she could. Under the circumstances, she thought she did a great job, but Lynn would not be deterred by pleasantness.
“Ha,” Lynn replied mockingly. “You are such a naïve little child. Antonyo will never be the man you want him to be to you. It is not in his nature. This little spell you have cast by using the oldest trick in the book to trap him will eventually wear off, so I will do everything but go away, because I want him to know as soon as he comes to his senses, I will be right here waiting for him.”
Antonyo entered the living area of their apartment at that moment. He took the phone from Clarke, already knowing who held the other end.
“Lynn, I’m changing my phone number today. I don’t know what else to do to make it clear to you that we are finished. Clarke is my woman now, and you will stop this blatant disrespect of her, our home, and my time.” Antonyo left the apartment right away, returning less than forty-five minutes later with a new cell phone number, leaving no room for Clarke to doubt his intentions toward her at that time.
Then a week later, Clarke saw the name Lynn on Antonyo’s call list. Clarke had taken to checking his phone as frequently as his absent-mindedness would allow him to leave it in her vicinity when he left the room for extended periods of time. Her snooping netted her information indicating that a call had been placed to his phone from Lynn around eleven-thirty P.M.
Of course this wasn’t the first time she had seen female names on his phone, but it was the first time she had seen or heard of Lynn since he changed his cell phone number. She chose to handle finding the name on the phone as she had all the others. She said nothing, believing that once the baby was born, Antonyo would recognize the lifetime bond they created and shared. Clarke trusted that Antonyo would fall in love with her completely the moment he saw her give birth to his seed. Clarke’s entire existence as his woman and the mother of his child rested on this being true. So, she put up with all the suspicious behavior because she was unwilling to walk away from the possibility of him allowing their child to totally change his life.
Both Clarke and Antonyo h
ad attended church with Ms. Trina on several occasions. Clarke had also joined her in the women’s Bible study from time to time. Clarke still felt quite unsure about becoming saved and living in accordance to the ways of the Bible. After all, she was unwed, pregnant, and living with the father of her child. Yet and still, Clarke found herself actually praying, asking God to keep her and Antonyo together. The changes in their relationship were beginning to take a toll on her, and in light of her mounting desperation to hold onto him, she found herself unconsciously speaking aloud to God more and more often. She even began compromising with God, stating that if He would have Antonyo ask her to marry him once the baby was born, she would become saved and give her and her child’s life to Christ.
Today, however, during her eight-hour labor, Clarke had become pretty sure God had decided her sins had been too many to want anything to do with her. She was certain that a God who loved her, a God who wanted a relationship with her would not have allowed her to face such excruciating pain, physically and emotionally, all alone.
Clarke had begun calling Antonyo right after her water broke at three o’clock that morning. She rang his cell phone every five to ten minutes, praying each time as she listened to the annoying song playing as his ringtone, that she would hear his voice. Finally, after sixty-five minutes of calling without success, Clarke decided to call an ambulance to take her to the hospital. She contemplated calling Ms. Trina, as well as her own mother, but she was too embarrassed to tell either of them that Antonyo was missing in action at such a late hour.
By the time the ambulance arrived, she had scribbled a note for Antonyo, letting him know she would be at the hospital preparing to deliver his child, in the hope he would arrive in time to witness the birth of their baby.
The sound of the chair at the foot of her bed scraping against the tiled floor of her hospital room brought Clarke back to the present moment. She took a moment to look away from her beautiful daughter to notice a sleeping Antonyo trying to wrestle himself into a comfortable position. Clarke stared after him in amazement, aggravated that he dared be so tired. He had made it to the hospital less than thirty minutes ago, more than fourteen hours after she began trying to get in touch with him to let him know her labor had begun. Antonyo waltzed into the hospital room five and a half hours too late to behold the birth of his beautiful daughter.
Antonyo squirmed in the uncomfortable, ugly, floral-covered chair, doing his best to find a suitable position to resume his disquieted slumber. Suddenly, the hair on the back of his neck stood at attention, jolting him perfectly upright in his seat. Blinking rapidly, he tried to bring his surroundings into focus. He smelled the disinfectant, saw the pristine white walls, and heard the voices that startled him awake on the loudspeaker overhead. Then he remembered Clarke.
He turned to look in her direction and found her staring at him with what appeared to be loathing in her eyes. He quickly shifted his eyes and noticed the swaddled bundle she lovingly held in her arms. The disjointed contrast unnerved his agitated soul even further.
Antonyo gradually began to recollect recent events, concluding that he was at the hospital with Clarke and his newborn daughter. He stood and timidly walked the short four-step distance from the chair to the edge of the hospital bed where Clark still tenderly held his child. He chanced another glance at Clarke, still finding the same disdain. He decided against saying anything to her right away, choosing instead to gently pull the receiving blanket away from the face of his daughter. He hoped not to see the same hate in her face as he saw in her mother’s.
The child, his child, was beautiful. Only a few hours old and already she was stealing his heart. Antonyo reached hesitantly for the baby, half expecting Clarke to refuse to hand her over to him. Surprisingly, however, she released her hold on the infant. Antonyo carefully walked the short distance back to the chair and sat cradling the baby as if she were fragile porcelain.
Wow! The magnitude of feelings that came over him nearly suffocated him. He became overwhelmed at how, in such a short span of time, he could fall so completely in love with another human being. The only other people he had felt this deeply for were his mother, Aunt Treecie, and his cousins. But even what he felt for them paled in comparison to what this little person had quickly stirred in him. He moved the blanket farther away from her face and examined her features closely. It was not because he was checking to make sure she resembled him. His heart and soul told him she was irrevocably his. He simply wanted to know more about her. Yes, he missed her entry into this world, but as he held his daughter, Antonyo vowed to never miss another major event in her life. After the way he’d been behaving over the past few months, he was unsure of how things would turn out between him and Clarke, but that would not be a concern one way or the other. No matter what happened, he would forever be a father to his daughter.
Antonyo reasoned he had to run the risk of Clarke’s wrath by asking her to talk to him. She had not uttered a syllable to him since his arrival. Her only acknowledgement of him had been the viciously creative frown she gave him when he initially entered her hospital room. Right now, however, he needed her to answer a very important question.
“Clarke, have you decided on a name for my daughter yet?”
Before answering his question, Clarke shot Antonyo the horrific glance once more, offended that he had the nerve to refer to their child as simply his own, as if he had been the one to bring her into this world all by himself. How dare he exhibit such bravado after not even caring enough to be there to witness her birth? Her love for him, as always, overrode her anger, and she acquiesced by answering him.
“I have played around with a couple of choices, but I figured you should at least be in on the final decision of what to name our daughter,” Clarke answered.
Antonyo did not miss the snide emphasis of Clarke’s statement, sarcastically referencing his absence at the time of the baby’s birth; however, the reference of dual ownership of the child went right over his head. Antonyo could only relate to the precious little girl as his and his alone—so much so that he had actually already decided in the last few moments exactly what he would call his daughter. In politeness, though, he figured he should at least hear what Clarke had to say about it.
“What names have you played with and thought about?” he asked.
“I like Nahla, like in the Lion King, or Tahlia, both accompanied by the middle name Ann,” Clarke announced, proud of her choices.
“Those names are cool, I guess, but they don’t really have any significance. They don’t reflect either of us or who she really is,” Antonyo said as he stared deeply in the sleeping face of his baby girl.
“Well, we don’t exactly know who she is yet, Antonyo. She is only six hours old. She doesn’t have a personality yet.” Clarke seemed irritated by Antonyo’s dismissal of the names she liked, but he was not going to be deterred by her opinion. His mind had been made up shortly after holding the baby in his arms.
“What do you think of this: LaToya Diamond Simms?” he asked out of politeness, not really caring what she thought one way or the other. Then he went on to explain his choice. “LaToya after my mother, Trina, and my aunt, LaTreece. Those are the two most significant females in my life. Diamond because she is absolutely the most precious little gem in this world.”
The barb about his mother and his aunt being the most important women in his life cut into Clarke’s heart just a little. This was no surprise to her, but having just given birth to this child he claimed was so precious to him, she would have thought perhaps an upgrade in her favor was due. Nonetheless, this was not the conversation to discuss the subject of his feelings for her. This had to do with the lifelong moniker for her daughter.
As she thought about it briefly, she rationalized the name would help her develop a better relationship with his mother, and a possible relationship with his aunt. She did attend church and Bible study with Trina, but she felt the older woman simply tolerated her in an effort to get her saved.
Clarke had met Aunt LaTreece only twice. The woman, on both occasions, seemed bothered with her. Clarke assumed it was because she had been the one who finally succeeded in having her protégé nephew settle into a monogamous relationship. Even with all that in mind, she thought the baby should at least have her last name.
“How about we give her my last name, Tyler, since we aren’t married? Or perhaps we could hyphenate it, using both our last names?” Clarke questioned. In the back of her mind, she hoped to hear Antonyo disagree just a bit, because he would profess to her that it was his plan to marry her soon.
“LaToya Diamond Tyler-Simms. It actually sounds kind of nice that way when you say it out loud. I don’t know if I have ever told you, but I’ve got four names too. But instead of having two last names, I’ve got two middle names. Yeah, I like it a lot. What do you think, Clarke?”
“The name sounds fine to me, Antonyo. I hope your mother and aunt appreciate the honor you are awarding them,” Clarke stated sincerely, but she did feel the sting of disappointment as no mention of marriage came forth.
Antonyo smiled broadly as the subject of the name for his princess had been settled with no issues. Too bad everything with Clarke wasn’t as easy. In all honesty, Antonyo realized the problems in their relationship were completely a result of his uneasiness with monogamy; yet he had truly given it the old college try, as the saying went, up until about four or five months ago.
Antonyo had woken up one morning, looked over at the expanding mid-section of Clarke, who slept beside him, and was almost certain that her morning sickness had become contagious. He became so sick to his stomach at the sight that lay next to him that he nearly threw up onto the bedroom floor. It had been three months, and Antonyo had gotten no more comfortable with his current relationship status and pending fatherhood than he had been the day Clarke initially told him she was pregnant.
The startling real dreams he experienced on the night of her news made him certain that his decision to be with Clarke had been the right one to make at the time. His father, patting him on his back, assuring him he would be just like him one day seemed so real. Antonyo determined in his mind during the wee hours of the morning just after the dream that he was a better man than his father would ever be.
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