by Ward, Vivian
Shit. I gotta do this fast. “Okay, but before you go, there’s something else really important that I need to say. I’ve been dating this amazing man, his name’s Dale Halloway, and…” Tony cut me off.
“That’s great sis, see ya later,” he kissed me on the head.
“Wait! That’s not all. I wanted to…” my mom cut me off.
“You’re not pregnant are you? Child, if you’re pregnant, I’m gonna beat your ass,” she threatened.
“No, ma, I’m not pregnant. I wanted to tell you that Dale is white.” The entire room fell silent and you could cut the tension with a knife.
“He’s what?” my little brother, Terrance, asked. He looked pissed! They all looked angry, actually.
“I know that none of you are going to like this, but Dale’s been very good to us. He brings us dinner, he comes over to the house to hang out and he’s even offered to help pay for Nevaeh’s medical expenses,” I tried to make him sound good.
“You better break up with him, Kimberly,” my mom said. “We can’t have you dating no white man. Girl, what the hell is wrong with you?” she scolded.
“Ma, I know what you’re thinking, but Dale’s not the crooked white cop that shot daddy. He’s a good man. We’re having a barbecue tomorrow if you’d like to come over to meet him.”
“Oh, this is some bullshit,” Tony said as he opened the door and left.
Tears began to roll down my cheeks as my mom and little brother stared at me. They were fuming.
“How could you betray us like this?” my mother hissed at me.
“Mom, it’s not like that….”
“Come on, Terrance, let’s go,” my mother jerked her purse up off the couch as they got up to leave.
“Momma, please,” I begged them to stay. “Terrance, please, listen to me. He’s a great guy.”
“Ain’t no white man gonna be part of our family. Ever!” he looked down at me with a stern look on his face. “Come on, Ma, lets’s go.”
I spent most of the afternoon crying. There was no way that Dale and I would ever work out. My family made it very clear how they felt about our relationship. How am I going to end things with him? I couldn’t let my family hate the man I was falling for. I would have to break things off with him if I wanted a relationship with my family. Nevaeh would be so sad; she really liked him.
The next day when Dale came over to barbecue with us, I decided to talk to him about my family and our relationship. It wasn’t long after he came over, he started asking what was wrong.
“Nothing,” I replied, not wanting to talk about things in front of Nevaeh.
“I can tell something’s bothering you. What is it?”
“Can this wait until after dinner?” I raised my voice, nodding towards Nevaeh.
“Fine,” he answered as he chewed his food.
For the rest of dinner, we avoided eye contact. For me, it was mostly out of shame and frustration. For him, it was anger. He hated not knowing everything that I was thinking. It drove him nuts to know that I was keeping something from him. After we had finished eating, I sent Nevaeh off to her room to play so we could talk.
“Listen, Dale, I warned you about this before,” I began.
“Warned me about what?”
“About my family and how they wouldn’t approve of our relationship. I spoke with them about us and they’re not happy.”
“What does this mean for us? We’re not breaking up; that’s not an option,” he declared.
“I’m afraid that we might have to stop seeing each other,” I tried to break it to him gently.
“You’re absolutely fucking crazy if you think I’m giving up on you and that little girl in there.” He stepped forward, closing the gap in our distance until he was standing in my face. “You might not realize it now, but you need me. She needs me, and you can’t deny that.”
As I broke our glance by looking down at the floor, he grabbed my chin to turn my face back to him. Could he not see that it was tearing me up? The fact was, he was the greatest man who’d ever walked into our lives.
“Dale, I don’t want you to get hurt. I’m only thinking of you,” I said tearfully.
“Hurt? Who the hell’s going to hurt me? Your brothers? You think I’m scared of them?”
I stared at him in shock. He had no clue what my brothers could do to him. I spared him the stories of my brothers beating the shit out of two guys who tried to make a move on one of their friend’s little sisters. He also didn’t know that Terrance had only been out of prison for about a year, and he wasn’t afraid to go back. When my brothers were teens and in their early 20’s, they were straight up thugs. They stole cars at night—when they weren’t burglarizing places—and terrorized the neighborhood. My mom did everything she could to raise those boys right. Ever since my dad was murdered, they were out of control.
“Dale, please,” I pleaded with him. “My brothers are dangerous. You have no idea.”
“Kimberly, I never wanted to bring this to your attention,” he said pulling his shirt out of his pants, exposing a .357, “but I can pack some heat, too. You might not realize this, but as the owner of the gas company, I have to go to various developing areas to determine the best ways to run the gas lines. You’d be dumb to think I’ve never been mugged.”
“You would shoot my brothers?” I was appalled. Who the hell does he think he is?
“I’m not saying I would shoot them, Kimberly, but I would protect myself. Don’t worry about me. I’m a big boy, and I’m more than willing to deal with your brothers if it comes down to it. I’m not backing down.”
Oh shit, here we go. This was probably why my momma always warned me about crazy white guys. He was fucking crazy—for me and Nevaeh. It actually turned me on that he was willing to take an ass kicking if it meant winning my brothers over. My mom would take some work to win over, but it wasn’t anything that I couldn’t handle myself.
On Monday, I called Dr. Newton’s office to schedule the first appointment with the specialist. I was nervous, scared, anxious and excited at the same time. The potential for this doctor to pinpoint exactly how severe Nevaeh’s disease had grown was something I wanted to know but frightened me at the same time.
“I’m sorry Ms. Harris, but Dr. Newton’s schedule is booked solid for the next three months. The earliest we can get her is after the school year starts this fall.”
“There’s no way you can squeeze her in? Her pediatrician said it was important to determine how far the disease has already progressed so we can closely monitor it.”
“No, we don’t have any available openings. If you’d like, we can go ahead and schedule the appointment today. We can also put you on an on-call list if there should be a cancelation, we’ll call you to see if you can make the appointment.”
“Okay, let’s go ahead and do that.”
My next call was to MaxCare, the mail order pharmacy. The end of the day was drawing near and they still hadn’t contacted me from the prior week when my local pharmacy faxed over the prescription.
“Yes Miss Harris, we received the request for the prescription from your local pharmacy but have been unable to process the request at this time.”
“What? Why?”
“When they faxed it over, they failed to include any insurance information. All they sent was the prescription along with the patient’s name and date of birth. Do you have a few moments to create a patient profile so we can process the request?”
Could my day get any better? “Yes, that’ll be fine.”
I grabbed my purse and removed the insurance cards as the woman from the pharmacy quizzed me over my insurance details.
“Do you know how much it will cost?” I asked when we were finished creating Nevaeh’s profile.
“Let me run your benefits and I can tell you,” the woman said as she clicked around on her computer screen. “Okay Ms. Harris, it looks like, with your insurance, a 90 day supply will cost $242.”
“And that’s
with my insurance?!”
“Yes, that’s after your insurance. Now once you meet your annual deductible, the price will go down considerably—to about $124 every 90 days.”
“Do you know how close I am to meeting my deductible?”
“No, we’re unable to see those details, but you can call your insurance company and they should be able to tell you.”
“I’ll do that, and can you let me know when you’ll fill this medication?”
“We’ll get this filled as soon as possible. You should receive it within the next 14 days.”
“Fourteen days?” I asked in disbelief. “But she needs this medicine. Can I pay extra for expedited shipping?”
“We can expedite it, but it will only arrive about 5-7 days sooner. Would you like me to do that for you?”
“Yes, please do. Thank you.” I said as I hung up the phone.
Oh, these phone calls will never stop. I flipped over my insurance card to call the toll-free number on the back to learn more about my deductible. Since we were generally healthy, I hardly used my insurance before. This was unchartered territory for me. As the prompts continued to ask what seemed like a million questions, my frustration began to grow. After several minutes of prompts, I was finally listening to the tacky elevator music that intermittently cut out while holding for the next available operator to answer my call.
After the long hold time, I found myself scribbling a ton of notes about my insurance onto a sheet of paper as I fervently questioned the man on the other line. He patiently explained my deductible, including the current and pending charges from the labs and doctor’s appointments. He then estimated how much of my deductible I still had to meet prior to when the insurance would begin more coverage. When signing up for health insurance, I opted for the lowest priced monthly plan since Nevaeh and I lived on a tight budget. I would soon regret making that choice; my deductible was $6,500. To date, I’d met about $450; leaving us to still meet over $6,000 of the deductible until they began to increase their portion of coverage. I also learned it meant I had approximately $450 worth of pending medical bills on their way—and we hadn’t even seen the specialist or began any real testing yet.
Exhausted from the day’s events, I curled up into bed with Nevaeh and fell fast asleep. I would let myself worry about how I was going to pay for everything later. Right now I had to get some rest. I’d been running myself ragged taking care of Nevaeh, going to doctor’s appointments and calling everyone all over God’s green Earth trying to figure things out. I had to get back to work. Kevin had given me a total of eight points for taking off while my daughter was sick; it only left two points until I’d lose my job. With bills to pay and food to buy, I desperately needed my job more than ever. My hopes were that Nevaeh’s symptoms would lessen with her new medications and allow me to work. If I were lucky, maybe I could pick up a few extra shifts to pay down some of the medical bills that would soon come in the mail. Once I had those taken care of, I’d have to start saving money for her upcoming appointment with the specialist.
Although the sun was shining, and the birds were chirping, I had a bad feeling about my day. I dressed for work and helped Nevaeh get her clothes on before we drove to Lorraine’s house. During my commute, I could already hear Kevin’s voice in my head, berating me for missing so much work and scoffing at me for fussing over my daughter. I tried to prepare myself, but I couldn’t. My thoughts were scattered between Nevaeh, the piling bills I was faced with at home, my relationship with Dale and my family. I felt badly for putting my relationship with him on the back burner and upsetting my family, but it was necessary so I could focus on Nevaeh. The truth is, I would love to spend more time with him and go on more romantic dates, I didn’t have the ability to do that while taking care of my baby; and the fact that my family was mad as hell.
When I arrived at work, the air was charged; I could feel the hostility emitting from my boss as we crossed paths.
“Kimberly, I need to see you in my office, please,” Kevin commanded.
As I followed closely behind him, he instructed me to close the door. Oh God, this is only the beginning.
“We need to talk. As of today, you have eight points against your attendance. The company policy states I’m required to give you a verbal warning, which I did over the phone, after the first three. When you hit the seventh point, I’m supposed to give you a written notice. I couldn’t do that since you weren’t here, and now you’re up to eight.” He removed a yellow carbon-copy paper from a clipboard inside his desk drawer.
“Here,” he said as he pushed the paper in my direction. “I’ll need you to initial that you understand the attendance policy and sign at the bottom, acknowledging this as your written warning.”
I could feel the heat radiating under my shirt collar. I wanted to yell and scream at my boss, but I knew better. He was so angry with me that he would’ve fired me on the spot if I dared speak up for myself. I hastily signed the papers before walking out onto the floor to begin my shift. Unfortunately, business was still slow. I was hoping it would pick up soon; I desperately needed the money.
That night, after Nevaeh was in bed, I called my mom. Terrance answered the phone, but other than saying “Hello,” he didn’t speak to me. I heard him throw the phone down as he muttered something about the honkey-lover being on the phone. I rolled my eyes. If I had been there in person when he called me that, I probably would’ve smacked him across the face.
“Hello, Kimberly,” my mother answered.
“Hi, mom,” I said. “I know that you were all pretty upset when you left the other day, and I wanted to talk to you about it.”
“Kimberly, I don’t think we have much to say to each other right now. You know what you’re doing is wrong,” she hissed.
“No, momma, I don’t. I don’t think it’s wrong to give a good man a chance. He’s so good to us. I wish you would give him a chance and see it for yourself.”
“Baby, if your daddy were alive, he’d beat you with his belt. Do you know that?”
“No, mom, he wouldn’t. Before daddy died, he always taught us equality. He’d be proud that I found a good man who wasn’t a bigot!”
“That’s because he let his heart talk too much, but you know what happened. The white man killed your daddy, just like they killed all of our ancestors in slavery!”
“I’m not going to listen to this, ma. Dale’s good to us and you’ll see that you’re wrong,” I yelled at her.
“I love you, Kimberly, but sometimes you’re as dumb as a box of rocks.”
Chapter Eight
Over the course of the summer, Nevaeh slowly began to see an improvement in her symptoms. I was elated to see that the medications seemed to help her. It was nice watching her run and play again. Nothing made me happier than seeing my daughter back to her old self. Additionally, mine and Dale’s relationship really began to take off and blossom. Though, I was still working on my mom and brothers. Our relationship was still a bit estranged.
When Nevaeh finally started experiencing relief from her arthritis symptoms and could eventually move like a typical eight-year-old again, Lorraine began watching her regularly. With the help of my best friend, I was finally able to start dating Dale more and spending one-on-one time with him. Throughout the summer, he treated me to top-notch restaurants, took me to fancy clubs and he even flew me to an island he owned off the Florida coast during my time off work.
The first time Dale took me to his house, I was blown away by the size of his mansion. Embarrassment swept over me as I began to walk through his living room foyer. The size of his living room and the study was roughly the size of my entire house! Though he’d never commented on my tiny two-bedroom house, which was once my grandparent’s, I began to feel inadequate. Dale could tell that something was wrong by the way I behaved.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.” I didn’t want to tell him how suddenly inadequate I felt standing in the living room of his m
ansion.
“I can tell something’s wrong. We were having such a great time after dinner, what changed?”
I didn’t know how to answer his question. I hated the fact that he could read me like a book. I shyly looked at my feet, only my mind was focused on the marble floors and how expensive just the flooring must have been in this house!
“Kimberly?” he cupped my chin in his hand and lifted my head.
“What’s wrong?” he asked again.
Staring into his eyes I said, “It’s just…you’ve been over to my house many times and never once made a comment about how tiny it was, and you live in a mansion.”
“So?” he asked. “What’s the problem?”
“I don’t know…I feel like,” I swallowed. “Maybe I’m not good enough for you.”