“Your son says you don't like me but you seem to respect me and I know he hasn't told you but I think you should know that I'm pregnant in case you want to get to know your first grandchild.”
Her words spilled through the receiver in a torrent, no commas, no periods, and, surprisingly, no emotion. It was as if she'd rehearsed several times, taken a dozen deep breaths, exhaled, and then sent the words inflectionless into the air to do their work. Her announcement was followed by silence from my end as I felt my universe imploding, the expectations I'd had for my son's (and my) future disintegrating, my relationship with my oldest son shifting. And then this:
“So, I was wondering, as far as medical history, could you tell me …”
I somehow managed to say, “I'll have to call you back,” before hanging up. I sat on my sofa blinking, stunned, looking at my hands, a grandmother's hands. I went looking for my son and laid his ass out.
Oh, I was a mess. I beat him all upside his head and shoulders with questions. How could he have been so stupid? Didn't he see the trap? How was he gonna take care of a child on a part-time Athlete's Foot salary? And how could he be sure it was his? All his teenage life I'd sworn that if he, or either of his brothers, became teenage fathers, they'd have to move out, get their two little minimum-wage jobs at Popeye's, and set up camp with their families in some Section 8 housing somewhere, wherever. Wasn't going to be no “Boys in the Hood” in my house with a crib in their bedroom and a stack of Pampers in the closet and they and their baby's mama acting like they got an efficiency apartment, in my house. No, sir. My house was like the inn in Bethlehem: no room here. You grown enough to start a family, be grown enough to go out and take care of it. Didn't he believe I was serious? What did he plan to do?
And finally why her, of all people?
In the brooding that followed I wondered why that boy always had to go so hard. Why did he force my hand? I couldn't retreat, I didn't know how to redraw the line in the sand; I had two more sons coming up behind him, watching. A precedent was being set; what message did I want to send them? I'd stood at that line with my arms folded over my chest or my finger pointing so many times that I had never considered an alternative. I'd been resolute; now I had to go as hard as he did. I'd have to put him out.
But really, I couldn't just throw him into the street. I knew that if I was feeling the way / was feeling over the situation, I could only guess what might be going on in his head when he tried to rest it on his pillow at night. His world had suddenly become enormously complicated. His dream for his life, at least his immediate future, had changed in that instant, or whenever he got the news, as well. My tirade turned into a conversation about options. He still wanted to finish college, he needed to provide for the baby in every way that the responsibility required. I encouraged him to join the air force, something that, considering my pacifism, I never imagined doing, and he followed that advice.
NOW, FATHERS OF GIRLS may think it's tough to guide their daughters through the throngs of sex-obsessed boys who come sniffing after their daughters, but from my side of the equation, as a mother of only sons, I can attest to the assertiveness, even the aggressiveness of girls. Girls were calling that boy before I realized we had to talk about girls calling. The mother of a friend of his told me that a girl wrote a message to her son in one of those books kids throw together and then autograph at the end of the school year that read: “Hope you're not a virgin when we get to 8th grade!”
Mothers of daughters might cast a wary eye on every “But I love him!” pipsqueak masquerading as a man that their daughters parade through the living room. Fear of pregnancy is probably in the Top Two on their list as well. Usually though, when a girl does become pregnant while living at home, she stays there, right? Usually. That means that mothers of daughters who live at home while pregnant and in the early months or years of their grandchildren's lives get to grow into the role organically. Their choices are limited, relatively speaking. The pregnancy is accepted and accommodated. These mothers often become co-mothers and the babies are equally comfortable relating to both Grandma and Mommy as Mother.
When you have sons, a girlfriend's pregnancy can seem so peripheral to your reality that it's like an idea, something way over there. Because it's not present in your day-to-day life, it's absent. If you're not at all thrilled about the relationship, it's easy to lose track of it and you might not recognize this as a stage of grieving. I did a lot of thinking about what it meant for the dream I'd had for him and assessed how far that dream had carried him. The progression in the dream, the arc of his story, was supposed to end with his being able to take care of himself so that I could let go and move back into the life I'd put on hold when I became a mother. His impending fatherhood, it seemed at the time, threatened to smash up the whole enterprise.
[Cue violins.]
In the dream version my son has finished college, embarked on a challenging, satisfying, and remunerative career first as a teacher while he attends law school, then as a lawyer; he has moved out of the house, established himself in a nice place; burned off whatever wildness remained; maybe in his mid-thirties he has found himself delighted and surprised by meeting a wonderful (Black) woman who fits the established criteria of being able to sit down with my friends and me at the table and hold her own on any number of subjects, but with respect; she “gets” yoga; she is solid, and lovely, and not only perfect for my son but in possession of a vision for the actualization of her own potential; she is socially conscious, politically sophisticated; they marry, invite me and his brothers for dinner often, and on one such occasion announce that they are pregnant; we are all magnificently happy; I buy the layette; we have a baby shower at my house; the pregnancy goes well, is uneventful, as they say; when her time comes, I am called right away; of course I'm expected to be at the hospital when my precious first grandchild arrives, in fact, I'm in the delivery room; if it's a girl, they give her my first name as her middle name, continuing a family tradition from my mother's side; everyone returns happily to their individual living quarters, and nothing much really changes.
[Cue the sound of a needle abruptly scratching the record.]
I needed that boy to live my dream for him—I guess. Her phone call made that dream die twice, and that made me hostile. Besides, I didn't like that woman; I couldn't imagine being connected to her for the rest of the life of this child she was carrying. I had no part in the pregnancy; I didn't speak to the mother again until after the baby was born. I withheld connecting until the blood tests confirmed my son's paternity. My youngest son joked that we should go on Jerry Springer. He thought that was funny. Then guess what he did five years later?
I PAID for my resistance and my bad attitude. The universe sent a veritable barrage of grandbabies my way. They came so fast that by the last one's arrival I was just about numb. Today I have nine grandchildren, people. Nine. And at the moment, eight are under the age of five. Along the way they've shown me how to become the grandmother they needed me to be. I've learned that as a matter of fact:
1. They make you earn their affection. They don't automatically give a rat's ass about you. Loving you is not like some birthright. Once they're old enough to have a preference and act on it, about three months, if they don't dig you, they'll holler when you pick them up. You'll really feel inadequate. But then all the tricks you learned about quieting a fussy baby will come flooding back. You'll sing a soft song, doesn't matter what it is. You'll stroke their back or belly. You'll realize that unlike the first go-round, you know this business now. The baby will sense the presence of an expert, and your competence will calm him or her. Or maybe not. One of my grandchildren still doesn't check for me, but in time she will.
2. My capacity to love expanded each time, with each birth, the same way it did to accommodate each of my sons.
When each of my sons was born, it seemed as if I grew a new heart with my new baby's name on it: Brandon, Ismael, Rafael. Now, tiny hearts hang off theirs, like charms:
Brandee, Taina, Lil Eazy, Jason Juicy Cheeks, Chloe Robin, Amina, Lena, Lil Brandon, Jack in the Sack.
3. Babies are rather, uh, unfortunate-look'mg at birth. And please note, I discarded the words ugly, funny-looking, and pitiful before arriving at that euphemism. One seemed like he was all head, another as if she was all eyes, one was bald for, like, ever but now has more hair than Tressy, one had a tongue hanging out of his mouth almost down to his chin, one looked like a little frog in a dress. Looking at them, I was reminded about the lopsidedness of my first son's head and how I tried to gently smooth it into shape before my friends came to visit. This did not work, so I brushed his few strands in a sort of swoop that drew the eye away from the slope. My friend Cindy called it “the Errol Flynn look.” Another friend said he looked like “Howdie Doodie” and I didn't speak to her for a lonnnnng time after. Another son's eyes occasionally crossed when he smiled, but he smiled early and deliberately, he was such a nice little fellow. One of my sons was stunningly beautiful, but I know that's an exception. I'm just saying that if I'm going to comment on my grandbabies’ newborn queerness, I believe I have the right. A couple of mine had faces—only briefly, but nevertheless—that only their mother could absolutely and unconditionally love.
I've learned that I get to do the Grandmother Dance my way and that as long as my love is consistent and real, the babies will feel it no matter how often or infrequently they see me. There are grandmothers who can't babysit enough; I'm not one of those. I'm not babysitting babies—period. I might watch him or her while you take a shower, but I'm not floor-walking and changing poopy diapers. I did my time in that vineyard. Babies require more vigilance and work than I'm willing to put in just so somebody can go see a movie. I was a devoted and active mom to my sons; it's their turn to be the same with their children. I like having them with me when they're old enough to hold a conversation and sit in Ben's Chili Bowl after seeing a movie with me and talk. I like quick walks to the store around the corner.
And your parents better be here when we get back.
A LONG TIME AGO I yearned for girls; I hoped with all three pregnancies that I was carrying a daughter. I had more girls’ names picked out than boys', and each time I saw a little tiny sack of male genitalia emerge during childbirth my joy was tinged with a little disappointment. After the last one was born and I knew he was the last, I realized that I liked being the mother of sons—you feel kind of queenly walking with your sons in the world, your princes. My experience raising sons has given me a perspective on boys that makes me understand them and love them differently from how I do the girls. Not more than, different from. And I do, I really do love them all. I also love watching my sons grow into fatherhood. They listen to my suggestions and indulge me when I recommend articles about child rearing. I'm not overbearing—I know they have to find their way. But I see my influence in their approaches to parenthood, and that is so cool.
For example, I don't believe in spanking/whupping/beating/“tapping” or otherwise hurting children to teach them a lesson or to punish. Once I heard my son Ismael reprimand his then fifteen-month by looking him in the eye and saying, “Didn't we just talk about this? Do we need to go talk about it some more?” and it worked. The boy settled down. When I watched Brandon hook up the inhaler for his daughter and give her asthma medication, my heart swelled, I didn't know the boy who did that; in fact he'd become a man. Rafael suffers with separation anxiety when he takes Jason and Jack home, and the boys who have girls are rising to the occasion—they know about princesses, and Dora, and they sing Elmo songs. … They're all great dads and I must have been a great mother because whatever reservations I may have had about the women who would have their babies, they have each been wonderful mothers. They chose the right women, or fate put them together, or whatever. The mothers of my grandchildren have my profound gratitude. They all try really hard. The babies may live under widely dissimilar circumstances, but they're wealthy in what matters, and that includes loving, devoted, involved fathers.
MY TRANSITION from mother to grandmother started off rocky, but each opportunity to do something for or with a grandchild, each time I observe a son changing a diaper with professional skill or patiently answering a question or making a doctor's appointment for a sick child and then attending the visit, with each of these moments I'm closer to figuring out this thing that initially seemed so overwhelming. I'm learning it in parts the way I learned how to be a mother. I had to learn every day, every minute how to do it. You learn by doing.
That phone call almost eight years ago was disturbing, to say the least. I didn't think I was ready; I thought the expectations would be greater than I could handle. What I've learned is that my life has become fuller and that my sons’ lives have become more focused. I may not agree with all their choices, but they have robbed this train their way, and I have confidence that since they're working from love, everything will work out. All the consequences and rewards will accrue to them while I get practically nothing but niceness, which I've earned, dammit, from raising them.
When everyone is over now, I admit, it's a challenge. I love the peace and quiet of my empty home. Having everyone there is like being invaded. But then I hear, “It's Grandma!” or I find pictures in my writing room of rainbows and captions that read “We love you Grandma” and I know how lucky I am that all these folks love to come home, to me. Sometimes I slip off to the serenity of my bedroom and they sneak in to bounce on the bed or lie there with me. Man! There's nothing better. I put on music and they dance with such infectious abandon. They make me laugh.
I have a feeling there might be one or two more coming; my sons are still pretty young, and that condom thing, they don't seem to have figured that out yet. But at least I got a chance to be on hand when a new grandchild made his grand entrance. I now know how it feels to be one of the folks standing just outside of the delivery room and not lying on the table with all that intense activity directed at me. So if there are more little people in the pipeline headed our way, I'd like to receive them proper. Heads up, guys: no more phone calls! And certainly no more like the one announcing number seven, which went almost verbatim like this:
“Ma? You sittin down?”
“Yeah. Why? Whatsup?”
“Looks like another one's on the way.”
“Another what, baby?”
“Yeah.”
“When?” loday
“Today! Who? Where? How …”
And just like that another little heart began to grow.
Learning the Name Dad
REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS
THERE ARE ONLY two days in prison: weekdays and weekends. You can tell which day it is by the behavior leading up to dinner. If it's a weekday, right after the afternoon count, you can look out into the pod, dorm, or tier and see a series of faces waiting for an officer to turn a corner with a stack of first-class mail. Men brushing their teeth, holding books in their hands or with a mirror bent just enough to show any figure coming or leaving. Once the guard comes, whether the man drops mail in your hand, door slot, or tosses it under the door, your reaction is the same. When he walks away, you walk away: to either savor the letter or move on, bury your disappointment in activity. Some men have given up on the ritual. They spend the moments when other people are waiting for mail consumed in some activity. Staring intently at a magazine filled with pornography or watching Oprah.
Mail call reveals secrets. With so many people using names to run from demons they brought to prison from the streets, that moment the guard pauses at a cell is the only time they hear the name their mother called them. Black hasn't been Tyrone Smith since he got his first tattoo, and there aren't three people here who know that Ray-Ray's real name is Todd Jones. Ray-Ray's mother doesn't even call him Todd, but each afternoon he wants to hear Todd Jones sure as he's not eligible for parole. It's a signal, a bridge to another time before pistols and robbery charges collapsed his dreams into a small cell.
Still, when the guard calls out R
eginald, I'm not taken back to memories of my kinfolks calling me by my first name. I think about the judge who addressed me as Reginald and realize the start of me owning my given name, if traced, leads me back to the moment a police officer clasped cuffs around my wrist.
I got my name from my father. When it was time to name the screaming newborn, he named me Reginald Dwayne Betts II. “I didn't pick it; your father named you that,” is what my mother tells me when I ask how I became the second. If she'd thought of another name in the last twenty-six years, she hadn't told me. My mother had buried it in her head until the middle of the story of my birth.
My family called me Dwayne from the very beginning. They lean on nicknames like they do the weight of the Bible. So many of us were named after fathers or named by fathers that the family reanointed us with something that didn't cause tension. Sometimes we handed out nicknames; other times we made middle names into nicknames. Always we set aside birth names until they could be said aloud without invoking someone else. Kareem becomes Reds, and Leon is Delontae until he's old enough to know what it means to have your daddy's name and not have him in your house. One day in the future I'll introduce my cousin as Delontae, and he will respond to the young woman he's meeting with “Hi, my name is Leon.” This naming is only a little less vicious than the playground games that end in Damien's angular skull making him Peanut forever.
I became Dwayne so thoroughly that until the second grade I could not spell Reginald. When my second-grade teacher asked if Reginald Betts was present, I looked around too, wondering who the boy was that wasn't there; and when she called me out on my inattentiveness, I let her know I was Dwayne. No one ever told me that the reason I wasn't Reginald or Reggie or Junior was because of my father's absence. The truth of this was never an issue, because the missing name said it all. I never knew my father. There was never a time when I walked into a kitchen and the conversation hushed with the echo of “father” or “Reggie” in the air. My mother never threw dirt on his name; she left me to make of the man what I could form from silence. I knew him by the silence his name caused and I learned from silence. I had decided exactly who he was and resolved to be the opposite.
It's All Love Page 22