Single Mom (55 page)

Brock laughed. “That’s true, too,” he agreed. “I can’t even lie about it. But not with all men. Because some men leave, and you never will see them again.”

“What about sisters?” I asked. I figured, that as a woman, I should have been jumping for joy, or at least that’s what society
told
us we should do. Marriage was a woman’s ultimate validation.

Brock thought about the question. “It used to be that sisters had to be married to feel like they achieved anything in life, but nowadays, a large percentage of women don’t even expect it. And I don’t know if that’s just with black women, or with women in the nineties in general. But it just makes me wonder what will happen to the institution of marriage by the year two thousand.”

I wondered about that too. “That’s a good question,” I responded.

“Well, you just think about how the word applies to us. And I promise I won’t bother you about it. As long as I know something by next week,” he told me with a grin.

“What if you don’t know?” I was dead serious. I had to really think about it.

Brock was startled by the question. I guess he really felt that I was going to say yes.

“Well, like I said, give yourself some time to think about it, and that’s all that I can really ask. But from this day on, you can never say that you haven’t had a good man ask for your hand in marriage, because I
am
a good man. I love and I care about you and your sons, I’m employed, I’m intelligent, mature, and I
am
asking you to marry me. So you don’t have any excuses.

“Life is about taking chances, and neither one of us can sit here and predict what
could
or what
will
happen between us, because we don’t know. All that we can do is give it a try and see.”

I walked into both of my sons’ rooms and watched them as they slept. I wondered what they would think about their mother getting married at thirty-five. Maybe it would set a positive example for them that marriage was all right, so that they could expect to do the same when they were of age. Children do follow the example of their parents.

Then I thought about
my
mother and father. My image of them had been shattered. I saw the futility of the many bragged-about thirty- and forty-year marriages from the 1950s and ’60s. I felt like they were filled with lies and cover-ups of cheating, hiding secrets, and plenty of emotional stress and endured pain. Yet many marriages had somehow survived it all. I couldn’t understand how they were able to do it, and I was reluctant to even try. Maybe if society had as many open windows for divorces in the past as it does in the present, few of our parents would have remained married. Or if marriage was the broken institution that it had become in the nineties, maybe few of our parents would have married in the first place. That was a heavy thought to go to bed with that night. It was so heavy that I couldn’t sleep. So I called my mother after two o’clock in the morning, knowing that she was easy to wake up. How many years had she slept lightly, with the weight of the world always on her mind?

“Mom, what are you doing up so late?” I asked her. She was wide awake. I expected to be the one to awaken her.

“Cheron has a cold. I have to make sure she doesn’t get too congested.”

“Does Nikita know?”

“Yeah, she knows.”

And what did she do about it?
I wanted to ask, but that wasn’t what I was calling for.

I asked, “Mom, can we talk for a minute?”

She said, “At two o’clock in the morning, that’s bout all that we can do.”

“I’m sorry, Mom, I just couldn’t sleep.”

“Well, thanks for not telling your sister what I told you,” she said. She had thanked me at least three times before.

I said, “Mom, the last thing Nikita needs to know is that Dad didn’t want her.”

“I never said he didn’t want her. I never said that. I just said that he wanted a boy.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, Mom.” I was snappy and impatient. I wanted to get right to the point of my call without all of the small talk. It was too late at night for small talk.

I cut to the chase and asked, “Mom, what do you think about marriage?”

“Did Brock ask you?” She sounded excited. I guess Mom knew how to cut to the chase herself.

“No, but I am thinking about it,” I lied. I didn’t need my mother’s excitement, I needed her honest opinion.

She said, “Brock is a good man, a
God-fearing man
.”

Since when has
God-fearing
become a criterion?
I wanted to ask. My mother only talked about religion when she wanted to, and she only went to church when she felt like it.

I said, “So it’s an individual man-and-woman thing instead of an institution?” I asked her.

“It’s both,” she told me. “And I hope you told Brock yes.”

I ignored her. I wasn’t going to lie twice. Once you start lying repetitively, you lose sight of what the truth is, and for the sake of Brock’s goodness, I didn’t want to do that. After all, he
did
ask me to marry him.

“So, you weren’t pressured to marry Dad at all? It was your idea to marry him, 100 percent? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Nobody got pressured into marrying unless the girl got pregnant. And if she was pregnant, then she made the decision to open up her legs in the first place, so she must have liked the boy. But now girls open up
their legs for anybody, even guys who they don’t like. We had names for those kind of girls when I grew up.”

I was getting irritated. I said, “Mom, are you saying that everything is the woman’s fault? Guys got pressured into getting married too, didn’t they?
Especially
if the girl was pregnant. That seems like it was
his
fault, too. So let’s stop making this thing a one-way show.

“It just seems that everybody lets the man off the hook,” I argued. “We let them off the hook when they cheat and treat us badly. Then we let them come back to us and do
more
damage. And after all of that, we continue to blame ourselves.”

I don’t know how many different conversations Camellia, myself, and plenty of other single mothers had in our monthly meetings over the years, but in all that we discussed, the cycle of broken families continued to do damage to the emotional, economic, and cultural needs of mothers and children in every town in America. Maybe J.D. was right, we
did
need to hear the men’s side of the argument because all we seemed to be doing was spinning around in circles.

My mother repeated, “Brock is a good man.”

She didn’t seem to get it. It wasn’t that simple. Or was it? Maybe
I
had it all wrong. Maybe it
was
that simple. Brock was a good man who had asked to marry me, so I should accept his proposal and see how long he could be good. Or maybe he couldn’t be good all the time. Then how would I deal with the change? That’s what I was afraid of. Or how would he deal with my change? In either case, I had too many thoughts on my mind to carry on a sane conversation with my mother after two o’clock in the morning.

I said, “Mom, I’m sorry I bothered you so late at night. I guess I’ll try and go on back to bed now.”

“If you could, you would have already been asleep,” she said. And she was right, but I didn’t know what else to say to her without sparking an argument.

“Do you think that women have changed that much from when you were growing up?” I asked her.

“Yes, they’ve changed. Women are more concerned about what a man can do for them instead of what they can do for a man. When I married your father, I wanted to make a good home.”

I stopped her and said, “Mom, was it really that simple? Because I can’t see you living just to make a good home for a man.”

“I guess you don’t need me to answer your question then,” she
snapped. “You have your own answers. So what is it that you want? You women sure don’t seem to be getting it. I hear more women complaining now than I
ever
did when I was a young woman.”

“That’s because you kept it all bottled up inside of yourself, Mom. I mean, you just told me what you went through with Dad, two months ago.”

“But I didn’t tell the world and get up here and start fussin’ and fightin’ with him on some talk show!” My mother was raising her voice.

I just couldn’t do it. I said, “Mom, I’m gonna have to hang up, because women who are on these talk shows have some serious problems that need to be worked out.”

“You think
we
didn’t have any problems?” she asked me. “You ain’t seen nothin’
yet
. You ain’t even
lived
long enough to see it. If you want to hear some stories, I’ll tell you some stories. That’s what’s wrong with so many of these girls now, they think they’re the only ones who go through anything. Then they want to talk about what they do, and how much they make, and how they don’t need nobody. Well, it sure doesn’t sound like they’re happy. Even that Oprah Winfrey couldn’t get that skinny, long-headed man of hers to marry her. And I’ve heard some things about his family too. So who is perfect? Who can throw the first stone? You tell me!” she shouted.

“We were
much
stronger than
this
generation because
we
understood what was more important—our families. And we wouldn’t throw that away for some whore out there on the street that ain’t got a family to spit on. So don’t
tell me
what I don’t know, because I know
plenty!
”

Cheron woke up and started crying. That was my final cue to hang up the phone. And when I did, I still didn’t get any sleep.

When I hung up, I said to myself, “They didn’t have AIDS back then, men took care of their responsibility, houses were easier to buy …” and on and on. My mother and I could have argued all night long on the subject, and at the end of the conversation, I still had a broken family, and she still had a dysfunctional family with pain that had extended to the grandchildren.

I just didn’t know where to turn. I clicked on my light and looked at that three-circled ring again. Boy was it beautiful! I was just concerned about it being forbidden fruit. I didn’t want to rush into anything that I would regret. Maybe it was just my own selfishness, but I had gotten so used to my own space and my own set of responsibilities that I was terrified of having to share. I felt as if I would lose myself and become dependent
upon someone else, and I could not afford that, so I resisted long-term arrangements. I knew that I could always count on myself, but I needed to learn how to count on others. I just had to convince myself that it was a reasonable thing to do.

After thinking over that long weekend, I was more than halfway there to giving Brock an answer to his pressing question. However, when Camellia and I met at Fletcher Elementary School for Black History Month that Monday morning, my answer became solidified.

I was in the wrong state of mind to lecture any schoolkids, so I planned on letting Camellia take the lead. She was used to leading discussions anyway. She had been hounding me all that weekend to find out what had happened between Brock and me on Friday night. It was as if she could sense that something extra had occurred. But I blew the conversation off until she finally left me alone about it. I wasn’t ready to reveal anything until I had a definite answer.

The teachers introduced us to several classes of fourth- and fifth-grade girls inside of their auditorium. The first thing I thought was,
Where are the boys?

Fletcher Elementary was a predominantly black school in the heart of the South Side. It wasn’t a school filled with poor kids, because many of the students were middle class. Fletcher was chosen as one of the experimental schools in Chicago where they had magnet programs for accelerated youth. I sat and stared out at the many shades of brown, with ponytails, braids, and cornrows. Some of them looked as confused as I was, while others looked as excited as Camellia. I began to smile. I was thinking that it was funny how life continues on with the same types of personalities over and over again.

“Class, I would like to introduce our two guests this morning and talk about the continued legacy of strong black women in the African-American community,” the teacher leading the event began. She was a lighter-brown sister with light eyes wearing African garb. I wondered if she dressed like that every day. It wasn’t a judgment call, I was just curious.

She went on to introduce Camellia and me as two longtime friends and successful single mothers, who had both received college degrees and went on to form the Single Mothers’ Organization to help others in their struggle for moral support, education, family, and economics.

After our introductions, Camellia began to talk about her job as a social
worker for the city government, then I explained what I did as an insurance saleswoman and financial planner. Next, Camellia began to ask some of the girls what they wanted to do, and they were eager to raise their hands.

“I want to be a lawyer.”

“I want to be a schoolteacher.”

“I want to make movies and dance in plays and stuff.”

“I want to be a basketball player, because I can beat my brother in basketball now. They have a girls’ team that I’m going out for this summer.”

I smiled at that one. Professional women’s basketball had just started a few years ago, and the idea of professional women’s sports was definitely taking off.

Camellia asked, “Okay, now do any of you know what you have to do to
succeed
at what you would like to become?”

That’s when things really got interesting.

“Do your homework.”

“Get all A’s and B’s.”

“Don’t do drugs.”

“And don’t have no babies.”

The entire auditorium began to burst out laughing after that last comment. I hated being judgmental, but the little girl who said it looked like a prime suspect for early pregnancy. She was a hyper child who was quick to get an attitude when she wasn’t immediately called on for her input. Everyone couldn’t be called at the same time. Before she was called on, I stood there and watched her huff and puff like a miniature dragon. She was the kind of hardheaded, smart-mouthed girl who was quick to run right into trouble. In fact, the little girl’s attitude reminded me of my sister.