Family Ties (5 page)

Crystal blinked twice, took a deep breath of her own, and leaned back, pressing her back against the chair.  “What makes her think that?”

I eyed Crystal skeptically and wondered if I should continue.  Although my relationship with my mother was a contradiction, I didn’t think mothers and daughters should have secrets from one another.  I felt bad, like I was about to divulge Brianna’s confidences. Then again, I reasoned that I was grown and Brianna wasn’t. It was best that she and her mother got everything out in the open. Never mind what my mother thought of
grown folks business
, Brianna was dealing with some heavy feelings and Crystal needed to reassure her.  She couldn’t do that if she didn’t have the full story.

“She says that you’re acting differently, that your voice changes when you’re on the phone during what she perceives are secret conversations, and she feels like you’ve recently had less and less time for her.”

At that last part, Crystal squeezed her eyes shut.  I knew the news hurt and I didn’t like being the one to say it. There was one last thing I didn’t want to say, but Crystal had always been a private person and I felt like admitting that I knew about the man being in the apartment was borderline dipping in her business. I did it anyway.

“She also says that once she woke up in the middle of the night to find you with some man.”

Alarmed, Crystal sprang forward.  “Did she see him?”

All acts of decorum and minding my business flew out of the window.  “Girl!  Who is he?”

“Chloe, I really don’t want to get into this. I didn’t mean for Brianna to get suspicious. I needed more time to tell her, or maybe no time at all since I hadn’t even made up my mind what I’m gonna do yet.”

“What are you talking about?  You’re not making any sense. Tell her what? Who is he?”

Crystal cast a guilty glance at the coffee table and I noticed two near-empty wine glasses. The John Legend song had faded into a track by Luther Vandross. I took in the low lighting of the room and my mind quickly did some basic booty-call calculations. I suddenly recalled the man I’d seen leaving the building not a few minutes before and I knew where I had seen him before. 

“That was Jermaine!”

Crystal looked at me wide-eyed.  “You saw him? I was hoping you’d missed each other when you didn’t mention it right away.”

“Oh, I saw him alright. I didn’t recognize him though. He looks older, different.  Crystal, where did he come from?  How did you find him?”

She looked over her shoulder and, from the sound of things, Brianna had ignored her mother’s instructions of setting up her gift after dinner and was busy learning all there was to know about Jupiter. For once Crystal looked as if she didn’t mind the disobedience. It made it easier for her to explain how it came to be that she was sipping wine with the man who had left her pregnant and alone all those many years ago.

“I didn’t find him.  He found me.”  Crystal sighed and sat forward with her hands folded between her open legs. With her head bent, she continued. “Remember I told you a few weeks ago that someone had been calling and hanging up?”

I just nodded.

“Well, after a few days the person called again and hung up as soon as I answered. This time though, I had a return number. It had happened one morning right before Brianna left for school. I waited until she was gone, then called the number back, prepared to curse out some sick pervert who got off on calling women and scaring them half to death.” She shook her head and closed her eyes at the memory of her first conversation in eight years with the father of her child.

“As soon as he said hello I knew it was him. Isn’t that funny? Over the years there would be times when I’d smell a certain scent or hear a song that reminded me of him, but never would I have guessed that I’d still know that voice from just one word. He said hello and I was just silent. I almost hung up on him. Seems like half an hour passed before I managed to ask if it was him and seems like another hour passed for him to admit it was.”

I wanted to ask what happened next, but a story like that you didn’t rush and you damn sure didn’t interrupt.

“I lit into his ass. Cursed him for the coward he was. Cursed him for all the times I struggled. Cursed him for all the times my child has asked me where her father was and how come he doesn’t want to be with her. I cursed him till my throat was sore and my hand hurt from gripping the phone so tight. I cursed him so bad I think I made up some new ones.  Then I cried.  Cried from all the anger.  Cried because I was tired.  He asked if he could come over, and for some reason I said yes. I told him he had to come right then and be gone before Brianna got home from school. It wasn’t until later that I realized I didn’t have to tell him where I lived. He just hung up, and forty-five minutes later he was knocking on my door.”

She looked up at me with a pained look on her face. “You say he looked different, that he looked older. To me he was the same old Jermaine. He was the same nineteen-year-old who left me with stars in my eyes and a baby in my belly.  I looked him square in the eye and asked him where he’d been for the past eight years, and you know what he said? Hiding. I told him he had that right ‘cause I’d looked for him for three years before finally giving up. He said that he wasn’t ready to be a father back then. He watched me get bigger and further along in my pregnancy and got scared. I told him that I was scared too, but didn’t have the luxury of just picking up and running away. He apologized up and down and left and right, telling me how much he had wanted to come back, to contact us, but the longer he stayed away the harder it was to reappear.

“He told me that he’d moved to New Jersey with a cousin and begged his mother and sisters not to tell me where he was. As you know, those trifling bitches had no problem doing just that. His mother never made any secret of the fact that she didn’t believe Brianna was Jermaine’s anyway.  Apparently she was keeping him informed of how we were and he pulled out pictures of my baby, pictures that his sister had taken of Brianna at the park or in front of the building. Pictures that I didn’t even know existed!  He had been spying on me for eight years and I had no idea. I asked him if he could do all that, why didn’t he just take his balls from his back pocket and come be a father to his daughter?”

“What did he say?” My throat was dry as I asked.

“What else?  He was scared.  He felt like he didn’t have much to offer us and didn’t want to come back half-assed.”

“So, what does he want now?”

“He says he wants to be a father to her.  He says he wants to get to know her.”

“Well, screw him.”  I stood up, angry. “He can’t be a man eight years ago and decides it’s just easier to up and run away.  Now that he thinks he’s ready, it’s supposed to be fine for him to just waltz up in here with his tail between his legs, ready to be Daddy?”

“Chloe.” Crystal glanced over her shoulder, checking for Brianna. “Lower your voice.”

I did as I was told, but I didn’t lose the anger in my voice.  “And you’ve been seeing him? What, are you two dating now?”

“No.  Not exactly.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  “What do you mean by
not exactly
?  Either you’re seeing him or you’re not.”

Crystal stood up to face me.  “It’s not so easy to explain.  If you had asked me two months ago what I would do if Jermaine suddenly showed up on my doorstep begging for forgiveness, I would have told you I’d send his ass packing.”

“That’s what you need to do.”

“Who are you to tell me what I need to do?  You have no idea how hard it is to raise a child in New York City alone.”

We were eye to eye and I refused to look away.  “You are not alone. You have Uncle Troy, my mother, me. You know that and so does Brianna.”

“But neither of you are her father. The reason I’ve been spending so much time with him is because I want to get to know him all over again before I can decide whether or not he gets to meet her. She has questions that only he can answer.  She doesn’t have to walk around thinking her father doesn’t love her anymore.  Who am I to turn him away if he’s genuinely sorry and wants to be her father?”

“You’re her mother, that’s who, and it’s not your responsibility to make him look good in her eyes.  He should have thought about that when he took off years ago.  If he’s worried about what she thinks of him he should have stuck around to make sure it was positive thoughts.” I gestured towards the wine glasses and CD player. “And what’s all this?  You have to wine and dine his ass to get to know him?  What’s all this got to do with him proving himself?”

“That is none of your business.”

There was a thin line between protecting your privacy and not telling your business because you know anyone in a ten-mile radius with a brain would tell you that you’re a moron. Crystal not only crossed the line, she left it blurred in her wake.  

“Does Uncle Troy know about this?” I asked with my hands on my hips.

“No, and you better not tell him.”

I sucked my teeth and we were again staring each other down when we heard a small voice from the doorway.

“Ma, I’m getting hungry.”

Her eyes never leaving mine, Crystal replied, “Dinner’s almost ready, baby.  Chloe was just leaving.”

It was my turn to blink, several times, as if my eyes and ears were playing tricks on me. Was this my closest relative, my own sister in a sense, telling me to leave and putting some trifling man who had abandoned her before me?

“Bri honey, can you go back in your room for one more minute? I want to tell your mother one more thing and then I’ll be in to say goodbye, okay?”

Brianna was not a stupid child and could sense the tension in the air. It was that same good sense that prevented her from dipping into what was going on. She turned and left the room.

“Crystal, I love that girl like she was my own. You know that.  Even though right now I feel like choking the crap out of you, you know that I love you too. You’re like my sister.”  I took a deep breath and tried to control my shaky voice. “I just want—all I’ve ever wanted was the best for the both of you. I’m not sure this is it. If you were spending time with him solely for Brianna’s sake that would be one thing, but it’s obvious that this has taken a romantic turn and I don’t think that’s very smart.  It’s liable to cloud your judgment, and if it turns out that he’s not changed and he’s still the irresponsible boy who left you before, you’re guaranteed to have your heart broken again.  I know what you must be feeling—”

She didn’t let me finish.  “You do not know what I’m feeling so don’t even fix your lips to say you do. Lawrence cheating on you is not the same thing. You have no idea what it’s like to carry the child of someone you love only to have that person disappear.  You question yourself; you question their love for you and your child.  You wonder if you did something wrong to push them away and you end up blaming yourself for turning your child into a single household statistic. You learn not to trust men. You struggle on for years trying to be both a mother and father. It’s hard.  Don’t insult me by trying to walk in my shoes because you can’t
fit
my shoes.  Please leave. I need to speak with my child.  I’ll talk to you in a few days.”

With my mouth wide open I watched my cousin walk in the kitchen without giving me so much as a backwards glance. I said a hasty goodbye to Brianna and promised to call her to solidify our Halloween plans. I don’t remember the train ride home or the walk to my apartment.  I don’t remember letting myself in the building, walking up the stairs, or turning the key in the lock.  I know I must have done those things because somehow I ended up kissing Patrick.

Chapter Four

Crossing the Line

Patrick

It was Sunday, and I hadn’t seen Chloe since Friday night when we’d had dinner with Myra. There was no rule stating that roommates had to see or check in with each other every day, but that didn’t stop a new and weird feeling from invading my chest as I walked from the train station to our building. I was hit with a wave of disappointment when I returned home to an empty apartment. I missed Chloe. Over the past weeks I’d gotten used to coming home and finding her there: candles lit, music playing, sometimes the undeniable aroma of food cooking, someone to talk to and listen to and, most of all, someone to laugh with.

Tossing my keys and jacket on the sofa, I headed to the kitchen.  I was determined not to spend the rest of my night worrying about Charlotte and my family. My brothers and sisters didn’t seem to be losing any sleep over the situation. Why should I be the one stressing?  I made up my mind then and there that my only dilemma for the night would be whether I should pop open a bottle of white or red.

My mother had insisted that I take home enough leftovers for both Chloe and myself.  Not sure of when Chloe would be home, I placed the covered plates in the refrigerator.  My eyes wandered two shelves down and I made my decision: white it was. Half a bottle later, just when I was about to pick up the phone to call Charlotte and demand that she carry her hippie ass over to my apartment, Chloe stormed in. I flinched as she slammed the door, dropping her jacket, keys, and bag on the floor. She was mumbling curses under her breath and stopped short when she saw me sitting on the couch, wine glass in hand.

Chapter Five