His First Wife (7 page)

“Y
ou're going to forget all about me when you go to Harvard,” Jamison said. We were wrapped around each other like two pretzel halves in the lumpy twin-sized bed in his dorm room. We'd been nesting there for two days straight. It was hot and musty and the only real air in the room came from a box fan Jamison had set up in the window—what he'd called “ghetto air conditioning.” It wasn't the best of accommodations: I had to sneak in and out and Jamison insisted on playing OutKast on continuous loop in his CD changer.

“Whatever.” I laughed and repositioned my arm because it was falling asleep, scrunched between the poster of Janet Jackson on the wall beside the bed and Jamison's back. “You'll forget me long before I forget you!”

“So you admit you'll forget me!”

“No, I didn't mean that,” I said, laughing again. He had a way of keeping me laughing as he twisted my words. We'd been dating for about a month and Jamison seemed to know me better than anyone in the world. He anticipated what I'd say, how I'd feel, and was careful to be sure I was happy. I was a long way from vagina-grabbing Preston Allcott. It was more than refreshing. Enough so that I was able to put up with the music and his long-lost lover, Janet Jackson, looking over us.

“It's okay; I can take it. I'm a big boy,” he playfully said. “Leave me woman; leave me be!”

“Please, you won't be too far away when you go off to Cornell for med school . . . and you already have your acceptance letter, so stop jinxing mine.”

“I can't jinx fate. You were born to go to Harvard Med,” he said. “And everyone knows that a wait-list means that you're practically in.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, girl, they accept half of the people on the list each year,” he said reassuringly. “And when you get finished . . . if you haven't forgotten about little old me . . . I'll come up to Boston and sweep you off your feet.”

“Even if I'm working on a cadaver?”

“I'd hug the dead dude too!”

“How romantic.”

“Then we'll get married and have eight boys.”

“Eight? Boys?” I laughed.

“I'm not a girl maker. Only boys will come from my nuts. Soldiers.”

“Ill; don't be crass.” I plunked him on the head with my only free hand.

“Yep, all boys and they'll all be Morehouse men like their father and then be doctors too . . . like their father. I'm building a legacy, baby.” He jumped up and began tickling me. “I need an army and you're going to give it to me.”

“Not out of my stomach!” I playfully wrapped my arms around my stomach as he wrestled with me. We hadn't had sex yet. I hadn't built up the nerve and Jamison seemed determined not to rush things.

“Do you really think we'll be together then?” I asked out of breath. “Like that far from now.”

“I can't imagine myself with anyone else.” His voice was serious. Not one crack. He was still. Stopped and looked into my eyes. “I love you, Kerry. You're the best thing that's happened to me. I'll come there every weekend if that's what it takes to keep you.”

“You're gonna come to class with me there too?”

“Hell, yeah!” He grinned. “I have to know what these folks are putting in my lady's head.”

“Very funny.”

“But whether I'm going to want to be with you isn't the question,” he started, circling the inside of my navel with his index finger. “It's if you'll have me.”

“If I'll have you?” I asked.

“It's no secret that you weren't exactly happy about dating me in the first place.... Not after you found out my past. How I got here,” he said. “I was surprised you even called. Being funny can only get a brother so far with a woman like you.”

Jamison was at Morehouse on a full scholarship. His mother, who hadn't gone to college, couldn't afford to send him and his father died the year before Jamison graduated from high school. His parents made ends meet before Jamison's father's kidneys gave out to a lifelong bout of diabetes, but they were by all accounts poor. He was raised in one of the toughest neighborhoods in southwest Atlanta, but his grades and penchant for science led to him receiving attention from a local doctor who went to Morehouse. The man liked Jamison so much that he and a few of his colleagues agreed to pay his tuition for four years if he got into their alma mater.

“Where you came from doesn't matter to me,” I said. “You're here now.”

“But it
does
matter,” he replied.

“In some circles, yes. It'll always matter. This is the South.”

“Yeah—home of the uppity negro . . . the Talented Tenth,” he said, sitting up. “Where I'm from will always matter here. I noticed it my sophomore year when I pledged APhi and my own line brothers shut me out of certain things—Damien included. You all segment and separate people based on things they can't even help or change . . . and for what?”

He was quiet then, but I had nothing to say. I realized that I was part of the “you” he was speaking of.

“The worst part,” he went on, “is that I've lived here all my life, not five miles from Morehouse, and I didn't even know it was going on. I mean, I knew people like you looked down on people like me when I was a kid, but I always thought it was just because I was poor or didn't have the right clothes. I thought that would change once I got to college, put on the right shirt and pledged the right fraternity. Then I'd be one of you.”

“It's not that serious, Jamison,” I said.

“It's serious to your mother. It matters to her. I saw how she looked at me when she came to visit last week.” He scrunched up his face to mimic the bitter frown my mother had permanently plastered on her face when I introduced them at my apartment. She didn't even have to talk to Jamison to know who and what he was. She saw his car in the parking lot. His sneakers. His clothing. And knew the story. She wasted no time talking to him. She just sat on the edge of my sofa as if his sitting beside her was offensive and spoke to me like he wasn't in the room.

“My mother is a different story. That's just where she's from. History means everything to her,” I said. This all seemed bizarre to Jamison, but in my world it was just how things were done. Our kind just married our kind and that was how it was. It was how they protected one another. Ensured that we were all going someplace. And had the same ideas. The same past. My granduncle had ties to Atlanta Life, the country's most wealthy African-American insurance company. My mom grew up in Cascade Heights and was a third-generation Spelman girl. There were rules that women with my mother's past had to follow. Rules that she'd passed on to me.

“If history means everything to her,” Jamison said, “then it must mean everything to you too.” He looked at me; the look in his eyes was far from what it had been just minutes earlier.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know you now,” I sat up beside him. “I know that you have a future. You're going to be a doctor, Jamison. And that has to count for something. Right?”

“But what if I'm not a doctor? Then will it count for something?” he asked.

“You will be.” I kissed him on the cheek reassuringly. “I know it. And my mother will just have to be happy about it.”

After we snacked on boxed macaroni and cheese he'd made in the microwave, Jamison fell asleep, and against the backdrop of his senseless snoring I was awake and thinking about everything we'd just talked about. I'd meant everything I said to him. I believed in Jamison. Believed in who he was and who he would be. I had the name and the money. But he'd be great one day. So what if he hadn't been in Jack and Jill and gone to the right prep school. He was going to be a doctor. We'd be okay, and I didn't need an elite Atlanta stamp to prove it.

But still, looking at the blue macaroni and cheese box in the trash, hearing rap on the radio, and realizing that I was a senior, sneaking around in a dorm room when most upperclassmen had the money to move off campus, a little part of me, one I'd wished was a bit quieter, did want Jamison to be more like me. More like the first boyfriend I'd imagined. He had caviar and fine wine and cheese in the fridge, an apartment in Buckhead and a last name that made other girls jealous. While in my heart I knew that Jamison was better than any of the men who could give me any of those things, Jamison was nothing like that man . . . and really, nothing like me. I looked at him lying in the bed and imagined how that could be—that the man who made me laugh so hard my cheeks would ache, with whom I never ran out of things to talk to about, was from the same city but a whole world away from mine.

My thoughts about our differences didn't exactly dissipate when I finally met Jamison's mother. If my mother hated Jamison, then Jamison's mother despised me. And unlike my mother, she wasn't quiet about it.

After quizzing me for thirty minutes about why I didn't know how to cook, she asked how I paid my bills and who paid my rent. It was obvious that she was trying to paint me out to be a spoiled little rich girl, and that wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the fact that she did it in front of Jamison's entire family.

To celebrate our one-month anniversary, he'd taken me to what he called Sunday dinner to meet his mother. Assuming it was anything like the Sunday dinners my mother hosted, I wore a sweet, floral print dress and carried with me a flan I'd purchased for dessert.

When we got there, it was clear that Sunday dinner looked a little different in the SWATS than it did in Cascade. First, there were children all over the yard and they were frying fish on the front steps in a metal machine I'd never seen in any store. I could smell fish as soon as we got out of the car. And while my empty stomach made me want to stick my hand in the hot grease to pick out a piece, I knew the entire scene would've sent my mother into shock.

When we walked inside, Jamison's mother was sitting in the kitchen, directly in front of the only fan in what I had to assume was an un-air-conditioned house full of people and screaming children. She was a short, round woman with skin that was surprisingly (because of Jamison's color) browner than mine. In fact, she was so dark that I wondered if Jamison's father was white.

She looked me up and down slowly, acknowledging what I already knew—I was overdressed.

“Mama, this is Kerry, the girl from Spelman,” Jamison said.

“Hello, I'm Dottie,” she said, flashing a fake smile without lifting her hand to shake mine. “You two came from church?” She was secretly trying to make fun of my outfit. I'd later learn that she was very good at these kinds of indirect insults.

“No,” I said. “Excuse my attire; I just thought that it was Sunday dinner and . . .”

“She brought dessert,” Jamison said, cutting me off. I was glad, because God only knows what I was about to say.

“What's that?” She finally put out her hand.

“It's flan,” I said. “My favorite.”

She opened the box and frowned.

“Like a cheese cake?” she asked, still frowning.

“No . . .” I said. “Like flan. It's Latin.”

She looked to Jamison and slid the cake onto the table like it was uncooked fish they'd have to deep fry before anyone touched it. I'd never see that flan again.

“My baby is home,” she suddenly changed her look and smiled at Jamison. “Home to see his mama.” She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek, spying me from the corner of her eye. “You know can't no woman love you like your mama, right?” she asked, still embracing him. “No woman.”

By the time everyone calmed down due to full stomachs and lots of hot sauce, the crowd was thinning out and I was having a good time. Jamison's family was a lot of fun, much more fun than mine, and his aunts seemed to have advice for everything under the sun. Including some unsolicited bedroom instructions for me.

“So, Ms. Girl, who are you?” I heard someone say from behind. I was sure they weren't talking to me, but judging from everyone's eyes, I knew to turn around.

Jamison's mother was sitting in a chair with her chubby little hands wrapped around a beer.

“Ma'am?” I responded.

“Don't play with me,” she said.

“Mama!” Jamison pleaded for her to stop.

“Boy, please, ain't nobody trying to scare her off. I just want to know who she is,” she slurred, “and what she wants with my boy.”

“I really like your son,” I tried. Jamison nodded. I guessed that was good.

“You really like what about him? The money he's gonna make? I know your kind. I can smell you. Just looking to cash in.”

“I don't need to cash in on anything,” I said defensively. “I have—”

Jamison cut me off with his stare.

“Well then, what can you offer him?” she asked. “Can you cook? Clean? What can you do besides spend other people's money?”

The room became even more quiet. Even the babies seemed to stop cooing and crying. The men fixing the car in the driveway poked their heads in the windows.

“Mama, this isn't the time or place for this,” Jamison said.

“No, let her answer,” someone said. “Dottie is right.”

“What can you offer?” his mother asked again.

“Well, I can offer a lot. I'm going to be a doctor too . . . and then I'll learn how to cook and clean and I'll . . .” I couldn't even believe what I was saying. I wasn't about to cook and clean for anyone. That was where I drew the line in the sand. But it sounded good. So I thought.