Single Mom

A
LSO BY
O
MAR
T
YREE

Diary of a Groupie

Leslie

Just Say No!

An Interview with a Loverboy

For the Love of Money

Sweet St. Louis

A Do Right Man

Flyy Girl

Capital City

BattleZone

A N
OVEL

Omar Tyree

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
P
APERBACKS
N
EW
Y
ORK
  L
ONDON
  T
ORONTO
  S
YDNEY

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1998 by Omar Tyree

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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IMON
& S
CHUSTER
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APERBACKS
and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information regarding special discounts on bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected].

Designed by Karolina Harris

Manufactured in the United States of America

15  17  19  20  18  16  14

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Tyree, Omar.

Single mom : a novel / Omar Tyree.

p.   cm.

1. Afro-Americans—Fiction.
I. Title.

PS3570.Y59S5   1998

813′.54—dc21   98-35892

CIP

ISBN 0-684-85592-5

0-684-85593-3 (Pbk)

eISBN 13: 978-1-439-12820-6

ISBN 978-0-684-85593-6

This book is for the struggles of my grandmothers Mercyle Tyree Simmons (RIP), Betty Alston (RIP), and Geraldine Briggs McLaurin; my aunts Sharisse Simmons Tolbert (RIP) and Darlene Simmons Crawford; my sisters Deidre Adams, Darlene Adams, and Cydnee Randall; my mother Renee McLaurin Alston (RIP) for having me; and my father Melvin Alston Sr. for stepping in and showing me the way to manhood.

T
HE
N
ATURE OF
T
HINGS
by Omar Tyree
When I first held my son
Time 4:33 p.m., Date May 31st, 1996
I knew I’d never let him go
simply because he was mine
and so was his mother
they belonged to me
and I belonged to them…

to be continued

N
EECY’S
a big woman in Chicago now. I’m proud of her! She sure has come a long way from where we grew up in North Lawndale. Neither one of us grew up in high-rise projects, but things were still like the show
Good Times
: getting out of one adventure, only to be involved in a new one. Times still are hard for me, and I’ve been going from one job to the next like “James Evans” to prove it. Hopefully, my next job will be more stable, but I’ve been saying that now for years.

Neecy, on the other hand, was always good at keeping a job,
and
with saving money. I remember I used to laugh at how cheap she was back in high school. She became my one and only girl in our sophomore year at West Side High. She used to show up in the stands at all of my basketball games with her girlfriends and holler, “Wes-side, Wes-side!” We had
big fun
back then!

Neecy has moved out to the suburbs now. She lives in Oak Park with my son, Little Jay, and her other little boy, Walter. She doesn’t want me calling her “Neecy” anymore either. She say it’s ghetto. I guess that suburbanite shit went to her head. You’re never supposed to forget where you come from, no matter
how
successful you are.

I remember when I first broke her in after school one day. It was in our junior year. Neecy hollered so much I thought I cracked a bone or something. I didn’t have much experience in the bedroom back then. I didn’t know how to be gentle with her. I had to
learn
to be gentle, you know, because I loved Neecy. She was my girl. And after a while, she got
used to it. We would find a place to get into things every night before my games. She said it was for good luck. The next thing I knew, we were doing it damn near every day, wherever we had to go. I bet she don’t want to remember that now either. But she can’t forget about our son. Little Jay is the tie that binds us forever.

I
need
to get his damn name changed, too! She calls him a Jr., but she didn’t even spell his name the same way as mine. We argued about that in the hospital. I don’t care if most people spell it with a “y.” Mine is spelled with an “i-e.” How are you going to call somebody a Jr. with the wrong spelling? On top of that, he doesn’t even have my
last
name! She gave her other son
his
father’s last name; Walter Perry III. Sounds like some nerd shit. That’s exactly how his father looks, too, like a black nerd scientist in need of a good barber. His name should have been Walter Peabody. I met him a couple of times, and we spoke for a minute, but I didn’t have too many words for him. The only reason he got with Neecy in the first place was because I got sent to jail. I was locked up in the Indiana State Correctional Facility for two and a half years for armed robbery.

Shit just all went downhill for me in my senior year of high school. Things were looking good before that. I had Neecy, my basketball future, and everything else. My pop even let me drive his baby blue convertible. It wasn’t brand new or nothing, but it was clean. Then we lost our last play-off game to Martin Luther King High School. I was messed up for a whole week after that. I was really looking forward to winning the championship that year. The whole neighborhood was. It was a big letdown. Then I messed around and screwed up my grades. Not to say that they were all that good to begin with, but at least I was passing. My pop died of a stroke that year, and Neecy ended up getting pregnant on me.

The school officials said I had to take a couple of classes in summer school to get my diploma, but that messed up my chances of going to a Division 1 college on scholarship. I would have to go to a junior college and transfer. But that would have taken forever. That’s when I started hanging out with the Gangster Disciples. Since I was a star ballplayer, they never really pressed me to join before, but once I realized I wasn’t going to college, I saw no reason
not
to join. All of my homeboys were already members, including my older brother, Marcus, and my younger brother, Juan.

I remember Marcus asked me, “What the hell are you doing? You
take your stupid ass to college!” If he was so concerned about
me
, then why the hell was
he
in it? My little brother, Juan, was in before I was, so when I started hanging around, he was excited by the idea. Juan could never play basketball, so me being in a gang with him was like getting a brand-new brother to relate to. Since Marcus didn’t want either one of us in the first place, we obviously couldn’t hang with his crew, so we had our own. And I was the first knucklehead to go to jail. Fortunately, my jail time saved my life, but I can’t say the same for my brothers, or for many of the other guys I hung out with. Most of them are dead now, including Marcus and Juan.