Single Mom (12 page)

“So, you got a new job in this area, do you?” She was leading me into her living room area with her ass jingling in front of me. I knew she didn’t have anything on underneath her dress. I guess she had the same idea that I had, sex for old times’ sake.

As soon as I took a seat on her green couch, she pulled out this fat joint with a lighter and offered it to me.

I looked at her like she was crazy. I didn’t want to get high, I just wanted some of that body. “I got a new job to go to in a couple of hours, girl. What’s wrong with you?” I asked her.

She smiled and lit it up for herself. “That just makes more for me then.”

We used to get high and go at it every time I hung out with Kim. I guess that some things never change for some people.

“Did you buy that from Barry?” I asked her.

“Naw, I got my own shit now,” she said.

I looked over at her twenty-seven-inch TV and her Aiwa stereo system. Outside of the building she lived in, Kim was doing all right for herself. “You still work at that restaurant?” From what I remembered, she worked in a restaurant close to downtown on the near South Side. Chicago was basically broken into three sections, North, South, and West. Near or lower meant that you were close to the downtown area, and far meant that you were not. Blacks lived on the South Side and West Side. Whites lived on the North Side and Southwest. The East Side of Chicago was basically the waterfront of Lake Michigan. I grew up in North Lawndale, located on the far West Side, but like I said, I
went
anywhere that I pleased.

Kim shook her head and exhaled the smoke. “Naw, not at that same one. I work at a new restaurant now, down on Adams Street.”

Adams Street was even closer to downtown. That meant that she was probably making more money, which would explain her upscale-looking apartment, or at least from the inside.

Her weed was pretty strong, but I still didn’t get tempted. I didn’t want to go to work
smelling
like I was high either, so I clicked on her floor fan and moved it right in front of me.

Kim started to laugh. “This job must be real important to you.” She had these sexy, Chinese-type eyes, and you could never tell when she was high. Kim’s eyes always looked small.

“You damn right this job is important to me!” I snapped at her. “They’re paying eight-fifty an hour!” Kim had never been to jail like I had. It took me nearly two years to get a job after I came out, and most of them were temporary positions where I had to start all over again after a couple of months. I was looking for something permanent that paid me something, because minimum wage was a damn joke! So I wasn’t planning on screwing up my new job opportunity. Good ones didn’t come along too often.

All of a sudden, Kim turned sour on me. “Maybe you shouldn’t be here at all then. Because I don’t want to be the cause of you losing your good job and all. So, urn, why don’t you come back when you’re not working?”

She started walking toward her door as if I was leaving. I looked at the clock and it was only ten-thirty. I had at least another forty-five minutes to blow, and Kim was still looking good to me. I figured I could talk to her and calm her down for fifteen minutes, dig in to her for twenty-five, and wind things down before it was time for me to go.

“Hey, Kim, come on back in here, sis’. I didn’t mean to get like that on you.”

She slowly walked back into the living room. I patted my lap for her to sit down, but she ignored me.

“You know, you’re blowing my high with all this job shit, man. I mean, you make it sound like you’re all
greater-than-thou
all of a sudden,” she said to me. “You gon’ just come up in here expecting to get all up in between my legs, and then won’t even get high with me! And then you gon’ turn on my damn fan so you won’t
smell
like you on, for some damn job! I mean, if you feel like that, Jay, why did you even come here tonight? You knew you had to go to work. Because see,
I’m off
tonight, and I
do
enjoy myself when I’m off!”

She was getting pretty loud with me. I looked around and said, “Calm down, girl, you might wake up your son.”

“My son is over his grandmother’s.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” I said.

We were both quiet for a couple of minutes.

“Shit!” Kim snapped again. She even put the weed out. I couldn’t believe I had pissed her off that much. “And I went and took
a shower
, for this shit!” she said.

When she said that, I started to laugh, and my pants began to tighten up on me. Maybe it wouldn’t take fifteen minutes to talk her into it after all.

“You’re telling me you’re all showered up and whatnot, hunh?” I asked her with a grin. “Come here, Kim.”

She came just close enough for me to grab her onto my knee. Then I slid my hands under her dress, up her thighs, and to the treasure palace.

“I shouldn’t even give you none,” she teased me. She pushed my hands away. “You don’t want to go to work smelling like pussy either.”

I started to laugh. “Wait a minute. You said you took a shower, right? And if
I
smell bad, then we can take another one.”

“Whatever, Jay. I don’t even feel like it no more, man. How’s Denise doing?”

I looked up at her and frowned. “Yo, why you always asking me about her when you get mad and shit?”

“Okay, well, how’s your son doin’?”

I tried not to let it get to me. “He’s tall,” I said. “That boy’s six-five already, and can play ball better than me; better than I
ever
could. He’s gonna be something else to watch. I can’t wait to see him play high school ball.”

Kim thought she was slick. Asking me about my son was the same as asking about Denise. Kim wanted to get serious a long time ago when I first started seeing her. I didn’t know how to break everything to her in one setting, so I told her that I was still seeing my old lady, Neecy. It was a lie at the time, because I felt guilty about not telling Kim about my son. The truth came out in the end though. Kim caught me shopping in a shoe store downtown when Little Jay was around seven. Kim was pissed off at me, but she never really let me go, either. Then she ended up getting pregnant by some knucklehead who was scared to death of me. I think she did that shit just to get back at me, which was sad. I still felt guilty about that. That probably added to my discomfort whenever I was around her son. Kim should have just found some other guy and gone on with her life. She was attractive enough to find someone nice. I never could understand why she was so weak for me. Denise damn sure wasn’t. Or at least not anymore.

Kim looked down into my face and asked, “Do you ever miss being with her?”

I couldn’t believe she was asking me that. She still had not gotten over her jealousy. Neecy and I had not even touched each other in thirteen years. I started to ask myself why I had even come back to see Kim. She was picking up from where we left off years ago.

“You know what,” I asked her, “why do we even do this shit to each other?” I was throwing up my hands with the whole thing.

“I don’t know,” she answered. She stood up and walked away from me. “You need to ask yourself that question.”

I didn’t have anything to say. I had no answer for myself. Did I want some sex that bad? I wasn’t so sure about my reason for being there. Maybe I just wanted to see how she was doing.

“You know, I wanted to marry you at one time, Jay,” Kim said to me. “Even though I knew you had been to jail and you couldn’t really provide for me, I just loved being around you. I felt like I was somebody important when I was with you.” She looked at me and started laughing, as if the shit was an old joke that
used
to be funny.

“Yeah, that’s just because of what I was a part of back then,” I told her. My fifteen minutes were up, and it didn’t look like I would be getting any skin that night. Maybe that was my problem with Kim, I never took her seriously. All I really wanted from her was good sex. It was
real
good when we were both high. Outside of being physical, we had never communicated any real feelings to each other. I think Kim understood that, and without us being in that special sensitive state that marijuana gives you, we were both scared of the truth.

“So what are we doing now?” she asked me. “Because I don’t really understand this. Are we just fucking each other? Are we friends? I mean, what the hell are we?”

I was stuck again, and my time was running out. Why was I thinking so much about the time? I guess I was still taking Kim for granted, and I was still not communicating with her.

“I don’t know,” I finally answered. What else could I say? I wasn’t going to tell her that she
was
my fuck partner, even though it would have been the truth. It didn’t seem right to say that. Or maybe it was right, to just tell the truth like it was. But how many guys in their right mind would do that? In fact, maybe we were
all
out of our minds. Maybe relationships just didn’t work for men. It seemed like the only time you were happy with a woman was while you were chasing her or having sex
with her. Everything else was like being in prison again, where you can’t do all that you would like to do. I think love and all that emotional stuff is at its purest form when you’re young and don’t know anything about life yet. Because once you get older and you know more, that love shit can really get complicated on you and drive you out of your damn mind! That’s why men try their best to stay away from that shit. Because when it hits you, there’s nothing you can do about it. You end up strung out like a man about to be hanged, waiting to die or to be given mercy.

By the time I left Kim’s apartment, I hadn’t gotten any sex, but I was glad I was gone! I felt like I was on death row in that place. The room was getting smaller and smaller with every question she asked me. I think that was the best thing to happen to me on my first night of work. I felt energized, like walking out of jail again. If I had gotten some sex, I would have been at least a little tired, and I probably would have wanted to call it a night by the middle of my shift.

I ended up getting to work twenty minutes early and met Roger Collinski, the Polish manager who hired me, at the employee entrance. When I applied for the job, he interviewed me, and we got to talking about our sons and sports. Roger had four sons, and all of them played various sports. He started working the night shift so he could be around during the daytime to see more of their games and practices. I told him I wanted to be able to do the same with my son, and that he was starting high school in September. I think that conversation was what got me the job. Even though I had a record, Roger could relate to how I felt about watching Little Jay run ball. It was like I was getting another chance at being a kid again, and he understood that. I was so happy that he gave me a chance to prove myself that I didn’t want anything to go wrong.

“Hey, you’re early,” he said to me. His manager’s office was right next to the employee locker room, so I guess he could keep an eye on any stealing. Or maybe that was my guilty conscience working overtime again.

I said, “Yeah, I know I’m early, but as far as I’m concerned, this job might as well start at eleven. That way, I’ll never be late.”

Roger looked at his watch and said, “In that case, you’re late right now.”

I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “It won’t happen again, boss. And you can count on that.”

Roger laughed and offered me some coffee. He looked like an old-time football player himself. He wasn’t as tall as I was, but he
was
as
thick as me,
and
he looked as physical in his stance. He had thick graying hair and a bushy mustache to go with it.

“Yeah, I’ll take some, with plenty of sugar and cream,” I said to him, with a big Uncle Tom grin. I learned how to butter up my employers over the years. It gave me a good reference list for when they couldn’t use me anymore. It didn’t work too well on brothers though. The brothers always thought I was trying to get over on them with some bullshit. I hated working for brothers! A lot of them were the most skeptical bosses in the world. Not all of them, though, because plenty of them were cool. I don’t want people thinking that brothers never tried to help me out, it was just more of a strained relationship most of the time because they knew more about me. Some of those white bosses, on the other hand, were some closet racists who couldn’t even talk to you with a straight face.

Anyway, Roger gave me a locker number and a dark blue work shirt that had a PPI patch in red and white on the left. The company name was Paper Plus Incorporated. On that first night, I was basically shown the ropes. PPI had three main departments: sales, manufacturing, and shipping and handling. I worked in shipping and handling, which was mostly warehouse work. What we did was stack all of the paper to be ready for shipping, and this paper could get as high as twenty-fucking-feet in the air! If a big enough stack of it happened to fall off from the top, it could put a lump on your head the size of Quasimodo’s hunchback! Other than that, it was a pretty simple job. The hardest part of it would be to just stay up and finish. I would even get a chance to ride forklifts to load up the trucks at the loading docks. When I learned that thought of Neecy and her truck-driving boyfriend. I still couldn’t believe it. If that was the case, then she could have had
me
back in her life.

“So what do you think?” Roger asked me at quitting time. It was seven forty-five in the morning. We were lounging in the locker room area. It wasn’t that many brothers working at that place, so I guess I could say I was lucky to be there.

“I think that this coffee is gonna be my new best friend,” I joked with my new boss. I had my eighth cup of the night in my hand. Roger let the guys get as much coffee as we wanted from the machine in his office.

He smiled and said, “Yeah, you’ll get used to it. Usually, it takes your body a good week and a half, and then you won’t need as much coffee.”

“How much coffee do you drink?” I asked him.

He laughed and answered, “Too much. Actually, I’m down to four
cups a night now. When I can get it down to two, then I’ve
really
done something.”