Single Mom (4 page)

“Okay, let’s see what kind of moves you got,” I said with a grin. It was pretty clear that I wouldn’t have anything for him. At least not before I spent a couple of months working on my game and endurance. So I figured I might as well play my role in the clown show.

I checked my son the ball, and Little Jay took a quick step to the basket, put on the brakes, and shot the ball in my face, while I stumbled backwards over my own feet. If I didn’t have any basketball skills of my own, I would have fallen flat on my ass.

“Good one,” I told him.

One of our little spectators shook his head and said, “You better quit while you’re ahead.”

I said, “I ain’t ahead
yet
,” and kept on playing.

After a while, I tried to use my weight advantage and experience to
back my son down under the basket. It worked a couple of times, but then he started to back off and wait for me to shoot. I gave him a couple of head fakes, but that didn’t work either. He ended swatting my shots around like we were playing volleyball.

“That’s enough, man,” he told me. “I got a game to play later on.” He held the ball away from me as if I were a child.

I gave up trying to get it from him and asked, “Oh yeah? Where is this game at?”

“At the rec. center out here,” he answered.

I was already drenched with sweat, and we had only played for about ten minutes. I should have brought an extra pair of shorts and a T-shirt with me, especially since I knew we’d be meeting at the playground that morning. It was an easy guess that we’d end up running some ball. I had already fantasized about it after seeing Little Jay play a couple of his junior high school games. Those younger kids in junior high couldn’t stop him from scoring. He told me that he averaged 33 points a game, and I believed him! He scored 38 and 32 points in the two games that I saw. Little Jay was
more
than ready for high school. And I mean
varsity!
He would be enrolling in his freshman year of high school in September.

My son continued to hold the ball and began to walk off the court. “Where are you going?” I asked him.

He said, “I’m going home to change. And I’m thirsty.”

I didn’t know what to say at first. I was wondering if he knew about his mother not wanting me over at the house. I figured we’d sit down on the benches and shoot the breeze, father and son. I didn’t know exactly what to talk about with him, but girls would have been a pretty good start. Whenever a young man plays any kind of sport well, he’s going to attract the attention of big butts in tight skirts, especially with Little Jay’s choirboy looks. He was the kind of quiet, good boy that girls could take home to their fathers.

Fathers never liked me. I don’t know if Neecy’s father, Antonio, would have liked me either. Her father died in a car accident before I met her in high school. It was a case of drunk driving, so Neecy made sure that I never mixed the two. She showed me plenty of pictures of her father. Come to think of it, that’s exactly who Little Jay looked like. It’s sad, but my son hadn’t gotten a chance to meet either one of his grandfathers. By the time he was born, my dad was dead too. It must be some kind of epidemic going on with black fatherhood in this country. A lot of us are just not making it, and for a lot of different reasons. You have
death, jail, no jobs, scared brothers who run away like I did, and then you have some mothers who don’t even want the fathers involved. I knew of a couple of guys like that myself. It was a good thing Denise wasn’t like that.

I started daydreaming about the good old days of hanging out with my old man. I used to love seeing his rugged brown face up in the stands at my games, even when he wasn’t all that healthy sometimes. He was my father, and I respected him. I loved him. Little Jay snapped me out of my daydream by passing me the ball. I guess it was time for me to develop some good old days with my own son.

“Hey, Jimmy, is that your father, man?” one of those youngsters asked him. The kid was speaking kind of low, but young, rowdy kids have never been good at whispering.

I felt kind of awkward about Little Jay’s answer. My heart skipped a beat. I was actually nervous about it. What would Little Jay say, and how did he really feel about me? I hadn’t been around him as much as I should have been. I don’t think I would have responded that great if my father had been in and out for years.

Little Jay smiled that easy smile of his and said, “Yeah.”

I was relieved. Big time! I got myself together and followed my son off the court. His good answer got me new respect from those youngsters who had been laughing at me. All of a sudden, they were looking at me in awe, as if they wanted autographs or something. I looked back at them and spun the basketball on my index finger. I said, “I used to be good, too, when I was
his
age.” Those youngsters even looked like they believed me.

Neecy lived just three blocks from the playground. I didn’t say much on the way, I was just checking out the sights. Little Jay had it good, and I’m damn sure certain that he knew it! Oak Park had the green grass and the healthy trees that
all
neighborhoods should have. Black families had just started moving out there not too long ago. That’s when the whites usually begin to move out. I was wondering if the white neighbors were ready to call the police and report us as two suspicious-looking black men in shorts with a basketball. I still had a guilty conscience to deal with over my previous lifestyle. That guilty conscience was something I had been working on. It’s harder to get out of a mental jail than it ever will be to get out physically. That’s why so many guys go right back in once they’re released. They’ve been conditioned to feeling guilty, and a guilty conscience will lead to guilty actions every time.

I said, “So what do you think about your new neighborhood?”

Little Jay smiled and said, “I like it.”

“What about your little brother? I bet he likes it, too,” I assumed.
His
father didn’t come from the West Side like Neecy and I did, so Walter III was probably used to seeing the good life. I heard his daddy grew up in North Illinois somewhere. People have plenty of money and land up on that northern end, or at least from what I’ve heard, because I’ve never been there to see it for myself. I even wondered if Neecy had ever been up that way.

Little Jay shook his head and smiled again. “Sometimes he do, sometimes he don’t.”

I was surprised. “What don’t he like about it?” I asked.

“He just don’t like living in the suburbs.”

I burst out laughing. “He don’t like living in the suburbs? What he think, he’s a city slicker?”

“I guess so.”

We got to the front door, and Little Jay pulled out a key that hung on a metal chain, under his T-shirt. I hesitated at the door. “I’ll just wait for you out here,” I told him, sitting on the front steps.

He looked back at me and asked, “You want me to get you a T-shirt and some shorts? I got some that can fit you.”

I looked at him and grinned. Baggy clothes was the style of the day with young folks. “You know, we wore extra-large clothes with no belts in jail, because that’s what they gave us. Now you young guys are running around, wearing extra-large clothes and no belts because its trendy.” I laughed and said, “All right then, hook me up, and I’ll wash them and give them back to you next time.”

I was still hesitant to go inside, but Little Jay was waiting for me. I guess he didn’t want me sitting outside on the steps, sweating and whatnot.

“You not coming in?” he finally asked me.

I was acting ridiculous, and so was Neecy. Little Jay was the only one making any sense. I wasn’t going to rob their house! What kind of a father would I be if I did that?

I got up and said, “Yeah, I’m coming in. What the hell?”

Neecy had bright blue carpet throughout the house, with nice furniture that I didn’t want to sit on until I got out of those sweaty clothes.

“Damn! It looks like your mom put a lot into this place,” I said. The house’s two stories didn’t look that elaborate, it was just extra clean, and a long way from where Neecy and I had grown up.

Little Jay smiled and led me to his room. He had a bunch of basketball posters on his walls; Anfernee Hardaway, Shawn Kemp, Barkley, Pippen, Jordan.

“Which one is your favorite?” I asked him.

“Hardaway.”

I nodded. “You wanna play guard?”

He hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know yet. If I keep growing, maybe I’ll play the three position, like Pippen and Grant Hill.”

I nodded again. “Yeah, that’s what I thought about it. I played the two and the three when
I
was in high school. As you can see, I wasn’t as tall as you, though. I would have had to play the two in college. And I had a chance to go to a couple of junior colleges, but I didn’t.”

I was hoping my son would ask me why, so I could give him an early pep talk about staying focused in school, but he didn’t, so I figured I would save it for later. I didn’t want to push anything on him, especially so soon. He hadn’t even started high school yet.

My son gave me a change of clothes, and I put them on in the bathroom. That place was spotlessly clean, just like the rest of the house, and it smelled like incense.

Shit, this woman is serious! I guess I
should
stop calling her
“
Neecy
,” I told myself.

I walked out of the bathroom in my son’s clothes, and he tossed me some sport deodorant.

“I stink, too, hunh?” I asked him with a chuckle.

He reached out his hand and said, “If you don’t want to use it …”

I said, “Naw, I’ll use it. And thanks.”

I was feeling good about my son. Our relationship was just fine. I was sure glad he wasn’t one of those disrespectful punks that talk shit about their fathers. I mean, I
did
realize that I was far from perfect, but I never put a hand on his mother, and I did come and get him whenever I could. I
know
I could have done a lot more, but that was all in the past.

I said, “You know, I start this new night job next week. Hopefully, if I’m able to keep this one, I’ll be able to see a lot of your games this year.” My son was actually the main reason why I even applied for a nighttime position. I would have rather had a daytime gig, but once I thought about Little Jay in his freshman year of high school, I figured it might have been a blessing in disguise for me to have a nighttime job. I could go to more of my son’s games than my father could make to mine.

He looked at me and asked, “What kind of hours do you work?”

“From twelve to eight,” I told him.

He said, “Man, I hope you don’t fall asleep in the stands.”

I laughed and said, “Naw, your games wouldn’t be until later on, right? And I don’t need that much sleep. I ain’t raisin’ no baby or nothing.” Then I smiled and said, “I remember when you used to sleep all day and cry all night. So this’ll be just like old times with me staying up late on account of you.”

We shared a laugh. Then I asked him, “So where’s this rec. center? Is it big, with fiberglass backboards and whatnot?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty big, but they don’t have fiberglass backboards.”

Nevertheless, I couldn’t wait to see the place. I hadn’t been inside of a good-looking gym in a
long
while. I hung out that entire day with my son, watching several summer league basketball games. He was one of the youngest and tallest guys on his team, and the coach had him playing small forward, just like I thought he would. Jay played the position well, too. He scored 19 points, had four blocked shots, and plenty of rebounds. His team won 68-54.

Jay told me their record was 7-1. The only game they lost, he had fouled out of. The play-offs for the championship started in another week. Then Jay told me he would be joining another league. It was early July, and he had already played in a spring league. I used to play basketball all year long when I was his age, too.

Before I got ready to leave him, I told my son to tell his mother I said thanks for her cooperation. I saw a recent photo of her in the living room that I was thinking about for the rest of that day.

“Is your mother, ah, talking to somebody?” I ended up asking my son. I really didn’t feel right asking him that, nevertheless, I wanted to know. I
had
to know! I was feeling lonesome. I mean, I had a few women I was seeing off and on, but they weren’t like Neecy. Neecy was prime, barbecued rib. The other women I had were cold hot dogs, with no mustard.
Why couldn’t I have done things right?
I asked myself.
I could have had a beautiful family with Neecy
.

Jay looked shocked by the question. “Hunh?”

I know he didn’t want to answer me, but I pressed him anyway. I had already asked, and it made no sense to turn back.

“Who is your mother seeing? You heard me.”

I tried to make it sound as lighthearted as I could, but I still wanted to know.

Jay laughed and looked away a few times.

“I’m not gonna cause any trouble, man, I just wanna know,” I told him.

“She’s talking to some truck driver.” He still couldn’t look me in the face when he said it.

I was shocked as hell! “
A truck driver?
You bullshittin’ me?” There was no way in hell I was going to believe that!
A truck driver! Ms. Denise “Big Shot” Stewart that didn’t want to be called “Neecy” anymore! No-fuckin’-way!

Jay looked at me and said, “She calls him her friend.”

I was staring at him, still in disbelief. “I don’t
believe
this shit!” I shouted. “A truck driver?!” Then I calmed down and asked, “Does he own the company or something, and he just drives trucks for a hobby?” I figured it
had
to be a catch to it.

Jay lightened up and started to laugh. “Naw, he’s just a driver.”

It wasn’t that funny to me. “So, I guess he’s been over to the house and all that, right?” I asked. I stopped my son before he answered me and said, “Matter of fact, I don’t even want to know any more. I never should have asked you that in the first place. You just tell your mom that I said thanks.”