Single Mom (7 page)

I never let him watch those silly late shows unless they had someone with a good message to send to young people, which seemed to be hard to find. Too many black celebrities only talked about making more money or how much fun they were having while hanging out in Hollywood. I didn’t want my son overexposed to all of that. He was already leaning toward stardom with basketball. But I didn’t want to take the sport away from him, especially since he loved to play the game, and was so good at it. I just wanted to make sure he balanced it out with a good education and strong political views on the world.

Excuse me for treason, but I didn’t want my son turning into another Michael Jordan. For all the years that the people in Chicago treated the man like a god, I have yet to hear him say anything of value, specifically to black boys in Chicago—or to black boys around the country for that matter—who were killing themselves over his hundred dollar sneakers! I wanted my son to have responsibility and a duty to any community that loved and supported him as a successful black man, which entailed more than just dunking basketballs and winning championships.

If any black man could be treated like a god in America, in the 1990s, with all the hell that black people are going through, that man should have strength and dignity enough to carry a torch for his people and make them proud of being black, while giving them inspiration to carry on, which few
celebrities
seem to want to do. So often I had to ask myself,
Lord, where are the Muhammad Alis and Jackie Robinsons of the ’90s?
and hope that my own son could fill the void one day.

EY
Brock, I know you’ve slept with that
corporate
sista’ by now. The way you’ve been acting lately, I’d say you’ve done her a couple of times. Either that, or you’ve been having a lot of wet dreams about her,” Larry said with a laugh. “Shit, you’ve known her long enough to get some, and you
surely
haven’t been chasing any other women lately. This sista’s corporate shit is
that
good, hunh, Brock?”

We were standing near my truck at the shipping dock in Cicero, Freeway Trucking Companies’ Midwest headquarters, right outside of Chicago. Larry was built like an Olympic wrestler with broad shoulders, and was full of bravado. I used to have the same physique and ramrod attitude five or six years ago, but then I stopped working out, and more importantly, I stopped
hanging
out. I got plain old tired of all the bullshit. Truck drivers were not all beer-drinking, foul-mouthed sex maniacs, but enough of them were to support the stereotype. On the other hand, a lot of the guys were dedicated family men who just happened to drive eighteen-wheelers. I was trapped somewhere in the middle when I met Denise a year ago. Since then, I was leaning toward the latter, the family man image. I had recently turned thirty-seven years old, and my days of kissing and telling were over.

“I doubt if you’ll ever know, brother, especially not from me,” I responded to Larry.

Larry was often my co-driver on long runs. He was nearly ten years younger than me, partying hard and playing the field of women like
I
used to do. He was one of the guys who was with me at the Black Women’s Expo when I met Denise.

“So, you mean you still ain’t gon’ tell me nothin’, playa’?” he asked, pressing me.

“That’s
exactly
what I mean, young blood. This ain’t no damn high school locker room.”

Larry frowned and said, “It never was, but that didn’t stop you from tellin’ me everything before.”

I moved away from him, heading for the driver’s side of my truck. “Yeah, well, I’ve changed. And this one is important to me,” I told him.

We were both wearing blue cotton T-shirts of fine, sand-knit quality. When it got cold in the wintertime, I broke out with the rugged Carhartt jackets and overalls that construction men liked to wear. There were no plaid shirts for me. I liked to travel in my own style. Whenever I needed a haircut and a shave—which, before I met Denise, was often—I usually wore a Chicago White Sox, Cubs, Bears, or Bulls hat to represent my proud city. It made for good conversation while out on the road at the truck stops. Guys were always willing to talk sports. And although Larry would joke about my being old, he broke his neck to copy everything I bought, right on down to my deodorant and socks. It was a wonder that he never asked me what kind of drawers I wore. That’s a typical young blood for you, always yapping, and rarely trying to figure out how to do their own thing. Most of them fail at something once, then they immediately start copying everybody else.

Larry climbed into the passenger side, still planning on bugging me about my personal life. “You really think … Naw, I’m not even gon’ get into it with you,” he said, stopping himself short.

I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that Denise would never be as serious about me as I was becoming about her. I thought of our relationship as temporary for a while myself, but since we continued to enjoy each other’s company, I decided that I had to stop thinking so short termed.

Why
wasn’t
I worthy of a Denise? She wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She came from modest roots just like I had, and just like Larry. On the job, the only thing the guys knew about Denise and I was that she was a kick-ass Chicago businesswoman, and I was a truck driver from Chicago’s South Side. They had no idea how affectionate we had become, or how vulnerable Denise could be sometimes. Her independence didn’t mean that she didn’t
want
or
need
a man. She wanted a steady man just like I wanted a steady woman in my life again. And despite
her career stature, she never made me feel any
less
of a man. The guys at the job were assuming that Denise and I were oil and water, and that we couldn’t go the distance. It was an assumption that I was out to change.

I looked over at Larry and asked him, “What are you thinking, Larry, that I can’t hold my own up against this woman? Is that it? Because if that’s the case, then I got news for you, young blood. I’m not going anywhere, and she ain’t either,” I told him.

He smiled. “Are you sure about that?”

I revved up my engine and got ready for our three-day, two-night run to Florida, Arkansas, and back up to Illinois. “You damn right I’m sure,” I told him. “It’s just like you said; I’ve been with her long enough to know, right?”

He nodded to me, still grinning.

“Well, there you have it then,” I said, blowing my horn to clear out our path. The shipping and receiving docks in Cicero were always busy with truck traffic.

Larry chuckled and stared out the window as we began to pull off. He just wouldn’t wipe that damn smile off his face. He made it seem as if he knew something that I didn’t. I got so concerned about Larry’s opinions on the class issue that I refused to let the conversation die.

I said, “Hey, man, what the hell is wrong with you young bloods and sisters who make their own money anyway? Don’t you realize that the more money
they
make, the less you have to break
your
neck? I mean, does that make any kind of sense to you guys?”

“It
would
make sense if it worked that way, but it don’t,” Larry responded.

“What do you mean,
‘it don’t’?
” I had an idea of what he meant, I just wanted to hear him explain it for himself.

He said, “It seems like the more money
they
make, the more you
have
to make.”

I nodded my head and smiled. Larry was telling me exactly what I knew already: the young bloods were scared to death of the challenge. “Larry, you know how much you can make as a truck driver?”

“A lot more than what some of these so-called
corporate
sisters make. Just because they work in a tall building and wear a damn suit and stockings don’t mean that they make all that much.”

“Exactly. So why are you so concerned about how much money you’re
supposed
to be making, when you already
know
that you can make more than they do.”

“I
do
make more than they do. Most of them, at least.”

I shook my head and pitied him. I couldn’t imagine anymore that I was once so young and petrified by successful women myself. I said, “Larry, it’s all in the mind. The more secure you feel about yourself, the less you worry about competing with a woman’s income.”

“I’m just saying though, Brock. I mean, I meet a lot of women nowadays, and the first thing that comes out their mouth is, ‘Oh, I got my MCA from this university, and my Ph.D. from that university, and I studied with so and so and worked for such and such company’ and on and on. You know what I mean, man? Nobody wants to hear all of that shit!”

“And nor do
they
want to hear, ‘Baby, my dick is a size nine, I can screw for three straight hours, and I can lift a woman over my shoulders thirty times.’”

Larry broke out laughing. “Are you
sure
they don’t want to hear that, brother?”

I smiled and thought about it. “Actually, a few of them might,” I added with a chuckle. “But what I’m trying to say here, Larry, is that you can’t let these women scare you away when they start talking about their degrees and whatnot. That’s just their way of telling you who they are, so you don’t go in there thinking that they’re gonna put up with no bullshit. And the proper term,
I believe
, is M-
B
-A.”

Larry calmed down for a minute. He knew that I was right.

He looked over and said, “They still treat you like shit when they find out that you don’t have any of them damn degrees that they got. You ever been to college?” he asked me.

I nodded. “I went to DePaul for a few years and dropped out. It wasn’t my kind of ball game.”

“Well, it wasn’t mine either. I dropped out before I even went,” Larry said with a chuckle. He seemed to be proud of it.

“And that’s exactly why you feel inferior to them,” I told him.

“Why, because I didn’t go to college? That don’t mean everything, man. I shouldn’t have to walk around braggin’ about degrees and shit. Just let me be me, plain old Larry Nicholson.”

I smiled at him again and said, “Exactly. And that’s why ‘plain old Larry Nicholson’ needs to stay away from ‘Corporate Susie,’ because he can’t handle her. And it’s
not
because he
doesn’t
have a college education, but because he doesn’t feel
comfortable
with not having one.”

Larry frowned at me. “Yeah, whatever, man. Fuck ’em anyway. They got the same thing every other woman got.”

“And you want some of it, too. Don’t you?” I asked, teasing him. “You
just don’t know how to go about getting it. Therefore, it’s driving you crazy. And it would drive you
crazier
if you saw one of these sisters walking around with a white man on her arm.”

Larry looked at me with his eyes blazing. “You damned right I’d be mad!” he yelled at me. “They don’t have to necessarily talk to me, but it’s plenty of other brothers that they could talk to. They need to at least keep it in the family.”

“Well, that means that more of you young brothers need to get busy working on your confidence, education, and everything else. Because I’m gonna tell you something, young blood, these women ain’t looking for no ‘plain old Larry.’ In this day and time, they’re looking for a Superman. And I’m not talking about just the money, either. I’m talking about a man who feels
good
about himself
and
who takes care of his business. You hear me, Larry?”

“Yeah, I hear you. And I’m a Superman right here,” he said, pounding his chest with a smile.

I shook my head and pitied him some more. Larry didn’t have a clue. It was going to take him another ten years to find out what I already knew. Maybe longer than that. Some brothers never learn; a woman can never be more than an equal match for a confident man, no matter how many degrees she has or how much money she makes. A confident man can always rise to the occasion. I firmly believed that. That’s just the way the Lord made it. One confident man and one confident woman make for plenty of confident children.

Before I knew it, Larry was falling to sleep in his chair. I told him to climb in the sleeper and get some rest so he could take over the wheel that night. Then I got to thinking about Denise. Thinking about her made my trips seem a hell of a lot shorter, and my return a lot more meaningful. There was a time, back in my early years of truck driving, where I looked forward to getting away and seeing new places. Even while I was married, I looked forward to getting away. Every trip was like a mini vacation to me. But after twelve years on the job, I’ve seen just about all I want to see, and the thrill of going away is gone. Denise gave me the thrill of returning home.

I reminisced on the first time she agreed to go out with me on a real date. It was after the Fourth of July weekend. Both of her boys had gone away to summer camp, and Denise had a full week to herself, which was a blessing in disguise; and a big opportunity for me.

I bought some Giorgio Armani cologne because of its mellow, nonaggressive appeal. Although I had stopped working out, at six foot one and
two hundred pounds, I was still no cream puff, and I didn’t want to overwhelm Denise with my physical presence. I wanted that first date to be a meeting of our minds.