Waiting to Exhale (10 page)

"Where did he sleep when he was here last time?"

"You better watch your mouth. Where he slept was none of your business."

"He's nothing but a pretty boy who can probably get any woman he wants. I hope you don't think he wants you."

Gloria picked up the phone and threw it at him, but he was too quick. He ducked out of the way, then rolled his eyes at her and ran upstairs to his room. She heard his door slam. What was she supposed to do with this boy? For fifteen of his sixteen years, she couldn't have asked for a better son. She should've never taken him out of that Christian school. Now he's talking like a hoodlum, dressing like a hoodlum-the boy won't wear shoes, he's got at least seven or eight pairs of leather sneakers-and everything he wears is too big. All he listens to is rap music, as if there's no other kind, and he wears two earrings in one ear and one of those flat-top haircuts with lines zig- zagging all across the back of his head. She went upstairs and knocked on his door. "Tarik?"

"Yes?"

"Would you open this door for a minute, please?"

"I can hear you."

"Open this damn door, Tarik." Gloria, who swore only when she was mad, opened the door herself. "Look. I don't like all this arguing we>e been doing. Let's call a truce."

"I'm not the one arguing, Ma. You've been jumping on my case about every little thing I do."

"I don't mean to, and I'm sorry. But, Tarik, we used to talk about everything. We used to be just like friends. But you're changing, and I don't know how to talk to you anymore."

"I'm not changing, Ma. Look, if you want to talk, talk."

He was making this too hard. She took a deep breath and just blurted out what she was thinking. "Remember when we talked about drugs?"

"What about drugs?" he asked, while he took off one pair of sneakers and changed into high-tops this time.

"Remember when we talked about peer pressure?"

"Yes."

"Didn't we agree that if you ever felt inclined to try any, we would talk about it? You could come to me."

"Oh, so now I'm on drugs, right?"

"I didn't say that, Tarik. But I don't know what to think. You're acting so cocky, and your attitude's getting-"

"I'm not using any drugs, Ma. Believe me. I'm not that stupid. I wish you would give me some credit," he said, and tied his thick shoestrings twice, then pulled the knots extra hard.

"You're doing something, and whatever it is, I hope you can talk to me or your father about it."

He bolted straight up and flung his arms into the air. "You don't get it, do you? That man is not my father, he's my daddy. If he was my father, he'da been here to help you take care of me. If he was my father, he'da done more than drop a check in the mail. He'da taken me to my baseball games, to the movies, somewhere-anywhere. I know a whole lot of dudes out here making babies and bragging about it. When Reverend Jones took all of us boys on that camping trip last year, he told us that anybody can make a baby but it takes a man to be a father. I see this bastard every two years, and I'm supposed to get excited? You get excited, Ma. Can I go to the arcade? Please?"

She knew if she said no, as soon as she left he'd go anyway. "Just be back in the house by six."

"I will," he said, and put his Walkman on. "Can I get ten dollars?" he asked. "Please?" Gloria got ten dollars out of her purse. "Thanks," he said, and bent down and gave her the habitual kiss on the cheek. She was surprised that he'd done it, and relieved, as she watched him trot down the steps to a beat, his right arm punching the air rhythmically, while he talked or sang-whatever they called it.

She walked back to her bedroom, switched on the ceiling fan, then went into her bathroom and turned on the shower. What was she going to do with this boy? She hoped he wasn't messing around with drugs, especially that new one that's out there: crack. It was treacherous. Too many of her regular customers had had some kind of tragedy happen in their family because of it. Gloria didn't know what was in this stuff, but whatever it was had to be powerful, because it seemed like everybody who tried it got hooked. When she was growing up in Oakland, heroin was the culprit. But she didn't remember heroin becoming an epidemic as fast as this crack mess was. And as usual, it seemed to love black people more than anybody else.

As a matter of fact, the main reason she bought her house in this subdivision was because it was a safe, clean, middle-class neighborhood that happened to be predominantly white. But that's what she felt she had to do to keep Tarik off the streets and get him into one of the best school districts in Phoenix, away from those schools that were already drug- and gang-infested.

Gloria took her robe off, put on her shower cap, and got in the shower. She would die if anything happened to this boy. She had been his mother for almost seventeen years. And for most of those years she had worried. She worried when he was late coming home and would sit by the phone, contemplating when to call the police, because she just knew he was dead, in a gutter, or on the side of a deserted highway somewhere. And she worried about whether or not she'd been doing a good job. She had introduced him to God a long time ago, but she still worried whether or not she had taught him the right things at the right time: manners, kindness, generosity, respect for others and respect for himself; pride in the color of his skin; how to eat at the dinner table and how to act in restaurants; why she'd refused to buy him any kind of guns except water guns; how to talk like he had some sense; how to stick up for himself and fight if talking didn't work; and when he was hurting, she didn't care if it was a scrape or a fall or his feelings, she had told him it was okay for him to cry and to ignore the little boys that called him a sissy. But she wasn't sure if she'd done enough, or if she was doing it right.

She wanted to be a good mother, wanted to expose Tarik to as many different kinds of cultural experiences as she could manage. When he showed an interest in music at seven, she gave him piano lessons; when his lungs got stronger and he said he wanted to learn how to play a horn, she bought him a clarinet; and in high school, he fell in love with the soprano saxophone, so she got him one. Over the years, it was when she watched him do little things-eating without spilling, tying his shoe for the first time, riding a two-wheeler, his first recital, his first nosebleed from a fight-it was during these moments that Gloria would become overwhelmed with the anxiety of being a mother, because it dawned on her that she was responsible for molding and shaping another human being's life. And later, when she watched him make his first basket, his first touchdown, when she saw the first signs of hair on his chin and above his lip, when he backed her car out of the driveway the first time, Gloria developed a different kind of anxiety, the fear of knowing that she was the person who was preparing her son for manhood. What if she forgot something crucial? How would she know? And when would she know it? Who would tell her? And what if she was raising him to be a mama's boy? She regretted all those years she let him sleep with her, but she couldn't help it. Those first few years were lonely, after she moved out of her parents' house and got her own apartment. Her bed was always cold. And Tarik's little body was so warm, and when his tiny feet would rub against her leg, Gloria knew she wasn't alone in this world.

She was in her last year of college when she got pregnant. Most of her girlfriends who'd gotten "caught" had run straight to the abortion clinic, but Gloria couldn't do that. She had been baptized Catholic, and even though she hardly ever went to church anymore, she knew she'd committed a major sin by having sexual intercourse before marriage; there was no way she could commit another. Her girlfriends tried to talk her into getting rid of the baby, telling her how safe and easy it was, and in this situation she shouldn't worry about God, because she was the one who was going to have to take care of it. But Gloria was too scared. And decided that a child's life wasn't such a high price to pay for a sin.

Her parents had insisted that she marry the father, but Gloria couldn't do that, either. First of all, she hadn't exactly been David's girlfriend. She'd been out with him a few times-like half the other black girls on campus. And like them, Gloria had secretly craved him. But who wouldn't, after watching his strong legs jump over those hurdles so fast that his blue-and-white jersey looked like a purple blur; David looked like a floating ballerina when he pole vaulted, a beautiful kangaroo when he broad jumped, and black lightning when he ran the 400. Gloria, who was one of the most striking girls on campus and, at that time, a perfect size nine, had prided herself on resisting David's overtures for two years. She didn't want to be part of his stable. And he seemed to like the chase. But finally she gave in and had coffee with him one afternoon; they went bowling and then to an early movie. When David asked if she'd be his date for one of the biggest frat parties, Gloria was so flattered to have been chosen, she went ahead and accepted. It was a wild night, so wild that she'd had four beers and two rum and Cokes, and she didn't know what to think when she woke up the next morning in his dorm room. She was three months pregnant before she got the courage to tell him, and David was in shock. "Why didn't you use something? And why didn't you tell me this sooner?" he said. All she could say was, "I don't know." David, who was on a track and field scholarship, had been selected to participate in the '72 Olympics. Gloria didn't want to spoil his life or ruin his future because of her own mistake, her own negligence, so she asked if he woujd do her one favor: after the baby was bom, would he just acknowledge that he was the father? She told him she would never ask him for anything except his whereabouts over the years, so that whenever the child was old enough, or curious enough, it would know how to find him. At first David was reluctant, but his parents had laid such a heavy guilt trip on him for being so irresponsible, he agreed to it.

She had majored in theater arts, but Gloria couldn't act to save her life. She yearned to do something involving the theater: set or costume design, lighting, or even stage makeup. After she graduated and had Tarik, Gloria couldn't find a theater job anywhere in the Bay Area that would support her and a child, and by the time Tarik was three, he was severely asthmatic and had so many allergies he could hardly play outside.

They were at their church's Fourth of July picnic in 1975 when Gloria's mother reached for a bowl of potato salad, dropped it on the grass, and said she felt dizzy. Like she was choking. Pearl suffered from high blood pressure and couldn't seem to keep it under control. Before the ambulance made it to the site, she was dead. Gloria's daddy was so distraught that a week after the funeral, he couldn't stand being in that house alone and decided to drive down to Alabama, where his people were. Gloria told him she didn't think it was a good idea, but he insisted the drive would do him good. On the way there, he fell asleep behind the wheel. His car overturned and crushed him. Shortly afterward, Gloria decided to leave California. She didn't have any reason to stay there now. She picked Phoenix, not knowing anybody there and not caring. At least Tarik would be able to breathe.

She sold her parents' house, donated some of the money to their church, put the rest in the bank, and enrolled in cosmetology school. Gloria had always cut and styled and dyed the hair of half the women in her neighborhood anyway. It seemed as though doing hair was as dramatic as she was going to get.

Over the next few years, David sent money and came to see Tarik a few times. Tarik's asthma got less severe, and the allergy shots he had to get once a week helped, but he still couldn't play in the grass, and his first furry pet, which was a rabbit, had to be his last. By the time he was five, Tarik had no memory of his daddy. David had suffered some kind of knee injury that prevented him from becoming a professional athlete; he had gone back to school, gotten his master's degree, and become a physical therapist for other injured athletes. He lived in Seattle and was still single. He traveled year round and only managed to see Tarik every couple of years.

At six, Tarik started asking for a daddy. He had memorized how to say his prayers, and Gloria had always told him that if he wanted something special but reasonable, he should ask God for it; if God felt he deserved it-or he had earned it-He would answer the boy's prayers. So Tarik started praying for a daddy-every single night. It broke Gloria's heart just to listen to him. "Don't worry," she'd say. "One day, Mommy'll get a husband, and you'll have a daddy that lives with us."

"How come he's not here yet?" he kept asking.

"You have to give God time," she'd say.

By the time Tarik was seven, he had already lost some of his faith in God, since God hadn't delivered. And that's when he started asking Gloria for a baby sister or brother. She explained that she needed a husband first. "But you don't got one now and you got me," he said.

She told him that it would be too hard having two kids and no husband, and then she'd look over at his bookshelf and pick out a book, he'd get excited, and that was the end of it, till the next time.

Gloria had no idea how much her life revolved around her son, until he reached that age where he preferred playing with his friends instead of spending his free time with her. Which was when she learned that food was good company. Back then, it was Bernadine who told her she needed to get out of the house and branch out socially. But Gloria had lost her social skills, especially when it came to men. She didn't know how to respond to them, so she treated them as if they were children; made herself indispensable and saw that their every need was taken care of. Gloria didn't know a thing about protocol.